Monthly Archives: May 2010

Andre Ethier Gets the Easiest Two Weeks Off Ever

Posted on by 15 Replies

To the surprise of no one…

Source: #Dodgers‘ Ethier headed to DL today. X. Paul likely callup. He can alternate with R. Johnson with G. Anderson filling in. (via @ken_rosenthal) 

At this point, I’m just glad a decision was made, so they could stop playing a man down. I assume this is backdated to Saturday, the first game he missed, so if he doesn’t miss more than the minimum he could be back for the first series of June against Arizona.

Update: Dylan Hernandez confirms that Xavier Paul will be recalled. Let’s hope Joe Torre follows the same pattern he used when Manny was out, basically replacing the starter with Paul while Johnson and Anderson wait in reserve, though of course Johnson will certainly start against lefties. Anderson, on the other hand, shouldn’t start against anyone who possesses limbs.

John Ely Tamed a Grizzly Bear

Posted on by 23 Replies

John Ely put up yet another quality start against Houston, going seven innings while allowing just two runs, striking out eight – a new career high – and walking zero. However, he achieved even more than you think he did tonight.

Ely…

Not only has John Ely not walked anyone in his last 23 innings, he hasn’t allowed an extra-base hit in his last 23 innings (@dodgerthoughts)

According to the Dodgers, it’s 84 straight hitters without a walk for Ely (@jimalexander)

John Ely can sing God Bless America in three seconds. #ElyMania (@chadmoriyama)

Cy Young never won a John Ely award #ElyMania (@truebluela)

Even more impressively, John Ely can change Juan Pierre into a useful starting pitcher. (@jay_jaffe)

It’s been just four starts, but Ely is quickly becoming somewhat of a folk hero among Dodger fans. Of course, that’ll happen when you’re a guy who 98% of Dodger fans hadn’t heard of (including your own right fielder, and let’s face it, the left fielder didn’t know who you were either), and you come up with the rotation falling apart and immediately contribute, all the while doing it completely opposite from how the other young starters are doing it. There’s no 90+ heat like Chad Billingsley and Clayton Kershaw from Ely, but nor are there bouts of wildness. And by “bouts of wildness” I of course mean “any walks, ever,” because that’s now three consecutive games in a row without one. Would you be willing to put money that Billingsley or Kershaw could go three consecutive innings without a walk? Of course not.

Let’s be clear here; Ely is not going to keep this up. He’s not a 0.94 WHIP pitcher over a full season, especially not when he wasn’t close to that in the minors. There’s going to come a day, probably soon, where he doesn’t have his pinpoint control, or batters don’t flail at his looping curveball, and sit on his mid-80s fastball. But that doesn’t mean what he’s doing right now is any less extraordinary, and it’s not too soon to think that the Dodgers might have found themselves a solid starter who can get them deep into games with a chance to win, each time out. And all for the low low price of Juan Pierre! (*snicker*).

*******

Until Blake DeWitt’s second triple of the night added some insurance in the 8th, the margin of victory was Casey Blake’s two-run double in the first inning. I mention this because it was a rare sign of life from the struggling Blake, but also for something far, far more important and nearly as mystical as Ely.

When I dissected Blake’s subpar start the other day, I said there wasn’t much that could be done, except for one thing:

So what can be done? Short of forcing him to grow back his beard, not much, unfortunately.

So you can imagine my joy tonight when I saw the beginnings of exactly that:

THE BEARD IS BACK. I don’t think it’s overstating the situation to say that Blake’s season, and indeed the entire Dodger campaign, depends on whether this was just a few days of stubble or the real deal. Judging by the jawline grooming, to avoid the dreaded Kyle Orton neckbeard? I’d say it’s back, and that means Blake is hitting 10 homers in the next two weeks. Mark it, dude.

It’s Amazing What Pitching Will Do For You

Posted on by 13 Replies

I’ve seen a few times, here and there across the internet in the last week, that the return of Manny Ramirez is what really got the Dodgers kicked off on their winning streak. With Manny in the lineup, the reasoning goes, you’ll A) see less of Garret Anderson and Reed Johnson (true) and B) not put pressure on Matt Kemp and Andre Ethier to carry the team. I’m not so sure I buy into that last part, since Ethier was doing just fine no matter who is in the lineup, and Kemp’s slump didn’t exactly correspond with Manny’s DL stint anyway. Besides, Manny’s hitting just .261 with one extra-base hit (granted, it was a bases-loaded double when Arizona intentionally walked Ethier to get to him) since returning from injury, so it’s not exactly like his return has led to an offensive explosion.

