Game 139, 2015

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Dodgers at Angels, 7:00PM PT, TV: SPNLA, FSW, ESPN

The Dodgers are on national TV again, so of course they send out their worst starting pitcher. Gotta make a good impression, right? Mat Latos, who is 4-9 with a 4.92 ERA overall but 0-2 with a 6.56 ERA since coming over to the Dodgers in July, will try to right his personal ship. He hasn’t gotten past the 4th inning since his only previous outing against the Angels back on August 2 when he went six innings, gave up four hits and one run but got no decision.

Latos’s counterpart will be Garrett Richards, who is 13-10 with a 3.77 ERA and quality starts in five of his last six starts. You can’t call him a Dodger-killer yet, but he does have a 1.59 ERA in 22 2/3 career innings against them. The last time Richards faced the Dodgers, on Aug. 4, 2014, he pitched a shutout.

Lineup when available.

It’s Wieland rather than Latos because Latos reported neck stiffness. Wieland’s a 25-year-old righthander with 43 2/3 innings of big league experience. He first came up with San Diego in 2012. He’s been in 10 major league games, all as a starter. He’s 1-5 with a 5.98 ERA over that time.

122 thoughts on “Game 139, 2015”

      • The fellow seems to be trying to make a case for Puig not making the roster even if he is healthy. If he is healthy, no way that Peraza makes the team over him. At this point, Peraza would be a third string 2nd baseman and a pinch runner.

  3. I just realized that if things continue on the same course, we’ll be facing Uribear in the first round. That could get exciting! He and his bat love October.

  6. I am getting tired of that ugly face, it’s almost as bad as my own. And I will have a new handle, Audit

    • I’m sorry, do I know you, Audit? Did I miss something? I like your picture and comments, but can’t work out who you came from. And as for no-hitters, I am way too superstitious to speak those words during an interesting game, with or without the rule.

    • Ah. Got it. Never mind. I’m awaiting critiques from my writers’ group on my latest ms., and my brain is too anxious to work properly.

  8. I am thinking about giving up Dish, well, make that TV, because I watch it so little, the occasional Dodger game and some old Westerns and that’s it. I prefer reading and looking up things on the Internet. Is it possible to watch all Dodger games on MLB on the Internet? How does that work? Can it be streamed to my TV set? What is the cost? Appreciate information from people who are or have experienced this.

    • As someone who does not have mlb.tv I’m not the best bet to answer you authoritatively. But from what I’ve seen here and elsewhere I think you can get all Dodger games, subject to the occasional blackout. As avid a fan as you are, probably worth checking further into.
      =====================
      He said, in reply to a comment that seems to have gone missing.

  9. How about our dose of daily controversy… Some of the left-over Jon Weisman rules I can do without:
    #9. Posting “No Hitter ” etc, That’s a personal thing that Jon put far more stock in than I do. I do follow the rule but only as a courtesy to the Blog owner. I can imagine the sheer delight WBBsAs would get in posting about and rooting against a Giant pitcher in that circumstance.
    #10. Being annoyed about the existence of this list. Ridiculous! How can you legislate against what people feel?????

    I was on a blog some years ago about a hundred times bigger than this one. All military, law enforcement, and outdoorsmen. You want controversy…. I don’t know what software they used but one of its features was an “Ignore List”. If a poster annoyed you or you simply didn’t like him, you could put him on your Ignore List and his posts would not appear on your computer. Pretty convenient at times. They had other rules, one of which perhaps we should adopt. Basically it was one member should not feel it his duty to correct another member’s spelling, grammar, or context errors. If the intent was clear, leave it alone. If it lacked clarity, a reply to the poster suggesting a correction might be in order.

    • The “don’t mention a no-hitter” rule didn’t start with Jon, as you know. It’s hoary old baseball tradition among the players and coaches. It’s silly, I agree, but it’s kind of amusing to decipher the code when someone says “there’s an interesting game in Cleveland,” particularly when there’s hardly ever an interesting game in that location otherwise.

      Anybody got strong feelings about that?

      The only strict grammar interpretation I can think of is WBBsAs’ insistence on using his spelling for the San Francisco team. Have I missed any?

