Category Archives: Clayton Kershaw

Matt Kemp, San Diego Generosity Help Cure Clayton Kershaw’s Sickness

Posted on by 33 Replies

I can’t say that went in any way like we’d planned. But I’ll certainly take it.

For months, we’ve been looking forward to Clayton Kershaw toeing the rubber on Opening Day in San Diego. Along with seeing who would finally force Frank McCourt out and hearing Vin Scully’s voice again, it’s been one of the bright lights at the end of the long tunnel of winter, especially if you remember how thoroughly he dominated the Giants to start off the season last year.

…and that lasted for all of about 30 seconds, until Vin let us know that Kershaw was suffering from a tough case of the stomach flu, one so severe that Don Mattingly & Ned Colletti apparently “begged him not to pitch”. (On a side note, how is Kershaw making that call? If he’s not healthy enough to pitch, you don’t let him pitch. On the other hand, that may have led to an emergency Jamey Wright Opening Day start, a reality I’m absolutely not ready to live in.)

Kershaw gutted his way through three innings, even collecting the first Dodger hit off Padre starter Edinson Volquez, until he was forced out of the game after just 39 pitches. The fact that he even made it that far without being scored upon is noteworthy; if you saw the game, Kershaw was definitely not himself, with a fastball that topped out at only around 91 and command that clearly wasn’t there.

On most nights, losing Kershaw early against a pitcher who appeared to be dealing – Kershaw’s hit was the only one Volquez allowed through three innings – would seem to be something of a death sentence. Fortunately for the Dodgers, Padres gonna Padre, because the wheels really fell off for San Diego in the fourth inning. After getting Mark Ellis to ground out, the next seven Dodger hitters went, in order, single (plus advance on wild pitch), walk, single, bases-loaded walk, walk, bases-loaded walk, before Adam Kennedy ended the threat by popping out to shortstop in place of Kershaw. All told, Volquez walked four Dodgers and threw a wild pitch, allowing two runs to score despite only two singles. They’d tack on another in the fifth after Dee Gordon ended up on third when center fielder Cameron Maybin misplayed a flyball and scored when shortstop Jason Bartlett bobbled a Matt Kemp grounder.

Speaking of Gordon, to simply look at the box score, you’d see that he went 0-5 with three strikeouts and figure that it might be the start of a long, trying season for the young shortstop. And who knows, maybe it will be. But that hardly tells the story; in addition to ending up on third base by running hard all the way on the fly to center, he also did, well, this:

(I was going to GIF that one myself. Chad Moriyama beat me to it, so I’m grabbing his instead. All credit to Chad.) While clearly this offense isn’t going to get too far if Gordon doesn’t figure out a way to get on base, he is one of those rare players who can absolutely impact a game even if he’s not collecting hits. I suppose we’re going to have to keep that in mind if he’s hitting .240/.280/.310 in a month. (Not that I expect he will be.)

Through seven innings, the Dodgers still had just those three singles, including Kershaw’s; that changed quickly once the Padres brought in emergency recall Brad Brach, who had been halfway back to Triple-A before being told to come back once Tim Stauffer was placed on the disabled list. Brach immediately gave up three extra-base hits, including a monsterous homer to right by Matt Kemp. One down, 49 to go! Oh, and Juan Rivera gave back his double with a TOOTBLAN, so there’s that, and Juan Uribe went 0-3 with two strikeouts, in case you were looking for signs of a revival there. On the brighter side, A.J. Ellis got on base twice with a walk and a single, setting his OBP at .500, approximately where I expect it to sit all season.

With Kershaw out, this turned into a bullpen game pretty quickly, with Josh Lindblom and Matt Guerrier looking good in throwing three scoreless innings between them, and Mike MacDougal much less so in allowing a walk & an RBI double in his one inning of work while Kenley Jansen was touched for a mammoth 445-foot shot off the bat of Maybin. Javy Guerra finished it off for his first save of the season. Not to add any more pressure to Chad Billingsley‘s plate tomorrow, but this was a lot more work than was expected from the pen today – hmm, if only there was a handy chart somewhere – so it’s important that he not get knocked out early.

We’ll do it again tomorrow night when Billingsley faces Cory Luebke, and check in early in the day for a special video treat. On a side note, I’d have to say the initial game thread of the new MSTI was a resounding success, no? Over 500 comments and lots of fun with the new system. Thanks for stopping by, if you did.

Seven Reasons for Optimism in 2012

Posted on by 37 Replies

Nearly five months after the disappointing 2011 season ended when a Kenley Jansen-induced flyball off the bat of Arizona’s John McDonald landed in Tony Gwynn‘s glove, pitchers and catchers are finally getting back to work in Camelback Ranch. Hitters will join them later this week, though many, like Dee Gordon and Matt Kemp, are already there. No matter what your outlook is on the 2012 season, this is the time of year where everyone has hope. (Well, everyone who isn’t an Orioles fan, I suppose, because that situation is beyond repair.)

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that much like last year, I haven’t exactly been thrilled with the offseason. The good will engendered by signing Kemp to an eight-year extension (which looks better by the day) hasn’t completely overcome the disappointment of spending millions on backloaded two-year contracts handed out to aging veterans, or that the previously-added expensive veterans like Matt Guerrier, Ted Lilly, & Juan Uribe are unlikely to improve enough to earn their contracts, or the fact that the big bat which was so desperately needed never arrived – despite the late push for Prince Fielder. Just like last year, this team looks like it’s built to win around 83-86 games, with some small chance of pushing 90, though with a likely equal change of falling below .500. When you have two of the best players in the game and some interesting young players around them, that’s not exactly what you hope your expectations would be entering the spring.

Still, it’s not all doom & gloom around here, so with a nod to last year’s attempt at finding some hope ahead of what looks like it could be an uninspiring season… here’s seven reasons why 2012 is going to be great – and no, the return of Brent Leach is not among them.

1. The welcome end of the Frank & Jamie McCourt era. I just cannot overemphasize this enough, because there’s almost nothing that can happen on the field that is going to make us remember 2012 as anything but the year that we finally rid ourselves of these two vultures.

The first mention of their separation on this site came on October 15, 2009, just hours before Game 1 of the NLCS. (Which I’ll never forgive them for. Jackasses. Edit: okay, there may have been other reasons why that happened then.) In the nearly two-and-a-half-years since then, through dozens of sins and probably hundreds of posts on this site, they have bankrupted the team off the field, hindered it on the field, and dragged one of the crown jewels in American sport through untold miles of mud and embarrassment. (And let’s not forget, it’s hardly as though we all loved them right up until the news of their separation came out.)

We don’t know who the next owner will be, or how they’ll run the team. We all pray they’ll be the owner we all hope they will be, but we know that there’s no guarantees; the next owner could be just as bad as the current one. For the moment, it doesn’t matter, because come April 30, it won’t be Frank McCourt. That’s a sentence I’ve been dying to write for years. Soon, friends. Soon.

2. The pure joy of having Kemp & Clayton Kershaw. There’s a lot of fluff on this team. Old, backloaded, underwhelming, underperforming, overpaid fluff that at best will help you tread water, but isn’t going to really help you move forward. Yet in the midst of all that mediocrity, we’re lucky enough to have the best hitter and best pitcher in the National League, two elite talents who are either close to or in their primes, coming off seasons where they reached the potential we all knew they had.

The best part is, short of injury, there’s little reason to think that they won’t as productive in 2012 and going forward, because 2011 was hardly an out-of-nowhere fluke from either player. Kershaw was a top-ten pick who was successful basically from the day he arrived in the bigs and continued to improve through his breakout 2011; Kemp has been a productive player in each of his four full seasons, despite a (somewhat overblown) disappointing 2010. We should be careful not to get ahead of ourselves here, particularly with Kershaw not yet signed to a long-term deal, but it’s pretty hard not to think that we’re watching the early stages of two of the greatest careers in Dodger history. For that alone, we should be thankful.

3. A big rebound season from Andre Ethier. We keep going back and forth on Ethier. On one hand, I’ve been pretty clear that I don’t like the idea of investing big money in a moody, overrated player who isn’t a great defender, absolutely cannot hit lefties, and has dealt with nagging injuries as he moves into his age-30 season. (When you put it like that, he basically sounds like a platoon DH.)

Yet for all his shortcomings, everything is perfectly primed for Ethier to have a really, really big year. He’s finally healthy heading into 2012, and if you don’t think that matters, just check his pre- and post-injury stats from the last two years. He’s also in his final year before free agency, and he’s made his displeasure at not having been signed to an extension clear. Whether it’s to impress new ownership or potential suitors on the market, Ethier has a chip on his shoulder and plenty to prove in 2012. A healthy, motivated Andre Ethier is exactly the kind of Ethier that could put up a huge season… before convincing someone to wildly overpay him.

