Sep 29

Game 159, 2016

Dodgers at Padres, 6:10PM PT, TV: SPNLA, FSSD

Julio Urias (5-2, 3.53 ERA) goes for the Dodgers and Christian Friedrich (5-11, 4.66 ERA) takes the mound for the Padres. Friedrich’s year hasn’t been good overall, but his September has shown improvement: he’s had a 3.86 ERA through four starts including 25 strikeouts and just nine walks. The Dodgers keep trying to limit Urias’s innings (he’s thrown 119 this year at OKC and with LA) but they keep finding a need to use him. He hasn’t pitched in two weeks, however.

Today will be the final game at Petco Park for the Padres’ own Hall-of-Fame broadcaster, Dick Enberg. He’s been their primary play-by-play man for seven years after a long career at NBC and CBS calling golf, football and tennis, as well as earlier stints as both UCLA basketball’s play-by-play man and the LA Rams play-by-play caller. He even taught and coached baseball at Cal-State Northridge for five years in the early 1960s.

Lineup when available.

Seager off, González off, Kiké in the infield, Chooch at catcher…

Sep 27

Game 157, 2016

Dodgers at Padres, 7:10PM PT, TV: SPNLA, FSSD

The Dodgers switched starters around for tonight’s game. They had scheduled Kenta Maeda (16-9, 3.20 ERA) to pitch Wednesday and Jose De Leon tonight, but they reversed the order. It may be that they want Maeda to pitch the last game of the season in San Francisco if home-field advantage for the playoffs is still undecided.

His opponent will be Paul Clemens (3-5, 4.48 ERA), who hasn’t given up a run in his last two starts but who has had trouble going deep into games; his last outing was his longest of the year at 5 2/3 innings.

In playoff opponent news, the Nationals’ All-Star catcher Wilson Ramos is out for the season; he suffered a torn ACL in his right knee in Monday night’s game.

Lineup when available.

May 30

Game 52, 2016

Dodgers at Cubs, 2:05PM PT, TV: SPNLA, WGN

Alex Wood (1-3, 4.03 ERA) pitches for the Dodgers while Jason Hammel (6-1, 2.17 ERA) goes for the Cubs. Those are gaudy numbers, but in his career he’s 2-6 with a 4.93 ERA in 16 games (12 starts) against the Dodgers. Wood is 1-1 with a 3.86 ERA in five games (two starts) against the Cubs.

Lineup:

May 10

Game 33, 2016

Link to Scully interview accompanying above

Mets at Dodgers, 7:10PM PT, TV: SPNLA, MLBN (out-of-market)

The Mets’ Jacob deGrom (3-1, 1.99 ERA) of the Flowing Locks starts against the Dodgers’ Alex Wood (1-3, 5.18 ERA) of the Moussed Pompadour. The right-handed deGrom only has 16 strikeouts in his four starts, which seems low. Lefty Wood would undoubtedly trade his 28 Ks for a couple of wins; he hasn’t had one in his last five starts.

Lineup when available.

Apr 19

Game 14, 2016

But first, Vin Scully reads a grocery list. Yep, someone sent the Sunday Night Baseball crew an audiotape of Vin reading just that back in the 1970s, and they played it during a tribute they offered to him during the third inning of tonight’s game.

Dodgers at Braves, 4:10PM PT, TV: SPNLA, FSSO

Alex Wood (1-1, 4.50 ERA) goes for the Dodgers against some guy named TBD. It will probably be Julio Teheran (0-2, 6.35 ERA, 17 innings, 9 BB, 14 Ks). This will be Wood’s first appearance at Turner Field since he was traded to the Dodgers last July for Hector Olivera, Paco Rodriguez and minor-leaguer Zachary Bird. Olivera has played five games in left field for the Braves this season and Rodriguez will miss the entire year after Tommy John surgery.

Lineup when available.

Jan 13

Milestones

Changes at ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball: Curt Schilling moves to Monday Night Baseball, John Kruk goes back to Baseball Tonight, and Jessica Mendoza and Aaron Boone move into the chairs next to Dan Shulman for the Sunday game.

Monte Irvin has died at 96. He joined the NY Giants from the Negro League Newark Eagles in 1949 (the second black player on the team behind Hank Thompson) and played left field next to Willie Mays. In the 1951 World Series those three men formed the first all-black starting outfield in World Series history. Jay Jaffe has more.

Jun 04

Big news for Dodger TV viewers

Effective Tuesday, June 9, Charter Communications will carry the Dodgers’ Sports Net LA channel. This is a result of Charter’s purchase of Time Warner Cable, which closed a couple of weeks ago.

SportsNet LA will be included in Charter’s most widely available cable package, which is called Spectrum TV Select. Charter has nearly 300,000 subscriber homes in the Los Angeles region.

In the Los Angeles market, the channel will become Charter’s standard-definition Channel 44. It will be broadcast in high definition on Channel 789.

[snip]

Beginning Tuesday, nearly 2 million homes in Southern California will have access to the channel as part of their cable lineups.

Charter’s decision is not expected to immediately prompt the other hold-out pay-TV companies, including DirecTV, Dish Network, Cox Communications and Verizon FiOS, to begin carrying the channel.

But the pressure may begin to mount. AT&T’s acquisition of Direct TV is expected to get regulatory approval within a few weeks, and that might prompt a change to the content lineup there. If so, that would give access to Dodger games to another 1.2 million subscribers.

May 25

Game 44, 2015

Braves at Dodgers, 5:10PM PT, TV: SPNLA, MLBN, SPSO

Lefty Brett Anderson (2-2, 3.61 ERA) will face the Braves for the first time in his career. He’ll face Williams Perez, a right-handed Venezuelan who’s making his second start in the big leagues and his fourth appearance overall. He hasn’t gotten any decisions yet. His ERA has dropped considerably from the 108.00 it was after his first stint against major league competition, when he went 1/3 of an inning while giving up two hits, walking two, and allowing four earned runs. His last time out was his first start; he went five innings, gave up one run, six hits and one walk while striking out seven.

Anderson has done pretty well against right-handed hitters, who have a combined .689 OPS against him. Against lefties he’s had poorer luck: he’s faced 61 of them and they’ve amassed an .803 OPS. Unfortunately, the Braves lean left-handed, so we’ll see.

Update: The LA Times reports that Charter Communications has made a $195/share offer to buy Time Warner. If that deal goes through then all Southern California Charter subscribers might be able to watch the Dodgers on the Sports Net LA channel. It still needs regulatory approval, though, so don’t hold your breath. Thanks to Howard Fox in the comments to Game 43 for this news.

Lineup:

Mar 27

Friday Night Giants

Vinnie does his one-and-only game from Camelback Ranch tonight on SPNLA.

Lineup: