Game 15 Thread: April 12 vs. Rangers, 1p

Roki Sasaki (0-1, 7.00) vs. Jacob deGrom (0-0, 3.72).

One last chance to say goodbye for the season to former Dodgers Joc Pederson (0-for-2 with 2 Ks Saturday, dropping his batting average to .143) and Corey Seager (three-run HR on Friday, but 0-for-3 with a K Saturday to drop him to a .240 batting average). I was there at the Stadium on Friday night, and Seager was applauded, but then not appreciated when he put the Rangers ahead with his early blast.

Let's get the sweep. We've got the Mets rolling into town next.

Game 14 Thread: April 11 vs. Rangers, 6p

Emmet Sheehan (1-0, 8.00) vs. Jack Leiter (1-0, 2.45).

Holy smokes, Max Muncy went off last night. And the Dodgers needed it, too, after watching former Dodger Corey Seager notch a three-run homer early, and then Edwin Diaz' trumpets rust over in the top of the ninth with his first blown save. But Muncy's third shot, in the bottom of the ninth, won the opener for Los Angeles.

How about we win tonight without the dramatic flair, huh Dodgers?

Game 13 Thread: April 10 vs. Rangers, 7p

RIP Chuck Norris.

Tyler Glasnow (1-0, 3.00) vs. Kumar Rocker (0-1, 3.60).

"Wyatt (Langford) and Kumar" doesn't have the same ring to it, but we'll surely see those two Texas Rangers tonight at the Stadium. Maybe we'll even see former Dodgers Corey Seager and Joc Pederson (both 2020 World Series Champions with the Dodgers, and both World Series Champions again with another team) as well?

I'm just excited because this will be my first game at Dodger Stadium this season! Drop a comment if you want to say hi and grab a beer.

Game 23 Thread: April 20 @ Rangers, 11.30a

Tyler Glasnow (1-0, 4.85) vs. Tyler Mahle (3-0, 0.92)

First off, congratulatons to Shohei Ohtani and Mamiko Tanaka for the birth of their daughter yesterday!

Now, if Kirby Yates hadn't coughed up a game-winning walk-off home run to Adolis Garcia yesterday, we would also be talking about this game making a three-game sweep of the Rangers. Alas, it's only a rubber match now. Let's still get the win.

Game 22 Thread: April 19 @ Rangers, 1p

Roki Sasaki (0-1, 3.29) vs. Nathan Eovaldi (1-2, 2.55).

Fresh off another great performance from fellow countryman Yoshinobu Yamamoto (who outdueled the Rangers' Jacob deGrom (7.0 IP, 7 Ks, 1 ER) by pitching 7.0 IP, 10Ks, 0 ER), young Roki Sasaki takes the mound this afternoon at Globe Life Field.

Sasaki has been shaky and hasn't gone deep into games all year long. Maybe this is the one where he figures it out?

Game 21 Thread: April 18 @ Rangers, 5p

Yoshinobu Yamamoto (2-1, 1.23) vs. Jacob deGrom (0-0, 4.30).

Oh, Corey. We loved you when you won the World Series MVP in 2020, but not so much in 2023. And here you are again, now batting .306 on the season with 4 HR,...and we do miss you. Except now we have Mookie Betts at shortstop, and well, he's been pretty good too (batting .266 on the season but also with 4 HR, and four more RBI at 10).

Texas leads the AL West by two games over Seattle. We're in second place, a game and a half behind the Padres in the NL West.

I hope we bring it this series.

Post-Game 69 Thread: Blowing Through Stop Sign, Pages Loses Game

RANGERS 3, DODGERS 2

Watching the play in isolation, it was maddening to see Dodgers rookie Andy Pages blow right through Coach Dino Ebel's stop sign and try to score from first on the bottom-nine Jason Heyward double to right-center.

Heyward laced a shot to the gap that was misplayed by the center fielder, scoring Will Smith from second base to make it 3-2 Texas. But it didn't look deep enough to justify the baserunning boldness of Pages, and when Pages was thrown out at the plate by a good distance, it seemed like a pretty stupid decision to try and stretch his run by 90 feet. It wasn't very close at home, and Pages cost us the game.

That said, it could be argued that Pages had already overachieved by even earning the two-out walk to get on base in the first place, so maybe we were playing with house money.

And with the nine-hole coming up next, it wasn't like Cavan Biggio, let alone any others in our expansive cast of shitty utility player benchwarmers, was going to get a game-tying RBI single after that point. But at least we would have still been alive.

At the end of the day, Pages should have known better than to take it upon himself to chance it, especially after making another baserunning blunder against the Yankees last weekend. He can't turn into the next Yasiel Puig on the basepaths.

Dodgers manager Dave Roberts shielded Pages from criticism, but here's hoping he took Pages aside and told him this can't happen again.

