Dodger Thoughts

Taking the night off tonight, so indulge yourself in a recap of the Dodgers’ 5-1 victory at Houston and other action in baseball today from Mike Petriello of Mike Scioscia’s Tragic Illness.

Why is August 21, 2010 significant to this Dodger team?

On that date, four different Dodgers homered. That’s one more than has homered for the 2012 Dodgers in 14 games this season.

Aside from Matt Kemp and Andre Ethier, the Dodgers have one home run in 350 at-bats this year. That was hit by A.J. Ellis on April 7. The Dodgers have played 11 consecutive games without someone besides Kemp or Ethier hitting one out.

Kemp’s slugging percentage is exactly 1.000 (first in the National League). Ethier is at .648 (sixth in the NL). The rest of the Dodgers are slugging .277.

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Clayton Kershaw did not have a good start the last time out, facing 26 batters and allowing 11 baserunners with three strikeouts. Looking forward to seeing him bounce back today against the Astros.

If the Dodgers can build a lead against Houston starter Kyle Weiland (7.90 ERA in 35 1/3 career innings), perhaps we’ll see two Los Angeles relievers who have been absent lately. Mike MacDougal hasn’t pitched for the Dodgers since April 14, Scott Elbert since April 13. MacDougal has thrown 60 pitches this season, Elbert 50.

So the quest today for the Dodgers is not only to take the last of the three games with Milwaukee, but win the series on run differential!

• Juan Uribe is day to day with a sore wrist, according to Ken Gurnick of MLB.com, which in my view gives the Jerry Hairston Jr. a chance to make a case for even more playing time at third. Hairston has an .812 OPS in 20 plate appearances this season and made a diving catch Wednesday.
• Bartolo Colon – now with Oakland, in case you haven’t been keeping up – had a stretch Wednesday in which he threw 38 consecutive pitches for strikes between the fifth and eighth innings against the Angels. Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle has details. It’s the longest such streak dating back to at least 1988.
• Cliff Lee pitched 10 innings for Philadelphia against San Francisco, needing only 102 pitches to do so, before going out for a pinch-hitter in the 11th. Naturally, the pinch-hitter (Jim Thome) struck out, and the Giants won in the bottom of the 11th.
• Matt Cain of the Giants, coming off a one-hitter in his last start, allowed only two hits in his nine innings, throwing 91 pitches. That’s right – the two combined for 19 innings on 193 pitches. The 11-inning game itself only took 2:27 to play.
• In the second half of this Baseball Prospectus column, Bradley Ankrom writes about former Dodger James McDonald’s rare feat – being a pitcher who had the only hit of the game against his opponent.
• Josh Lindblom leads major-league relievers with 8 2/3 scoreless innings, according to the Dodger press notes. Lindblom has allowed two of four inherited runners to score (those crossed the plate in Clayton Kershaw’s last start).
• Frank Jackson of the Hardball Times writes about the final days of Dodger baseball at the Coliseum.

© Jon SooHoo/Los Angeles Dodgers

We’ll start by going straight to the finish line, which saw what appeared to be the rarest of things: a tailor-made double-play fly ball.

The Dodgers and Brewers were tied in the 10th inning, 2-2, but Milwaukee loaded the bases with one out and defending National League MVP Ryan Braun at the plate. With the Dodgers turning to a five-man infield, Matt Kemp and Andre Ethier were left to patrol the outfield by themselves.

But Braun lifted a short fly ball to center field that Kemp had plenty of time not only to catch, but to set up a big throw home that would nail Nyjer Morgan should he try to score from third base.

Kemp originally seemed to have it in mind to have forward momentum as he caught the ball, but he got to the spot too soon, and ended up being flat-footed as he threw a two-bouncer home toward Dodger catcher A.J. Ellis (whose throwing error moments earlier contributed to the Dodgers’ 10th-inning woes). Ellis actually appeared on replay to make the tag on Morgan a hair before he tumbled across home plate, but the Brewer was ruled safe, giving Milwaukee its second consecutive eyelash victory over Los Angeles.

Kemp drove in the Dodgers’ first run with a single (after Mark Ellis tripled) in the first inning, but struck out with two on and two out in the eighth and the score tied. The other Dodger involved in the final play, A.J. Ellis, had the team’s other RBI.

Chris Capuano pitched six innings, allowing two runs on eight baserunners with four strikeouts.

© Jon SooHoo/Los Angeles Dodgers

If it weren’t enough that Andre Ethier’s super April has been overshadowed by Matt Kemp, then how frustrating was it that his latest feat — a two-out, two-run homer off Francisco Rodriguez to give the Dodgers their 4-3 lead Tuesday — fell by the wayside when Javy Guerra couldn’t hold the lead in the bottom of the ninth?

So let us take a moment to celebrate, as Kemp is doing in the photo above, Ethier’s super start. He has a .383 on-base percentage and .738 slugging percentage. He is seventh in the National League in adjusted OPS. Yeah, we’ll take that.

