Random rantings and ravings about the Los Angeles Dodgers, written by a small consortium of rabid Dodger fans. With occasional comments on baseball, entertainment, pop culture, and life in general.
Fri 6.9 4p: Grove vs. Suárez
Sat 6.10 1p: Miller vs. Nola
Sun 6.11 10.30a: TBD vs. Walker
I'm having to put up a bunch of placeholder GameThreads while I will be off the grid, so these won't be full of my pithy sarcastic wit. I know you'll weep at its absence as you lament the void in your soul. Sorry about that.
But I can say, as disappointing as Trea Turner has been this year for the Phillies (through June 4: batting .237 with a .655 OPS (79 OPS+), Turner is a heck of a lot better than our own Miguel Rojas (batting .218, .512 OPS (39 OPS+). Is he $300M / 11 years better? 2023 WAR values would tell vote no: Turner = 0.2 WAR; Rojas = 0.3 WAR.
5 Former Dodgers and how they are faring this year:Justin Turner (Red Sox): Hitting .284 with 2 home runs.
Cody Bellinger (Cubs): After hitting .165 and .210 in his last two years in Los Angeles, he’s bounced back nicely and is hitting .300 with the Cubs – and has three homers against his former teammates.
Corey Seager (Rangers): Hit .359 in first 11 games of season before going on the injured list with a hamstring strain.
Trea Turner (Phillies): Solid, but not spectacular; hitting .293 with only seven RBIs.
Kenley Jansen (Red Sox): Has not given up a run in seven games with five saves.
It's all in how you look at the data, right? Over at third base, I do miss JT but Muncy's revival (and MLB-leading 11 HR this year) is certainly helping me move on. Cody Bellinger had three HR against us across seven games, but James Outman's .316 BA is ahead of Bellinger, and Outmans' 193 OPS+ is also ahead of Bellinger's 154 OPS+.
It has been a while since we've seen Corey Seager at shortshop in Dodger Blue, but let's hope he gets well soon. But speaking of shortstop, Trea Turner's .293 with seven RBIs still eclipses Miguel Rojas' .125 BA and ZERO RBI this year. Maybe with Mookie slotting over at shortstop, we'll finally get some production from that spot...but I do miss having a real shortstop in the lineup.
And good for Kenley Jansen, who also led the league with 41 saves last year in Atlanta. Our bullpen is still patchwork and hardly revered, but $16M is a lot of money for a last-place Boston team's closer.
And no mention of Kiké Hernandez, and his .220 BA (84 OPS+) starting for Boston every day at shortstop? Or Joc Pederson, batting .250 in 13 games with the Giants? Or Alex Wood, off to a good start with San Francisco and a 1.50 ERA, but sidelined to injury?
Oh sure, the Dodgers took Game 1. But that was only because the Padres, crippled by the Wild Card Round, had to pitch Mike Clevinger in Game 1. Clevinger gave up five runs in his three innings of work, and it was very fortunate that those five runs held up, because we were shit against the San Diego bullpen.
Julio Urias was good, but not great, in this Game 1 start. Give innings, but 3 ER: not a quality start for him, especially watching his mortality in the fifth (his final inning). Evan Phillips came in for a high-leverage sixth inning, and Doc made the right choices with Alex Vesia, Brusdar Graterol, and Chris Martin to close out the win.
Credit Trea Turner with his first-inning solo HR for opening this up; Will Smith with two huge doubles and an RBI; and Max Muncy and Gavin Lux for RBIs on their own. But Mookie Betts was 0-for-4; Justin Turner and Cody Bellinger were 0-for-3--and we couldn't do anything against the four Padres relievers that came in from the third inning onward.
That's going to have to change if we want to progress in this postseason. For now, I'm going to drink my last beer...and make sure I have enough for tomorrow and the rest of this series.
Walker Buehler has been good but not great this year: 1-1 with a 4.02 ERA entering this game. But in his fourth start, Buehler dazzled, pitching the majors' first complete game shutout since September 2021. His line: 9.0 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 0 BB and 10 Ks. Buehler's ERA dropped to 2.55.
Now on the downside: apparently it was the highest pitch count of anyone this year (as per Joe Davis' call), at 108 pitches. And I'm a little surprised Doc Roberts let Buehler go so long into the game, given his penchant for the early hook, not to mention keeping the starters really protected this season given the lockout-shortened spring. So I guess we'll have to see how Buehler pitches in his next outing, which (with the day off), wouldn't roll aournd until Sunday May 1 vs. the Tigers at home.
The Dodgers got on the board early, using only nine pitches to have Mookie Betts walk, Freddie Freeman double Betts over to third, and Trea Turner double both runners home. Max Muncy, who started the game with a 3-0 count that he worked back into a strikeout (groan), doubled in Betts for another run in the fifth. And Will "Slappy" Smith hit a solo shot to center in the eighth that notched the Dodgers' final run of the game.
Only Justin Turner (0-for-4) and Cody Bellinger (0-for-3) were hitless in the Dodgers' lineup; both players had one K. At this point, one-tenth of the way through the season, only Muncy is sub-Mendoza. But Justin Turner and Mookie Betts are barely above .200 (.203, each), so we've still got a way to go to get this whole team humming.
And as a reminder, the Game Thread for this @Diamondbacks series is here.
Chris Taylor saved the Dodgers in the 2021 Wild Card Game, winning the game with a walk-off two-run HR. And though none of Taylor's astounding three home runs were a walk-off last night, he definitely punctuated this NLCS Game 5 victory as well, multiple times. With Justin Turner felled by a hamstring in Game 4, and Joe Kelly gone for the series after being removed in the first inning, it was up to one of the remaining Dodgers left standing to step up and carry this team.
Enter Chris Taylor:
Amazing. Having been at Adam Kennedy's three-HR ALCS performance in 2002, and watched Kike Hernandez do the same against the Cubs in 2017, it was awesome to view Taylor going to town for the final game of this series at Dodger Stadium (I watched this game at home). There have been 11 players with three home runs in a postseason game (including teammate Albert Pujols), but Taylor is the first to do it in an elimination game.
Chris Taylor carried us for the first half of this season, cooled off in the later months, and then came alive again for the postseason (despite his baserunning gaffe in Game 1). He now has four HR this 2021 postseason, in which he is batting .364 with a 1.254 OPS. Taylor is a free agent at the end of this season, and I so hope he is back in Dodger Blue.
Not that Taylor was the only Dodger hero in NLCS Game 5. AJ Pollock went 3-for-5 with two HR and 4 RBI of his own; Pollock's eighth-inning, three-run HR was a definitive game-ending smash. Love this picture:
Albert Pujols went 2-for-4 with two runs scored. Trea Turner, elevated to the two spot, went 3-for-4 with a run and a RBI. Will Smith was the only Dodgers position player to go 0-fer, and even Smith made a fine play to throw out Eddie Rosario at second on a stolen base attempt.
That was the Dodgers' seventh straight win in a postseason elimination game. Four of these backs-against-the-wall wins have been against the Braves.
So we head back to Atlanta for a Game 6 on Saturday. But I'm going to just buzz and enjoy this beatdown, right now. Let's cue up Don Henley (and Axl Rose on backup vocals):
3/27 vs. AZ (W, 6-4): AC
4/11 vs. TEX (W, 8-7): Sax
5/11 vs. SF (L, 3-9): Sax
5/25 vs. COL (W, 5-3): Sax
6/11 @ PIT (W, 8-6): Sax
6/15 vs. TB (W, 4-3): Nomo
7/4 vs. SD (W, 3-0): Orel, Sax
