Game Thread 9/27/12

It’s Capuano v. Kelly and the devil take the hindmost!

Maybe more later. There’s a medical problem today which may entail a trip downtown, so I thought I’d put this up before anything later kept me from doing so.

Lineup:

Punto, N, 2B
Ethier, A, RF
Kemp, M, CF
Gonzalez, A, 1B
Ramirez, H, SS
Victorino, S, LF
Cruz, L, 3B
Ellis, A, C
Capuano, C, P

Gameday

Oh, by the way, the Reds beat the Brewers in the ninth with a walkoff triple after a home run tied the game 1 – 1 and a single followed that. That leaves the Brewers 1/2 game back of the Dodgers and 4 back of the Cardinals for wild card #2.

63 thoughts on “Game Thread 9/27/12

  1. 1) Guess the dodgers.com story Wednesday prematurely saying the Dodgers had clinched their second straight series worked out well. Maybe this should be tried again, as in “Dodgers sweep last 6 games”…

    2) Maybe the Dodgers should look into making Luis Cruz Sr. a special consultant hitting coach…discounting the unorthodox stance he had and Jr. has, Sr. hit well in the Mexican league for years. He probably knows hitting well beyond just a stance. Couldn’t hurt.

    Story on team site today says he saw Jr. in person for the first time this year Wednesday. Jr. responded by donning the golden sombrero. After the game Sr. said: “What? You’re trying to HR every time?” Jr. said that was exactly right; he was trying to do too much. Probably what entire team has tried to do since the trade…hit a 5-run homer every AB.

    3) And Ned sed…http://losangeles.dodgers.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20120927&content_id=39134766&vkey=news_la&c_id=la

  2. Dodgers are guaranteed a non-losing season! To be honest, I wondered if they would be able to achieve that in recent weeks.

    Didn’t Kasten say this was a .500 team? Of course, that was before the Big Spending, so the rest is icing? Regardless of what happens with the Cards, I’d love to end the season with the offense clicking and hitting — that would fuel high hopes for ’13 . . . especially if Lilly and Billz return to form!

  3. Cruz now 2-for-2 . . . in the No. 7 hole. Victorino now hitting .224 as a Dodgers, with an OBP below .300. The best thing about him is he is not signed after this season.

  4. I’d like tonight’s lineup a lot more if Cruz were moved up, Ethier down (or to the bench) and Victorino not in it.

  5. One more stats post and maybe I’ll have it out of my system. Those for the old friend who catches for the Yankees–

    Martin, R NYY 126 398 47 82 16 0 19 49 52 86 6 1 .206 .309 .389 .698

    Is 5th on NYY with the 19 HR. He hits in AL East parks, but that’s as many as Ethier has and just one behind Kemp. But his .206/.309/.389 personifies the pits.

    http://newyork.yankees.mlb.com/team/player.jsp?player_id=431145

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    HR envy dept.– ahead of Martin in the Yankee dinger derby are: Granderson, 40; Cano, 30; Swisher, 24; and Teixeira, 23 . TEN Yankees have 14 or more.
    Less-than-fondly remembered old acquaintance A. Jones has 14.

    NYY team total of 233 leads MLB. Baltimore has 204 (shades of the days of Earl Weaver.) On a list of MLB team HRs, the first NL team appearing is the Nats, 8th with 183.

    Your Los Angeles Dodgers are 29th with their 105…leading only the Giants and their 98.

    Not to berate the team, because better days clearly are coming, but team OPS is really revealing and not at all surprising. The Dodgers’ .681 is 28th, ahead of only Houston and Seattle. Aaaarrrgggghhhhhh….

    First in team OPS? NYY, of course, .783. Then Texas, .782.

    Despite being dead last in HR, SF has managed a respectable .725 OPS. There’s a lesson in there somewhere, maybe.

    • What is somewhat surprising to me is that we appear to have much better pitching than SF. They are at ERA+ 96 and usins at 112.

