Tag Archives: Shane Victorino

Jul 28

Game 101, 2015

Posted on by

Athletics at Dodgers, 7:10PM PT, TV: SPNLA, MLBN, CSNCA

Here’s an interesting note which may or may not be taken as true (that’s why they’re called rumors): the Dodgers may listen to trade offers for Yasiel Puig. That’s the hook for the entire post, and there’s not much else there other than what we already knew: the team is unlikely to give up either Seager or Urias but it wants/needs starting pitching. The author thinks it unlikely they’d move Puig, and in fact the same site reported two days ago that the team had assured him he wasn’t on the block. However, that same day Ken Gurnick of MLB reported there had been no such assurances.

I can’t see trading Puig. He’s an excellent outfielder with a lot of potential upside and he’s cheap. He’s being paid $4.5M this year and the Dodgers control his future for three more years for just $19.5M. That’s less than one Crawford-year.

In other trade news of note within the division, the Rockies traded Troy Tulowitzki to the Blue Jays for Jose Reyes and three pitching prospects. Since neither team needed a shortstop, why they swapped them must have had more to do with money (Tulo’s owed $113.7M over the next five years) than anything else. None of the other three teams in the division have made any deals yet, at least not ones made public. The next time we see the Angels they’ll have old friend Shane Victorino with them, as he was traded by the Red Sox today.

In tonight’s game it will be Brett Anderson (5-5, 3.33 ERA) going for the Dodgers against his former team, which trots out ace Sonny Gray (10-4, 2.30 ERA). Anderson says and the team agrees that his Achilles tendon is fine now after causing him to leave his last start early. Gray has cooled off some recently. He’s 2-1 with a 3.95 ERA and .232 opponents’ batting average over his last six starts after going 5-3 with a 1.37 ERA and .190 opponents’ batting average over his previous nine starts.

Lineup when available.

Oct 01

Walkoff win!

Posted on by

It’s not every day you see a manager pull a double switch which involves pulling the guy who hit a two-run home run earlier in the game and putting a relief pitcher in his spot. That’s what Don Mattingly did in this game, however, taking Andre Ethier out of the number-two spot and replacing him with closer Brandon League while putting little-used utility-man Elian Herrera in the number-nine spot. It paid off in spades when Herrera came up with the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth inning and lined a single off the glove of the drawn-in Marco Scutaro at second base, scoring Hanley Ramirez to give the Dodgers a 3 – 2 win and keeping their slim playoff hopes alive.

This was a tight game all evening, with the Dodgers falling behind 1 – 0 on a double by Buster Posey in the very first inning, scoring Scutaro, who’d walked. Ethier got the run back and one more with a booming home run to center field after a Mark Ellis single. The Dodgers had a chance to score an insurance run in the sixth inning, but Adrian Gonzalez’s career-high 47th double of the year was wasted when he was out at the plate on an excellent throw by Dodger cast-off Xavier Nady after a single by Shane Victorino. Then in the eighth inning the Giants tied the game on a double by Angel Pagan and a single by Scutaro, who took second on Victorino’s ill-advised throw to the plate. Fortunately for the Dodgers, pitcher Kenley Jansen got the next two Giants out with no further damage. League got the Giants out in the ninth, allowing a single by Aubrey Huff but no further damage. That set the stage for Herrera’s heroics in the bottom of the inning.

St. Louis defeated Cincinnati 4 – 2 earlier in the evening, reducing its magic number to one. The Dodgers’ only hope is to win the final two games against the Giants while the Reds defeat the Cardinals in the final two games of the season. That would leave the Dodgers and Cardinals with identical 87 – 75 records and force a one-game playoff between the two teams to determine which goes on to another one game playoff against the Atlanta Braves, who won the National League’s Wild Card #1.