Hello,
For those of you who are stumbling on this blog for the first time: This is one in my continuing series of blogs about the Dodgers following nearly every game day. It's become a very frustrating experience as they've been so bad this season. Their inability to score runs is probably the most frustrating part about being a Dodgers fan. Over the years I've also started cheering for the Boston Red Sox, Baltimore Orioles, Oakland A's, Chicago Cubs, Pittsburgh Pirates and the Atlanta Braves. Fortunately all those teams are better at scoring runs.
In Game 2 of their 4 game series San Diego beat LA 5-2. San Diego has won the first two games in the series, the Padres are well on their way to winning 3 of 4 games in this series. That's what I'd predicted. Once again that doesn't say I'm good at predicting things, it just says I have some common sense. I can see that the two teams are going in completely opposite directions, the Padres have been just as good as the Dodgers have been bad. Due to that and the Padres being at home, predicting they win 3 of 4 was the only logical conclusion. Earlier this season the Padres swept the Dodgers in LA.
Anyway the less said about the Dodgers the better, I just want to point out a few things. Again the Dodgers offense scored very little, only two runs. LA finished with 8 hits, as usual they weren't able to string enough of their hits together to win the game. Yasiel Puig, Mark Ellis and Juan Uribe all had 2 hits each. Yasiel Puig remains the best Dodger player by far. I keep on hearing about this small sample size nonsense and I understand it. However all I can is he keeps on getting hits. On Friday Puig was 2 for 4 and is hitting .455 this season. I do realize that there's no way he'll continue hitting at that level. As always Puig played a part in both of the Dodgers runs. But I do believe we are seeing a superstar in the making. There has to be at least one good piece of the news for the Dodgers this season, right?
Hanley Ramirez was 1 for 2 and is hitting .378 in limited action. Maybe that's the key for the Dodgers is to only have their players play limited games this season. Oh yeah with all the Dodgers injuries, that's exactly what they're doing. Besides Puig and Ramirez, no other active Dodger is hitting .300. Adrian Gonzalez, who did all he could the early part of the season to keep the Dodgers afloat, was 0 for 4. His batting average drops to .299.
The Dodgers are 30-42 and 9.5 games behind first place Arizona. LA has won only 3 of their last 10 games. Meanwhile the hot Padres have surged to second place in the NL West. They've won 8 of 10 and trail the Diamondbacks by 2.5 games. Having a home series with the Dodgers can cure a lot of a team's woes. As of now the Dodgers have a 1.6% chance of reaching the playoffs.
If the Dodgers could miraculously discover an offense they still could make a run in the compacted NL West. Especially if Matt Kemp comes back like he was at the first of the 2012 season. According to a Ramirez tweet Kemp is about to go on a rehab assignment to Albuquerque. Although Kemp before his injury wasn't outstanding, he was only hitting .251, with 2 home runs and 17 RBIs. My hope is that the Dodgers don't rush back Kemp on a season that may already be lost. If he's fully healthy though, then let him play.
Dodgers ace, Clayton Kershaw, had another rough game. He pitched 6.0 innings, gave up 7 hits, 4 earned runs and 1 walk. Although his ERA is 2.06, his record drops to 5-5. Sadly Kershaw, and all Dodgers pitchers, play on a team that provides so little run support.
The scheduled pitcher for today for the Dodgers is Zack "Brawl Facilitator" Greinke. I'm hoping he'll finish the season with more wins than brawls facilitated. I'm pretty sure the Dodgers didn't pay Greinke $147 million over 6 years for his pugilistic skills. San Diego's scheduled pitcher is Edinson Volquez, he's 5-5 with a 5.84 ERA. Although he has the same record as Kershaw, the Padres offense give their entire pitching staff 58 more runs in run support than LA.
In the updated runs stat, the Dodgers remain in 29th place. They only lead the awful Miami Marlins as of now. However the Marlins have been doing better ever since Giancarlo Stanton has been back. They are starting to close in on the Dodgers. After Miami scored 6 runs yesterday, they only trail the Dodgers by 28 runs. Again this shows that money spent doesn't guarantee success. (Although I'd much rather the Dodgers ownership group than the cheap Jeffrey Loria as my team's owner.) LA has the second highest payroll in MLB and the Marlins have the second lowest payroll. At this point of the season the Dodgers are paying $848,246.70 per run, meanwhile the Marlins are paying $174,545.81 per run. Just for fun the lowest paying team in MLB is the Houston Astros. They've scored the 19th most runs in all of MLB at 286 runs, they are paying $85,064.81 per run. (All numbers are approximate, salary info is provided by deadspin.com before the season started.)
On to the Pirates, Pittsburgh fortunately is playing one of those terrible LA teams. They beat the Angels 5-2 on Friday. Pirates rookie pitcher Gerrit Cole has had a promising start to his career. After the Pirates win yesterday, Cole moved to 3-0 on the season. He pitched 6.1 innings, gave up 4 hits and 2 earned runs. I do wish his 3.44 ERA was about .44 lower though. Pedro Alvarez was the the Pirates offensive hero for the second day in a row. On Friday he was 2 for 3 and hit his 17th home run of the season. He also has 49 RBIs although his batting average is only .229. However of late he does seem to be finding his swing.
The Pirates, 44-30, have moved into second place in the NL Central, they trail the very hot Cardinals by 3 games. The Pirates have won 2 in a row and 6 of their last 10 games. Pittsburgh now has a 58.9% chance of making the playoffs. If nothing else I hope this is the year Pittsburgh finally finishes above .500, which would be the first time in 20 years. With 88 games left in the season Pittsburgh is 14 games over .500. The Pirates have started out hot the last two seasons only to crash and burn in the second half of the season. Hopefully they've learned their lessons from the past couple of seasons.
Meanwhile the AL East continues to contract on itself as the Toronto Blue Jays have won 9 straight games. As I'm writing this blog it looks like the Blue Jays might win their 10th game in a row, they have a 4-2 lead over the Orioles in the top of the 9th inning. As of Friday night the Red Sox also won, keeping the difference between first place Boston and last place Toronto at 7 games. The Blue Jays are officially the hottest team in MLB right now as they've won 9 of their last 10 games. The AL East is going to be fun to follow the last 60% of the season.
themusicaddict
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