Dodgers at Rockies, 1:10PM PT, TV: SPNLA, ROOTS Sports
The Dodgers ask Alex Wood to do better at Coors Field than he has in the past. He’s made three starts and given up 15 earned runs on 21 hits in 11 innings in his career there. He’s 1-2 with a 5.06 ERA and more walks (8) than strikeouts (7) so far this season. His opponent will be Jordan Lyles, who’s 1-1 with a 6.00 ERA and 9 strikeouts with only 6 walks in his three starts this year.
In other words, this could be an all-staff game from each team, and runs may be easily come by. If they are, you can bet these two guys will be in the middle of it as long as the starters remain in the game:
Yasiel Puig is a career .571 hitter (4-for-7) against Lyles, with a home run and three RBIs.
Nolan Arenado has only faced Wood nine times, but he’s done his damage, hitting a pair of home runs and plating five while batting .333.
Lineup when available.
Utley 2B
Seager SS
Puig RF
Gonzalez 1B
Grandal C
Kendrick 3B
Pederson CF
Thompson LF
Wood P— Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) April 24, 2016
NPUT
Only 4 games and all that, but Latos very much showing why LA signed him last year.
Oh, to have gotten anything like this version of him. Baseball.
http://espn.go.com/mlb/player/_/id/30196/mat-latos
That was some game.
Woo-HOO!!!
Dodgers gain on every other team in the division.
And the band plays on in Arizona and it is playing in 2/4 time. The Dbacks have come from 4 runs down to send it to extra’s and then from 2 runs down to keep it tied after 12. Now in the 13th, they need to score 2 more times as they are trailing 12-10, a very familiar score.
And now it is done. Dbacks lose. The Dodgers gain a game on every team in the West today.
The Dodgers absolutely should have lost this game.
The Dodgers absolutely deserved to win this game.
Enjoyed chatting with you all today. Thanks.
You too Scoop!
Putting the paper bag I was breathing into away until we return to Coors.
Exhale!
Off to get my hair cut at last!
And that’s three! Wooo and Whew!
All things considered Blanton is a fine recipient of the W. 2 outs
on one pitch is definitely the most efficient pitcher today!
“A touch, Watson, a definite touch!”
Oh man Link that’s great!
Grins. I was given The Complete Sherlock Holmes when I was 14. That’s the one with the Christopher Morley foreword.
https://youtu.be/qpGx4foRdPw
Big time!
I understand that in Dubai they don’t understand the Flintstones. but Abu Dhabi do!
Oman – that was a bad pun.
Or Yemen – that was a great pun.
We win!
That’s two.
That’s one.
Hopefully Jansen’s heart rate is fine today. Doesn’t he have some issues here sometimes?
I have to go!!! Arggghhh!!!!
A 4 pitch walk is perhaps not the best sign.
First of the season.
So we are saying that today’s game is crazier than this one from last year? http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/COL/COL201506022.shtml
Sorry – really not trying for click bate. It is the 4 run 9th for a 9-8 win in Colorado.
Colorado reliever McGee had entered the game with all four of his team’s saves and a 1.80 ERA.
Yes I think he is still a good reliever to be honest. Just an off day for him.
Can’t wait for Weisman’s recap on this one (fingers crossed).
And that friends – is how to get to 100 comments. Coors Field game for the win…
Spreading my fingers a little more now!
Insurance!
Seager aiming for RoY honors, I think.
But probably trailing Maeda at this point.
Dude!
Remarkable how my mood can swing 180 degrees in the baseball blink of an eye. Now, I just don’t want it to swing 180 degrees again.
Link’s hair is growing!
And losing its gray as the Dodgers retake the lead!
Monday in the booth: “This is been a crazy last 35-40 minutes.” Can’t argue with that.
More runs!
Hooboy!
Oh baby!
10-10!
Can you imagine being a Rox fan and sitting through 81 games like this?
No, no, a thousand times no.
I’m not sure this needed to be a compound sentence.
William Tell Overture time! https://youtu.be/YIbYCOiETx0
We need one more hit!
Let’s go AJ!
10-8 and pinch hitter time.
Where is Alex Guerrero when you need him?
So if it comes to it – would you rather have AJ or Culberson as the pinch hitter?
Don Newcombe.
Nice
Manny Mota! Vic Davalillo! Kal Daniels!
Hershiser, congratulating new announcer Davis on catching the ball bouncing off Cargo’s glove: “Nice catch seeing that, Joe. Young eyes in the booth!”
This is prolonged agony for sure today.
Horrendous meltdown by the Dodgers pen, again and again. Let’s hear Friedman/Zaidi address this one. Sign mediocre pitchers and your results and worse than mediocre.
Actually the pen had been on a nice roll lately. Something like ERA 1.25 over the past 33 innings.
Maybe I am too annoyed to be rational and all of you right. As someone once said: My mind is made up; don’t confuse me with the facts. However, unless we pull this one out, in our eight losses (if we lose today), we have blown leads of 4-0, 2-0, 5-0, 1-0, 3-0 and 7-1 in six of the games. In the other two losses, we never had the lead.
Apparently the Rox pen has been horrendous and have chosen this game against us to look invincible.
How dare it!
The bullpen has been very good for about ten days straight. Blame this on the Dodgers’ offense going silent after the third inning. Not a single hit since then.
Before today, the pen had allowed five runs in its last 33 innings. That’s very good.
This ball park is a bad place.
I like Coors, because it’s not a cookie-cutter ballpark. Baseball needs such diversity, but it’s true there are some nightmare games.
Yeah, but it’s haunted or jinxed or something.
Probably the first time that someone has said anything nice about Coors.