No, what’s really turned around is the pitching, as we all knew it would have to be. The Dodger bats haven’t really changed that much over the course of the young season; in April, the team put up a line of .272/.343/.424 (.767), while in May it’s been nearly identical, with a line of .270/.344/.420 (.764). Despite the varied absences of Ethier, Manny, and Rafael Furcal, the hot streak to start April and the cold streak to end it, the bats are what the bats are.

But the pitching… good lord, the pitching. In April, the arms “supported” that offense by allowing 4.79 runs per game and a 1.51 WHIP, a large part of how the team ended the month at 9-14. In May, the Dodgers are 11-3, despite basically the exact same offensive output, because the pitching staff is down to 3.79 runs per game – that’s right, the ERA has dropped an entire run – and they’re allowing a WHIP of just 1.23.

Of course, it’s even better than that, since “May 1″ is such an arbitary date. Even despite the improvement in May, the month has seen Charlie Haeger’s zero-out disasterpiece on the 8th and Clayton Kershaw not getting out of the 2nd inning on the 4th. If you look even over just the last week, the staff is holding opponents to a .180 batting average and just 12 earned runs in 54 innings, a perfect 2.00 ERA.

Now sure, we’re looking at some different guys this month. Russ Ortiz is long gone. Vicente Padilla never made it to May, and Jon Link’s stay was short. In their places, we have guys who made it to LA at the end of April and struggled at first (Ronald Belisario, Hong-Chih Kuo, John Ely) before turning it around once the calendar changed. It’s more than that, though, because the guys we were counting on have started to step up. Guys like…

Chad Billingsley, who for all the hand-wringing has allowed just one or two earned runs in four of his seven starts this year. Hong-Chih Kuo, who missed most of April and allowed two earned runs in his only 1.2 innings that month, and has put up five scoreless and nearly perfect innings since. Clayton Kershaw… well, look. Kershaw was always good. We thought it was ridiculous at the time when people started freaking out over his one terrible start, and that’s been proven time and again. Other than the one disaster against Milwaukee, he’s given up two earned runs or less in six of his other seven starts (and even the other one was just three). Ronald Belisario has been untouched in five of his six May appearances (the ERA inflated a bit by one bad 3 ER outing in that terrible Milwaukee series), and then you’ve got the rare guys like Jonathan Broxton and Hiroki Kuroda who’ve been solid basically all year long.

The point is, things were never as bad as they seemed when the season was at its lowest, late in April when they were getting swept in New York and early in May when the pitching was abused by the Brewers. Kershaw wasn’t going to get knocked out in the 2nd inning every time, Billingsley’s “7th inning curse” was more a function of Joe Torre than anything, and they did what they had to with Charlie Haeger. With the amount of talent on the staff, it was going to get turned around one way or another. The pitching won’t be as good as it is right now all year, either, and they still could stand to add someone to put them over the top, but the old baseball saw remains the same: pitching and defense wins games.

******
This is just a little thing, unimportant in the grand scheme of things, and I realize that it was just probably just some ESPN intern who set this poll up on the right side of Tony Jackson’s story about Andre Ethier’s injured finger. Still, I couldn’t help but laugh at the fact that Matt Kemp isn’t even included in the top five in the poll for the “Dodgers’ best player”. Looks like someone’s been taking those clubhouse rumors seriously, eh? Ethier, to no one’s surprise, is winning handly with 61% at the time of this writing.

******
Finally, I got accused of being overly negative in the comments of the last post, and I’ll admit that pointing out Casey Blake’s failings in the middle of the winning streak may have seemed like odd timing. Still, as I mentioned there, I didn’t do it to just be the stick in the mud, but because I hadn’t seen his weird backwards splits pointed out anywhere else, and if i can’t point out things like that, what’s the point of the blog? Besides, I don’t care if the team goes 80-4 over the next four months, you’ll never convince me that Garret Anderson’s “veteran leadership” is worth his horrendous performance.

******

One more “finally”: Jonathan Broxton has pitched three nights in a row, so he’s likely unavailable tonight. Hong-Chih Kuo pitched last night as well and we all know how fragile he is… so are we looking at a Troncoso/Sherrill situation should the Dodgers have a small lead in the 9th tonight?

