Clayton Kershaw threw eight innings of one-run, seven-strikeout ball, allowing five baserunners, but the Dodgers managed only four baserunners of their own and lost their third straight game to Oakland, 4-1, on a walkoff home run by Yoenis Cespedes off Josh Lindblom.
Juan Rivera had two of the Dodgers’ three hits, driving in Elian Herrera (who doubled) with the only Dodger run.
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Ben Kirst
What is the possibility of trading for a bat any time in the near future? Or are we just waiting for Matt Kemp to come back and save the offense?
Rob Carnachan
Kemp can’t do it by himself. Uribe needs to be replaced/released. LF is also a problem area as Rivera doesn’t seem to be able to repeat his 25 HR season. And, of course, Dee Gordon is a disaster. He’s just not a major league leadoff man in any way except for his speed, which is vastly overrated in importance for leadoff hitters. Bobby Abreu would be a better leadoff hitter than Gordon.
Linkmeister
Are we sure these As pitchers aren’t the reincarnation of those old Billy-Ball staffs with Mike Norris and those other guys?
Anonymous
There are but few bats and less prospects for teams to get from the Dodgers, for many reasons, this ownership change could be a year too late to make a big splash.
Anonymous
Thank goodnes this happened during the week, otherwise Jon might have treated us to the “Lost Weekend” clip. Horrors!
Jon Weisman
I have fond memories of using that clip.
Old Bear
Funny, I was thinking of that. And, of course, the symbol for the A’s for years has been the elephant, just not the pink ones.
Anonymous
sometimes you need a little dose of reallty, hopefully it serves a purpose.
mixdr077
wow, we need a complete infield overhaul (has it ever been done mid-season by a “contender”?) Loney/rbi machine platoon stinks…. uribe is horrible….gordon cant even bunt! at least mark ellis is coming back….here’s prayin’ the DFA Kennedy and keep de jesus and herrara….
bills, cap, and harang vs red hot angels? hope we can at least get 2 outta 3 or all the halo honks at my job are gonna make my life hell
Anonymous
Desperation setting in. Time to release Kennedy, send DeJesus back for good, and give SVS and Sands another round.
Christopher Staaf
Kennedy never should have been signed in the first place. I would like to see Van Slyke get called back only for the power potential. Sands is never going to amount to anything as a big leaguer. Put him as a throw in when the Dodgers do make a trade in a few weeks. Same goes for De Jesus Jr.
Anonymous
Not sure why you given up on Sands already as opposed to Van Slyke. A bad spring certainly doesn’t kill a career (unless you are Joe Thurston). Sands has shown more at the major league level than Van Slyke. Personally, they both need to be in this feeble line up.
Anonymous
I agree :)
Christopher Staaf
I had hopes until the Dee Gordon bunt attempt in the 9th inning. Good play by Inge but that should have never happened. I want to see Herrera or Abreu when he plays to be the lead off man. Dee needs to stay in the 8 spot for the foreseeable future.
Anonymous
The hitting is terrible, agreed, but this is the same team that was doing fine a week ago. Getting Ellis back will be big, but Ethier, Herrera, Abreu, Hairston and AJ Ellis aren’t this bad. If the pitching holds up we’ll weather this drought. We have nothing but our young arms to give up for a bat that just doesn’t exist out there right now. Do we trade Zach Lee, or Eovaldi, or one of our other top pitching prospects? I don’t want to trade one of those guys for a just decent over the hill hitter, who might be available.
Billy Healy
Yes they are this bad. Ethier has always started hot and then declined
as the season goes along. He has always had horrible platoon splits.
Abreu was released by a team and Hairston is a 30+ journeyman who can go
on great hot streaks and sub artic cold streaks. AJ Ellis is actually
good at what he does. Herrera is another journeyman. Im fine with trading Lee for someone who is actually good. Not that Ned will ever do that. His trade record is appalling.