The announcers were chatting early on about how Jim Leyland was brought to his knees by one season at Coors, and almost gave up baseball altogether…
Also, a great setting, with mountains nearby, and lively neighborhood.
I could do without the purple dinosaur.
Not so bad as some mascots.
Poor Link – he got a haircut and so did his team’s lead.
No, I haven’t left yet. I’m waiting till the game’s over.
Oh for goodness sake. We just crumpled like a wet towel on this one.
Maybe I’ll give up. Odds we’ll get three or more runs to tie in the top of the 9th look slim.
From 7-1 to 8-7, and more on the horizon, I fear.
Boy, these Rockies play us hard. Oh brother. Down by one now – another error in the outfield.
Gnats lose, Snakes losing.
Dodgers hanging on by less than a thread.
Can we find the bridge to Jansen today, or is there no such bridge out there?
It’ll be Hatcher.
Very shaky bridge indeed. Kind of like the swinging rope bridge on Tom Sawyer Island at Disneyland.
Brings back good memories.
Better than this inning from Hatcher.
Down 5-4, Gnats load bases with nobody out, fail to score as Pagán GIDPs 1-2-3 and Panic looks at called strike three.
Pagan also caused the Giants one or two runs earlier when he lost a fly ball in the sun and it bounced about 15 feet away. Giants announcer Jon Miller noted that he was wearing his sunglasses on the top of his cap, “more like an accessory,” and that it was the second fly ball he had lost in this series.
It gets better.
Two more innings in this wild ride of a game.
I need to go out to get a haircut, guys. Finish off the 8th and 9th quickly.
Yes! Paints the corner.
Nice catch, Trayce!
Partial redemption, at least.
Thompson!
Checking in. DP would be nice here.
Nice recovery by Báez.
Yes!
I am peeking through my fingers at this game. It is way to scary!
I agree! Shallow breathing over here too.
I literally couldn’t watch. But phew!
If the Dodgers hold on to win this will be amusing. If not, it’ll still be amusing. (Puig goes to high school prom in Denver.)
Need your basic around the horn triple play here.
Too late for that.
The wheels appear to be coming off…
Lead in danger here in a big way.
It’s Coors, Jake…
Need one more clean or at least scoreless inning from Wood here.
Maybe I should have said a clean inning from the defense as well! Gonzo with the rare error not helping Wood’s cause.
Or maybe they aren’t ruling it an error!
If the Rockies lose this game and series – it doesn’t appear that it will be on the backs of their bullpen. Can’t seem to make much noise against them.
I would be happy to be proven wrong on this…
Good Wood this inning.
Ha! Steiner on that fly ball: “Puig caught it about six, seven steps in front of the wall and the wall breathed a big sigh of relief.”
Steiner gets it wrong once again.
Puig almost Kemped himself there.
Now lets score some more.
Phew! Puig to the rescue!
Yasiel!!!!
Ugh. This inning should have been over three batters ago.
Even if it’s not all his fault, Wood’s pitch count and ball-strike ratio are not encouraging.
Somewhere, some Koufax fans circa 1955-1960 are nodding.
Not to say Alex is gonna ever come close to the latter six years of Sandy’s career, but we tend to forget how mediocre he looked for the first six.
So we need an old backup catcher to tell Wood not to throw as hard in order to get more control of his pitches?
I don’t know if the same answer would work for Wood, but something has to if we’re going to get the value from him we hope to.
Part of the problem was that, as a so-called “bonus baby,” Sandy had to spend years on the major league bench instead of learning to pitch in the minors. That retarded his development.
So Sandy was kinda their version of our current day Alex Guerrero?!
It was a baseball rule at that time. He was not the only one.
No. He certainly wasn’t. The guys in pink on this chart were the ones who were bonus babies. Four of ’em made it to the HoF: Killebrew, Catfish Hunter, Sandy and Al Kaline.
Come on Woods. Lets end this inning now.
Yes – I know he has had some bad breaks this inning with the fly ball and the shift and now the bunt base hit.
I guess the wind was a big factor.
Wood almost walked Para – and that might have been a better option as he then drives Colorado’s second run.
Thompson butchered the ball, though.
So far, liking Wood much more this game. Offense also good. But that was a serious misplay by Trace in the outfield.
Feels like Arenado heard my thoughts yesterday about switching over to admiring Manny Machado and took it personally.
I like the start of this game. On pace for a 21-3 win.
Wood pitching in Coors is scaring me quite a bit.
He’s been decent so far today, and the offense is backing him up.
To quote Sondheim “Into the Woods and out of the Woods and happy ever after.”
Wood needs to work on his baserunning skills if he’s gonna hit the ball hard.
Package continues to be disappointed with Joc, undoubtedly.
Joc with the big fly. 5-1 now.
Okay, Alex, throw strikes and get through innings quickly.
He’s not listening.
Well, he’s young.
4-0. Over to Woods.
“Gulp.”
Another walk and the bases are loaded. Puig unloads them a bit. 3-0 Dodgers.
2 and 3 no outs. Let’s get something out of this please.
Well, it’s clear Lyle is not thinking about a perfect game at this point.
Diminished expectations have him going for a no-hitter (not a Rule No. 9 violation).
In regards to Link’s post up top – it is funny imagining the Dodgers actually have the conversation and asking Wood to do better. “Look Kid, we like you a lot and think you are great. But Kid – you have an ERA over 5 here and we are asking you to do better…”
I know the Dodgers didn’t score there but I would take my chances with getting 3 walks in a row in future innings!
Now Lyles needs to groove one to Kendrick.
Fine with me if he keeps walking people.
Back in Buenos Aires, no family obligations today, I can actually watch the game.