Rafael Furcal and Jon Garland are officially on the disabled list, replaced for the time being by Ivan De Jesus Jr. and John Ely. Vicente Padilla has had a setback, which is why he’s not being activated. Juan Uribe and Blake Hawksworth could displace the Ely and De Jesus within days, however.
Ely will pitch out of the bullpen – Rubby De La Rosa is still scheduled to start Tuesday.
In his 10th game since returning from the disabled list and 17th game of the season, Rafael Furcal went kablooey again, leaving tonight’s 2-1 Dodger loss to Cincinnati in the top of the third inning with an injury to his left side. He is day-to-day, although keep in mind that Furcal’s body measures days based on Mercury time.
Meanwhile, the Dodgers’ offensive surge of earlier this week proved itself to be the fluke we all assumed it would be. Los Angeles has scored one run in its past 21 innings, despite playing today’s nine in one of the healthier hitting environments in the National League. Andre Ethier and Matt Kemp had six of the Dodgers nine times on base, with Kemp erasing one of his successes by being doubled off second after Ethier scored the team’s only run via James Loney’s sacrifice fly.
Hiroki Kuroda pitched six innings, several of them rough ones, but escaped unscathed (thanks in part to Jay Bruce being thrown out on the bases in the second inning – the play that might have caused Furcal’s injury) until the bottom of the fifth, when Scott Rolen drove in two runs with a bases-loaded single. The Dodger bullpen pitched two shutout innings, highlighted by Scott Elbert relieving Mike MacDougal with a runner on second and one out in the seventh and retiring Joey Votto and Bruce. But pinch-hitter Rod Barajas flied out with Kemp and Ethier on base to end the Dodgers’ last threat in the eighth.
The Dodgers put the ball in play tonight, striking out only four times in 31 at-bats, but they just could not make anything happen outside of the trainer’s room. Aaron Miles, slated to be the 25th man on the roster, remains on pace to combine with backup infielder Jamey Carroll for 1,000 plate appearances this year.
We’re still waiting for the official word, but Tony Jackson of ESPNLosAngeles.com is reporting that Jon Garland will be placed on the disabled list (for the second time this season) with a right shoulder problem.
The immediate roster replacement would be Vicente Padilla, who will be activated from the disabled list, but more significantly, it could mean Rubby De La Rosa will make his first major-league start Tuesday in Philadelphia.
Update: Whatever’s going to happen is apparently not happening before today’s game, according to this note from the Dodgers.
Linky-dinky doo …
Meanwhile, who remembers the details of a collision at San Francisco in 2009 between Eugenio Velez and Russell Martin? I was at the game:
… And so we went scoreless into the bottom of the fifth inning, when the first of six Dodger relievers, James McDonald, surrendered a double off the glove of Andre Ethier and then a run-scoring single. Coming around to score, Eugenio Velez undressed Dodger catcher Russell Martin like he was a line drive at Charlie Brown. It took Martin a couple of minutes to get himself together. The next batter, Pablo Sandoval, handed Martin his catcher’s mask, and I thought, “Oh, what a nice guy.”
That didn’t last long. McDonald’s next pitch was a bit inside and from our sideways vantage point appeared to hit Sandoval. Nonetheless, it wasn’t much of a brushback and it certainly didn’t seem intentional, given how tight the game was. But Sandoval immediately reacted angrily, walking out toward the mound, and suddenly a donnybrook was dawning. I couldn’t believe it. That being said, almost everyone else in the ballpark seemed to be itching for a Giants-Dodgers fight, including Martin, and it took some time to restore order. The fans around me actually thought Martin and McDonald should have been ejected, as if they started it – though to my mind they were wearing orange-colored sunglasses. …
Joe Torre plans to have a talk with Sabean.
Update: Granillo found the Velez-Martin play: That’s the first time I’ve seen the replay. Velez slid, which makes it more harmless than I remembered. Martin was definitely vulnerable, and I think Velez could have avoided upending him, but it wasn’t something to get in an uproar about.
The next edition of Dodger Cogs and Dogs will be June 16. In the meantime …
… “I don’t think there is any question there is a strain between the franchise and the community right now,” Schieffer said. “And that isn’t the community’s fault.” …
“Have you been approached by anyone in support of Frank?” I asked.
Schieffer laughed, then gave me the answer I fully expected.
“I’m not going to go there,” he said. …
The kids have come to the rescue of the Dodger bullpen, and not nearly enough has been said about it.