4. The breathtaking speed of Dee Gordon. I don’t know if Gordon has enough plate discipline to allow his zero-power game to work on the major league level. I don’t know if he can hone his defensive chops enough to stop making the errors on easy plays that occasionally hurt more than his flashy, outstanding plays help. And I especially don’t know if his slight frame can hold up to the rigors of a full season. But I do know this: in just 56 games last season, Gordon and his speed made more jaw-dropping plays on both offense and defense than I think we’ve seen over the last ten years.

Gordon’s done all the right things this winter to improve his game, from working out with Hall of Fame shortstop Barry Larkin to being one of the first to arrive at camp. It remains to be seen what kind of player he’s actually going to be, but no matter how much he progresses (or not) this year, his entertainment value alone is worth the price of admission. Considering the rest of the infielders that’ll be around him, that’s a stat which might even be more important than his on-base percentage.

5. More young pitching on the way. Last year, we were excited to see the next wave of Dodger hitters, since Gordon, Jerry Sands, and Trayvon Robinson were all starting together at Triple-A. All three saw big league time – though not exactly in the way we expected – and Gordon & Sands are poised to be big parts of the Dodger core going forward.

This year, it’s the youthful pitching that demands our attention. Other than Nathan Eovaldi, I’m not even really talking about what we saw in the bigs last year, because Scott Elbert & Josh Lindblom finally proved themselves as big leaguers after having been close for years, and Javy Guerra really came out of nowhere to take over the closer’s job – at least until Kenley Jansen takes it. If you look at all of the various top prospect lists that came out over this offseason, you’ll find an Alfredo Silverio here and a Joc Pederson there, but what you’ll mostly see is a Dodger list that is full of quality pitching, most of which is ready to make their Los Angeles debuts in 2012 and 2013. This year alone, you could see Eovaldi, or Allen Webster, or Shawn Tolleson, or Chris Withrow, or Steve Ames or others, plus the return of Rubby De La Rosa; after them, it might be Zach Lee, Chris Reed, Garrett Gould, Ethan Martin, Aaron Miller, Angel Sanchez and more.

ESPN’s Keith Law summed up the feeling well in a recent chat:

Mike (CT)
After really digging into this did any farm systems surprise you in a good or bad way??

Klaw
Rockies came out better than I expected. Dodgers too. I love that collection of arms, and now it’s close enough to potentially impact the ML club this year.

We all know the failure rate of pitching prospects, and you can guarantee that some of the names on that list will either never make the bigs or do so unsuccessfully. But there’s so much talent there that we’re almost certain to see a few of them make big contributions to the Dodgers over the next few years (whether in blue or via trade), and they’re close enough that it’s worth keeping a close eye on them as they try to advance another level in 2012.

6. Improved infield defense. You can make a good argument that the Dodger infield might be the worst offensive group in baseball. (A really good argument, especially with the durability issues around Gordon, Mark Ellis, and Juan Uribe, and the complete unknown that is James Loney. But hey, at least Adam Kennedy is in reserve!) Who knows what you’ll get out of Uribe – though the fates aren’t on his side – and Ellis is coming off an age-34 season with a .288 OBP.

But what you should get out of this group is some fancy glovework, superior to what we saw last year. For all of his failures, Uribe was a plus defender at third base when he played, and Ellis has long been one of the better defensive second basemen in the game. Assuming health, they’re replacing 970 innings of Aaron Miles (who was merely passable at second and atrocious at third) and about 1050 innings of Jamey Carroll, who was rated as slightly below-average at each of the middle infield spots. As mentioned above, you hope that Gordon can get to enough balls with his incredible range to make up for the easy ones he’ll boot, and it’s easy to see how this group of infielders could potentially be a big step forward over last year. Even when they go down, the glovework may not suffer; for all of my problems with the Kennedy signing (and there are many), he’s still a good second baseman, though one who should never play elsewhere, and Jerry Hairston offers a decent glove at a few spots. Beyond them, playing solid defense might be the only thing Justin Sellers can do.

Is this group going to hit, at all? Well, uh, this is the optimism post, so we’ll stick to what works. At the least, they’ll pick it, and that can only help the questionable starting staff beyond Kershaw.

