For no particular occasion …
In honor of Mike Ramsey (1987), here are the most memorable Opening Day starters for the Dodgers since they last won a World Series:
Trenidad Hubbard, CF (1998)
Blake DeWitt, 2B (2010)
Olmedo Saenz, 1B (2006)
Juan Rivera, LF (2012)
Jason Phillips, C (2005)
Juan Encarnacion, RF (2004)
Luis Cruz, 3B (2013)
Justin Sellers, SS (2013)
Vicente Padilla, P (2010)
Luis Cruz greets Justin Sellers during 2013 Opening Day introductions. (Photos by Jon SooHoo)
Vicente Padilla allowed seven runs in 4 1/3 innings on Opening Day 2010.
By Jon Weisman
Every spring, there’s tons of edge-of-your-laptop anticipation over who will start for the Dodgers on Opening Day, even if it won’t mean much by the end of that year, month, week or game.
Going back 30 years, here are nine of the most eccentric picks for the Dodgers’ season-opening lineups. Do you remember them all? They’re each peculiar yet lovable in their own way …
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By Jon Weisman
Memorial Day is only a week away, so don’t wait to make your plans to spent the evening at Dodger Stadium.
The Dodgers are on the road this week, but soon enough, they will open their next homestand with the Cincinnati Reds on May 26, and it occurred to me this game might be worth a special mention.
If you needed more incentive than the above-mentioned Andre Ethier BBQ apron giveaway (free to the first 40,000 ticketed fans) or the chance to see Hyun-Jin Ryu at home for the first time since April, then there’s this: Lined up to pitch in the 5:10 p.m. game for the Reds is arguably the No. 1 contender to try to steal the National League Cy Young Award from Clayton Kershaw, 28-year-old Cincinnati righty Johnny Cueto. In other words, if the Reds rotation holds, Memorial Day will provide a prime time to size up the opposition.
With a 1.25 ERA heading into his Tuesday start at Washington, Cueto will provide a great challenge for the Dodgers. Among other things, with runners on base, opposing hitters are 6 for 60 with six walks and one homer against Cueto this year. He leads the NL with a 0.71 WHIP and is striking out 9.5 batters per nine innings.
The Dodgers topped Cueto the last time they met, on July 3, 2012, when Luis Cruz hit a tiebreaking double in the bottom of the seventh inning and later stole home. Yeah, that’s right.
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Last year’s Memorial Day at Dodger Stadium brought one of the best games of the year, with the Dodgers rallying from a 6-1 deficit to top the Angels, 8-7. It was a great way to spend the holiday last year, and I’m looking forward to this year’s game.
It has to be a great pitching performance to take Luis Cruz’ first home run of the season off the headline, but Hyun-Jin Ryu delivered.
In the best start of what has been a sterling debut as a Dodger, Ryu allowed two hits and no walks over nine innings, striking out seven and retiring 19 in a row at one point, in pitching the Dodgers to a 3-0 victory over the Angels.
The Dodgers have won two games in a row for the first time since May 14-15 against Washington.
Lowering his ERA to 2.89, Ryu simply dazzled, and seemed to get better as the game went on. A two-out, eighth-inning double by Chris Iannetta ended the 19-in-a-row streak that followed Howie Kendrick’s second-inning single, but on Ryu’s 101st pitch of the game, Cruz charged a slow grounder by J.B. Shuck and fielded it cleanly on the shorthop to end the threat and prevent the tying run from coming to the plate.
The play capped a whale of a night for Cruz, who has been hitting pop-ups all season but finally showed some pop, breaking a scoreless tie in the fifth with a two-run homer off former Dodger Joe Blanton. Cruz last homered 90 at-bats ago, September 30 against Colorado.
"Luis Cruz has hit a home run." – Vin Scully, with a trace of amazement #dodgers
— Jon Weisman (@jonweisman) May 29, 2013
In the sixth, A.J. Ellis followed a Matt Kemp double with an RBI single to give the Dodgers their three-run lead.
After that, it was the Ryu show. His previous career high in innings was 7 1/3 in his last start (May 22 at Milwaukee) and in pitches was 114 on May 11 against Miami. He came out for the ninth, and began it by striking out pinch-hitter Brendan Harris, then retired Erick Aybar on a grounder to third. Superstar Mike Trout, trying to keep the game alive, grounded to Mark Ellis at second base, and with 113 pitches, Ryu had his first career complete game and shutout in the States.
