Vin Scully 'resting comfortably' after medical procedure, will miss postseason http://t.co/arHS5cxTkX pic.twitter.com/WwXLUYJHia
— Dodger Insider (@DodgerInsider) October 8, 2015We wish you a speedy recovery, Mr. Scully, sir. Your voice will be sorely missed this postseason.
Now, Dodgers, more than ever:
We heard from Chris, "Mr. Cable Cutter," from Cut Cable Today:
I run the website CutCableToday.com where I'm obsessed with freeing readers from the shackles of cable. I'm particularly focused on making sure they are aware of the legal streaming options available to watch their favorite TV shows, live sports, etc. Nothing sketchy, just the legit stuff. We've been featured on USA Today, TechCrunch, Engadget, MSN and others.
Thanks, MCC!
Former Dodger and current Met Juan Uribe unfortunately won't be with the Mets for the NLDS, as he continues to recover from injury. And I say unfortunate, just thinking about Uribe himself; it's probably better that we aren't facing him, given he batted .357 with 3 RBI against us this year.
Uribe, who originally injured his chest while diving for a groundball a few weeks ago, is expected to remain in New York to receive physical therapy while the Mets open the NLDS with Games 1 and 2 in Los Angeles this weekend.Mets general manager Sandy Alderson confirmed Tuesday that Uribe, who was acquired by New York a week before the July 31 non-waiver trade deadline, will not be available to play in the NLDS, which begins Friday against the Los Angeles Dodgers, with whom Uribe began the season.
photo: Corey Sipkin / NY Daily News
Nice profile on Kike Hernandez over at ESPN, though you've gotta love any story that has a lede: "On Enrique "Kiké" Hernandez’s official website, his biography states, 'He might be best known for creating the Rally Banana, but his contributions on the field have been immense.'"
Whether the Dodgers go with Hernandez or Pederson in any particular game against the Mets, they will have rookies at two of their most important defensive positions, center field and shortstop. Corey Seager won the starting shortstop job from veteran Jimmy Rollins a couple of weeks ago.
As well as Hernandez played, the defining moment of his season might have come when he wasn’t even on the active roster. Still recovering from a strained hamstring, he sheepishly appeared in the Dodgers’ dugout wearing his banana suit during a 14-inning game against the San Francisco Giants that started on Aug. 31. The Dodgers rallied to win that game, won the next two and rode that momentum to their third straight NL West title.
Dodgers veterans admit that Hernandez’s relentless energy and goofy hijinks might be viewed differently if they didn’t seem to be genuine. Like Juan Uribe before him, Hernandez tends to break the tension in a room that is filled with well-paid players who took superstar paths to the major leagues.
“It’s all right,” said Dodgers reliever J.P. Howell. “It does lighten it up. As soon as you find him annoying, you find yourself laughing. That’s how it works with him.”Hernandez’s rise coincided with Joc Pederson’s second-half downward spiral, and Hernandez was ready for the opportunity. For the season, he batted .307 with an .836 OPS while playing every position other than pitcher, catcher and first base.
Hernandez, the modern-day Uribe equivalent. Wow.
Jonah Keri over at Grantland gives the 2015 NL Cy Young to Clayton Kershaw, a man who seems to be less commonly mentioned of late than teammate Zack Greinke or the Cubs' Jake Arrieta. Keri leans heavily upon Baseball Prospectus' Deserved Run Average (DRA) as the determining veriable, but it's still worth a read:
If you believe that a pitcher who just posted the lowest ERA since peak Greg Maddux2 deserves the honor and that suppressing batting average on balls in play is an attainable skill for a select few genius pitchers, then Greinke’s 1.66 makes a great case for the title. For a different kind of historical performance, Jake Arrieta has smacked extra-base hits at the plate more frequently than he’s allowed them this year (and last year), and he also just set the record with an 0.75 ERA after the All-Star break.