Casey Blake’s Bizarre Splits

Posted on by 19 Replies

The Dodgers, as we all know, have been red-hot lately, doing a fantastic job of rescuing a season which looked to be headed directly down the toilet. The bullpen has really turned it around, and even the starting pitching has stabilized nicely, thanks mostly to Clayton Kershaw, John Ely, and Hiroki Kuroda. Even the loss of Rafael Furcal hasn’t sunk the ship, since Jamey Carroll’s been adequate as a fill-in, and as we await the report on Andre Ethier’s finger, we’ve been able to marvel at his his absolute dominance.

Yet there’s one member of the Dodgers who hasn’t been able to enjoy the ride as much as everyone else, and that’s Casey Blake. Blake’s been, on the whole, pretty lousy this season: a .233/.323/.397 line with 3 homers isn’t going to get you very far as a third baseman. His .720 OPS in fact ranks him 20th among MLB 3B, and his .265 True Average tells a similar tale, putting him 22nd. Even his defense, surprisingly good last year (12.0 runs above average per UZR), has slipped below average to -0.9 this year. The standard “small sample size” warnings apply, but it’s hard to ignore that he has six errors in six weeks this year, after ten in six months last year.

But this isn’t about peeing in everyone’s corn flakes by highlighting the one squeaky cog in the machine; it’s about pointing out that the Casey Blake we’ve seen in the first six weeks of 2010 is almost entirely a different player than the one saw in his first year-plus in LA and for years before that in Cleveland.

Consider this…

Blake usually is a notorious quick starter, before tailing off in the second half. For his career, he’s got an .803 OPS with 82 homers in the first half, followed by .765 and 67 in the second. Last year was much the same, with an OPS 50 points higher in the first half. That’s not to say that he couldn’t still do the same this year, just that if he drops 50 points from what he’s at right now, he (and the Dodgers) are going to be in big trouble. The usual hot first half from Blake just isn’t there right now.

Blake usually crushes lefties, while adequately hitting righties. Career, that’s .834 (vs. LHP) and .768 (vs. RHP).  In 2009, that OPS was 1.005 (vs. LHP) and .783 (vs. RHP). The difference hasn’t always been that large, but it’s been a pattern of his for years, no different than many right-handed hitters. So far in 2010, he’s hitting righties much as he usually does, at a .780 clip. But his production against lefties has completely fallen off the cliff, hitting just .214/.281/.250 (.531 OPS) with only one extra-base hit.

Blake usually hits far better at night. Here’s a career split which isn’t even close; he has an .829 OPS career during night games, which would make him an All-Star… if he never had to play during the day, when he hits only .227/.304/.376 (.680). Yet this year? Granted, it’s only been 8 day games so far, but he’s killed it in the sunshine this year, hitting all 3 of his homers with a 1.256 OPS, while struggling under the lights with a .579 OPS.

All of which means, we have a guy who will turn 37 this summer and suddenly looks like a completely different player, and not in a good way. You may remember that after his smoking-hot start in 2009 (nine homers and a .938 OPS in the first two months), he struggled the rest of the year, not getting his OPS over .800 in June, July, or August, and though he did in September, he also missed half the month with a strained left hamstring. I’m sure I don’t have to remind you about his brutal postseason, when he hit just .167 without an extra-base hit. Save for some short bursts here and there (two of his three homers this year came in one game against Craig Stammen’s career 5.30 ERA and the Nationals in April), he hasn’t been a consistently solid player in some time.

So what can be done? Short of forcing him to grow back his beard, not much, unfortunately. With Josh Bell traded to Baltimore for George Sherrill (though Bell is struggling with a .276 OBP at AAA Norfolk), there’s no minor league prospect ready to step in. Blake DeWitt would have been the obvious choice, but the last thing you want to do is stunt his second base growth by moving him now. Third base in Albuquerque has been shared by Nick Green (no) and Russell Mitchell (not really a highly thought-of prospect), so there’s not much help here. This is where I ought to throw in that it sure would have been great to have signed Hank Blalock rather than Garret Anderson, but that ship has clearly sailed.

With no able replacements, the Dodgers are somewhat stuck with hoping that Blake turns it around, and hasn’t seen his best days despite his advancing age. You may remember that I wasn’t completely thrilled when he signed this contract, and that was mainly because I didn’t think he required a third guaranteed year. Just based on his surprising career year in 2009, I would have accepted his downturn this year (especially if he was in the role he ought to be, as a 4-corners power bat off the bench, but that’s a different discussion), but if he doesn’t turn it around, 2011 could be ugly.

