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By Jon Weisman
Some jottings before turning out the lights on the weekend, a most successful one for the Dodgers.
- If someone had offered you a 9-4 start in a season that began with a cross-globe trip to Australia and was soon followed by injuries to Clayton Kershaw and Brian Wilson, I’m guessing you’d take that, right? Only surprising Milwaukee, winners of nine games in a row en route to a 10-2 record, has a better record in the Majors than the Dodgers.
- The Dodgers’ offense roared this weekend in their three game sweep of Arizona, climaxing in today’s 8-6 victory (recapped here by Ken Gurnick of MLB.com), but it’s not that much of a surprise that the team would have an easier time scoring at Chase Field than Petco Park or even Dodger Stadium.
- Similarly, Phoenix is going to be a tougher place to hold a lead, so don’t get too angry at the Dodger bullpen.
- Not that I’m looking to take anything away from Adrian Gonzalez, who has an extra-base hit in eight consecutive games, one shy of a team record. Tied for the MLB lead in home runs at five until Mark Trumbo launched No. 6 today off Jamey Wright, Gonzalez is slugging .680 in 2014. Last year, Gonzalez hit his fifth home run in his 42nd start, May 25.
- Tonight’s random trivia: The Dodgers have scored eight runs in two consecutive games. Only two seasons ago, they tallied exactly eight runs in three consecutive games.
- Meet your MLB stolen base leader, Dee Gordon, with nine steals in 11 games. What a display he put on today. And in addition to his four steals, he also walked twice, raising his on-base percentage to .457, eighth in the Majors.
- Also, this, from Jon SooHoo:
- Meet your MLB co-leader in doubles, Juan Uribe, who has a .547 slugging percentage and a .358 OBP despite going the entire season to date without a walk. Yeah, I know — but don’t worry about it now.
- You want to use a .154 batting average to judge Matt Kemp, be my guest. I’ll take the .829 OPS. After 31 plate appearances, Kemp has 14 total bases but has yet to hit a single.
- Making his debut for Albuquerque today, Alex Guerrero had a three-run homer, double and single in four at-bats, as Christopher Jackson notes at Examiner.com.
- One more note from the minors: Joc Pederson has a .511 on-base percentage and .714 slugging this season for the Isotopes. He has 13 hits, six of them for extra bases. But he has yet to drive in another runner. He has three RBI, each coming on a solo home run.
- The Dodgers struck out 16 times today, tied for third-most in team history (the record of 20, you should recall, was set last year before Yasiel Puig hit his walkoff home run to beat Cincinnati, 1-0). Never before had the Dodgers struck out 16 times in a nine-inning game and won.
- The Dodgers have now struck out 123 times in 13 games, or 9.46 times per game. a pace that would give them 1,533 strikeouts in their 162-game season. That would break the franchise record of 1,190 by more than 300. I guess I should be more worried about this, but I’m going to assume that it will taper off, unless you’re also willing to grant that all the superb offensive numbers will also stick.
oldbrooklynfan
I’ll take the strikeouts wih the wins. The Dodgers are an aggressive hitting team with very little discipline anyway and these things are bound to happen. The pitching seemed a little shaky in these last two games but that came at the right time with the offense getting hot.
Don Bright
As far as the pen, mainly the bad pitching was done by Wright and Legue, one of them should go once Wilson is activated. If Paco or Withrow get sent down instead, I may have to hunt down Ned.