Terry Pruett
Normally, I’d be all over Mattingly for sac bunting in the 9th with your backup catcher on 1st and nobody out. Then I remembered that Dee Gordon was up. Gordon has the distinction of being a lousy hitter AND a lousy bunter (not to mention a lousy fielder…but that’s not relevant here). So Manager Don was faced with choosing, as Russell Crowe’s character in Master and Commander said, between “the lesser of two weevils”. …
…I know, intellectually, that the team is just regressing to the mean. I know that our 1st basemen (both of them), 3rd baseman, shortstop, and left fielder (except when Abreu plays there) are barely major league caliber. I know this. It doesn’t mean I have to like it.
Anonymous
I must be a jinx. The last time I attended three straight Dodger games in Oakland, it was the 1974 Series.
I remain bewildered by Mattingly’s unwillingness to run for his catcher in the late innings of a close game.
I am also bewildered by Travis Blackley’s being in the majors at all, let alone shutting down the Dodgers.
Anonymous
Not pinch running for your catcher in the 9th inning of a tie game is terrible error. Maybe Mattingly was pulled for a pinch runner and it traumatized him. Or maybe he played with super slow catchers in NY.
Anonymous
I would say it borders on malpractice. Of course, so does writing Uribe on the lineup card.
Anonymous
Slumps happen. Hot streaks happen. Such is the way of baseball.
Anonymous
I didn’t think that they were that good when this sort of lineup was winning, but I do think that they are this bad now that they are losing.
Anonymous
It’s like having a cold. You know how bad the cold is. You never really think, “You know, two weeks I didn’t have a cold and I felt great!”
Anonymous
I have baseball fever, and I love it!
Adam Luther
We may limp into the All-Star break, but it’s not circle the wagon time…yet. Ned will make a move or two around that time to shore everything up for the stretch into September when the roster expands.
Anonymous
In other words, stop my sniffling?
Robert Babbitt
I’m glad to see that people are waking up to the fact that Dee Gordon is WORTHLESS in every facet of the game…. He is an arrogant over-confident DUMMY who (though fast) just cant’ get out of his own way…. or anybody else’s for that matter… Always in the way of the outfielders…. He is horrible as a shortstop…. A horrendous bunter…. Their is absolutely no UPSIDE to this CLOWN… He belongs in A Ball so that he can learn how to respect & play the game….
The truly sad thing is, we have a Manger who thinks he will somehow improve…. It is just plain Silly to think he will get better until he learns how to play the game correctly…
Along with Kennedy and Uribe we have 3 guys that just don’t belong on a major league roster…
Anonymous
Some harsh words sir. I wont go so far as calling him a clown. I’ll save those words for Kemp’s shaving cream pie antics. But I do agree that he is not a good baseball player, magnified by hitting him leadoff.
Jeffrey Thomas III
Sure his play has looked bad most of the year, but I don’t know where you’re getting this arrogant dummy stuff? Or that he has no upside? I too hate watching him try to bunt or almost running into an outfielder daily, but I think you are giving him a harder time than he deserves.
Anonymous
I think he made some comments in Spring Training that were to the effect of “I don’t need to learn to take a walk because I gotta be me.” That raised red flags for me immediately. Also, he’s been in pro ball for four years and some of his problems are just lack of fundamentals. You can’t chalk it up to growing pains when he’s running into an outfielder constantly or can’t bunt or can’t throw for four years straight. That’s just a ballplayer who either can’t improve or doesn’t think he needs to improve on learnable skills.
Anonymous
Funny how victory has a thousand fathers but defeat is an orphan. Except on the blogs, when defeat brings out all the deadbeat dads who want nothing to do with their progeny. We’re just three days removed form the excitement of Dee Gordon hitting a walkoff single to beat the first-place White Sox.
He’s not awful, he’s simply young and mediocre. Whether he improves with age is hard to tell yet. But the Dodgers don’t really have any other options at short right now (can Herrera play there?), so yelling and screaming about him isn’t going to do much. They don’t really have another leadoff hitter either (can Herrera play there?) but at some point, Gordon has to be dropped to 8th simply because he just isn’t getting on base.