Chad Billingsley is cruising, and Luis Cruz is, well, chadding.
The Dodger starting pitcher and infielder each continued their hot ways, pushing the Dodgers to a 5-0 victory at Atlanta today, completing a 7-3 East Coast roadtrip.
Allowing three hits over seven innings underneath the summer Georgia sun, Billingsley improved to 6-0 with a 1.30 ERA since coming off the disabled list. Billingsley gave up only three hits and walked two while striking out four, throwing 101 pitches.
Billingsley’s only trouble inning was the fourth, when the Braves fouled off 13 of his pitches before Jason Heyward hit a two-out triple. Freddie Freeman then walked on five pitches, but Billingsley got Dan Uggla to pop out on the 30th pitch of the inning.
Impressively, Billingsley also blew Heyward away on a swinging strike three measured at 93 miles per hour with Michael Bourn on third base with two out in the sixth.
According to the Dodger press notes, Billingsley is the first Dodger to win six consecutive starts since Kevin Brown won seven in a row from May 14-June 17, 2003.
Meanwhile, Cruz homered for the second consecutive game while going 2 for 4, giving him a .484 on-base percentage and .852 slugging percentage in 31 plate appearances on this roadtrip. He also pushed his 2012 major-league OPS over .800 for the first time since his first week in a Dodger uniform.
It appeared that the Dodgers might have to rely on Cruz’s fifth-inning home run for their entire offense, but Los Angeles tacked on a run in the eighth and three more in the ninth, all of the scoring flowing directly from Heyward losing fly balls in the sun in each inning. Mark Ellis, who earlier in the game stranded five runners on base in two at-bats, took advantage to collect all four RBI, the last three on a bases-clearing double.
Ronald Belisario pitched a perfect eighth while the score was still 2-0, and Scott Elbert returned from the disabled list to finish things off with a spotless ninth.
Heart-of-the-orderers Matt Kemp, Hanley Ramirez and Andre Ethier combined went 0 for 13 with a walk. Kemp is hitless in his past 15 at-bats (with two walks).
Chad Billingsley is pitching so well, the Internet took a moment of silence.
With eight shutout innings tonight, pacing the Dodgers’ 11-0 victory over Pittsburgh, Billingsley lowered his season ERA to 3.62 and his ERA in five starts since coming off the disabled list to 1.56. In his longest outing since his first start of 2012, Billingsley threw 107 pitches, 75 for strikes, and allowed five hits and walked one while striking out five. In those five post-DL starts, he has walked six and struck out 23. For the season, Billingsley’s career-best K/BB ratio improved to 3.1.
With two out in the bottom of the third inning and the Dodgers leading by one run, Pittsburgh rightfielder Travis Snider hit a double that sent pitcher Kevin Correia to third base. The Pirates’ MVP candidate, Andrew McCutchen, came to the plate.
Billingsley struck out McCutchen looking on a 2-2 pitch, and that was it for Pittsburgh, who had two baserunners over their remaining five innings. The Pirates, to say the least, looked like the Pirates of 1993-2011 tonight.
Meanwhile, the Dodgers had one of those innings you need to remember when things break bad for the team. Their first three baserunners in the top of the fourth, Matt Kemp, Andre Ethier and Hanley Ramirez, reached base while hitting the ball a combined 37 inches. James Loney’s RBI groundout doubled the Dodgers’ lead, and then Luis Cruz (3 for 5) drove in the first two of his three RBI with a clean single to left.
The Dodgers padded their lead in the seventh on Cruz’s third single and A.J. Ellis’ sacrifice fly, and more in the ninth on Kemp’s bases-loaded single off the leg of Chad Qualls and two-run hits by Ethier and Ramirez, pushing Los Angeles to its biggest romp of the season, ahead of the 10-0 victory July 28 over San Francisco. Shawn Tolleson extended his scoreless streak to eight innings to finish off the Dodgers’ biggest shutout over Pittsburgh ever.
Ramirez had three hits, while Kemp and Loney each had two. In his first start since July 22, Juan Uribe could not live up to his .500 on-base percentage in 18 plate appearances against Correia entering the game, going 0 for 4 before drawing a ninth-inning walk.
Winning their fourth game out of five on the road trip so far, the Dodgers moved a half-game ahead of San Francisco, pending the result of the Giants’ game tonight at home against Washington, and 5 1/2 games ahead of Arizona, which lost 8-2 to St. Louis.