*******

It figures, then, that Blake would get a day off during  a day game today:

#Dodgers lineup: Martin 2 Johnson 9 Loney 3 Kemp 8 Belliard 4 Anderson 7 Green 5 Carroll 6 Billingsley1

I get that you want to give Manny a day off on a day game after a night game, though against a lefty and with Ethier out I might skip that for the day. I get that you want to sit DeWitt against a lefty, and that Furcal’s out, and Blake is struggling. Fine, fine, fine. I just can’t get over the fact that the Los Angeles Dodgers are starting an infield that contains Nick Green, Ronnie Belliard, and Jamey Carroll, all at the same time, plus Garret Anderson and Reed Johnson at the same time in the outfield. That’s just horrendous. And on top of it all, that apparently means that Joe Torre has rescinded Russell Martin’s planned day off, so Martin will now start his 17th consecutive game. And we’re supposed to be shocked he’s not the player he once was? Then when A.J. Ellis finally gets a shot and goes 0-4 because he hasn’t seen real pitching in a month, he’ll get tossed under the bus.

*******

Finally – and this is of no importance whatsoever, but it’s an impending roster move, so i’ll mention it – Dylan Hernandez reports that Luis Ayala has activated the opt-out clause in his contract and must be released if he’s not added to the 25-man roster by 5pm Monday. I laughed as soon as I saw that, because between A) the seeming unwillingness to dump Ramon Ortiz, B) the improved performance of the big-league bullpen, C) the roster crunch the team will soon face when Furcal returns and Charlie Haeger’s rehab stint ends, and finally D) the superior talent to Ayala in AAA like James McDonald and Josh Lindblom, this would seem to be a massive miscalculation on Ayala’s part. I thought that, and I laughed, even before Eric Stephen checks in with this perfect note:

Luis Ayala wins the poor timing award for exercising an out clause: 2 straight blown saves in AAA, and gave up runs in last 3 games.

You may remember Ayala from such times as being DFA’d or cut three times last year, so I suppose “good choices” aren’t exactly what he’s known for. Let’s just say, I’m not exactly holding my breath for him.

A Night of Ups and Downs

Posted on by 7 Replies

Good news: the Dodgers have won 11 of 14, making them arguably the hottest team in the bigs.

Good news: Hey, remember when Clayton Kershaw was “regressing”? Yeah, me neither. Kershaw worked through the 7th (so at least that’ll make Joe Torre happy, right?) allowing just three hits and two walks while striking out seven. Once again, had some slight difficulties in the first and then mowed down everyone afterwards.

Good news: after a monumentally disastrous April, the bullpen has really turned it around, as Ramon Troncoso and Jonathan Broxton each turned in a perfect inning to back up Kershaw.  Hell, even George Sherrill has had four scoreless outings in a row.

Good news: the Dodgers are just three games out of first place, with the chance to pull within two tomorrow.

Good news: the fact that Rafael Furcal has had a setback hasn’t hurt as badly as you’d think, since Jamey Carroll has apparently turned into a player. He’s still got zero range at short, but after a two-hit night he’s got hits in eight of his last nine games, and has the OBP nearly up to .400. I still don’t like the two-year deal, but he’s proving himself worthwhile for now.

Bad news: There’s no getting around the obvious, and that’s that all the good news from tonight is overwhelmed by the news that Andre Ethier fractured his right pinky in batting practice, and is headed back to Los Angeles to see a hand specialist. Nothing’s been confirmed, but you’d have to think that a broken finger isn’t something a hitter can play through. The original report that Xavier Paul was pulled from his AAA game in the 3rd inning seemed to point towards his recall to the bigs, but news has since come that he was pulled because he was “hit by a throw”.

What we do know is that neither Ethier or Paul is going to be with the Dodgers tomorrow, and since the Padres are starting lefty Wade LeBlanc, Reed Johnson is almost certain to get the start. Let’s not get overexcited about Garret Anderson‘s triple today; Padres outfield Oscar Salazar slipped and fell on the warning track.

We’ll have to wait until we hear more about Ethier’s finger, but since it’s been confirmed he has a fracture I’d have to say signs are pointing heavily towards him headed to the DL. I suppose that would mean Anderson has bought himself a stay of execution if that’s the case, but the good news is that if Paul’s fit to play, they probably wouldn’t recall him to let him ride the bench, just judging by what we saw when Manny was on the DL.

This situation seems to change by the moment… but more tomorrow.