At least I left the game early, so I didn't have to see this mess in person.

Games 68-70 Thread: June 11-13 vs. Rangers

Dan Hurley, also not in the running to be new Dodgers manager

Tue 6.11 Paxton vs. TBD Dunning
Wed 6.12 Buehler vs. TBD
Thu 6.13 Yamamoto vs. TBD
All games 7p

Winning two out of three over the YankMes on the road should be cause for celebration, I suppose. But let's remember that we didn't see Juan Soto in their lineup, nor did we see Gerrit Cole in their rotation. So I'm not going to get too excited here.

I might get excited if we can dispatch the defending World Champion Rangers, even if they're 5.5 games behind the AL West-leading Mariners (Dodgers still have a 7.5-game lead over the .500 Padres), and they're a sub-.500 team this year.

I'm going to the game Wednesday night, probably to see another shaky start from Walker Buehler, who is clearly still finding his form. Hey, at least we've named our three pitchers for this series by now.

UPDATE 6/12 11p: Yamamoto's start pushed back a couple of days.

photo: Christian Petersen / Getty Images

Series Thread (Games 96-98): July 21-23 @ Rangers

Fri 21 5p: Gonsolin vs. Heaney
Sat 22 1p: Miller vs. Dunning
Sun 23 11.30a: Sheehan vs. Perez

Win two, lose one. Win two, lose one. That's how the Dodgers have fared since the All-Star Break, winning series in Queens and in Baltimore. But now they face their toughest opponent of all, the Texas Rangers, who lead the AL West by 4.5 games (as of end of play Wednesdauy).

Thursday's day off will help erase the turd of Wednesday's eight-run stinker by Julio Urias. But this weekend will be quite a test to see if the Dodgers can maintain their razor-thin lead in the NL West.

Series Thread (Games 63-65): June 11-13 vs. Rangers

Fri 6.11 7p: Kershaw vs. Foltynewicz
Sat 6.12 7p: Bauer vs. Allard
Sun 6.13 1p: Buehler vs. Dunning

Dodgers leave a rainy Pittsburgh (the first two games' starts were delayed by rain; Thursday's game was ended early due to rain) with a sweep, so that gave us a 4-2 road trip. Which looked a hell of a lot worse after dropping turds in Atlanta, but hey--I'll take it.

So now we come home to start a series with Texas, last place in the AL East and 13 games behind the A's. More importantly, though, it finally gives me the chance to hype Sunday's game as WALKER / TEXAS RANGERS.

Thank you, Hollywood! Good night!

Series Thread (Games 34-36): August 28-30 @ Rangers

Fri 8.28 5p: May vs. Minor
Sat 8.29 4p: Stripling vs. Lynn
Sun 8.30 11.30a: Gonsolin vs. Gibson

This year, a new era for the Texas Rangers begins with the opening of Globe Life Field in Arlington. According to the Rangers' website, "the beautiful baseball-only facility serves as the centerpiece of a 270-acre complex which solidifies Arlington, Texas as an entertainment giant in the Southwest." Except no fan is able to attend a game this year! COVID-19 clearly threw a spanner in the works here, but to be fair, naming your new baseball park "Globe Life Field" when the "old", now multi-purpose field is called "Globe Life Park", is really frickin' confusing. All in the name of retractable roofs, and air conditioning.

The Rangers are 11-19 this season and sit two games ahead of the bottom-feeding Angels in the AL West. They're 1-9 over their last 10, whereas the Dodgers have won 10 of their last 12. And the Dodgers are gifting Texas with our presence on Jackie Robinson Day, which really should have been a home game for us. Everything just seems weird about this, right?

5 Burning Questions Ow It Burns Make It Stop

Congratulations @RedSox Well played and deserved. We’ll see you next season.

— Sons of Steve Garvey (@sosgsosg) October 29, 2018

I did not tweet this tweet. Maybe we got hacked.

It's the return of Five Things! (That means something to like two of you out there.)

1. Kersh: In or out? Obviously he can make more than $65 million for two years so he'll opt out, but will he re-sign with us and stay competitive or sign with his hometown Rangers and enjoy the second half of his career closer to home? The first domino falls soon.

2. Harper? First of all, Goodbye Felicia/Manny. Secondly, do we break the bank for Harper? Does the front office think he'll fit their newfangled homer-only adjust-never approach? If we land Harper, who goes? Does Joc and/or Puig become trade bait? Remember we owe Kemp $21.5M next year.

3. Catcher issues. Grandal leads the free-agent catcher class with his 24 regular-season HRs and supposedly legendary framing skills. The Dodgers are unlikely to dish out for offense they already have and his butterfinger defense, but then who becomes the everyday catcher? Barnes? The minor-league guys are still years away so this one is a head-scratcher. Maybe a trade?