7. Vin Scully. No matter what happens off the field, no matter how many games are lost on the field, as long as there’s Vin, there’s reason to watch. Well, home games, at least. No year with Vin can be a bad year, and it’s comforting to know that he’ll outlast Frank McCourt at Dodger Stadium.

News From the First Day of Dodger Spring Training

Posted on by 71 Replies

Plenty of news coming in on this first official day of camp, and isn’t that a lovely feeling? Pitchers & catchers have reported, with position players joining them by Monday, and that means we’ll finally have real news & updates to talk about, not just hypotheticals and what-ifs. Don Mattingly held court this morning with a few of our famililar media names, and here’s what we know so far…

* Clayton Kershaw will be your Opening Day starter. (Ken Gurnick) Well, of course. This is news in the sense that “hey, Frank McCourt might not be such a great guy” is news. You know how I feel that the Opening Day assignment is wildly overrated, and so this doesn’t mean a great deal to me. Still, it’s a nice honor for Kershaw, and one that he’ll hopefully be able to carry for at least the next ten years. With three lefties likely to be in the rotation, I imagine that Kershaw will be followed by Chad Billingsley & Ted Lilly, then Aaron Harang & Chris Capuano. That will mean two lefties back-to-back as the rotation turns around, but that’s unavoidable.

* Dee Gordon will lead off and Matt Kemp will hit third. (Eric Stephen) No surprise here, either, especially with how well Kemp finished the year in the #3 spot. I think there’s a good enough argument to be made that Gordon is best served hitting lower in the order, where his inexperience and questionable on-base skills may not be exposed as much, but with his speed there was never any real chance Mattingly would have done that, and to be honest it’s not like there’s an obviously better choice anyway. (No, not even A.J. Ellis.) The official Dodger Twitter notes that Gordon reported early to camp and was in the cage taking BP today, which is a great sign. Dylan Hernandez adds that Mattingly likes the idea of Andre Ethier & Juan Rivera behind Kemp for protection, so while it’s not like we didn’t already know what the batting order was going to be, it seems pretty clear that the regular 8 will work out like so: 1) Gordon 2) Mark Ellis 3) Kemp 4) Ethier 5) Rivera 6) James Loney 7) Juan Uribe 8) A.J. Ellis, with some chance of Loney & Uribe being swapped. You know what’s going to be fun, though? When Gordon is inevitably banged-up, or even just gets a regular day off, and Jerry Hairston or Adam Kennedy gets to lead off instead.

* Blake Hawksworth is not going to be ready for Opening Day. (Dylan Hernandez). This initially came as something of a surprise, because Hawksworth’s January elbow surgery was originally not expected to keep him out so long, but Hernandez reveals that Hawksworth had to have a second procedure to deal with an infection that resulted from the first, so he’s “a few weeks behind schedule.” If there were any justice in the world, this would mean that the final bullpen spot would go to Josh Lindblom, who clearly proved he was big-league ready in his debut last season. Of course, Lindblom has options remaining, and the Dodgers have plenty of washed-up veteran non-roster types in camp. Remember yesterday when I said that I had a feeling that I couldn’t back up that Jamey Wright was going to make this team? Yeah, this is how. Depending on Hawksworth’s timetable, his recovery could force the Dodgers to make some interesting roster choices to make near the end of April when Ronald Belisario is eligible to return from suspension. (I know, it sounds crazy to even suggest it, but Stephen actually saw him in person today.)

* Javy Guerra starts camp as the closer. (Hernandez) Again, no surprise here, because Guerra took hold of the job last year after no one else could and did little to force the team to make a move. If he can be effective again this year, then fantastic, because Kenley Jansen is arguably more valuable as a “fireman” type who can come in and dominate when the situation dictates, rather than tether him to the 9th inning. Still, I see Jansen moving into the 9th inning at some point this year.

* Steve Yeager rejoins the Dodgers. Yeager, who originally joined the organization when he was drafted in 1967 and was a Dodger catcher for all but one of his 15 major league seasons before becoming an occasional Dodger hitting coach for four minor-league affiliates, has been hired to work with the backstops in camp. Yeager hit .228/.298/.355 over his career, which makes him basically the perfect person to work the current group of catchers… or lead an interstellar battleship.

