Clayton Kershaw did not have his best stuff yesterday, but it was good enough to throw 7 shutout innings. I think he could have pitched another inning, but why wear him out. He threw a very efficient 90 pitches and his ERA now sits at 2.09. Those of you who wanted to anoint Walker Buehler the Ace will have to wait a while. Dodgers Starting Pitcher ERA & WHIP:
- Clayton Kershaw – 2.09 ERA 0.91 WHIP
- Trevor Bauer – 2.53 ERA 0.66 WHIP
- Dustin May -.253 0.94 WHIP
- Walker Buehler – 3.16 0.96 WHIP
- Julio Urias – 3.23 0.98 WHIP
The fact that all five have a WHIP under 1.00 is insane! I fully expect all of them to have ERA’s under 3.00. Barring injury, this is one incredible starting staff! The Dodgers lead MLB with a 1.07 WHIP and they are 3rd in team ERA with a 3.00 mark.
The Dodgers really needed that game yesterday to help them snap out of the funk. Now, it’s on to the Brewers with Bauer going tonight. Perspective says: The Dodgers offense is still the best in baseball. I guess we can say they are “woke!”
Rants & Raves
- Gavin Lux is worrying me… a lot! Max Muncy will come around and I even believe in Rios more than Lux. Boy, I hope I am wrong!
- Blake Treinen is auditioning for the closer’s role, with a 2.70 ERA! He looked overpowering yesterday after allowing a hit.
- Dennis Santana was throwing some filth too. It was a small sample, but 97 with that nasty sinker?
- Cleavinger took a shot off his shoulder – I hope he is OK. I think he is going to be a very useful pitcher.
- The Dodgers are averaging exactly 5 runs a game and giving up exactly 3.52 Runs a game. If they maintain that differential, they will maintain the best record in baseball. The other team’s run differential is not even close.
- The Dodgers should not change their approach as they continue to see more pitches and take more walks than any other team. Why? See above – No team has a better offense.
- In about 5 days we may have some Minor League Baseball.
- Joe Biden and Stacy Abrams continue to get Pinnochios as they repeatedly still lie about Georgia’s Voter Bill. They both continue to try and push a false narrative, evidently to justify what MLB did. I sent a letter to Rob Manfred asking him to explain how the Bill is racist and restricts voting. Crickets! But, that is what I expected!
Thanks Bluto
Bluto posted this yesterday, but it got stuck in moderation, so I am posting it here, Good stuff:
“Stuff from around:
CW (Montana):
You are BA’s Mr Dodger. Outman or Vogel to have a better career?
Kyle Glaser: It’s closer than you might think. Both are really athletic outfielders with swing questions. This might seem like a cop-out, but I want to wait and see what Vogel’s swing adjustments look like this year before answering. He should be out in Rancho Cucamonga at some point this year. Let’s circle back on this in a few months.
Do the Dodgers still see Michael Grove as a SP or will he begin transitioning to becoming a reliever?
Kyle Glaser: They’re starting to view him as a more of a potential long man, simply because he hasn’t shown he can maintain anything for more than 2-4 innings at a time. This year will be big for him to prove he can.
Who’s LAD’s second baseman in 2023, Gavin Lux or Michael Busch?
Kyle Glaser: Lux. I think Busch is either their DH (because I expect the DH to be universal beginning in 2022) or more likely they push Muncy to DH and Busch is their everyday 1B. He’s gotten better at 2B and, as one veteran evaluator put it “it’s not a no”, but Lux at 2B and Busch/Muncy at 1B/DH is going to be a much better defensive alignment for the Dodgers.
Old Friend Ross Stripling on pitching:
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/ross-stripling-talks-curveballs/
Fan Graphs on the Dodgers-Padres
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/decades-in-the-making-the-dodgers-padres-rivalry-has-arrived/
Jake Mailhot on Dustin May
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/dustin-may-has-finally-discovered-his-strikeouts/
Keith Law on an old friend:
ivy: Do you see Dean Kremer as having the potential to become, say, a #3 starter? He can look terrific for several innings, seems to have problems sustaining his performance for more than a few innings. How fixable is that sort of problem?
Keith Law: The delivery isn’t great, but I think he can be a back-end guy, a 4 or a 5 who eats innings but is worse than league-average at run prevention.
