Dodger Thoughts

Kathy Willens/AP
James Loney can’t believe tonight’s strike three call against him – nor the downward slide of the Dodger season.

So far in 2010, these Dodgers have been something – as in, it’s always something.

With their 10-5 loss to the Mets in the second game of today’s doubleheader, the Dodgers now have the worst record in the National League – tied at 8-12 with Atlanta and Pittsburgh, which won the season-opening series between the two teams.

Not for lack of effort, the team has simply found a way to lose. The Dodgers aren’t loafing, but they’re not executing – not enough of them for long enough. You could say there were turning points today, if you could also say there are turning points when you’re sitting in a dunk booth.

I don’t think the Dodgers take the field defeated, but they’ve left me feeling that way. Lately, wins feel like aberrations.

They get bad breaks – the lowdown called strike three on James Loney with the bases loaded and two out in the top of the fourth tonight made the Dodger first baseman angrier than most of you have probably ever seen. But everyone gets bad breaks.

They get hurt – three Dodgers to the disabled list in the past week, and now Rafael Furcal’s health is back in doubt, reports Tony Jackson of ESPNLosAngeles.com. You can’t win if you can’t stay healthy.

They’re out of sync – pitching, defense and hitting almost never working at once.

Wednesday marks the end of a nine-game roadtrip that has already yielded six losses. We’ll see if home cooking this weekend helps fix things; we’ll see if the Dodgers are getting their bad fortune out of the way early. Time and potential are on the Dodgers’ side. The question is whether reality is.

The Dodgers lost tonight, and if you don’t know how, you can probably guess.

Lisa Blumenfeld/Getty Images
Hank Gathers and Loyola Marymount only cared about how much they scored, not how much they gave up.

The Run-and-“Shoot!” Dodgers are still at it. And I’m starting to wonder whether the team secretly replaced manager Joe Torre with former Loyola Marymount coach Paul Westhead.

It has been more than 30 years since Major League Baseball has seen a game in which both teams scored at least 20 runs, but the 2010 Dodgers are looking increasingly likely to be in the next one. The runs scored (6.6 per game) and allowed (6.2), boosted by tonight’s 14-6 victory that saw the team score in eight of nine innings, are mindblowing for this blogporter.

Al Behrman/AP
Rafael Furcal tonight: walk, single, double, triple, error.

The situation in a nutshell: Rafael Furcal makes a unforced error at short that leads to two unearned runs off Hiroki Kuroda in the sixth inning, then comes back in the top of the seventh with an RBI triple – his fourth RBI and fourth time on base in the game.

Four times on base: Furcal, Matt Kemp (seventh home run, six of which have gone to center or right field), Manny Ramirez (.510 on-base percentage), Andre Ethier (.460 OBP/.689 slugging).

Three times on base: James Loney.

Two times on base: Russell Martin.

One time on base: Casey Blake DeWitt.

Kuroda had his worst outing of the season so far, but still would have emerged with a quality start had he gotten better play behind him. He threw 103 pitches over 5 2/3 innings, allowing three earned runs and three unearned runs.

There were a couple of encouraging signs from the bullpen. George Sherrill allowed the two unearned runs to score in relief of Kuroda, and Jeff Weaver had to leave after one batter with what appeared to be a hamstring problem, but Ronald Belisario was perfect in his first inning of the year, and Carlos Monasterios got the final five outs on 27 pitches.

The Dodgers stayed within 1 1/2 games of the National League West-leading … Padres.

* * *

The night’s most bizarre play took place in the fourth inning. With the bases loaded and two out, Cincinnati pitcher Aaron Harang hit a sinking liner into right field. Andre Ethier dove and came up with the ball for what was ruled the third out. Reds manager Dusty Baker came out steaming – but in almost no time, the umpires conferred and then called over Torre to tell him they were ruling the ball had bounced into Ethier’s glove, and so they would be awarding Harang a single and advancing all runners one base. (Torre seemed more disappointed than disgusted by the reversal, not really arguing at all).