* A spring training primer from Jon Weisman. In a long piece at ESPN/LA, Jon breaks down the players in camp, all the way from Kemp to Lance Zawadzki. Rabid followers over the winter will likely have seen all of these names already, but this is a good resource to keep bookmarked for three weeks from now when you’re trying to remember just who in the hell Matt Chico is.

More to come, no doubt.

Clayton Kershaw Avoids Arbitration With Two-Year Deal

Posted on by 31 Replies

No one ever likes going to arbitration, and Clayton Kershaw is no different – he’s avoided next week’s showdown by agreeing to a two-year deal worth $19m. That breaks down to a $500k signing bonus, $7.5m this year, and $11m in 2013, making it an incredibly rare backloaded two-year deal from Ned Colletti which I don’t hate.

This isn’t really as big of a deal as it sounds, because the contract is essentially the average of what he was likely to get in arbitration over the next two seasons anyway. All it really does is avoid the awkwardness of having to go to the arbitration room and try to pretend there’s actually reasons where you can refute claims of his awesomeness, so that’s something, I suppose. Considering that Tim Lincecum made $23m over the same two years of his career after winning one more Cy Young than Kershaw has, it’s a pretty fair deal all around.

Kershaw’s eligible for free agency following the 2014 season, so this doesn’t completely buy out his arbitration years. That’s fine, but it’s also the route the Phillies have taken with Cole Hamels, and they’re set up for a difficult situation as he enters his walk year with no long-term contract in place. Obviously, the Dodgers are in a different situation – they have just one other large deal as opposed to several, and the ownership situation hangs over everything at the moment – but it’s clear that whomever is actually in control of the club going forward needs to spend every moment of the two years this deal covers attempting to sign Kershaw to the long-term contract we’ve wanted him to have for quite some time.

The Dodgers now have 18 players under contract for 2012 for just a touch under $88m. Include approximately $4m more for the various minimum salary guys, and the active payroll stands at about $92m, not including deferrals and buyouts. That number increases to $92.4m contracted for 2013, though to just 11 players – Matt Kemp gets expensive, and Colletti’s odious two-year deals all ramp up – before dropping back to $33m committed in 2014 to only Kemp and Billingsley. Obviously, by that point you’ll have other young players in arbitration and plenty of other holes that will have need to have been filled.

Update: Tony Jackson reports that $2m of this year’s money is actually deferred to 2013.

******

Unrelated and obviously far less interesting, the Dodgers have signed 37-year-old veteran Jamey Wright to a minor-league contract and an invite to camp. Wright was a first-round pick of the Rockies way back in 1993; he made his debut in 1996 and was in Dodger Stadium three days later for his second career game against a Dodger lineup that featured Chad Fonville, Mike Blowers, and Greg Gagne. Despite being a soft-tossing righty, he has manage to last for sixteen seasons with eight teams, with two stops apiece in Colorado and Kansas City. Wright got into 60 games for the Mariners last year and actually posted a career-best 3.16 ERA, though the 4.30 FIP doesn’t quite back that up. As far as non-roster guys go, he’s par for the course and fine by me, though I’m not exactly sure I see how he has a prayer to make what looks to be a pretty full roster unless the injuries really pile up in camp.

Plenty of Dodgers Making the Cut on Bill James’ Top 100 Pitcher’s Duels

Posted on by 14 Replies

Last year, ESPN and Bill Simmons teamed up to launch “Grantland“, a new venture aimed at focusing more on long-form sportswriting, a throwback to the glory days of magazines and newspapers, as opposed to the shorter blog posts which are more popular today. Predictably, the feedback has been mixed; some of the work I’ve read has been excellent, but good lord, can it be pretentious.

Your feelings on Simmons aside, it’s hard to argue with a staff that includes Chuck Klosterman, Jonah Keri, Rany Jazayerli, and Katie Baker, among many others, and today they’ve added a new luminary: baseball stats legend Bill James. James debuts with a list of the 100 best pitcher’s duels of 2011 – completely subjectively, of course, because how else could you do it – and wouldn’t you know it, 10 of his first 42 entries involved the Dodgers. As it turns out – and this is going to come as a huge surprise, I know – Clayton Kershaw is really, really good, and I don’t know if anything was more fun this past season than watching him constantly beat down Tim Lincecum and the Giants.