It was a great night as well for Hiroki Kuroda, who took a no-hitter into the seventh inning in New York and ended up shutting out the Rangers on two hits.
Jerry Sands’ latest stay in Los Angeles has turned out to be ever-so-brief, as the Dodgers have sent him back to Albuquerque — where he will meet up with Tony Gwynn Jr., who cleared waivers and accepted a minor-league assignment — to make room on the Dodger roster for Adam Kennedy coming off the disabled list.
The moves mean that with 23 days to go until MLB active rosters can expand to 40, Juan Uribe is probably going to defy Damocles’ dagger and remain a Dodger though the end of next season and, presumably, on into 2013. This is the case even though Uribe has only three plate appearances in the past 17 days.
One position-player move that remains for the Dodgers to make is the potential activation of Dee Gordon from the disabled list if he’s ready before September 1, but at this point, I expect the Dodgers would send Gordon or Luis Cruz to the minors for a brief time and then recall the player when rosters widen (or just keep Gordon on the DL until then). As far as I can tell, the breaking point with Uribe for 2012 has come and gone.
Cruz, by the way, is in a 3-for-22 slump with one walk, lowering his 2012 on-base percentage to .286 (nearly identical to Gordon’s .280) and his slugging percentage to .385. According to Baseball Prospectus’ True Average statistic, which factors in baserunning, Cruz is at .245 compared to Gordon’s .224. Cruz, four years older, might be a better player than Gordon right now, but I still am interested in seeing how Gordon can develop, even if the next opportunity doesn’t come until next year.
* * *
… MATTINGLY LIKES to joke that truebluela.com’s Eric Stephen knows more about the Dodgers than anyone else in the media.
“Go ahead, Eric,” I tell him after Mattingly speaks highly of Stephen again, “ask him about some minor leaguer.”
“All right, I’ll ask about Juan Rivera,” says Stephen …
Dodgers at Diamondbacks, 1:10 p.m.
Tony Gwynn Jr., CF
Mark Ellis, 2B
Bobby Abreu, LF
Juan Rivera, 1B
Jerry Hairston Jr., 3B
Elian Herrera, RF
Luis Cruz, SS
Matt Treanor, C
Chris Capuano, P
I didn’t come up with the thought, but quickly I realized it made sense. Presuming that Matt Kemp comes off the disabled list before Friday’s post-All-Star opener against the Padres, Scott Van Slyke will return to Albuquerque. But when Andre Ethier comes off the disabled list, it might mean the end of Juan Uribe’s Dodger career.
Since a second-inning double June 20 at Oakland, Uribe is in the midst of an 0-for-27 slump, with three walks and nine strikeouts. That happens. The problem is that when he hasn’t been slumping … well, Uribe can hardly say he’s ever not been slumping as a Dodger.
If Uribe gets an at-bat today and makes an out, that will leave him with exactly 80 hits in 400 at-bats as a Dodger – a pristine .200 batting average. He has 25 walks and has been hit by more pitches (eight) than he has hit home runs (five). His OPS as a Dodger is .546.
That Uribe, who is still owed $8 million on his contract after this season ends, is still the Dodgers’ best defender at third base has been the lone remaining argument in his favor. However, that saving grace has been weakened by two emerging factors. One is that Jerry Hairston Jr. has played capable defense at third while swinging a more reliable bat, and the other is that the injury to Dee Gordon has meant that Luis Cruz needs a spot on the Dodger roster.
Unless the Dodgers are willing to start giving Uribe time at shortstop – he played 21 2/3 innings there in 2011 after 103 games for the Giants at short in 2010 – Cruz is staying. That leaves a battle for the final roster spot between Uribe, Elian Herrera and Adam Kennedy.
The choice might seem obvious, but you can’t rule out the possibility of Herrera, who has minor-league options, going back to the Isotopes. He’s been 100 times more fun to watch than Uribe and his versatility is an asset, but once Kemp and Ethier are back in their starting roles, Mark Ellis is re-entrenched at second base and Bobby Abreu, Tony Gwynn Jr. and Juan Rivera are holding down left field, there’s going to be less call for Herrera to roam around the diamond. That’s not to say that he’s without a purpose, but with his own slump to a .326 on-base percentage and .335 slugging, the difference between him, Uribe and Kennedy (.315 OBP, .309 slugging) isn’t overwhelming.
Who will bat leadoff for the Dodgers when Matt Kemp and Andre Ethier return?