Jonathan Broxton went on the disabled list May 6, followed within 10 days by Hong-Chih Kuo, Vicente Padilla and Blake Hawksworth. To replace them, the Dodgers brought up Kenley Jansen (who had temporarily gone down to Chattanooga), Scott Elbert, Javy Guerra and Ramon Troncoso.
Another week later, the Dodgers dispatched mop-up man Lance Cormier and replaced him with Rubby De La Rosa. Then in the past week, Jansen went on the disabled list and was replaced by Josh Lindblom, who made his major-league debut with an inning in the finale of the Colorado series Wednesday.
Of the replacements, Troncoso was the veteran with all of 177 1/3 career innings. The combined career experience of Jansen, Elbert, Guerra, De La Rosa and Lindblom was 39 2/3 innings. Their average age: 23 1/2. Think about it – more than half of the bullpen handed over to runts.
Here’s how they’ve done, including the 3-0 Dodger loss to Colorado, in which the bullpen followed Jon Garland’s six-inning, three-run start with shutout ball:
Total: 31 1/3 innings, 40 baserunners, seven earned runs, 32 strikeouts, 2.01 ERA, 3 of 16 inherited runners scored
That’s remarkable, especially considering we can assume that we can possibly attribute three of the seven runs allowed to the shoulder inflammation that sent Jansen to the disabled list.
The news that Padilla is expected to return to active duty Friday will, barring injury, start pushing the runts back to the minor leagues, but each has made the case to stay with the big club. Considered a weakness less than a month ago, the Dodger bullpen will in less than 48 hours have eight effective relievers to choose from, with more to come as Broxton, Kuo, Hawksworth and Jansen get back on their feet.
The other noteworthy thing is that with all the injuries, Dodger manager Don Mattingly has basically been forced to throw the idea of a designated closer out the window, instead bringing in pitchers simply based on the situation rather than their title or status. Unshackled from a pecking order, the Dodger kids haven’t suffered – they’ve thrived. Jansen, Guerra and De La Rosa have all finished close games, while Elbert and now even Lindblom have pitched in situations where giving up a single run could be a killer. De La Rosa, whose destiny remains starting pitcher, could be a circa-1992 Pedro Martinez-like smokejumper, giving you a couple innings at a time as long as there’s sufficient rest in between.
Message to Mattingly: Do yourself a favor. As the veterans return to the pen, don’t get caught up in who your closer is. Just keep doing what you’re doing. Manage according to the situation, not according to resume.
The Dodgers are going for their first four-game winning streak since August 24-27.
The last time the Dodgers scored at least seven runs in four consecutive games was May 24-27, 2009. The last three of those games were in Colorado.
Finally, Matt Kemp has the longest active consecutive games played streak in baseball and is almost 1/10th of the way to Cal Ripken Jr.’s all-time record of 2,632. Kemp is on target to pass Ripken in late September 2025, on or about his 41st birthday. Get your tickets now!
Regarding the dad who dropped his daughter when trying to catch a foul ball the other night at Dodger Stadium … all I have to say is that I’m glad there were no cameras on me when I lifted my then 1-year-old oldest son above my shoulders head-first into a ceiling fan.
Whap whap whap whap. Still makes me shudder. We all do bonehead things to our kids, sometimes literally – if we can laugh about them afterward, we’re lucky.
In the middle of Memorial Day, my wife and I punished my two oldest children. We love them more than life itself and have the highest hopes for them, but of course that doesn’t eliminate the paths to frustration with them.
In particular, they have developed some sort of simultaneous mental block to saying hello to people they know. They resist a friendly greeting like some sort of evil bacteria. I understand shyness – I was the shyest one in my family as a kid and it still crops up from time to time today. But these kids got to the point Monday where their grandparents, who have been very good to them, said hello and the kids didn’t so much as look up. It wasn’t shy – it was dismissive.
That ain’t right. It’s damn vexing, and it only seems to be getting worse. To be sure, my wife and I are wondering what we’ve done wrong to cause this and what we should or shouldn’t do to solve it. But in the meantime, taking away some of the kids’ Nintendo DS privileges seemed a logical stopover en route to the next parenting solution station.
Over the next couple of hours, the kids hardly snapped out of their funk.
At the end of the afternoon, we went to see my 101-year-old grandmother, who is deteriorating rapidly now in a manner that is difficult to take, especially for my father. It was not an easy place for any of us, including single-digit age children who, for the first time in their lives, are face to face with someone whose mind and body are failing.