This team is so far ahead of where we expected them to be that I can’t get upset yet, not even with a three-game sweep by one of the worst teams in baseball. It wasn’t so long ago that the Dodgers fit that description.
That said, Kennedy must go, Uribe must become the futility infielder (making Herrera the everyday 3B) for now, and something must be done to upgrade Loney at 1B. Or maybe they can just get the best player in baseball to come play center field. Oh wait a minute. . . .
Anonymous
I don’t think you can applaud Dee’s heroics while ignoring his shortcomings. A few generations ago a player of his calibration would be toiling in the minors. I agree with you keep him in the 8 spot. Now who leads off?
Anonymous
Speaking of calibration, the Dodgers have too many .38 specials throughout the lineup and too few AK47s.
Anonymous
Disagree. A few generations ago, shortstops were expected to field well and hit .220. It’s only since Cal Ripken and Derek Jeter that we expect them to hit like major leaguers too.
Fred Stanley was the starting shortstop for the 1976 Yankees, a team that went all the way to the world series. Bill russell’s career OBP is .310. Dave Concepcion .322. Gordon hasn’t hit even that well yet, but I’m willing to give him a year to figure out big league pitching. It’s not like they have a lot of other options.
Anonymous
Usually there is a trade off between the glove and hitting. Lack if hitting is made up with a better defense with the early Ozzie Smith being the best example. I can’t see Gordon as offering a trade off. He is not a very good ball player period.
As for your examples, how many years did Fred Stanley, Billy Russell, and Davey Concepcion hone their skills in the minors before they were allowed to wear a major league uniform?
I don’t think guys like Ripken, Jeter, and A-Rod, changed the standard. They are the exception, the one in a generation player who transcends the position.
Anonymous
Concepcion was a big leaguer at 22. Russell at 20. Stanley at 23, though he didn’t win a regular job until 27. But those guys were all younger than Gordon, who’s 24. He has been honing his craft in the minors for the past four years, but he still isn’t very good at it.
Anonymous
and, of course, Russell honed his skills to be SS in CF.
Anonymous
Is “calibration” Auto-Correct speak for “calibre?”
Anonymous
Yeah I typed calibre and got calibration. But it does seem that calibre, calibration, and to calibrate belong to the same genre, comparing some measure to some standard. And in Gordon’s case that comparison is quite dismal.
Jeffrey Thomas III
I’ve been wondering if it’s time to give either Oeljten or possibly Angle a shot at batting lead off for a bit.
Anonymous
Glad I missed this one, this scenario will probably happen again starting next series when we have to actually face a team with an offense.
Jeffrey Thomas III
Today old friend James McDonald threw his first complete game giving up 6 hits, 1 earned run, and striking out 5 against the twins. He now has an ERA of 2.19 and WHIP of .95 on the year. I’m so glad we traded that bum for Octavio Dotel.
Billy Healy
you mean 6 weeks of Dotel? less than 20 innings if i remember correctly.
Anonymous
OT: (If i may Jon) This thread (to me at least) is a perfect example of why we need each other (as a community) i’m reading The Moral Molecule (think wealth of nations) so my awareness of this is heighten, but today i was that guy (as a times we all are, a bit on the negative side) and i will be that guy again (just natural order of things, or what ever the reason maybe) but reading the thread as it was being gardened by the posters, i was LEVELED OUT (don’t know if that’s the right word to use) with some well balanced prospective, which is really cool to see.
Anonymous
here’s something from another book that has stayed with me-> honesty in the absence of compassion becomes cruelty. Tenacity unmediated by flexibility congeals into rigidity. Confidence untempered by humility is arrogance. Courage without prudence is recklessness.
Anonymous
Was De Jesus the least threatening DH in the history of baseball?
