Hello,
Friday night the Dodgers and Red Sox started a 3 game series. Boston needs to play well to still be in after Sunday night's game. This is a huge series for Boston, but not quite as important for LA. With Arizona and the rest of the NL West playing DOA, LA almost has the NL West in the bag. Arizona lost earlier in the evening, LA knew if they won they'd be 10.5 games ahead of Arizona. I'd say the NL West is in the bag for LA, but I don't want to jinx the Dodgers.
Indeed LA did win the series opener 2-0, yet another shutout by the very tough Dodgers pitching staff. The heroes of this game were Ricky Nolasco, Hanley Ramirez and Kenley Jansen. Hanley Ramirez hit his 13th homer of the season in the 4th inning. With that homer he added his 41st and 42nd RBIs of the season. Those two runs were the only runs scored in the game. I'm glad that's all the runs it took to win that game, the Dodgers only finished with 3 hits in the game. Carl Crawford had the other two hits, he was 2 for 3 and is hitting .293 this season.
From the pitching mound came the most surprising player of the game. That was Ricky Nolasco's great outing. Nolasco was effective for 8 innings and gave the Dodgers bullpen a rest. He gave up 2 hits in those 8 innings and added 6 strikeouts. Nolasco finally inches his record above .500, he's 10-9. It helps your personal record when you go from the lowest scoring team in MLB to the hottest team. Nolasco lowered his season ERA to 3.42. If Nolasco consistently has outings like this, this Dodgers team will be very tough to beat in the playoffs.
Just a side note the Dodgers have played 128 games, which means they still have 34 games left. The MLB season is way too long!
Kenley Jansen pitched the 9th inning and his usual dominant outing. He struck out two Red Sox players in the 9th inning. He also earned his 22nd save and lowered his ERA to 1.95.
As I mentioned Arizona lost earlier in the evening, LA now leads the NL West by 10.5 games. LA is 10 games or more ahead of their division for the first time since 1977. They're 24 games over .500 and have a 99.0% chance of reaching the playoffs. Although the Braves lost tonight and have only won half of their last 10 games, they still have a 99.9% chance of reaching the playoffs. It helps that they lead the NL East second place Nationals by 13.0 games.
Meanwhile the Red Sox are in a virtual first place tie with the Rays. Tampa defeated the Evil Empire tonight in Tampa. Both Boston and Tampa are 20 games over .500, however the Red Sox have played 4 more games than the Rays. Tampa leads the NL East by .002 percentage points, although the Red Sox have a slightly higher chance of reaching the playoffs. The Orioles continue to play well enough that I can't totally dismiss them. To be honest the Orioles making the playoffs seems to be an extreme long shot at this point. Although the Orioles are only 4.5 games out, too bad they didn't play better when the Rays visited earlier this week.
Meanwhile the Pirates have been struggling of late, but they've had two clutch wins back to back. The Pirates remain in first place in the NL Central, leading the Cardinals by 1 game. Pittsburgh only has to win 6 of their 34 remaining games to finish above .500 for the first time in 21 years. The Reds had been playing very well of late, but lost Friday night. Cincinnati falls 3.5 games off the pace in the Central. Although all three NL Central teams will be reaching the playoffs, that's the closest race in the NL. The next closest race appears to be who will win their division by more games, the Dodgers or the Braves.
Daisuke Matsuzaka is still in MLB? He popped up Friday night pitching for the Mets. I'm surprised Matsuzaka is still in MLB, how desperate are people for pitching? Matsuzaka only lasted 5 innings, giving up 6 hits and 5 runs. All runs were earned and he also gave up 2 homers. This is Matsuzaka's first game this season and drops to 0-1. The ERA is a bit misleading as it was only one game, but after one game his ERA is 9.00.
As a Boston fan I was excited when Matsuzaka joined the Red Sox. Sadly Matsuzaka was a profound disappointment for the Red Sox after he came to Boston with much fanfare. However he never lived up to all the hype that preceded him. All the hype that noted how many pitches he had and his success in Japan. I think he had a couple of good outings in the WBC. On reaching Boston his first couple of seasons were decent, but after that he wasn't of much help to the Red Sox. Once his contract was over, the Red Sox dumped him. I'm surprised that someone else gave him a shot.
For every Ichiro there seems to be a Matsuzaka. For every Hiroki Kuroda there's a Kosuke Fukudome.
themusicaddict
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