Game 79, 2017

Angels at Dodgers, 7:10 PM PT, TV: SPNLA, FS-W

RHP Jesse Chavez (5-7, 5.15 ERA) goes for the Angels while RHP Kenta Maeda (5-3, 4.62 ERA) makes a spot start for the Dodgers.

Chavez appeared in 23 games for the Dodgers last year, all in relief. He was acquired from the Blue Jays in a trade for Mike Bolsinger and let go to free agency in the off-season. In his career he’s faced the Dodgers 11 times with a 3.32 ERA. Maeda has been in the bullpen since a poor outing on June 4, but he’s shown signs of improvement according to Dodgers’ manager Dave Roberts. “I think over the last three appearances, he’s throwing the baseball really well,” Roberts said.

This date in Dodgers’ history:

  • 1940 To honor the lyricist of Take Me Out to the Ballgame, Jack Norworth Day is celebrated at Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field. Norworth and his partner Albert Von Tilzer, who wrote the music, had never seen a game when they created the song in 1908.
  • 1980 Dodger southpaw Jerry Reuss, facing only 28 batters, no-hits the Giants at Candlestick Park, 8-0. Shortstop Bill Russell’s errant throw on Jack Clark’s grounder with two outs in the first inning deprives the 31 year-old left-hander from tossing a perfect game.
  • 2011 Citing MLB refusal to sign off on a transaction that would provide the team with $385 million, the Dodgers file for bankruptcy protection in a Delaware court. Although there will be no disruption to the day-to-day status of the franchise, the Chapter 11 financing permits the Dodgers to use $150 million for daily operations and gives owner Frank McCourt time to seek a media deal that will ensure the club’s long-term financial stability.

Lineup when available.

66 thoughts on “Game 79, 2017

  1. If I were a hard-core class warrior I’d mutter about this: “The rich can buy their way out of trouble,” I’d say.

    In a negotiated settlement, Dodgers outfielder Yasiel Puig’s one-game suspension has been rescinded and he instead will make a charitable donation.

    • Bryce Harper got his suspension reduced by a game after responding to Hunter Strychnine’s provocation. Strychnine served the full six games of his.

  2. Two games in a row, Dodger SP goes 7 innings . . . and neither is Kersh — nice!

  3. Is this really a Dodger game — going into the 9th inning under 2:30 since first pitch???!!!!

  4. Mea culpa for saying last night that the Dodgers should win the game vs. Nolasco. My fingers have not offered anything toxic about tonight.

  5. I might be visiting a friend in Saskatoon this summer. I could look it up, but how far is that from Winnipeg?

    • It’s a drive of about 800 km. So about 8 hours.
      But before you go crazy and think about swinging by – I will be in Asia for 5 weeks this summer.

      Is your friend an author? Was it you who recommended some books to me last summer? Dave Margoshes?

  6. Nice to have Thompson back. If he is healthy and productive, he takes away some of the sting of losing Toles for the year.

  7. Okay, this is fun:

    https://goo.gl/gAnQW9

    It’s a statcast tool that shows how fast of a sprinter every position player in the MLB is this year. If you click through to the tool itself you can filter by team and/or position. Looking at the Dodgers, only four players are below average – Grandal, Gonzalez, Turner, and (of all people) Joc Pederson. The fastest player on the team is Cody Bellinger, because of course he is.

    • I’m a little surprised to see that Chris Taylor is a bit faster than Toles (of course, I could outrun Toles at the moment). Taylor’s barely slower than Bellinger, though Belli has the advantage of being a LHH.

      • Pederson was the surprise for me, and he was below average last year, too. He was a big base stealer in AAA, and I’ve always wondered why that never translated to the majors. Now I know.

          • Yes, that’s what I was thinking: simply running straight from first to home. When I was at John Burroughs Junior High in Los Angeles one of the tests that we had in PE was a timed run around the bases. The less time it took, the more points you got. There was a time penalty if you missed a base, compounded if you missed additional bases. One kid decided that he would consciously miss all three bases and just run “around” the bases by going about two steps in each direction, making sharp turns, so the route took about five seconds. The gym teacher was not amused. We were, however.

          • I remember we had to run a 660 in HS and I was always nearly last. I wasn’t particularly overweight, and I wasn’t dogging it, so it was a mystery.

          • I ran the two mile and the mile in high school track, then I added the 880, which came about the middle of a high school meet, just to stay warm. I was never fast, but I could run a long time.

          • We had to run the 100, the quarter-mile, the half-mile and the mile in PE in high school. I was not fast, but I recall running a 12.6 in the 100. I extrapolated from that if I could maintain that pace for a mile I could run a 3:42 mile. That was never going to happen. I think I broke six minutes once in the mile and ran a 64-second quarter mile.

          • Extrapolation is fun! If I have my Math correct, if you maintained the same pace as 9.58seconds/100m (world record by Bolt), then the time for the marathon would be 1 hour 7 minutes and 22 seconds.

          • And if you ran the 100m in marathon world record pace – it would take roughly 17.5 seconds.