At the time, I was with broadcaster Steve Lyons in thinking I had never seen this kind of play overturned. On TV, we kept being shown replays that weren’t entirely conclusive, because the ball, glove and grass all sort of merged together. But I didn’t even think the replays mattered. The whistle had already blown, so to speak – I didn’t think the umpires could assume what would have happened if they hadn’t initially ruled an out.

I asked baseball authority Bob Timmermann of Native Intelligence what his opinion of the play was:

… Umpires have the ability, if not the duty, to change calls in this situation. Granted, it is a judgment call, but pretty much everything is a judgment call.

The umpires then had to decide what to do with the runners. There is no specific rule to cover this. But, Rule 9.01b gives the umpires the right to rule on anything not specifically spelled out. It’s the Elastic Clause of the rulebook. (A famous example of this was Alex Rodriguez being called out in Game 6 of the 2004 ALCS for slapping the ball out of Bronson Arroyo’s glove.)

The umpires decided that the fairest way to solve the matter was to give Harang a single and let everyone else move up one base. This is not much different than the umpires deciding how many bases to award on fan interference. (It could be one, two, three, or four.)

Some calls by umpires aren’t reversed for practical reasons, like balls and strikes. (Checked swings are an exception.)

TV replay wasn’t used because it wasn’t a home run call. That’s the only time, it is allowed.

Why didn’t the Dodgers protest? Because there was nothing to protest. Those only prevail if a rule is misapplied. This was just a judgment call that was initially misjudged and then corrected.

Umpires do make mistakes. I think they should get credit for trying to make up for an error.

* * *

• The delight of extra innings is nicely expressed by Jim Caple of ESPN.com.
• Carlos Zambrano, the highest-paid and normally best pitcher for the Chicago Cubs, has been sent to the bullpen.

Getty Images
Matt Kemp probably would have enjoyed the Hideo Nomo-led 2003 Dodger pitching, which had a team ERA barely half of what the current Dodgers have.

If you could mix the 2010 Dodger offense with the 2003 Dodger pitching, what a team that would be. It would blow your mind, man.

Instead, we’re left with the Don Drysdale paradox: “Dodgers scored nine runs tonight.” “Did we win?”

We saw it encapsulated in tonight’s 11-9 loss to Cincinnati. The Dodgers got a three-run double from Casey Blake in the first inning, then after falling behind by six, rallied to tie the game – capped by Mighty Matt Kemp’s sixth homer of the season. And still it wasn’t enough.

Chad Billingsley came out with a clear mission to throw strikes. He didn’t walk any of the 17 batters he faced and only had 21 pitches out of the strike zone. But he couldn’t back that mission with much of an ability make people miss. He got hit and hit hard, allowing five singles, a double, a triple and a home run over the next two innings. Commenting on the KCAL telecast, Steve Lyons pointed out at least three times that the Reds got hits despite good pitches by Billingsley. Small consolation, though.

Billingsley also made a painful throwing error on a Homer Bailey bunt that added three unearned runs to the three earned runs in the second inning, signaling another unimpressive night for the Dodger defense. Russell Martin made a fourth-inning throwing error on a steal attempt by Drew Stubbs (with Blake DeWitt seemingly late to back up the play). And then in the eighth, working a pickle, DeWitt was late to recognize a runner trying to score from third, tossing the ball instead to Ronnie Belliard at first base – and then when he set up to throw home, Belliard dropped the ball, allowing Cincinnati’s 11th run to score.

In contrast, Reds right-fielder Jay Bruce made a sensational catch of a ripped line drive in the top of the eighth by James Loney to deep right that would have scored Manny Ramirez had it been a few inches higher.