Baseball America
Mock Draft: https://t.co/WW30io8ozD?amp=1
BA’s newest mock gives the Dodgers prep righty Chase Petty, who would immediately rival guys like Bobby Miller, Clayton Beeter, and Gerardo Carrillo for the most pure arm talent in the Dodgers’ system.
MLB Pipieline
Mock Draft: https://www.mlb.com/news/mock-mlb-draft-2021?t=mlb-pipeline-coverage
First legit connection of the draft season: “The Dodgers have definitely been scouting [Peyton] Stovall.”
Transaction Wire
The Dodgers trade Jimmy Titus & Albert Suarez to the Mets for cash considerations last week.
Titus was a 23rd rounder from 2019, and had only played for Ogden in his pro debut. Suarez signed for $300k in the 2016-17 international signing period, and played his age 18-19 years in the AZL.
Interesting article on how the Padres are employing shifting:
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/no-team-is-shifting-like-the-padres/
Discussion (73)
Disagree, not disagreeable
The Dodgers are certainly snakebit. And certainly Murphy is at work. But in a long season with its inevitable peaks and valleys, we are likely to see a prolonged period when bloopers begin to fall in, ground balls grow eyes, and long fly balls find their way past the warning track and over the fence. And Mookie Betts is not likely to keep taking fastballs down the middle for strikes, especially strike-three. And it won’t hurt when Bellinger gets back.
Tommy,
Talk to the baseball gods, NOW!
Well it’s good to see Barney step up.
Come on Barney!
Still snakebit…
Seager smoked that ball: DP!
There are 80 pitchers in MLB who have a 0.00 ERA.
Of course, that will not last. Thinking they will have a 0.00 ERA after less than 30 games is as silly as thinking the Dodgers bullpen is bad after 30 games. BANG!
Graterol has “forearm tightness.” I suspect he will be facing TJ.
That is what the Dodgers have been hiding!
WHIP is a good metric, but some relievers have had a great season with a higher WHIP because no one could hit them, but they had poor control. Corey Knebel’s best season was like that.
I think I am going to invent a new metric to rate relievers. I have some ideas…. stay tuned!
Yah, the bullpen has been a bit of a mess. Been there before. So none of this is terribly unusual. I’m sure it will work out, somebody will step up. The Dodgers will find ways to fix or address the problem. Not sure when Tony Gonsolin is due back, but he will help. July will offer trade opportunities.
Without looking it up, who is the 30th ranked prospect?
Not sure about Lux? He has skills and has hit some balls hard, but right at people. Roberts plans to stay with him so he just needs to stay healthy and find some holes. Once he does confidence will grow and I think he can be a special player. We’ll see. It will be nice when the minors get under way and you get to see what the prospects can do. Maybe somebody steps up and is a mid-season option.
But one player who needs to step up is Max Muncy. He has to start putting the ball in play, especially when he’s hitting clean-up. He seems to waiting for the perfect pitch or is becoming walk happy. That’s a problem for a team looking to score runs and has Cody Bellinger on the injured list. One other thing, AJ Pollack has to play more, especially against righthanders.
Another thing I don’t get is how did we end up with all of these old guys needing days off. When players are in their 20s do they really need that much rest. Have trouble scoring runs? Wonder why?
Sorry, but I have nothing to say about politics other than shame on Rob Manfred for putting baseball in the middle of a firestorm. Only a total dumbass would do that. How did baseball benefit from that move? Oh yah, it didn’t.
White coming.
Raley going.
Remember when Kenley was awesome? He could go 4 games in a row. He could go multiple innings. He was a excellent closer. The biggest problem with the pen is not having a great closer.
Treinen and Knebel have had some of the best years ever by a closer. Same with Kenley. Liam Hendricks sucks this year, after dominating the last couple. Kimbrel is perfect this year after sucking the last couple. What to do?
No one is going to trade a closer 24 – 25 games into the season. Morrow, Gonsolin, Knebel, Treinen, Jansen are all on the team. Santana, Graterol, Gonzalez, Cleavenger, White all have great stuff, closer stuff. Be patient, this too shall pass.
I’ll jump into the bullpen conversation. I look at career stats (all of them), the specific stat that I pay the closest attention to is OPS.
Gonzalez and Gonsolin are our 2 best relievers career wise (I don’t include Jansen because he is in decline). But Gonsolin is on the IL.
