See Jon SooHoo’s Wednesday photo gallery at LA Photog Blog.
By Jon Weisman
First, we’ll get the Kenley Jansen discussion out of the way. The Dodgers’ top reliever gave up a run for the second straight night (each one driven in by the Tigers’ Victor Martinez) and Wednesday, it cost the Dodgers with a 7-6 loss in the 10th, after Los Angeles had rousingly rallied for three runs in the ninth.
From Earl Bloom of MLB.com, in his game recap:
“He’s just a really good hitter,” Dodgers manager Don Mattingly said. “Today, it looked like they [Jansen and catcher Drew Butera] were trying to go in under his hands, and just didn’t get it there.”
Mattingly did not sound concerned about his closer giving up a lead and a tie on consecutive nights against the heart of the Tigers’ powerful lineup, citing Yankees great Mariano Rivera as an example.
“When guys struggle, it’s usually two in a row,” Mattingly said. “I’ve seen Mo do it many times. He [Jansen] is healthy — I’m not worried.”
“It’s tough, man,” Jansen told Eric Stephen of True Blue L.A. “He’s a tough hitter and kept battling. I feel like I executed, and one pitch I go in there and he took me deep. He kept fouling me off away and I tried to go in there to back him off,” Jansen explained. “Nothing I can do about it. It’s a tough series, but I can’t worry about this. I just have to go now to Arizona and get it back together.”
One other statistical oddity about Jansen, however coincidental, is this: His career ERA before June 1 is 3.81. His career ERA from June 1 on … 1.32. There are a variety of factors that could be playing into this — his past health concerns for one — but early season stumbles have not previously meant anything perilous.
But as much as everyone’s focus will be on what happened late in Wednesday’s game, there was also a pretty big moment early on.
Starting a game behind the plate for only the fourth time since 2012, Martinez figured to have his hands full whenever Dee Gordon reached base. But former Dodger catcher Brad Ausmus rolled boxcars with a first-pitch pitchout — and I mean, Martinez throws the ball to second base from about a foot outside the batter’s box — and Gordon was out stealing for the first time in 2014, still only by a hair.
[mlbvideo id=”31956959″ width=”400″ height=”224″ /]
Carl Crawford then doubled, kicking off what still became a two-run inning for the Dodgers that included a Martinez error. It’s a classic “We’ll never know what would have happened” had Gordon been running on a normal pitch, but this was just such a pure baseball moment that I didn’t want it to pass without comment.
There was really a lot to chew on from this game. Josh Beckett made his first official start in 11 months, and he had two quick outs on five pitches in the third inning until all of a sudden: Martinez single, Austin Jackson double and then, one pitch after a visit to the mound, a three-run home run to center field by Nick Castellanos.
“Josh was kind of back and forth, to me,” Mattingly said (via Bloom). “He’d get in a rhythm, keep the ball down, and all of a sudden, he’d get the ball up. So it was kind of good and bad with him.”
Said Beckett: “I’ve got some things to work on.”
The Dodger defense was kind of back and forth as well, committing three errors but also turning three double plays (not to mention this) to keep the game from getting out of hand, setting the stage for the ninth-inning rally.
Key to this was that after Adrian Gonzalez led off the bottom of the ninth with a homer (not that that wasn’t also key), Andre Ethier and Matt Kemp each showed enough discipline to work out walks after taking first-pitch strikes from Tigers reliever Joe Nathan. Then Juan Uribe pounced on a first-pitch fastball for a soft single to load the bases.
Yasiel Puig’s return to action as a pinch-hitter ended quickly with a three-pitch strikeout, but Scott Van Slyke brought home one run with a groundout, and then Gordon smacked another fastball into right field for the game-tying single. Crawford nearly had his second walkoff hit in as many nights with a slicing fly to left, but it was caught, and into the fateful 10th the Dodgers went.
Other notes:
- Gordon and Uribe each had three hits. The Dodgers’ leaders in Wins Above Replacement (according to Fangraphs) after 10 games: Gordon 0.5, Ramirez 0.4, Uribe 0.4.
- Beckett’s successful squeeze bunt in the second inning was the Dodgers’ third official sacrifice hit of 2014.
- Mike Baxter cleared waivers and was outrighted to Triple-A Albuquerque by the Dodgers.
- A.J. Ellis had some interesting thoughts in his first talk with the media since his knee surgery. See more at True Blue L.A.
- Carl Crawford talked to J.P. Hoornstra of the Daily News about breaking free of the head-first slide.
- Dodger starting pitchers and relievers have nearly the same opponents’ OPS, but come by it different ways. The top line below belongs to the starters:
oldbrooklynfan
As far as Jansen goes, let’s stay away from what the opinion is of it and just hope that Jansen just turns the page as all good closers do and just concentrates on his next outing.