Carlos Monasterios takes the hill tonight, a reminder of how much people lamented the Dodgers’ lack of a reliable No. 5 starter earlier this year.
This came up in the Dodger Thoughts comments on Thursday, and I think it’s worth pointing out that while the Dodgers had mixed success finishing off their starting rotation from inside the organization, it wasn’t as if the strategy itself was a failure. It worked quite well down south for the National League West-leading San Diego Padres.
In fact, the Padres’ rotation was even more of a longshot. Back in March, Mat Latos was a guy with 10 career starts and a 4.62 ERA, Wade LeBlanc had 13 career games with 5.05 ERA and Clayton Richard 51 games with 4.80 ERA. Yet all three of these guys came through huge, joining Kevin Correia and free agent signee Jon Garland in making 118 of the Padres’ 120 starts so far this season.
Some will argue that the Dodgers should have done things differently, or that the Padres had more reason to believe that their guys would do better than Monasterios, John Ely, James McDonald, Scott Elbert and ex-Padre Charlie Haeger. But the fact remains that very few teams enter a season with five established starting pitchers. By necessity, the Padres cobbled together a rotation largely from within, with a mixed bag of resumes, and it paid off handsomely.
Basically, things have just gone very right for San Diego this year.
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Tony Jackson of ESPNLosAngeles.com has this update on the man in the crosshairs, Matt Kemp:
Slumping center fielder Matt Kemp took about a half-hour of early batting practice on the field just before the rest of the team came out for pregame stretching. The only coach on hand to watch Kemp was the one who was pitching to him, hitting coach Don Mattingly, who offered occasional batting tips between pitches.
“For the most part, we were just working to get his posture back,” Mattingly said. “His butt was jutting out, so he was reaching for a lot of balls. I was trying to get him to keep his butt underneath him, in layman’s terms, to give him more of a direct path to the ball.”
And, in theory, prevent him from chasing so many low, outside breaking balls, a habit that had contributed greatly to Kemp’s recent struggles. He entered the day hitting .218 for August, with 16 strikeouts in 61 plate appearances, and he had struck out 128 times in 510 plate appearances (once every four trips to the plate) for the season.
After his one-on-one session with Mattingly, Kemp went 0-for-4 in the game. But that wasn’t as important as the fact that he didn’t strike out, and two of his three outs (he reached on an error in the eighth) came on balls that were squared up.
“He was a lot better,” Mattingly said. “I was really happy with him tonight. Hopefully, he felt better. He didn’t get any results, and that [stinks], but his swing was much better.”
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- From the Dodger press notes: Los Angeles has won 12 straight home games against Cincinnati since losing July 28, 2005.
- Albuquerque has eight players with at least 10 home runs this year, according to the team press notes: John Lindsey (21), Jay Gibbons (19), Russ Mitchell (19), Xavier Paul (12), Lucas May (11), Prentice Redman (10), Michael Restovich (10), and Justin Sellers (10).
- Molly Knight of ESPN the Magazine still can’t quite believe that the McCourts aren’t settling.
- The possibilities and hurdles of trading Manny Ramirez are broken down (from the perspective of whether the Texas Rangers might get him) by Jamey Newberg of MLB.com. Ignore the part about the Dodgers offering Ramirez arbitration — that won’t happen.
- These Bat Slicers remind me of the round All-Star Baseball cards I played with in the 1970s.