Still, my vote is for Kershaw, because pitchers have more control over strikeouts than over whatever happens once a ball is put in play, and he just struck out 301 batters in 232.2 innings. That’s the highest single-season strikeout rate for any qualified starting pitcher in major league history not named Pedro Martinez or Randy Johnson. Plus, we can throw in that microscopic edge in DRA for good measure.
It’s exceedingly rare that you get three worthy candidates for one award. And really, any of these guys would be a deserving winner.Baseball Prospectus combines DRA with innings pitched to calculate which pitchers delivered the most raw value. That combined stat is then scaled to look like the various derivations of Wins Above Replacement, where a 25th man would deliver a score around zero, an average player around two, an All-Star four or higher, and an elite player six or higher. By this DRA-plus-innings measure, Clayton Kershaw was worth 7.9 wins, Zack Greinke 7.6, and Jake Arrieta 7.5. In other words, the difference between the three amounts to maybe a few hits over the course of a 162-game season.
Keri also has Kershaw and Greinke 2-3 in the NL MVP race, to Bryce Harper.
Jake Arietta (22-6, 1.77) vs. Gerrit Cole (19-8, 2.60).
The Pirates were here last year, and choked to the Giants, allowing the evil ones to start yet another improbable ascent. This year, you've gotta think about this as which one is going to be a better foil for the Cardinals (Cubs were 8-11 vs. St. Louis this year; Pirates were 9-10). Both teams wield a nice underdog storyline, so I'm on the fence for this one.
We're a couple days away from the start of the 2015 NLDS, and I'm starting to get nervous again. Watching yesterday's Wild Card game and feeling the palpable tension in the air has reminded me of how nervous I've felt at NLDS games, hanging on every pitch, not willing to exhale until the final out is made.
I won't be there in attendance for the 2015 NLDS, but our opponent is worrying me sick. And it has nothing to do with superstitious drivel from Steve Dilbeck. No, this one is because I still am scarred by the 2006 NLDS, specifically Game 1 in the top of the second inning, when things went off the rails.
I was watching the game at SoSG Orel's house on his larger-than-life television (which in today's television dimensions is probably a bathroom tv, but back then it was huge). I had just busted out of work early in order to come watch the game, and given the 1pm start time, that was kind of a bold move at the time. And in the first moments after my arrival, this disaster occurred:
A double play in which both outs came at home plate. About 2½ seconds apart.
A double play on which one catcher (the always-gymnastic Lo Duca) caught one throw and then applied tags on two different baserunners -- one of which he never even knew was there until he tagged him.
But if Lo Duca didn't know what the heck was going on out there, he wasn't the only one.
The Dodgers had runners on first (J.D. Drew) and second (Jeff Kent), with no outs in the second inning, when all this insanity began.
It started routinely enough, with Martin whacking what looked like an RBI double off the right-field wall. But what it looked like and what it turned out to be were two very different things.
Kent thought the right fielder, Shawn Green, might catch it. So he headed back to second to tag up.
Drew instantly decided this ball was going to take a crazy carom off the fence, and that he was going to be able to score from first. So he quickly revved into a full sprint.
You can see the dark clouds gathering over this mess already, can't you?
Meanwhile, in the third-base coach's box, Dodgers third-base traffic cop Rich Donnelly watched intently as Green scooped up a perfect bounce off the wall and wheeled to throw.
So Donnelly looked up and got ready to throw a giant stop sign up there to hold Kent at third. Then he realized they were all in big trouble.
"As I was about to hold Jeff up, I said, 'Uh oh,' " Donnelly said, "because here came J.D., about 10 feet behind him. So what am I supposed to do? I can't hold them both. And I can't send them both. So I said, I'd better send Jeff and hope they screw up the relay or something." [...]
"Third-base coaches," continued Donnelly, "are like air-traffic controllers. Nobody says anything until there's a wreck. Well, there was a wreck out there, and it was awful. The worst part was, that should have been a four- or five-run inning, and it wasn't."It was a double play unparalleled in postseason history (thank goodness).