4. How to fix the bullpen. Once Kenley gets his heart surgery, will he return to the Kenley of old? Can we go Baez in the 8th to Kenley in the 9th and just figure out the post-starter bridge guys? Remember the Dodgers owe Jansen $56M over the next three years so he isn't going anywhere.

5. Forget small ball. It's big ball now. Somewhere along the line the front office decided to mash at all costs. Will they decide this year's results were worth it? Was NLCS Game 5 just a fluke? Will Justin Turner remain the only guy who excels at situational hitting?

OK that was more than five questions but you get the idea. This team needs to make some decisions.

"Series" Thread (Games 132-133): August 28-29 @ Rangers

Tues 8/28: Walker Buehler vs. Ariel Jurado, 5p
Wed 8/29: Alex Wood vs. Mike Minor, 5p

Just after abandoning all hope in the SoSG World Headquarters, following the dispiriting sweep by the Cardinals, the Dodgers beat up on the division rival Padres to get back a small piece of their manhood (if beating up friars makes one more masculine, that is). COupled with the Giants' shutout of Arizona in SF, and the Angels' late come-from-behind victory vs. Colorado, the Dodgers find themselves only two games back of the division lead and one game back of the Rockies. The Dodgers still have shrunken scrotums, abut at least there may be something in there after all.

Meanwhile, we Sons took the weekend off from posting Series Threads (i.e., we were hung over), but now we're back, somewhat hopeful again (and back atop Baseball Prospectus' Playoff Odds charts, at 56.0% playoff odds vs. Arizona's 53.4%), though incredibly guarded (and, as seen from the above picture, dressed in hipster garb). I would love nothing more than to have "Ariel, listen to me" in the first game, and then get make sure the second game ends on a Minor key for the Rangers.

I'm gingerly hopeful, that the offense will show up, that Matt Kemp's slump is over, that Kenley Jansen won't give up any more ninth-inning home runs.

You?

Series Thread (Games 66-67): June 12/13 vs. Rangers

The Rangers' two starters, in a recent photo shoot.

Caleb Ferguson (0-0, 21.60) vs. Bartolo Colon (3-3, 4.16), 7p
Kenta Maeda vs. Cole Hamels (3-6, 3.86), 7p

In a short two-game series, The Dodgers are seeing very different starting pitchers from the visiting Texas Rangers. Tonight, we see a gargantuan mound of flesh so large, his belly can withstand a 102-mph comebacker and simply reverberate like a jello mold. In tomorrow's game, we see a spindly toothpick who fancies himself a runway model when he's not pitching.

And that's the long and the short of it. Or, the fat and the skinny of it.

It shouldn't matter much for the Dodgers, whose recent clawing back to a one-game-over-.500 record reflects a starting rotation held together with duct tape and fishing line (not to mention an overworked bullpen). But we had a day off yesterday, following our seventh-straight series without a series loss (6-0-1 record). So go ahead, Texas, throw whatever you've got at us.

Just don't throw that big fat guy too far, or you'll strain your back.

Other League LDS Games 5 Thread

The Texas @ Toronto game is going nuts. Blue Jays up 6-3 in the eighth, with two benches-clearing events and the Rangers giving up the lead by allowing three errors in one inning.

Houston @ Kansas City later tonight: Collin McHugh vs. Johnny Cueto. Said Cueto, poignantly:

"Obviously this is the deciding game," Cueto said through a translator after the Royals worked out Tuesday afternoon. "We either win and stay or you go home."

Uh, yeah.

Both are winner-take-all games. It's crazy out there!

Baseball World Heavyweight Title Update: Rewriting History

I am woefully behind on proper Baseball World Heavyweight Title updates. Let's get caught up.

First, let me take you back to the All-Star Break. Entering the break, the Angels were the belt-holders, ending up with the title after it bounced quickly from the Brewers to the Royals to the Red Sox to the Orioles to the Rangers. Now, if you remember the original rules for the title, it can only be defended in regular season series, but since I'm in charge of the title now, I decided to have some fun and put the belt on the line in both the Home Run Derby and the All-Star Game itself.

It was fairly simple to come up with a scenario for the Home Run Derby. It was a single-elimination tournament, and the Angels' Albert Pujols was participating. If anyone beat him, they'd get the belt. Turns out Joc Pederson did, in fact, beat him, only to lose to the Reds' Todd Frazier in the Finals. That meant the Reds were the current champ. I then took this a step further by coming up with a complex set of rules for the belt to change hands during the All-Star Game. Despite multiple title swaps during the game, the Reds still managed to walk away champions, after a dominant performance from Aroldis Chapman.