      • There have been other instances where “someone” has corrected a poster’s spelling, latest last night. It’s considered rude among friends.

      • I’ve always respected that here, but I think it’s worth noting that Vin doesn’t refrain from to describing a no-hitter in progress. As for being annoyed with the existence of the list, I think it should be a matter of expressing that annoyance.

        • Quite so. As with most things we should probably refrain from doing anything that might embarrass, annoy, or make our companions feel uncomfortable. Or select new companions. As for the existence of the list, that is probably what Jon had in mind, but I still think the rule itself is extraneous. If I had a blog and felt the need to publish a list of rules of behaviour, I would think it should be enforced without debate. But I don’t have a blog and don’t enforce rules. We have too many laws already. On a different note, can you imagine a set of rules on the comment sections at True Blue LA or Dodger Digest? Those are insane asylums…

          • IMO Jon’s rule on profanity helped the other 2 gain commenters. There were some who didn’t like having their so-called “freedom of expression” modified. From what I’ve seen, at least at TBLA, some commenters mostly drop bombs there in some kind of attempt to be cool; one usually follows another. And there’s not a lot of it.

            Some DoDi commenters speak almost a different language, so I know less about that particular asylum. I usually know what they’re talking about but find reading what’s there mostly a time waste.

          • And I can’t believe that over the years millions of fans haven’t deliberately broken that taboo when their team was playing victim or the pitcher or the offending team was one that they particularly hated. If “BadGums” was pitching a no-no, I bet WBB would hire a sky writer to announce it to the world for purposes of jinxing it.

          • Many broadcasters still refrain from mentioning a no-no. At the same time, nothing that any of us can do will change what happens on the field (unless, of course, we are Jeffrey Maier).

  14. This is a ten game road trip! What is is, a 5 hour drive to Phoenix? They should take a bus.

    • Last time I did that (admittedly a LONG time ago — 1986 or 1987) it took eight hours and the trip back on I-10 just stopped at Upland and was bumper-to-bumper the rest of the way in to Culver City.

  15. I’d rather the Dodgers had won, but I can’t get too upset about this
    one, since the lead remains the same and the magic number goes down.

  23. Playing for the tie on the road? (Donnie must think he is in Los Angeles for some reason)

  24. I used to complain about Agon GIDP but he seems to have cured that habit. By striking out. Be interesting if one of you stats fans could compare his GIDP rate in the last month or two to the rest of the season. Also strikeout rate. I expect fatigue might be a factor.

    • Since June he has had only 2 GIDP. In August, when his K rate hit 20% and he had 1 GIDP. In July, however, K rate was only 14% with 1 GIDP. Big difference between the months was OBP of .371 in July and only .301 in August. In June, when he hit into 7 GIDP his K rate was 13%, OBP .320.

    • Vin was saying the other night that he has noticed that infielders are keeping the glove on sliding players as the replay can catch these sorts of things much easier than the ump.

  36. Schebler, LF
    Utley, 2B
    Gonzalez, DH
    Turner, 3B
    Ethier, RF
    Seager, SS
    Van Slyke, 1B
    Pederson, CF
    Barnes, C

    • A fickle game. Last year’s NL Manager of the Year being lambasted here in DC. I actually he did a better job this year in juggling personnel in response to their 1,2,4, and 5 hitters being out for much of the year. Hope that they at least stay close so that the sportswriters don’t use the team’s performance as an excuse for denying Harper the MVP Award that he richly deserves.

      • They played better when their big names – except for Harper – were out with injuries. Harper is clearly the best position player in the game, but he’s not enough. They’ll have a big hole in their rotation when Zimmermann leaves, and the Scherzer signing may have been a huge mistake.

  38. My take on what went on in yesterdays post. Can we all (and I mean all) make a commitment to follow the 12 rules of the road. There have been many that have been broken lately.

  39. I haven’t been on here a while . . . reading the other posts in today’s offering, I concur with the feeling of this online community of being just that — a community. I’ve often posted the maxim that sharing what’s going on with fellow fans doubles the fun and halves the pain.

    That said, I wanted to state what is probably the obvious — this is now a really fun team to follow (bullpen aside — I’m not a huge fan of rollercoasters!). Besides the fact they’re winning, they’re also running. Who ever would have thought that the 2015 Dodgers would be leading the league in stolen bases — even if it’s just for a short stretch of games?