The only bright spot for the Dodger pitching staff tonight was the major-league debut of Jon Link, who needed only 27 pitches to throw two shutout innings. Ramon Ortiz gave up two runs in the fourth to put the Dodgers down, 9-3. And in the eighth, after the Dodgers had come all the way back, their No. 2 reliever of the moment, Ramon Troncoso, walked two batters before giving up the go-ahead runs with two out.

So instead of being Manute Bol (7-6), the Dodgers are Dolph Schayes (6-7). Wednesday, the team will come back and set their sights on Gheorghe Muresan.

Update: The Dodgers optioned Link back to Albuquerque after tonight’s game. They haven’t officially announced who will take his place, but expect it to be Ronald Belisario.

Manny Ramirez hit his first homer of 2010.

I didn’t have the league bylaws with me to see when the pitchers’ mercy rule would kick in and they would bring out the tees, but I know the Dodger and Diamondback parents must have felt it was close.

There was an offensive display at Dodger Stadium Opening Day — particularly offensive if you were a fan of good pitching. Arizona and Los Angeles combined to walk 14 and needed 362 pitches to get through nine innings, but ultimately it was the Dodgers who enjoyed their postgame snacks and juiceboxes most with a 9-5 victory.

Manny Ramirez added to the pregame fireworks with his first homer of 2010 to give the Dodgers a 2-1 lead in the fourth inning, and Casey Blake, Andre Ethier (back from his injury) and Matt Kemp followed with more round-trippers in a game that the Dodgers seemed to own basically the entire way — only their pitchers seemed practically determined to lease it back to the Diamondbacks.

Clayton Kershaw threw only four pitches out of the strike zone in the first inning, but once again increasingly battled his control as the game progressed and couldn’t make it through the sixth inning despite a comfortable lead. He walked No. 8 hitter Chris Snyder and Arizona pitcher Ian Kennedy to lead off the top of the fifth and later hit a batter before escaping a bases-loaded jam. Then in the sixth, he again walked the first two batters and was clearly laboring to find himself. Kershaw left after 5 1/3 innings with seven strikeouts and only two earned runs, but five walks and another four days to come of pitchers’ soul-searching.

But Kennedy, whom Arizona is counting on to hold down a spot in its starting rotation, was certainly little better after a 1-2-3 first inning for the Diamondbacks, allowing six runs and nine baserunners while using 100 pitches to get 13 outs.

No reliever really impressed for either team until the ninth, when Jonathan Broxton — who received a warm reception from a good-mooded crowd that held nothing from the end of 2009 against him — struck out two in a perfect final frame. Dodger fans worried about rising ticket prices at least got 222 minutes of game action today for their trouble, and a happy ending as they hit the postgame traffic.

The Dodger offense now has 45 runs in seven games (6.4 per game), though it is a slow-starting group. Russell Martin’s sacrifice fly provided the Dodgers’ first second-inning run of the season, and all but eight runs in 2010 have been scored from the fourth inning on. Kemp and Ethier each went 2 for 5, James Loney had two doubles and Blake DeWitt walked three times (once with the bases loaded) to give him 11 on the season against one strikeout. Yes, folks, your National League 2010 walk leader is none other than Mr. DeWitt.

As indicated above with Broxton, the atmosphere at Opening Day was positive, though perhaps not as euphoric as a year ago when Ramirez was making grand entrances from the left-field bleachers and Vin Scully was saying “It’s time for Dodger baseball” instead of Larry King. In particular, the staff working the scoreboards seemed a little disengaged from the festivities, rarely showing fans in the stands and being sluggish with stat updates. In addition, they’ve made a peculiar choice to air random trivia (not baseball trivia, but things like the temperature of lightning) in paid spots for Mega Millions, and even the bloopers segment had nothing to do with baseball.  They seemed to be marching to their own, odd drummer.

As for me, I’ll be marching home with a Russell Martin foul ball that I caught after it caromed off the hands of a fan behind me. It’s the fifth of my career – one for my fortunately not sore thumb.