May 26th, 2013: Dodgers Daily: Kershaw Can't Do It By Himself

Hello,

St. Louis beat the Dodgers in LA on Sunday and won 2 of 3 games in this series. The Cardinals won today's game 5-3. Sunday's loss was very representative of so many other Dodgers losses this season. The Dodgers who've performed the best this season were the ones who performed the best in this game. The players who've performed the worst were also the same in this game. Here's a brief recap of the good and bad.

I'll start off with the good. I include Clayton Kershaw in with the good, Kershaw battled for 7 innings. He gave up 7 hits, 4 runs and 3 walks and all the runs were earned. Kershaw has been so dominant this season that his ERA is still only 1.68. Holding your opponent to 4 runs or less will many times get a team a win. But this is the Dodgers, the second lowest scoring team in MLB. Usually once an opponent scores at least 5 runs, the offensively challenged Dodgers are essentially finished. For example 13 of the 15 teams that won today scored at least 5 runs. The other two winning teams scored 4 runs. Maybe the Dodgers didn't want to separate themselves more from the Marlins for the 29th place in runs?

Also Kershaw remains handy with a bat, he was 1 for 3 today. He later came around to score. Kershaw has as many hits in one game as Matt Kemp and Andre Ethier have had in their last 3 games- 1.

Adrian Gonzalez was great, not just good, again, he's hitting .321 this season. Gonzalez went to bat 5 times and got on base 4 times. He had his 6th home run of the season and he was responsible for all 3 Dodgers RBIs. In RBIs he improved from being tied for 17th to tied for 10th in the MLB. Is it too much to hope for that Gonzalez starts to get hot? He's tied with a player, Mike Trout, who'll be on the opposite side of the field the next 4 Dodgers games. In case you were wondering Miguel Cabrera leads all of MLB with 56 RBIs.

Every time I think that Carl Crawford is going to fall off, he comes through with another spectacular performance. Crawford had 5 at bats today and got on base 4 times. He had 3 hits and a walk. Crawford is hitting .308 on the season.

Now on to the bad.

I love Matt Kemp, but he's still battling as if he's having some lingering injury issues. Don Mattingly gave him the day off to rest, only giving Kemp a pinch hit in the whole game. And keeping in with his rough season, Kemp hit into an inning ending double play. Kemp hasn't had a home run at Dodgers Stadium in his last 101 at bats, which was last season. (Thanks to ESPN.com.)

Andre Ethier was 1 for 3 today, since he hit .333 today, he actually raised his putrid batting average from .252 to .253. I hope the Dodgers can find a good trade partner for him.

The Dodgers dropped to a 2.3% chance of making the playoffs.

themusicaddict