No, it wasn't, Rich Donnelly. We ended up losing 6-5 and were swept by New York in three games. I remember going back to work for the late afternoon, and being in a stunned sense of disbelief, knowing we were doomed, and brutalized by the fact that the Mets' double play came at the hands of three former Dodgers (Shawn Green, Jose Valentin on the relay, and Paul Lo Duca).
And for weeks afterward, I kept flashing back to the car wreck that was Jeff Kent and J.D. Drew both tagged out at home, like some sort of little league / Keystone Kops scene. You could hear Jeff Kent's bones creaking as he feebly tried to belly flop at home and tag the plate with his left arm. And then Drew's flop was more fit for a slip-and-slide than a playoff game; he looked like an idiot. It was horrible.
Fast forward a decade, and we're again facing the Mets, except now we've got Ron Roenicke as our third base coach. Yes, that Ron Roenicke.
I'm nervous all over again.
photo: Travis Lindquist / Getty Images. GIF of the play also found here.
Had to laugh at this recent headline on espn.com, involving a Yomuri Giants pitcher banned for betting on baseball. Clearly, according to the label tag, the San Francisco Giants are culpable.
I agree.
The Mets had a mandatory workout, and Matt Harvey missed it becuase he "lost track of time." Try to tell me that if Yasiel Puig were in Harvey's shoes, that this wouldn't be a national incident:
Harvey later apologized to teammates for the unexcused absence, which apparently happened because he lost track of time.
"Obviously, today was not the greatest," Harvey said after arriving at Citi Field. "I know we had a mandatory workout. The last thing I ever want to do is not be here with my team. Basically, there's no excuse. I screwed up. I wasn't here. I showed up a little late. I've talked to [general manager] Sandy [Alderson] and I've talked to [manager] Terry [Collins] and my teammates and apologized to them and apologized to everybody. They understand. I'm here to get my workout in and be with the team.
"Unfortunately, today I screwed up. There's not really anything else to say. They know what happened. I told everybody and apologized to everybody and told them it's not going to happen again. It's never happened before. Unfortunately, it happened kind of at a bad time, a mandatory time. Truly, I just screwed up."
Harvey remains on schedule to pitch Game 3 of the National League Division Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers on Monday, when the series shifts to Queens.
"I told everybody and apologized to everybody and told them it's not going to happen again. It's never happened before. Unfortunately, it happened kind of at a bad time, a mandatory time. Truly, I just screwed up."
Collins said Harvey would be fined for missing the workout, which took place from noon to 2 p.m. ET. The Mets' manager also indicated that Harvey called to say he was stuck in traffic.NEW YORK -- Mets ace Matt Harvey missed a mandatory team workout Tuesday at Citi Field.
Stuck in traffic for two hours? That can't be possible, either.
Though I suppose if it was indeed Puig in Harvey's shoes, Puig probably wouldn't be stuck in traffic for two hours, either.
Jumping on the Dodgers bandwagon, along with Aaron Boone, are ESPN.com colleagues Doug Glanville, Christina Kahrl, and Doug Padilla. All four of them have picked the Dodgers to win the 2015 World Series.
The Toronto Blue Jays were the trendy pick, with 12 of the 23 ESPN pundits selecting them as World Series winners.
Bear in mind, only Adrian Virk had picked the Dodgers six months ago, out of 14 pundits. Virk has since changed to the Blue Jays.
First let's start with the story: Dodgers GM Farhan Zaidi gave Dodgers manager Don Mattingly a vote of some confidence recently:
"His preparation has been tremendous. We spend some time with him before every game. We see how thorough he is," Zaidi said. "In every other industry, being a manager is managing people. In this industry we think it's just X's and O's. But the reality is, you're being a manager like you would manage a business, but you also have to make X's and O's decisions."
One advantage for the Dodgers is home-field advantage for the first round. Los Angeles tied St. Louis for the best home record at 55-26, and the Dodgers have had their road struggles, posting a 37-44 record.