        • Our only really bad starter is Blaton, but he has pitched but 50 innings. Whereas they have given 180 innings each to Timmy and Zito.

          • Zito, astonishingly, is more reliable than Lincescum. Vogelscheiße has also been awful, leaving them with only two decent starters. This is their last gasp.

  6. Thanks, guys. I’m back. It involved a trip to the ophthalmologist downtown and the acquisition of new eyedrops to relieve a sudden onset of blurry vision.

  7. Regarding clinching season series vs. San Diego, the Dodgers are 10-7 vs. the Padres this year with one game remaining (tonight) and the Dodgers were 13-5 vs. the Padres in 2011.

  8. John Ely and Joc Pederson are the 2012 additions to this list of Dodger minor league pitchers and hitter sof the year. I notice two things about the list:
    1) Neither Kemp nor Kershaw is on it.
    2) The rest of the guys, with perhaps the exception of Chad Billingsley, haven’t amounted to much in the big leagues (the jury’s still out on players like Rubby, Elbert, and Tolleson). But I’m pretty sure Andy Laroche, James Loney, Chin-lung Hu, Ivan De Jesus, and Joel Guzman are never going to be all-stars.

    Anybody remember Mark Alexander? Greg Miller? Carlos Garcia?
    2000/Joe Thurston/Carlos Garcia
    2001/Phil Hiatt/Ricardo Rodriguez
    2002/Joe Thurston/Edwin Jackson
    2003/Franklin Gutierrez/Greg Miller
    2004/Joel Guzman/Chad Billingsley
    2005/Andy LaRoche/Chad Billingsley
    2006/James Loney/Mark Alexander
    2007/Chin-lung Hu/James McDonald
    2008/Ivan De Jesus/James McDonald
    2009/Dee Gordon/Scott Elbert
    2010/Jerry Sands/Rubby De La Rosa
    2011/Scott Van Slyke/Shawn Tolleson

      • Jackson has a career ERA+ of 99, the very definition of average. McDonald’s is 94. He’s getting better, but I’m still not sold on him. I still wish the Dodgers hadn’t traded him for the dregs of Octavio Dotel, but he isn’t better than anybody in the current rotation save for Joe Blah.

  9. In poking around more in stats, Hiroki’s season stats pretty much mesh with what he did for the Dodgers. As for this year with NYY, not sure how this line will print, but he’s tied for most team wins at 14, 1st in ERA, 1st in IP, 2nd in Ks, and 1st in WHIP. Apparently he did not find AL hitters too fearsome.

    Kuroda, H NYY 14 11 3.34 31 31 0 0 207.1 188 82 77 24 47 159 .244 1.13

    http://newyork.yankees.mlb.com/team/player.jsp?player_id=493133

    ——————————————————————–

    Meanwhile, back at the stat ranch, one old friend V. Padilla has been thoroughly mediocre with a bright spot of 50 Ks in 48 IP and a probable low point of one save in the 5 attempts they gave him, for some reason. If that’s not low enough, a .302 BA against might be.

    Padilla, V BOS 4 1 4.69 54 0 1 5 48.0 58 26 25 7 14 50 .302 1.50

    http://boston.redsox.mlb.com/team/player.jsp?player_id=218894

  10. This appears at bottom of a dodgers.com story today: “The Dodgers clinched their second straight season series victory over the Padres with Wednesday night’s win.”

    Hey, a bit premature is fine–if it works out that way.
    ———————————————————————–
    Also, from poking around mlb.com stats….

    JAMES LONEY STATS SUMMARY

    2012 BOS 26 87 4 21 26 2 0 1 7 5 0 11 0 0 .241 .280 .299 .578 1.22
    2012 LAD 114 334 32 85 115 18 0 4 33 23 7 39 0 3 .254 .302 .344 .646 1.17

    “Get James Loney gear at the Boston Red Sox shop ”

    ….Um, OK if I pass on that, just this once? Pretty please?