Against left-handed pitchers — the big concern going into 2012 — Ethier is 4 for 13 with a double, triple, two walks and two strikeouts. He has eight RBI in 15 plate appearances. Last year, he had 13 RBI with seven walks and 41 strikeouts in 151 plate appearances against lefties.

Ethier and Kemp, by the way, have the most RBI of any duo in their first 11 games since Bob Meusel and Lou Gehrig of the 1927 Yankees, according to STATS LLC.

Aside from the fundamental desire for the Dodgers to win and not lose, I had two hopes for tonight’s game:

1. The offense not get shut out.
2. Chad Billingsley not get hammered

In the bottom of the second inning, it looked like each might take place. In the bottom of the ninth, it looked like neither would.

Instead, Dodger fans were left with a third outcome – a grim-faced, walkoff loss. George Kotteras’ pinch-hit, two-run double off Javy Guerra gave the Milwaukee Brewers a 5-4 victory, the Dodgers’ second loss of the season.

One game after a triple play helped save Guerra’s bacon in the ninth inning against San Diego, no such rescue arrived. He gave up a leadoff single to Corey Hart and stolen base to pinch-runner Carlos Gomez, then walked Mat Gamel. Jonathan Lucroy struck out after failing to bunt, but Brewers manager Ron Roenicke made a fearless move, sending up Kotteras to pinch-hit for Cesar Izturis even though no other shortstop remained on his bench in the event of extra innings.

Guerra got the count to 2-2, but Kotteras launched one to right-center. Andre Ethier chased it down, but the relay home was just a half-second late to nail Gamel with the winning run.

The result spoiled the celebration that was all but set for Andre Ethier, who doubled and scored to tie the game 2-2 in the seventh inning, then hit a dramatic, opposite-field, two-out, two-run homer in the eighth off Francisco Rodriguez to rally Los Angeles from a 3-2 deficit and give the team its only lead.

For Dodger fans, riding that 9-1 season-opening wave, it was the latest in a month of exhilarations.

Kenley Jansen then retired the side in order on two strikeouts in the bottom of the eighth, before Guerra blew the third save of his career in 29 opportunities.

Still, I’ll have to call this a better alternative to the way the game unfolded at the outset. After the Dodgers had wasted a scoring opportunity in the first inning (because of Dee Gordon getting picked off by Brewers starter Yovanni Gallardo), Milwaukee hit for the cycle off Billingsley with its first eight platesmen, good for two quick runs.

However, Billingsley settled down, retiring his last 11 batters and finishing his third straight quality start to begin 2012, allowing five hits and no walks in six innings and 83 pitches. For the year, his ERA is 1.33, and he has allowed 13 hits, one walk and one hit batter in 20 1/3 innings.

It’s the absence of walks in the plural that is perhaps most exciting for Billingsley. Even when he gets in trouble, he has hardly backed down. His weakest moment tonight was throwing two balls to Izturis with a 1-2 count and a runner on third. Izturis then singled on a 3-2 pitch, driving in the Brewers’ second run. But that was the exception. Billingsley had the bad inning that he is (unfairly) notorious for, but he didn’t let it ruin him.

Meanwhile, the Dodgers withstood their own hitless streak – 10 in a row retired after Matt Kemp (1 for 4) doubled in the first to raise his batting average at that moment to .500 – and tied the game. In the fifth, Juan Rivera doubled, went to third on a James Loney single and scored when Rickie Weeks caught Juan Uribe’s pop-up but then dropped the ball before throwing home. In the seventh, Ethier and Loney hit the Dodgers’ fourth and fifth doubles to even the score, 2-2. (Loney, by the way, was thrown out on the basepaths in both innings.)

With two out and Uribe on second via fielder’s choice and wild pitch, A.J. Ellis was walked intentionally to get to Billingsley’s spot in the order. I basically agreed with Don Mattingly’s decision to hit for Billingsley, even though he was on a roll, although I’d feel a lot better about it if the Dodgers’ first hitter off the bench weren’t Adam Kennedy, who popped out.

But after Milwaukee squeezed home a go-ahead run off Matt Guerrier in the bottom of the seventh, the Dodgers came back in the eighth, with Ethier (slugging .738 this year and now the National League RBI leader with 17) once again proving to Kemp that he doesn’t have to carry the offense by himself.

Unfortunately for the Dodgers, the bullpen didn’t deliver tonight, with the Guerr boys, Guerrier and Guerra, retiring only four batters as they allowed three runs.

Having grabbed some rays from baseball’s national spotlight thanks to their 9-1 start, the Dodgers can now expect the following treatment after what’s supposed to be their first test, a three-game series in Milwaukee beginning tonight:

This weekend’s events at Dodger Stadium provided Jayson Stark of ESPN.com nearly an entire column’s worth of material – including a mention of our good friend Bob Timmermann.

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The latest feat of Matt Kemp, hero: He’s the first MLB player ever to win a league Player of the Week award three consecutive times.