Dee Gordon is injured, and Tony Gwynn Jr. won’t start often. That leaves Luis Cruz, Bobby Abreu, Jerry Hairston Jr., Mark Ellis and A.J. Ellis.
Assuming Dodger manager Don Mattingly still can’t stomach the idea of his catcher leading off a game, I would say Abreu, Hairston and Mark Ellis all have a case. Something tells me, though, that we might see Cruz there as much as anyone.
By optioning Herrera, the Dodgers can put off making a final decision on Uribe or Kennedy, neither of whom can be sent down. The question is whether those decisions need any more putting off. Do the Dodgers see any hope left in Uribe? Before you answer, note that Andruw Jones has an .820 OPS in more than 1,000 plate appearances since the Dodgers got rid of him.
My instinct is to cut Uribe, but I wouldn’t call it an automatic decision. The defense is there, and once Ethier and Kemp are back, you don’t lose much by sending Herrera down and keeping Uribe as a defensive specialist who bats eighth, nor by just getting rid of Kennedy, who doesn’t give you defense or a bat (.617 OPS against right-handed pitching).
The best news is that the Dodgers might finally be healthy enough that they can even make the decision.
* * *
Dodgers at Diamondbacks, 6:40 p.m.
Elian Herrera, LF
Mark Ellis, 2B
Jerry Hairston Jr., 3B
Juan Rivera, 1B
Luis Cruz, SS
A.J. Ellis, C
Scott Van Slyke, RF
Tony Gwynn Jr., CF
Nathan Eovaldi, P
Thumb surgery on a torn ligament in Dee Gordon’s thumb will sideline the Dodger shortstop for approximately six weeks, as Eric Stephen of True Blue L.A. notes. Claiming the roster spot is reliever Javy Guerra, who has been activated from the disabled list.
On the night that Mark Ellis makes his first start at second base in nearly seven weeks, the Dodgers will move forward with Luis Cruz at short and joining the ranks of obscure but memorable No. 5 hitters.
Jerry Hairston Jr., who played so well at third base early in the season before declaring he wasn’t comfortable there (he could have fooled me), will make his first start at that position since May 29.
* * *
Below is an 11-minute Forbes interview with Irwin Raij, who advised the Guggenheim group on their Dodger purchase. The link comes from Eric Young, my one-time Stanford Daily colleague and not the former Dodger.
Pretty glorious night all around. The five Weismans didn’t get out the door until 6 p.m., but we were in our seats by the start of the second inning, saw a svelte, 144-minute 4-1 Dodger victory punctuated by five strikeouts of the final six Cincinnati batters, took in one of the best fireworks shows at Dodger Stadium in years (a perk of new ownership?) and were out of the stadium and back at home less than four hours after we had left. It’s 10:15 p.m. as I start typing this, and the kids are tucked away in their beds.
So sure, we only heard the Dodgers’ three-run first inning on the car radio, which started with four consecutive hits at the top of the order, meaning that we only witnessed two Dodger base knocks after we arrived. And sure, Dee Gordon let the air out of his 30th stolen base of the year by dislocating his thumb. But otherwise, like I said, glorious and svelte.
Assuming Gordon goes on the disabled list, as Ken Gurnick points out is likely in the above-linked story, your starting shortstop for the next two or three weeks is probably Luis Cruz, who went 2 for 3 with a walk to raise his three-game on-base percentage to .400. That will please those who had grown tired of Gordon, but the Roadrunner had upped his OBP in his past 12 games to .346 while stealing 10 bases in 11 attempts. Aside from the two errors against the Mets, you started to see improvement in Gordon if you were open to it, so it seems a shame to lose him now.
Certainly, this is nothing new for the Dodgers, and the epilogue to the Gordon saga is that when he went out with his injury in the eighth inning, it was Mark Ellis pinch-running for him in his first action since May 18. Ellis will ideally return quickly to his form of the season’s first six weeks, when he had a .373 OBP and flawless defense.
With the Giants losing again to Washington shortly after I finished my morning cereal, Los Angeles is back in first place, and five regular-season games from now, heading toward the July 31 trading deadline, could have a 2-3-4 in the lineup of Ellis, Matt Kemp and Andre Ethier. Hard to worry about the situation at shortstop when you can fantasize about that. (And yes, you just saw me getting excited about Mark Ellis.)