But when we had all but given up hope on the kids salvaging the day, they came alive. They were not only friendly, but they went and put their piano lessons to tremendous use, playing an impromptu mini-concert for Grandma Sue and a few others at the assisted living home, something so wonderful that thinking about it now does something to my head that I can’t find the words to describe. They did something for this woman, who whom they essentially can no longer communicate with through words because of her hearing and speech decline, that I could never do.
I hope I’ll never forget that moment. I know I won’t forget, at least until my mind goes, the look on my grandmother’s face as we were leaving, a look of direct melancholy but also of one that had been engaged in the world at least one more time.
Anyway, I started writing this tonight after the Dodgers took a 5-1 lead against Colorado and reached this final paragraph with the scorer 8-2, on the way to what hopefully for them and their fans will be their third straight authoritative victory, with the plan of drawing a connection of how quickly simmering frustration can turn to elation. That seems a bit forced now that I’ve gotten to this point, so all I’ll say now is that I’ll never cease to be surprised by how often I can be surprised, much less blown away.
To make the Dodgers’ end-of-May payroll, Frank McCourt once again borrowed from Peter Future to pay Paul Present. From Molly Knight of ESPN The Magazine:
… McCourt was able to meet the team’s payroll Tuesday with cash advances drawn on the team’s corporate sponsorship deals, according to three people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to speak publicly.
Since McCourt has been unable to secure traditional loans to fund the cash-strapped Dodgers, front office executives in charge of revenue were charged with finding more creative ways to help float the troubled franchise for two more weeks.
Current team sponsors were contacted and offered discounts on their annual bills and luxury box stadium seats in exchange for cash up front, according to two sources. It is not known which sponsors took the offer, or the depth of discount they were given.
McCourt is still searching for the funding to make the team’s next payroll on June 15, according to two people with knowledge of the Dodgers finances who were not authorized to speak publicly. Should the beleaguered owner fail to make payroll, Major League Baseball would cover it for him and likely formally seize the team.
Based on an Opening Day payroll of $103.8 million, the Dodgers’ payroll for its major league roster in the second half of May was about $8.25 million. The figure includes 16 days’ salary, but not any signing bonus payments that happen to fall due.
The Times, citing anonymous sources, reported last week that McCourt needed roughly $9.8 million to meet Tuesday’s payroll. His financial woes will increase in June because the Dodgers owe Manny Ramirez more than $6 million in deferred compensation, the paper said. …
Here are some items for your mailbox:
The Dodgers were up by six when it happened, so it wasn’t the biggest moment in the game (see above for the answer). But …
Chad Billingsley had already thrown 99 pitches and scattered a career-high 11 hits, including allowing the leadoff man for Colorado to reach base in six consecutive innings, when he followed a visit to the mound from pitching coach Rick Honeycutt by walking Carlos Gonzalez to load the bases with one out in the top of the seventh. I’m one of Billingsley’s biggest fans, but with Troy Tulowitzki coming to bat, I was almost sure it was time to go to a Dodger bullpen that was rested from Clayton Kershaw’s complete game Sunday. Despite the loss of five relievers to the disabled list and a sixth to the restricted list, it seemed obvious that Don Mattingly should go for a fresh arm to protect the 7-1 lead and protect Billingsley’s eight-strikeout outing.
Billingsley stayed in, and four pitches later, Tulowitzki grounded into an easy Rafael Furcal-to-James Loney double play. I love when feeling wrong feels so right.
And despite my misgivings about this team – and keep in mind, even with this 7-1 Dodgers victory tonight, Los Angeles is only 8-10 since I voiced my big fear that this is the worst Dodger team since 1992 – this whiff of hope that has come from the past two games is a tasty amuse bouche of crow.
If nothing else, thank goodness for the respite from negativity that the last two games have provided. A day after Kershaw’s two-hit shutout, the Dodgers gave up 14 knocks – and still allowed only one run. Los Angeles went 4 for 4 with runners in scoring position; Colorado went 1 for 12. Rafael Furcal has entered the Rafael Furcal Zone, going 2 for 4 to reach 7 for 13 over his past three games. Andre Ethier is 9 for 15 with five walks (that’s a .700 on-base percentage, friends) since he banged into the wall in Chicago and got four days of rest from regular play.
And are you ready for a hot, or semi-hot, James Loney? Two homers in his past four games, including a two-run shot tonight, and 26 for 84 with seven walks and only four strikeouts since May 3 – a .370 on-base percentage and .440 slugging percentage. It’s not Gil Hodges, but a .810 OPS for this offense will cure some amount of ills.
Those who wanted to start the rebuild on Juneday, the National League West and the Dodgers’ recent show of extreme competence have conspired against them. Say hi to the hottest 25-30 team in baseball.