    Since I haven’t been following EF — nor any coverage — that closely during this stretch, are “they” attributing it all to Kershaw’s challenge to his teammates? I know the calling up from the minors has helped, but a large stretch of this stretch (to stretch the usage) occurred before then and definitely after Clayton & his panic/intensity soundbite.

    Whatever the cause, let’s hope there’s another 7-8 weeks left of Dodger Baseball!

    • Nobody I’ve seen has directly claimed that it came from Kershaw’s “time to panic” remark (later dialed back to “play with urgency”), but who knows? Maybe it was just “Oh, it’s September 1, time to go harder.”

      • Thanks — and I won’t panic that I mis-remembered “urgency” for “intensity.” 🙂

    • Playing harder hasn’t helped Agon, Justin and Grandal, who have been our offensive mainstays much of the season. We are winning despite their cooler bats. We are certainly running more, but when I looked a few days ago, few of the SBs led directly to runs. Seems that the new guys, both vets and rookies have picked up the slack on offense and our pen seems to have progressed more toward the average pen it is, instead of the horrendous one of past months. And, of course, our starting pitching remains strong. Clayton, himself, seems to be pitching with more urgency, but he has been doing that since late June.

    • I posted this about an hour and half ago and then left for supper, Came back and saw that it hadn’t gone through. I refreshed this page and then it went through. But now it looks like I am posting old news as new news! 🙂

        • Just not the breaking news like I was intending it to be! Nevertheless, it feels like we are really playing with house money tonight, but it will still be fun to see the kids in action. Glad to see Barnes in there especially.

  41. Wonder how long Latos has had a stiff neck? Could that be the reason he’s been so ineffective?

    • Doubt it. He was actually incredulous about being pulled from the last game, after putting a string of a few good innings together. He felt that he was getting in a groove. Of course, we were behind 4-0, so Donnie thought we needed to score some runs to win and pulled him for a PH.

    • His stiff neck probably came from getting it stuck in the bowed position after DM yanked him last time out. ;-])

  42. I’ll repost my comment too:

    I don’t want anyone to leave unhappily. I do wish that the subjects of
    Joc’s strikeouts v. Kemp’s defensive liabilities, Kendrick’s abilities
    v. Dee Gordon’s, and Grandal’s one-time suspension could be avoided, as
    well as the motives of the Dodgers’ front office. The mention of any one
    of those things immediately stirs up the fire in people who feel
    differently than the original mentioner.

    Let’s just all try to enjoy the season we’ve got with the players we’ve got, please?

  43. I am reposting this from the last thread because I think it is important for people here to know that I responded to the part of conversation that related to Package leaving:

    Just reading this now and feel very sad. I haven’t always agreed with
    you Package [also have not always agreed with others, not just Package], but I recall asking you in the off-season last winter why
    it was that you held the opinions you do. You said it was because you
    want the best for the Dodgers and just want to see them win. I knew from
    that point on that whether I agreed or disagreed with your point of
    view about the team and how it was run, etc., that I liked you as
    another passionate Dodger fan. And I have certainly appreciated some of
    the non-Dodger chats about food, weather, life that has mixed into our
    conversations. I’m sad that my comment last night about the back and
    forth arguments was not more clear about it not reflecting my
    appreciation for the people behind the posts. I feel sad that the
    comment instead had the effect of pushing you away. I will miss chatting
    with you if you do go and hope you will have a change of heart and
    return.

      • Package: Let me join WinnipegDave, john galt, RBI and, I am sure, others in hoping that you will reconsider your decision and decide to remain an active participant of this blog, which is so selflessly and tirelessly run by linkmeister. I appreciate your comments, not only about the Dodgers but about many other things as well. You know, it is funny that although I have never met any of you, and perhaps never will, I consider you friends and I get great pleasure in reading what you post and sharing observations with you about the team that we all love and suffer with. This could be our year, and, Package, I want to make sure that you are among us in the World Series Championship victory parade through downtown Los Angeles. And besides, let us all celebrate together tonight’s 50th anniversary of Sandy Koufax’ perfect game against the Cubs.