Just to wrap up the night, Aaron Harang allowed only four baserunners and a run in seven innings, one of his best outings of the year, before Ronald Belisario struck out the side in the eighth (lowering his ERA to 0.99) and Kenley Jansen fanned two in a perfect ninth to end it. After Reds star Joey Votto doubled in the first inning, he, Brandon Phillips and Jay Bruce combined to go 0 for 10 against Dodger pitching.
Reds at Dodgers, 7:10 p.m.
Elian Herrera, CF
A.J. Ellis, C
Jerry Hairston Jr., 2B
Juan Rivera, RF
James Loney, 1B
Juan Uribe, 3B
Scott Van Slyke, LF
Luis Cruz, SS
Chad Billingsley, P
Dee Gordon is getting a day off after suffering a cramp in his leg late in Sunday’s game. Given that the Dodgers don’t really have a backup shortstop and were contemplating adding a player to the bench, it comes as little surprise that they have brought up Luis Cruz to the big-league roster, with Shawn Tolleson returning to the minors.
Cruz has been viewed by some as, if not a savior, at least a viable improvement over the oft-struggling Gordon. Without ruling out an Elian Herrera-like hot streak, it seems unlikely. The 28-year-old has a lifetime .275 on-base percentage and .260 slugging percentage in 169 major-league plate apperances, and while he is at .348 and .529 for Triple-A Albuquerque this year, keep in mind that OBP is lower than what Gordon had with the Isotopes in 2011. (In addition, as the man from Cat Hell, Mike Petriello of Mike Scioscia’s Tragic Illness, notes, Cruz’s minor-league OPS on the road this season is .672.) But, as a backup’s backup, we’ll hope for the best.
Gordon, by the way, had a .342 on-base percentage with seven steals in eight attempts in his past nine games. That’s not to say that his overall performance this year hasn’t been disappointing, but again, we went into 2012 knowing that he’d be a work in progress.
Ted Lilly, by the way, was transferred to the 60-day disabled list. Lilly last pitched May 23. On the bright side, Mark Ellis and Javy Guerra have begun their rehab assignments and could be activated this week.
* * *
The Dodgers announced the signings of four 16-year-olds from Latin America today: pitchers Lenix Osuna, Victor Gonzalez and William Soto and catcher Julian Leon. Osuna is the son of former Dodger pitcher Antonio Osuna.
Starting today, I’m making periodic contributions to the CityThink blog at Los Angeles Magazine. My first piece looks at the state of the Dodgers from a War Games perspective. Check it out …
Good teams have bad weeks, and one bad week like the Dodgers are having (with four losses in a row, including Friday’s 8-5 come-from-ahead defeat against the Angels) doesn’t ruin a season. At the same time, people have feared all along that the Dodgers are a team living on the brink of destruction in a dangerous baseball world.
In the spirit of War Games, here’s a snapshot of which Dodger problems are tic-tac-toe and which are global thermonuclear war …
Scene from Wednesday. © Jon SooHoo/Los Angeles Dodgers 2012
Haven’t done a links post in a while … so let’s catch up.
The Dodgers’ first significant lineup change of the season may be underway, with Juan Uribe headed to see a specialist about his injured left wrist.
Uribe, with a .257 on-base percentage and .265 slugging this season in 36 plate appearances (one walk, one double) has missed two games already on this road trip. The trip to the specialist is “an indication that the club is concerned the injury — incurred during a slide — could be something serious,” writes Ken Gurnick of MLB.com.
I’m not so sure a great many Dodger fans will be crushed by this news. Uribe’s value to the Dodgers has mainly been reduced to his defense at third base.
In the short term, Jerry Hairston Jr., Adam Kennedy and Justin Sellers can all play third base for the Dodgers. If Uribe goes on the disabled list, Josh Fields (.949 OPS at Triple-A Albuquerque) might head to the big club, as could infielder Luis Cruz (.995 OPS).
If the Dodgers wanted to get crazy, they could bring up Double-A third baseman Pedro Baez (.838 OPS at Chattanooga), a once-highly regarded prospect who has been beset by injuries.
Update: Gurnick now writes that Uribe “was examined by the Brewers’ team doctor on Thursday and will not see a specialist in Houston, as was considered.”
What happens when three old friends in crisis fall into an unexpected love triangle? In The Catch, Maya, Henry and Daniel embark upon an emotional journey that forces them to confront unresolved pain, present-day traumas and powerful desires, leading them to question the very meaning of love and fulfillment. The Catch tells a tale of ordinary people seeking the extraordinary – or, if that’s asking too much, some damn peace of mind.
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