Hello,
On Labor Day 2013, Monday September 2nd, the Dodgers started a three game road series with the Colorado Rockies. This series is taking place in the thin air of Denver. Games played in the thin air of Coors Field can become wild very quickly and that's what happened with this 10-8 Dodgers victory. LA has won 5 games in a row as they continue steamrolling the NL West.
This was a good news and bad news game for Clayton Kershaw. The good news is the Dodgers scored plenty of runs in a game he started. Kershaw again helped himself with the bat, he was 2 for 2 today. More importantly his 5th inning single drove in two runs, Kershaw's 9th and 10th RBIs of the season. The last piece of good news for Kershaw is he finished with a win and improves to 14-8. Now for the bad news, Kershaw didn't have a particularly good outing from the mound. He lasted 5 innings, giving up 11 hits and 5 runs. His ERA jumped up a bit, but it's still at a solid 1.89.
I'm so glad that Kershaw is pitching for the Dodgers. He easily leads all of Major League Baseball starters in ERA. His 1.89 ERA is .38 points lower than the second place Matt Harvey. Harvey's ERA won't change as he's injured and is out for the rest of the season. Kershaw leads all starting pitchers in Wins Above Replacement (WAR), he is 6.8 games WAR. Last but not least, Kershaw is tied for second place in strikeouts with Detroit's Max Scherzer. Both are 35 strikeouts behind the Rangers Yu Darvish, who probably won't be caught.
Another concern for the Dodgers is that Yasiel Puig left the game with a strained knee. The hope is that he won't miss much time. Before leaving the game, in favor of Skip Schumaker, he was 1 for 3 and is hitting .351 this season. The Dodgers are cruising so he can sit out a few games and the Dodgers won't be harmed very much, if at all. LA would have to stop showing up to their games for them to lose their 12.5 game lead over the Diamondbacks.
I'll remain positive in this blog as there were a lot more good things that happened than bad things. The Dodgers had 15 hits with the 10 runs. Andre Ethier continues his good play of late as he had 3 hits. Along with raising his batting average to .279, he also had his 29th and 30th doubles and his 11th home run. Ethier also has 50 RBIs. The other Dodger that had three hits was Juan Uribe, as with Ethier he's having a bit of a late season resurgence. Uribe was 3 for 5 and is hitting .274 this season. Uribe had 3 singles but drove in his 38th and 39th runs of the season.
Another good sign for the Dodgers is that they had 15 hits with Adrian Gonzalez, Yasiel Puig and Hanley Ramirez only having a total of 2 hits. That's a very encouraging sign as those three have been the most consistent Dodgers this season.
Carl Crawford had 2 hits, including the biggest hit of the game. His two run ground rule double in the top of the 9th inning ended up being the difference in the game. Crawford, who's hitting .291, had his 25th and 26th RBIs with that crucial hit.
Crawford's big double gave Kenley Jansen a bit more insurance than he usually needs. Jansen usually gives up few hits and rarely gives up runs. However tonight he gave up Wilin Rosario's 9th inning homer. That drew the Rockies to within 10-8, but the Rockies didn't score any more runs. Jansen went on to secure his 25th save, his ERA increased a bit to 1.97. It's good to see on a night that even when Kershaw and Jansen weren't at their best the Dodgers could still win the game.
Brian Wilson also pitched effectively, the Beard only had to pitch 14 pitches to get through the 7th inning. However the pitchers that preceded and followed him weren't as good, in fact both were pretty bad. Brandon League, who was signed with the thought that he would be the closer, gave up 2 hits in 1 inning. However he gave up no runs. However Ronald Belisario was awful, in his one inning of work he gave up 4 hits and 2 runs.
While the Dodgers are running away from the NL West, the A's and Rangers are tied atop of the AL West. Just when I thought the A's were going to fade, they've come out of recent spate of bad play and won 4 games in a row. Oakland has also won 8 of 10 games. ESPN is of the opinion that the Rangers won't fade season this season. I'm not sure if that's true, but with the Rangers letting Josh Hamilton go in the offseason that will certainly help them. Hamilton got bored at the end of last season and the Rangers didn't have enough to overcome his poor play. Also Hamilton's whiff on a fly ball against the A's didn't help either. But at least the Rangers aren't paying a lot of money to Hamilton this season for his about 0.00 WAR.
Monday's game was the first game in the A's-Rangers 3 game series, which is being played in Oakland. The A's are playing fantastic on their current 10 game home stand, they've won the first 4 games so far. They swept the Rays to start off this home stand. Oakland-Texas have two more games, which will be played on Tuesday and Wednesday. Then to close out this home stand they'll play the terrible Astros for 4 games. As of Tuesday morning the Astros are 45-92, have no chance of reaching the playoffs and are 34 games out of first place.
After the current A's-Rangers series, the two teams only play 3 more games each other. That series is in Texas from September 13th to 15th.
themusicaddict
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