While Mattingly will take the heat or earn the credit for the Dodgers' success or failure, Zaidi doesn't subscribe to the idea that all the credit or blame should be put on the manager.
"If you're going to tell me that the team's success is solely driven by the manager, I just don't think that's how it works," Zaidi said. "Managers make strategic decisions, but a lot of the decisions they make are 52-48 or 55-45.""We're looking at games that are going to be tight, going to be low scoring," general manager Farhan Zaidi said. "So you're looking for a manager that is going to be able to handle the pressure and handle the personalities and the added pressure of the postseason." [...]
Look, I defintely think Mattingly's strategic decisions, or lack thereof, have caused us a game or two or five. And from the look on her face, Alanna Rizzo is with me on this one:
John Wooden used to say, "Failure to prepare is preparing to fail." Let's hope Mattingly's preparation pays off this postseason.
Pretty disappointing reading, that the LAT's Bill Shaikin couldn't get MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred to give two shits about the Dodgers being blacked out on television:
I’m not sure I quite said there is nothing we can do about it. Fundamentally, this is a dispute between the owner of those rights – Time Warner, who has an obligation to get distribution – and the [cable and satellite operators]. We are really concerned about having an iconic franchise like the Dodgers, who happen to be playing very well, only available in, what, 30% of the market? We would like to get to full distribution and have expressed our views on this topic to all the relevant parties.
So is there something you can do it about it? MLB does business with DirecTV on league-wide broadcast packages. Could you offer DirecTV an incentive that might persuade them to carry the Dodgers?
No. I wouldn’t do that. I can’t horse-trade 30-club assets to help one team get distribution. It is fundamentally a dispute that is outside our control, but we certainly have weighed in, in terms of our desire to get this resolved.
At the root of the dispute – and the Dodgers are not the first team to have their games blacked out in this way – is that cable and satellite distributors are reluctant to raise rates for fear that subscribers will cancel their service entirely. You don’t need a cable or satellite subscription to watch TV any more. How worrisome is that for you, given the substantial percentage of revenue clubs get from the local cable television contracts?
I think the market in L.A. has been particularly difficult, with the fragmentation of the RSNs [regional sports networks]. I think the ability to pass on additional costs to consumers is a concern. But I think the RSN business is a fundamentally sound business. Occasionally, there are going to be blips in terms of getting distribution. This is not the first one, and it probably will not be the last one. But the fundamentals of the RSN business, the strength of live sports programming, remains solid.For two full seasons now, a majority of Dodgers fans have not been able to see their team on television. You have said the league cannot do anything about the situation, but at what point does the league consider this a black eye for the franchise, especially given how successful the team has been?
Manfred's responses are bullshit. MLB certainly good do something about this, particularly with DirecTV, and has chosen to do nothing. And it's the LA fans who suffer.
As reported yesterday, the Dodgers finally announced their 2015 NLDS starters through Game 3.
The Dodgers announced their rotation Tuesday, hours after a team workout and days after the Mets announced theirs. There were no surprises. Three-time Cy Young Award winner Clayton Kershaw and Jacob deGrom will pitch Game 1, Zack Greinke and Noah Syndergaard will pitch Saturday's Game 2, and Brett Anderson and Matt Harvey will pitch Monday's Game 3. The first two games are at Dodger Stadium before the series shifts to New York's Citi Field for Games 3 and, potentially, 4. [...]
The Dodgers have not committed to a Game 4 starter, but the debate is between using Kershaw on three days' rest and going with young lefty Alex Wood. Under a new front office led by president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman, the Dodgers are probably less likely to use Kershaw on short rest than the previous regime of Ned Colletti. Kershaw has done it twice in the postseason, with the Dodgers winning one of those starts, in Game 3 of the NLDS versus the Atlanta Braves, and losing the other in Game 4 of the 2014 NLDS versus the St. Louis Cardinals. Kershaw worked 12 innings combined in those starts with a 2.25 ERA.
