Hello,
After the Reds won the first game in their series with the Dodgers, LA has won the last two games. The final game of the series will be Sunday afternoon. The Dodgers get Monday off, before welcoming their traditional rival the New York Yankees. The Dodgers-Yankees series will be two games, they'll occur on Tuesday and Wednesday. Following that series LA will go on the road for 8 games. LA plays 4 games against the trade depleted Cubs. They may lose more players by the time LA comes to town. That's followed by LA playing 4 games against the very tough Cardinals.
Back to Saturday's game: one of the heroes of tonight's game was Skip Schumaker. Matt Kemp is still on the 15 day DL and Carl Crawford sat out the game with a "high temperature and fever". (Thanks to ESPN.com.) LA needed production from elsewhere, Schumaker was able to fill in and get the big hit. Schumaker had his second home run of the season and his 20th and 21st RBIs of the season. His hit was also timely, he hit the tie breaking homer in the bottom of the 5th inning. Schumaker finished the game 2 for 4 and is hitting .270.Whoever might fill in for when Crawford needs to miss a game should always be ready. Very few players miss as many games as Crawford, I'm still waiting for him to go on season ending DL. LA was able to coast to victory following Schumaker's big hit.
After giving up a lot of hits in his last couple of games Hyun-Jin Ryu had a much better outing tonight. In 7 innings he only gave up 2 hits and 1 run. He improves to 9-3 on the season and his ERA decreases to 3.14.
With the Dodgers up by 3 runs I was hoping that Don Mattingly wouldn't go with either of the blown saves twosome, Brandon League or Carlos Marmol. Thankfully he didn't, instead he brought in the very tough Paco Rodriguez, who only needed 2 pitches to get a needed out. Kanley Jensen pitched the 9th inning and earned his second save in as many nights. That's his 14th save of the season and he was able to decrease his ERA to 2.24.
Other notables in this game included Yasiel Puig. He was 2 for 3 and earned a walk, he's hitting .375 on the season. Adrian Gonzalez was 2 for 4 and is hitting .302. Hanley Ramirez remains the Dodger with the best batting average, he was 1 for 4 and is hitting .383. Those are the 3 Dodgers every day players hitting over .300.
The Dodgers continue to play well, they are 55-48, where will they be 59 games from now? I still can't quite believe the Dodgers are in first place after how bad they were through about the first half of the season. Arizona got blasted 12-3 by the Padres, the Diamondbacks fall back to 1.5 games behind in the NL West. Go Dodgers!
There was some question about who MLB's weakest division is, but I think it's clearly the NL East. At least the NL West has two teams above .500. The Braves are playing like crap and they are still running away from their NL East rivals. Atlanta only won 5 of their last 10 games and yet they've gained two games on both the Nationals and Phillies. Atlanta is 59-45 and has a 97.4% chance of reaching the playoffs. The second place NL East team is Washington, they trail Atlanta by 8.5 games. The Nationals are 51-54 with a 4.9% chance of reaching the playoffs. In third place is the Phillies, Philadelphia seems to have given up. They are offering many of their key players as trade bait. Philadelphia is 49-55 and have a 1.3% chance of reaching the playoffs. Go Braves!
Many people have been waiting for the Pirates to collapse, like they did the last couple of years. But as a loyal Pirates fan over the last couple of seasons I say this is the year they break their 20 year streak of not finishing above .500. The Pirates only have to go 21-39 over their final 60 games to finish above .500, that would give them a 82-80 record. Of course the Pirates want more, right now they are 61-41 and have a 94.3% chance of making the playoffs. Go Pirates!
Good luck to all my other teams, the Orioles, Red Sox, Cubs and A's.
themusicaddict
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