3. July 20, 2011, Dodgers at San Francisco, Clayton Kershaw against Tim Lincecum

MSTI, July 20:

Now how about adding eight shutout innings with 12 whiffs against just three hits and a walk? By Game Score, which is admittedly imperfect, that was the third best start of Kershaw’s career. That it was also the third best start of his season should tell you a lot about just how good his 2011 has been so far, particularly now that he’s up to 23 consecutive scoreless innings and an MLB-best 167 strikeouts.

5. September 9, 2011, Dodgers in San Francisco again, Kershaw and Lincecum rematch

Looks like I didn’t say anything, because I was traveling for a wedding that weekend. Stupid weddings, part one.

18. September 20, Giants in L.A., Lincecum against Kershaw, Round 3

Stupid weddings, part two. This was my birthday and I was busy getting engaged. Still not sure that choosing those over watching Kershaw / Lincecum was the right move.

23. June 26, Angels at Dodger Stadium, Jered Weaver against Clayton Kershaw

MSTI, June 26:

This is the 12th time in Kershaw’s career he’s put up double-digit strikeout numbers, though it’s the first time he’s done it in back-to-back starts, since he also struck out 11 Tigers last week. It also put him up to 128 K’s on the season, putting him back ahead of Justin Verlander for the most in baseball. That’s impressive, but that’s not what I liked the best about today; it was the fact that he did it without a single walk. Remember when we said that the only thing holding him back from megaultrastardom was harnessing the walks? Yeah, about that: his K/BB rate from 2008-11: 1.92, 2.03, 2.62, 3.66.

Clayton Kershaw, shiny golden god.

25. August 9, Phillies in Los Angeles, Cliff Lee against Ted Lilly

MSTI, August 9:

On the other side of the ball, for all the jokes we have at Ted Lilly‘s expense, the veteran lefty was actually pretty solid against a good Phillies lineup. Lilly allowed just six hits and a walk over eight innings, which ties for his second-longest outing as a Dodger, and he even drilled Shane Victorino in the back for good measure. Of course, it wouldn’t be a Ted Lilly game if he didn’t allow a homer, and that’s how we get back to Lee, who took Lilly out to right field in the 7th inning. That made the score 2-0, though with the way Lee was pitching against the unimposing Dodger lineup, it might as well have been 200-0.

This was also the game where Dee Gordon injured his shoulder attempting to dive around Ryan Howard at first base, nearly causing all of us to pass out in terror.

31. August 2, Dodgers in San Diego, Mat Latos against Hiroki Kuroda

This win merely put the Dodgers to 50-59, and it’s amazing how tuned out we were from worrying about daily results at the time. The second-half improvement didn’t really get going until the latter half of August, and at the time we’d considered this team completely dead in the water, to the point where I was less concerned about recapping a phenomenal Kuroda start than I was about looking ahead to possible waiver moves and September recalls.

32. March 31 (season opener), San Francisco in Los Angeles, Lincecum against Kershaw

MSTI, March 31:

Earlier today, I noted that I had picked Clayton Kershaw to finish 1st in the NL Cy Young Award voting over at Baseball Prospectus. I’m now concerned that I didn’t pick him quite high enough, because Kershaw was absolutely sublime in tonight’s season opener, to the point where San Francisco starter Tim Lincecum allowed just one unearned run over seven innings himself, yet there was still no question about who was the most dominant starter on the mound tonight.

Kershaw scattered just four hits over seven scoreless innings, but even that doesn’t tell the true tale. One of those hits should have been an error on a botched toss from James Loney to Kershaw, and one was a bloop that fell just out of Loney’s reach. But while Kershaw was outstanding all around, it’s not just the few hits he allowed that impressed me most, and it’s not the nine strikeouts he put up. It’s not even how bad he made a handful of Giants look, particularly when he offered his curve. It’s the fact that he walked just one and made it through seven innings with fewer than 100 pitches. In years past, it might have taken him 120 pitches to get that far; in starts that aren’t his first of the season, you’d expect to see him continue into the 8th and 9th.

Need more proof of Kershaw’s progression? This was the 11th time in his career that he pitched at least seven innings without allowing more than one walk. Though he’s been in the bigs since mid-2008, seven of the previous ten came after June 27, 2010 – i.e., in the last half a season. We’ve long known that Kershaw had all the talent in the world, but there’s now a clear pattern of him harnessing the wildness and becoming one of the most dominant pitchers in the bigs. Mark my words, this is the year he gets the respect from the general public he deserves. Oh, and he turned 23 two weeks ago.