"I think it at least presents the option," Dodgers general manager Farhan Zaidi said Tuesday. "At the appropriate time, I'm sure we'll have more conversations about that."The first three pitching matchups for the National League Division Series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Mets are set.
Sorry about this. We're asleep today at SoSG World Headquarters.
It's 2-0 Houston in the top of the sixth.
In his final "The 30" column for the year, Jonah Keri of Grantland has the Dodgers fifth, and adds some insight into what makes Zack Greinke so good:
While we wait for the playoffs to start and for Zack Greinke to take the lowest starting-pitcher ERA in 20 years into the postseason, check out this piece by Eno Sarris at FanGraphs. In it, Greinke says he’s tried to avoid attacking hitters inside too often, because even though he feels he can induce weaker contact that way, he also found that hitters managed to bloop more balls for hits on inside pitches than on outside ones. As Sarris goes on to explain, Greinke’s suspicion turns out to be well-founded.
Over the years, many misguided writers have tried to argue that Greinke is a head case not fit for the big stage. But as Sarris, Molly Knight in her book The Best Team Money Can Buy, and Greinke himself demonstrate, the Dodgers right-hander isn’t only one of the best pitchers the game has seen in years. He’s also one of the smartest.6. Los Angeles Dodgers (92-70, plus-72, LW: 5)
#6 is a little bit of a degradation from the prior week, but apparently we've been vaulted by the Royals. Go figure.
If, at the end of the regular season, the belt-holder does not make the playoffs -- and due to the dynamics of this thing, that scenario is entirely plausible -- said team will be stripped of the title for not qualifying for the postseason. Then the winner of the playoffs -- the World Series -- takes the belt and the title into the offseason.
 Current Champion: Title Vacant 2015 BASEBALL WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE HISTORY | CHAMPION | WON FROM | REIGN LENGTH | SUCCESSFUL DEFENSES |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1) San Francisco Giants | (9/28/14) | (Offseason time does not count towards 2015 reign.) | (vs. AZ) |
| 2) San Diego Padres | (4/12/15) | (vs. CHC, COL) | |
| 3) Los Angeles Dodgers | (4/25/15) | (vs. SFG, AZ, MIL, COL, MIA, COL) | |
| 4) San Francisco Giants | (5/20/15) | ||
| 5) Pittsburgh Pirates | (6/2/15) | ||
| 6) Milwaukee Brewers | (6/9/15) | ||
| 7) Kansas City Royals | (6/17/15) | ||
| 8) Boston Red Sox | (6/21/15) | ||
| 9) Baltimore Orioles | (6/25/15) | ||
| 10) Texas Rangers | (7/1/15) | ||
| 11) Los Angeles Angels | (7/4/15) | ||
| 12) Texas Rangers | (7/25/15) | ||
| 13) Seattle Mariners | (8/9/15) | ||
| 14) Boston Red Sox | (8/15/15) | ||
| 15) New York Yankees | (9/2/15) | ||
| 16) Baltimore Orioles | (9/9/15) | ||
| 17) Boston Red Sox | (9/26/15) | ||
| 18) Cleveland Indians | (10/3/15) | ||
The two games are expected to feature outstanding starting pitching, but at least hitters shouldn't have to battle those 5 p.m. shadows at the stadium.The Friday opener against the Mets in the National League Division Series has been scheduled to begin at 6:45 p.m., while Saturday’s Game 2 has a 6:07 p.m. starting time.
But if they can't talk about shadows during the game, what the heck are the announcers going to discuss?
I don't know how to link to those newfangled embedded videos over at ESPN.com, but I'm with you, Aaron.
Don't you worry, we Sons over at SoSG world headquarters are already bouncing off the frickin' walls in anticipation of NLDS Game 1 on Friday. The Dodgers' securing of home-field advantage actually made a huge difference for SoSG AC, who was on the precipice of missing games had Games 1 and 2 been on the road...so we are quite thankful (not to mention for getting home-field advantage in the first place).
