Opportunity, thy name is Saturday night's game
All streaks must come to an end, but as it was last weekend in San Francisco, the Dodgers left Saturday night's 10 inning, 4-3 loss to Milwaukee at the Ravine believing they should have won. Jonathan Broxton pointed one of his big fingers at himself for walking a man with two outs in the 10th, ahead of what would become a game winning single from JJ Hardy. Hard to argue with the philosophy of not walking guys. Matt Kemp blamed himself for not advancing to third on a long drive to center from Andre Ethier. Kemp, believing the ball would be caught by Mike Cameron- hard to blame him after watching this play from Gabe Kaplar, along with this one from Corey Hart, and a couple other fantastic grabs made by Cameron for which we can't find the video- was waiting to tag at first. Instead of standing 90 feet from home plate when Jeff Kent followed with a sac-fly quality liner to center, Kemp was at second. That one hurt, but in fairness it wasn't a slam dunk read.
If it makes him feel any better, the guys in the other dugout didn't think the ball was going as far as it did, either. Painful, yes, but on the other hand, the Dodgers left five guys on base in the final two innings.
LA will look to take the rubber match this afternoon, with Clayton Kershaw taking on Jeff Suppan.
In other news, as we mentioned in Saturday's pregame, Joe Torre isn't counting on a return from Brad Penny this season.
Blake DeWitt is getting some tutoring at second base at Triple-A Vegas. The current second baseman, meanwhile, thinks Vinny is a little too chatty.
Kurt Streeter takes a look at the growth, and growth potential, of Kemp.
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The other Torre move that confounds me is the double switch in the eighth. If you know you're only going to use Kuo for one inning, why double switch? The pitcher was due up second in the bottom of the 8th, so if you're going to hit for him anyway, why not leave Nomar in there?
A double switch is fine if you're going to bring in a superior hitter to hit in the pitchers' spot. But Berroa/Ozuna (I forget who came in first) is not superior to most of the pitchers, or even to Juan Pierre. The pitcher hitting in the 7 spot hurt them the rest of the game. Pierre hitting for the shortstop meant you couldn't use a pinch runner in the ninth for Kent and it meant you had to bat Weeney for the pitcher's spot that inning. We all know the best thing Weeney is going to do in that at-bat is walk, since HE NEVER GETS A HIT.
Sorry, but Nomar gets the winning run in in that situation.
Posted by: SaMo | August 17, 2008 at 10:58 AM
Why oh why couldn't Martin have handled the 3 spot.
How long till Kent is retarded... oops, I meant retired?
Posted by: Benzo Jones | August 17, 2008 at 11:18 AM
Well ya know, life goes on....
The Dodgers are still a better team than they were a month ago.
I'd still like to see them pickup Greg Maddux with Penny probably gone for the season. For 2 million what could it hurt?
Posted by: Andy B | August 17, 2008 at 11:47 AM
It seems to me that our biggest problem is a lack of a dependable closer.
David
Posted by: DavidS | August 17, 2008 at 12:38 PM
You know what? TJ Simers really pisses me off. I have no doubt that Jeff Kent may have said those things, but TJ's entire philosophy seems to be to quote people totally out of context so as to get a rise out of the fans. The fact that he's trying to make Kent look like a bad guy is ridiculous. Note that he never actually issues direct quotes of the questions he asks the players, just quotes of what they say. He "paraphrases" what he says. That's just dirty journalism, I don't understand why anybody even reads his articles except to get pissed at him.
That being said, batting in front of Manny does not make Jeff Kent a better hitter, it makes the pitchers more prone to pitch to him because they'd rather take their chances with him than face Manny with runners on; especially with two outs. He hasn't changed his approach, he hasn't changed his mechanics, pitchers are just more likely to put the ball over the plate with Manny due up. The announcers for today's game made a good point, he's probably sick of hearing all the "batting in front of/behind" discussions from when he was in San Francisco with Barroid.
The home plate ump from today's game is awful! Not only is he missing calls, he's really inconsistent with the strike zone.
Posted by: Nils | August 17, 2008 at 03:27 PM