35. June 8, Dodgers in Philadelphia, Hiroki Kuroda against Cole Hamels

Kuroda was very good, as I mentioned…

Hiroki Kuroda sailed through the first four innings on a hot night in Philadelphia, escaped some trouble in the 5th, and then was touched for a Ryan Howard solo homer in the 6th. That was the run that put the Dodgers down 1-0 entering the top of the 7th…

…but this game ended up being far more memorable for being one of the low points of a dreadful first half by the offense, as once again, no Dodger other than Andre Ethier and Matt Kemp could contribute even the slightest bit of help:

Down one run, Andre Ethier & Matt Kemp set up the 5-6-7 hitters with two men in scoring position and no outs. To avoid scoring a run in that situation, you basically have to be actively trying to fail. To the surprise of absolutely no one, Juan Uribe, Marcus Thames, and Rod Barajas failed to get the job done. But that’s not news; Ethier and Kemp have been sabotaged by their underperforming teammates all season long. What really got me was the furor on Twitter as this was happening. In rough chronological order…

Tony Jackson (ESPNLA):

horrible AB by Uribe right there. Just horrible.

EephusBlue:

Boy am I glad we kept Thames

Dylan Hernandez (LA Times):

Thames, who batted 3rd Monday, comes up with men on the corners. “It doesn’t matter where you bat him,” someone said, “the game finds him.

Jayson Stark (ESPN):

The Rod Barajas Fan Club will be delighted to know that once that pop-up came down, he was 2 for 37 this year with men in scoring position.

Jackson:

@jaysonst and that .054 average is 54 points better than Thames, who is now 0 for 11 w/RISP

Jackson:

I have never seen a team come up with more creative ways to not score after getting a runner to third with less than two outs.

Kevin Modesti (LA Daily News):

@dodgerscribe It’s another example of we’ve talked about. Ethier & Kemp get on … Uribe, Thames & Barajas coming up — what do you expect?

ChadMoriyama:

That was one of those Dodgers offense moments you sorta knew was coming, but you still feel disgusted anyway watching it happen.

36. July 9, Dodgers in San Diego, Rubby De La Rosa against Aaron Harang

This led to one of my favorite post titles of the season,”Dodgers Win in Most Dodger Way Possible“. This was still a few weeks before the second half surge really got going, and the team was so bad at this point that it was all you could do to laugh at them.

Being no-hit for 8 2/3 innings, nearly wasting six one-hit innings from rookie standout Rubby De La Rosa, and then winning on two miraculous hits from Juan Uribe and Dioner Navarro, two of the worst hitters on the team?

Yeah, that sounds about right.

42. June 19, Houston in L.A., Bud Norris against Hiroki Kuroda

MSTI, June 19:

For 7 1/3 scoreless innings on Sunday, the Dodgers looked likely to set us up for disappointment. Hiroki Kuroda had sailed through the first seven, allowing just five baserunners before Matt Guerrier threw a clean eighth. After a tough turn around the starting rotation, it was a much-needed boost from the veteran. But yet again, there was absolutely no support from the offense, as Bud Norris and Sergio Escalona held the Dodgers to harmless singles by James Loney and Dioner Navarro, and walks by Matt Kemp and Andre Ethier. There’s a reason Kuroda has a losing record both for the season and his career, and it’s because of games like this. How many times have we seen a solid starting pitching performance wasted due to an offense that is barely of a Triple-A caliber? Tony Gwynn flied out to center to start the eighth, and with the bottom up the order due up, it seemed just a matter of time before patchwork bullpen (though buoyed by the returns of Kenley Jansen yesterday and Hong-Chih Kuo today) would allow the Astros to score and complete the sweep.

Kuroda didn’t get the win in the boxscore today – Guerrier did – but I think we all know who deserves that W next to his name.

Just barely avoiding a sweep against the lowly Astros. How did we survive the first half of the season again?

Perhaps more pertinent to the current situation, I wonder how this list might look if it were redone after 2012, now that Kuroda is gone and De La Rosa is injured. To be fair, Chad Billingsley does appear twice in the second half of the list, Harang was very good in the De La Rosa game, and Chris Capuano had the single best-pitched game of 2011 as judged by Game Score. (To be even more fair, this is a completely subjective list that’s very easy to tear apart and by definition requires both pitchers to be excellent at the same time, something which the mediocre Dodger offense probably had a big hand in.)