But just in case you're not overly excited just yet, Deadspin has scribed some reasons why the Dodgers merit our barracking, and we fully agree:
Mean. That is just mean.
Greinke, for his part, throws two curves, one noticeably slower and loopier than the other. He’s got a handful of other nasty pitches—he’ll trash a righty with a two-strike slider—but the curves are where it’s at, man.
Both have been great this year. Kershaw hasn’t been quite as dominant as he was in 2014, when he won the NL Cy Young Award and was the first pitcher named that league’s Most Valuable Player since 1968, but still, c’mon. Dude deals, man. He struggled a bit in the postseason last year, leading to a certain amount of smarming about how Madison Bumgarner does it when it counts, man, which is another reason to root for the Dodgers this year. A pitcher as good as Kershaw—he’s historically good!—doesn’t deserve to be used by shithead hot-takers to buttress some other guy’s Magical Baseball Unicorn credentials. Plus he looks like a guileless Amish lad out on rumspringa, and I want to send him back to the gmay feeling good about himself.
Also, you should know about Vin Scully, the national treasure who has been calling Dodgers home games since their home was in Brooklyn. Probably you already know about Vin Scully. I don’t know how this shit works, and am guessing we probably won’t get to hear him call Dodgers games in the playoffs—but, if the Dodgers win the World Series, it will make this wonderful old dude very happy, here in the closing years of the long life he has spent making baseball more enjoyable for people. Rooting against that is objectively evil.Really, though, your guys are the Dodgers’ pair of ace pitchers, lefty Clayton Kershaw and righty Zack Greinke. I love a good curveball, and these two are curveball artists. Kershaw throws a downright sickening 12-to-6 number and will do a really cruel thing in two-strike counts where, instead of burying the curve in the dirt like pitchers do, he’ll throw it up high; because his delivery looks exactly the same no matter what he’s throwing, the batter will see a high fastball and reflexively bend his knees to frame it as a ball, then freeze and slump like his strings got cut an instant later as the pitch dives back into the strike zone. [...]
And of course, we love how the article ends:
You should root for the Dodgers because their best path to a World Series championship involves Kershaw and Greinke pitching out of their minds, Puig returning to health and becoming the Puig of 2013 again, the middle infield of the 2005 Phillies getting a last moment in the sun, a guy named Joc maybe doing some fun shit, and Turner having to tie his repulsive beard around his torso like a bandolier so he won’t trip over it. You should root for the Dodgers because the most ridiculous possible outcome is always the most fun one, and the Dodgers winning the World Series would be incredibly ridiculous. And you should root for the Dodgers because it will force Kevin Draper to do the gross Bay Area passive-aggressive thing where he takes solace in the cold mathematical comprehensibility of it and pretends it isn’t burning him up inside.
You should root for the Dodgers.Why you should root for the Dodgers
The Dodgers finish the year 92-70 and champions of the NL West for the third straight year, following today's sweep of the Padres. More importantly, Clayton Kershaw became the first pitcher in 13 years to reach 300 strikeouts. And even more important than that, no one was injured today (though Jimmy Rollins, given the role to manage by Don Mattingly, walked awful slowly out to the mound to relieve Kershaw in the fourth inning. Rollins, wearing Lasorda's #2 jersey, took his own sweet time from the dugout).
Joc Pederson uncorked a two-run HR in the second. Corey Seager had a solo shot in the sixth, and Chris Heisey had a two-run HR in that same frame. Ronald Torreyes singled for his first major-league RBI in the eighth.
Kershaw, with seven Ks, was his old dominant self. Chris Hatcher got the save, as Kenley Jansen was playing the role of Rick Honeycutt (pitching coach) today, alongside Rollins.
The Mets won vs. Washington, snapping a five-game losing streak. We face them Friday at the Ravine.