* * *
My sincere appreciation to those who gave themselves so that others could have a better life, and my best to you on this day.
The Dodgers almost made it through their first two months without playing a first-place team in the National League West. They have played 20 games inside the division, but not counting Opening Day, only once was the team they were playing in first place at the time.
(Note – it’s very disappointing to me that I couldn’t say they hadn’t played a first-place team in the division at all. That would have been a much more impressive little-known fact, and it would have carried nicely into the Colorado series.)
The Dodgers’ only remaining games inside the division before the All-Star break are against the Rockies and Padres. They next play the Diamondbacks on July 15 and the Giants on July 18.
NL West opponents to date:
March 31: vs. San Francisco
April 1: vs. fifth-place San Francisco
April 2: vs. fifth-place San Francisco
April 3: vs. fifth-place San Francisco
April 5: vs. third-place Colorado
April 6: vs. second-place Colorado
April 8: vs. second-place San Diego
April 9: vs. third-place San Diego
April 10: vs. fourth-place San Diego
April 11: vs. fifth-place San Francisco
April 12: vs. fifth-place San Francisco
April 13: vs. fourth-place San Francisco
April 29: vs. fifth-place San Diego
April 30: vs. fifth-place San Diego
May 1: vs. fifth-place San Diego
May 13: vs. fourth-place Arizona
May 14: vs. fourth-place Arizona
May 15: vs. fourth-place Arizona
May 18: vs. second-place San Francisco
May 19: vs. first-place San Francisco
So that’s what a breeze feels like.
Sailing into a storm most of the season, the Dodgers enjoyed a day with the wind entirely at their backs, with Clayton Kershaw in near no-hit form and the offense practically an arcade, leading to an 8-0 breeze over the Marlins.
The Dodgers took two of three from Florida for their first series victory since April 22-24 in Chicago. If you’re any kind of believer – and praise be onto you if you are – this is where it starts, all the ifs and buts transforming into actual results.
Whether they can extend this one-game winning streak, matching their longest since May 13 (yes, that’s right), is of course up in the air, but if in fact it’s a blip on the losing radar, it was a blip to be savored.
Kershaw’s marquee game in my mind remains his showdown victory over Ubaldo Jimenez of Colorado 12 1/2 months ago, but as Mike Petriello of Mike Scioscia’s Tragic Illness points out, today was Kershaw’s finest statistical outing ever – a Kershawnal Best, if you will – allowing two hits and one walk while striking out 10 in his second career shutout. The second hit off Kershaw was a ball that Jay Gibbons lost in a battle with the sun and an unusually ferocious wind, which would have been exceedingly painful for fans had Omar Infante not singled softly to left in the third inning.
In any case, Kershaw, who lowered his ERA to 2.62 and now leads the major leagues with 87 strikeouts, was in complete control.
“He was hitting both sides of the plate and throwing inside on lefties, which you don’t see that much from a lefty,” Florida’s Wes Helms told The Associated Press. “Kershaw just commanded all of his pitches today, and he had above-average stuff. He knows how to bury his curveball and his slider. He’s not going to leave it over the middle of the plate. I mean, you get geared up for that heater, and his slider’s hard enough that you can’t hold up when it’s in the dirt.”
It was a Hershiseresque day all around for Kershaw, who had as many hits at the plate as he allowed. The 23-year-old, who was 10 for 132 entering this season, is 6 for 25 in 2011. His two hits were only 13 percent of the Dodgers’ 15 off Marlins starter Ricky Nolasco, who was forced to stick it out for five innings after Florida blew out its bullpen Saturday. The total tied a Los Angeles record for the most off a single starting pitcher (Mario Soto of Cincinnati was the last victim, in 1982).
Gibbons, Andre Ethier and Rafael Furcal each had three, including Furcal’s first homer of the year, a two-run shot to the right-field bullpen that gave the Dodgers their initial lead after Kershaw led off the bottom of the third with a single. Ethier reached base in all five plate appearances, while Dioner Navarro went 2 for 4 to complete a 7-for-18 week.
Dodger life is good today, for the second time in three days.
* * *
What happens when three old friends in crisis fall into an unexpected love triangle? In The Catch, Maya, Henry and Daniel embark upon an emotional journey that forces them to confront unresolved pain, present-day traumas and powerful desires, leading them to question the very meaning of love and fulfillment. The Catch tells a tale of ordinary people seeking the extraordinary – or, if that’s asking too much, some damn peace of mind.
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