Jason Ungar
I blame it on Uribe. Ever since he returned everyone stopped hitting
Anonymous
Gotta get more than 3 hits I guess!
Anonymous
The last time the Dodgers went on a skid….I got on DT and suggested that they needed to make a move or two to shore up their roster….
….
They then rattled off a nice winning streak… totally proving me wrong.
….
So, in an effort to get some karma for this club….I’ll do it again and hope for the same results…
“This team stinks…trade everybody!” ( I hope the baseball gods are listening ) …. :-)
Anonymous
I don’t think they “proved you wrong.” The Dodgers have had some sustained fabulous luck combined with some legitimately excellent pitching. Yesterday, they had excellent pitching until the ninth, but were forced to rely on their offense, not luck, for runs. This week has been the 2012 Dodgers minus luck. That team, over the course of a season, would play at a .400 clip.
Anonymous
Actually….. To me personally, this season has been kinda different….yet, totally the same!
….
By that, I mean that the team didn’t really go out and get any significant free agents…..Same!
The youngsters are kind of a mixed bag of hot and cold….Same!
Kershaw and Kemp are “nails” …. Same!
Injuries are piling up, just as they did in 2011….. Same!
…..
However, for some reason… this team finds itself right there with the best teams in baseball, in terms of record. – Different!
Go figure. (I don’t think that this roster is particularly impressive top – to – bottom, but they have been successful so far in 2012)
……
Do they get back on course?
Do they ‘come falling back down to the level that their talent level would suggest?’
Do they make a trade or two and fix some things?
Stay tuned! :-) ( I am )
Anonymous
It’s is a very interesting season. It will certainly have it’s share of twists and turns before the year is out. (Stay tuned sums it up very well)
Billy Healy
This reflects my expectation coming into the season. Sometimes bad teams can go on a run for a couple months like the ’10 padres and Giants did but thats really rare. This team feels like all those pittsburgh or KC teams that would start out winning be leading the division and then fall apart and finish in the bottom of the league. Belief will only take you so far. eventually you need talent too. Sadly the new ownership has kept Ned Colletti one of the most inept GMs employed. I wouldnt trust that guy to rebuild a gingerbread house much less a baseball team that you want to win for more than a year. All of his moves are about really short term results at the expence of long term winning.
Anonymous
What’s success in baseball? It’s the moment before you want your team to have more success.
Jon Weisman
The #Dodgers “are the first team since the 1978 Rangers to be held to no more than one run and no more than three hits in three straight games.” http://es.pn/LlItOA
Anonymous
Back in 2009 around this time we also had the best record in the MLB and 9 games up in the division. Lots of grumbling around here when we saw that lead “dwindle” to 6, as we lost series to Chisox and Mariners, though we did take 2 out of 3 from the Angelitos during that stretch.
Jon Weisman
There’s a new post up top in the Entertainment section.
foul tip
Oh, the woes of Lincecum==
Sounds almost like a Biblical plague, doesn’t it?
http://losangeles.dodgers.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20120621&content_id=33704842&vkey=news_mlb&c_id=mlb
Anonymous
Time for the boys to fatten up on the Angels!
KT
yea right…aren’t they facing Santana
foul tip
Perspective check:
As of today the Dodgers are 42-28, .600, 4 up. However it was achieved, the team has had MLB’s best record much of the season.
Anyone honestly believe that still would be the case in late June?
If so and if you’re being honest, you have quite a future in Vegas. You should go there–now.
Think I saw the other day that the Dodgers even have the best record, or one of the best, dating from the time Kemp was lost–which is even more extraordinary.
Can it all unravel? Of course. Is this a legitimate .600 team? Not very likely. Does a recent bad streak mean the wheels have come off and the team will lose the lead and be 5 games out in just a couple weeks? Not very likely. Do Dodger fans lead the league in overreaction? Possibly.
Should we all remember the saying “enjoy what you can; endure what you must”? Definitely.
[apologizes for channeling Jim Tracy]
Jon Weisman
Game chat is open up top.