An OPS under .600 is dominant.
Gonzalez:
Career OPS overall .472
Against RHB .569
Against LHB .368
Gonsolin:
Career OPS overall .547
Against RHB .542
Against LHB .552
As you can see both are dominant. The others in the pen have flaws. Some are dominant against one side of the plate and bad against the other side (Graterol and Treinen come to mind). Some are good not dominant against one side and average against the other (Price and Alexander come to mind). Some are average against one side and bad against the other (Nelson comes to mind). Some are just bad against both sides (Santana comes to mind).
To sum it up, it will be good to get Gonsolin back, but Freidman needs to get at least one reliever that can consistently get outs against both sides of the plate.
Treinen is the best BP piece we have.
I was one of those who wants to anoint Buehler as ace. Buehler is not in total synch yet. His velocity was down early. I just know that playoff time they start him first.
However, I think kershaw may have exorcised some of his demons. I am a lot more confident of him in the playoffs now that he has a World Series in the bank and he has a lot more help in the starting rotation.
It is not going to matter if we go into the playoffs with this bullpen. This is a terrible pen right now. Offense and bench are bad also. U can say look at team averages blah blah blah. We have 4 outs in our lineup any given day.
As of now we have an elite starting rotation and not much else. The names will have to change in the bullpen to improve. I expect there will be a lot of name changes but it is going to cost us a lot of games before it happens. Offense has to get an mlb lineup in the game to improve.
The Dodgers have the best record in baseball (tied)
The Dodgers have the biggest run differential in baseball.
The Dodgers have the best starting staff in baseball.
All of this mitigates the impact of the bullpen.
Bullpens take time to sort out, but I believe AF will do it!
It is not total panic time for the bullpen yet, but it is close. They need someone down there who can A. pitch on back to back days, B. Be effective when doing so, C. Throw some serious heat. Cleavinger has some impressive stuff, but not the poise yet. He is lucky he did not get his coconut crushed by that line drive back to the box. Bauer, who is extremely entertaining when he pitches, and manages to piss MLB off at the same time goes tonight. Last game I will get to see until next Wednesday. Tomorrow night I will be on a choo choo.
I finally got a good night’s sleep last night and didn’t toss and turn until 3:00am worrying about the Dodgers and the fixes needed,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, okay, that’s a lie but it certainly is good to win one. This was a really competitive game u til the 8th.
Wow, we finally got a quality balls and strikes game behind the dish. Lance Barksdale was very good. I have complained about the umpiring ad nauseam. It seems like Smith and Mookie were especially victims of a wide strike zone. I have half jokingly suggested that until the ABS system is employed, that they just eliminate the K-Zone box superimposed on the TV screen as it just irritatingly provides more proof of how bad the home plate umpiring has been. Make it like the old days when we had to guess along with the umpire.
Yesterday dodgerpatch offered the perfect solution instead of the ABS system. Promote and reward the better umpires and demote the lousy ones. That’s a great idea. But it will never happen. The Umpire’s Union and their good ole boy network would never allow it. The good youngsters are stuck behind these old hacks like CD Bucknor, Angel Hernandez, Las Diaz and Joe West who aren’t about to give up their jobs without a fight. There’s supposed to be performance evaluations and ratings. If that were the case, how would these hacks keep their jobs. It’s a smoke screen and there is zero transparency in this process. Therefore, the ABS system has to be the solution if we want better umpiring. The technology is there so use it. Or is it? Again, lack of transparency by MLB provides little data on how it’s worked on their experimental basis. I’ve watched it in Fall Ball and didn’t even notice it. My fear is that it’s implementation will be used as a bargaining chip somehow in the upcoming CBA, making it political like the DH.
Chris Taylor really tried to infuse some aggressive base running yesterday to get us going. I love his hustle.
I too was hoping to see CK pitch one more inning when it was 2-0 and he was at 90 pitches. I know it worked out for the best. Without getting into an area I will leave for another time, the expectation that the starter is done at 85-90 pitches and 6 innings is more and more accepted. I know it’s a long season but how we arrived at those numbers intrigues me. One less inning to cover by a struggling bullpen would be nice once in awhile. But the “100 pitch threshold” is a conversation for later.
Clayton Kershaw = Regular season Ace
Walker Bueller = Post Season Ace
This place is really quiet today. Did everyone get so worked up that they all tuckered themselves out?