A few weeks removed from the All-Star break, however, I started to feel remorseful about noodling with the firmly-established rules for the title. In reality, I made the change in the hopes that the Dodgers would somehow walk out of the All-Star Game with the belt. So, yesterday I put it up to a blind Twitter vote to decide which lineage would stand: The one where the Reds left the ASG with the belt, meaning the Yankees would be the current champ, or the one where the Angels retained, meaning the Rangers would be the current champ. Twitter voted to keep the original timeline, so here we are. The title changes that "occurred" during the Derby and All-Star Game will remain a non-canonical diversion.

Current Champion: Texas Rangers 2015 BASEBALL WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE HISTORY
CHAMPION	WON FROM	REIGN LENGTH	SUCCESSFUL DEFENSES
1) San Francisco Giants	San Diego Padres (9/28/14)	6 days	1 (vs. AZ)
2) San Diego Padres	San Francisco Giants (4/12/15)	13 days	2 (vs. CHC, COL)
3) Los Angeles Dodgers	San Diego Padres (4/25/15)	25 days	6 (vs. SFG, AZ, MIL, COL, MIA, COL)
4) San Francisco Giants	Los Angeles Dodgers (5/20/15)	13 days	3 (vs. COL, MIL, ATL)
5) Pittsburgh Pirates	San Francisco Giants (6/2/15)	7 days	1 (vs. ATL)
6) Milwaukee Brewers	Pittsburgh Pirates (6/9/15)	8 days	1 (vs. WAS)
7) Kansas City Royals	Milwaukee Brewers (6/17/15)	3 days	0
8) Boston Red Sox	Kansas City Royals (6/21/15)	4 days	0
9) Baltimore Orioles	Boston Red Sox (6/25/15)	6 days	1 (vs. CLE)
10) Texas Rangers	Baltimore Orioles (7/1/15)	3 days	0
11) Los Angeles Angels	Texas Rangers (7/4/15)	21 days	4 (vs. COL, SEA, BOS, MIN)
12) Texas Rangers	Los Angeles Angels (7/25/15)	14 days (through 8/7)	3 (vs. NYY, SFG, HOU)

As for the the SoSG World Championship, introduced in the last update, the championship committee has decided to shelve it for the time being, due to barely being able to keep up with one belt. Joc has it stashed in a locker somewhere. It may resurface at some point.

Confused about what the BWHT is and how it works? Hit the BWHT link on the sidebar for all the relevant posts to date.

Post-Game 67 Thread: Walkoff Balk

Not your average walkoff.

DODGERS 1, RANGERS 0

Whole lotta goose eggs in that box score. If the Dodgers and their ice-cold bats were going to win tonight, something different had to happen. After all, they left men stranded everywhere all night. But Greinke pitched flawlessly and the Dodgers found themselves in a scoreless tie with two out and Kiké Hernandez on third in the ninth. Hernandez juked, Rangers pitcher Keone Kela flinched, and the balkoff win was in the books.

The Dodgers' three-game losing streak ends in the most ignominious of ways, but (everybody together now) we'll take it.

Game 67 Thread: June 18 vs. Rangers, 7p

Zack Greinke (5-2, 1.95) vs. Anthony Ranaudo (0-1, 32.40)

Look, if the slumping Dodgers' offense can't break out against a guy with a THIRTY-TWO POINT FOUR-OH ERA, then they've officially Ranaudo excuses.

How about not getting swept, Dodgers? Deal?

Game 66 Thread: June 17 vs. Rangers, 7p

Clayton Kershaw (5-3, 3.21) vs. Wandy Rodriguez (3-2, 3.03).

How to hype an upcoming game, exhibit 426. MLB.com game preview:

• Dodgers shortstop Jimmy Rollins has a .444 career average (8-for-18) with one home run against Rodriguez.

Rollins is batting .198 (46-for-232) all year.

I'll take the under. (Prove me wrong, J-Roll!)

Game 65 Thread: June 16 @ Rangers, 5p

Brett Anderson (2-4, 3.57) vs. Chi Chi Gonzalez (2-1, 0.42).

Chi Chi is known for being tough and fierce, but Dodger fans in particular should be particularly interested in this opponent's start:

Gonzalez enters the game with a 2-1 record and 0.42 ERA in three career starts. His latest start against the Athletics was his first loss, but he went seven innings and allowed only one run.

Since Fernando Valenzuela posted a 0.33 ERA through his first three outings in 1981, the only other pitcher with a lower ERA than Gonzalez through his first three starts and at least 20 innings pitched is Pat Combs, who had a 0.41 ERA through three outings for the Phillies in 1989, according to Elias Sports Bureau.

Wait a minute, Chi Chi is channeling our own Dodger legend?! Say it ain't so! Can we put up a fight?

Maybe it's about time that we grow up a bit and quit the histrionics, and focus instead on scoring some damn runs.