I still think that Lux will come around. Someone on another site posted his stats this year, it basically went something like this…
Spring Training – Awesome
First Week – Awesome
Second Week – Crappy
DL
Return from DL so far – Crappy
It sure looks like the wrist injury pushed him off track. He needs to learn to deal with adversity better.
I’m a huge Edwin Rios fan. At the same time, I’m a huge fan of sending guys with options down in order to get right. They did it with Beaty and it’s time they do it with Rios. Give him a week or 10 days to get right and bring him back up.
A lot has been said about the bullpen and many think we should be trading for an arm. I would love to get a high end arm back there, but not at the price of one of our top prospects just yet. Certainly not for guys that have Ace ceiling like Pepiot or Miller. Certainly not for a guy that’s so close to the Bigs like Gray or Ruiz. These are guys you want to use to get you a difference maker like Mookie.
Back to the pen and injuries. Doing a little research on recovery times, here’s a quote from MLB.com regarding lat injuries.
“Recovery time varies depending on the strain, with Grade 1 strains typically requiring 2-3 weeks and Grade 2 strains usually taking at least a month. Grade 3 strains often require surgery, however, and can come with considerably longer recovery periods.”
It could be that 2 months might be on the high side of recovery time. So, can we keep the wheels from falling off until then? Unexpected news is that Morrow has been pitching at the alternate site. Kelly and Gonsolin might be closer than we think. Could it be that AF isn’t panicking and rushing guys back because he knows his team is better than everyone else? Sure we lost 3 of 4 to the Pads, but what did they do after that? They split the D-Backs series and now they have to play the Giants. Not exactly building momentum.
Could we be close to a Bellinger return? Did anyone expect a hairline fracture from being cleated on the calf? That was a freak injury if I ever saw one. Hairline fractures can take as little as 3 weeks to heal. The fibula is not a weight bearing bone, so that makes it a little less serious than the same injury to the tibia. Hopefully, it was slight fracture and will heal quickly. We’ll be at 4 weeks this Monday.
I think the late outburst last night is a sign of a turnaround about to happen. It sure seems like Murphy’s law hit the Dodgers after winning the first two games of the Padres series. Seager and Smith hit a funk, Mookie and Pollock were banged up. Belli and Lux were already on the IL. All the Covid shots could have made the players feel a little flat, a couple even went on the Covid IL because of it.
I think we’re about to turn the corner.
Really? You just had to go all political. Could not just leave it alone could you. Fun fact – Your traitorous hero Trump lost bigly. If we are going to count pinnochios then lets count the 30,000+ LIES Trump told while in office. And maybe you can explain why the repubs decided to enact this lame voter law anyway when there was zero rigging and in fact one of the most fair and honest elections in years? All because Trump LIED! Now Mark you can go down the flat earther path of debate and just claim that it is not true but please provide proof that the election was rigged and not fair. I guess you also think Trump did not incite the violence on January 6th either. You suffer from cognitive dissonance and have succumbed to the cult Trump personality where he can do no wrong and does not lie.
But how about you do all of us a favor and knock off the politics. By not doing so just proves the points I have made.
Every time they talk to Ned Colletti, he always says the same thing. Building a bullpen is the hardest and most volital part of a team, a guy can be lights out one year, and trash the next. That seems to be what we have this year, but if you look around the league, a lot of teams have great shutdown bullpens for about two weeks, then it turns into a dumpster fire.
Man, Kershaw is still the best.
But the Dodgers still have a problem. Here’s Houston Mitchell of The Times this morning:
“But the big problem is the bullpen. Hitting will come around, especially once everyone gets healthy and Mookie Betts breaks out of his slump. But the bullpen inspires no confidence at all. They usually have a couple of shutdown guys they can rely on. Right now, you can’t rely on anyone. You just pick a guy and hope he has it that day. And that’s a really, really tough way to consistently win games.”
Not sure if any of you watch High Heat on MLB.Network or not but today they had a 10 minute segment where the Dodgers players had a video tribute to Alanna Rizzo (who is now on High Heat with Chris Russo) congratulating her on her receiving a 2020 World Series Ring. Pretty cool and classy. You can tell all the players respected her and miss her doing the sideline reporting.
I can never get enough Georgia Voter Bill talk. May I request more please? It’s fascinating content.