The Dodgers finally got off the proverbial schneid beating the Giants 4-3 and snapping a five game losing streak. In the process they avoided being swept at Dodger Stadium which would have been quote embarrassing. It only took them 12 innings to do it though. It took 12 innings, 16 runners left on base and another blown lead in the late innings from the bullpen. Andrew McCutchen’s three-run home run off of Caleb Ferguson in the seventh inning erased a 3-0 Dodger lead and nearly killed them. The Dodgers hung in there and eventually won it in the bottom of the twelfth on Dozier’s walk-off sacrifice fly. Despite all of that they were able to pull out a win. Thank god.
Left hander Hyun-jin Ryu came off the disabled list and provided the Dodgers with six shutout innings. Ryu was excellent allowing just three hits and striking out six without walking anyone. Opposing starter Derek Holland was pretty good too, holding the Dodgers to six hits and four walks over 4.2 innings while striking out seven. Neither starter was involved in the decision. The game was decided much later in the evening.
The Game was scoreless in the fifth inning when the Dodgers had a golden opportunity to take the lead and almost did. Brian Dozier’s ground-rule double and an intentional walk to Manny Machado put two runners on for Matt Kemp. Bison’s broken bat flare into center should have scored Dozier, but San Francisco center fielder Gorkys Hernandez fired a missle to Buster Posey who tagged out Dozier by an eye lash. The official replay confirmed the play. Dozier’s head first slide was a tad too late.
Giants 3 6 0
Dodgers 4 14 0
WP-Baez-4-3
LP-Kelly-0-1
HR-McCutchen-14
The Dodger bats perked up in the sixth and seventh innings against the San Francisco bullpen. Yasiel Puig doubled and came around to score on a Joc Pederson sacrifice fly. In the bottom of the seventh the Dodgers plated two more runs. Justin Turner walked and Manny Machado doubled past the third base bag to score JT and give the Dodgers a 2-0 lead. Machado had a great game collecting three hits and reaching base four times. Later in the inning Matt Kemp’s RBI single knocked in Machado to put the Dodgers ahead 3-0. Speaking of resurgences, Kemp had two hits as well, and reached base three times.
The lead didn’t hold. JT Chargois did his job with a scoreless seventh inning, but McCutchen’s three-run shot tied the score shocking the home faithful and nearly sending yours truly into a fit of rage. That’s now six consecutive games where the Dodger bullpen has blown a lead in the final three innings.
With the game tied at 3-3 entering the bottom of the ninth inning, the Dodgers had a chance for a walk-off and to dispel some demons. The Dodgers had a problem though; they had used up all of their position players. So when Chris Taylor singled and stole second putting himself into scoring position, the Dodgers had to use Kenta Maeda as a pinch-hitter. Ty Blach struck him out of course and onto extra innings we went.
Horrific visions of Enrique Hernandez pitching in Philadelphia filled my head. In order to not get to that point the Dodgers had to score soon. They were running out of bullets. Scott Alexander took the mound in the top of the tenth and nearly blew it again, but he got himself out of it. A Hunter Pence single and a sacrifice bunt put a runner in scoring position for the Giants, but Alexander got three grounders to keep the game tied. I would love to see more of the good Alexander, and not the one giving up walk-offs.
The Dodgers stranded two more runners in the bottom of the tenth and then turned to Pedro Baez to pitch the top of the eleventh. Baez was actually effective pitching two scoreless innings and picking up the win. In the bottom of the twelfth, Yasmani Grandal led off with a double. Max Muncy singled him to third and Dozier’s sacrifice fly scored the winner.
It’s been a while since we’ve had a productive positive night. The Dodgers gained a game on the Rockies and a half game on the idle Dbacks. They’re now 1.5 games behind in the NL West, moving back into second place. The Dodgers will pack up and fly to Seattle where they will open a three game series on Friday night against the Mariners. Walker Buehler will open the series against left hander Wade LeBlanc.
The question that I asked myself was why did Roberts bring in the lefty Ferguson knowing that the next 4 batters were all righties that he would be facing? After completely blowing the lead, he takes out Ferguson and replaces him with a righty. How is this logical either in traditional baseball wisdom or sabremetrics? Anyone care to answer?
What a sight Maeda was batting. I’ve never seen these kinds of situations come up like this till this season with Roberts at the helm. Everything is topsy-turvy now.
Loved seeing the ‘ideal’ of Turner, Machado, Kemp, producing runs and getting on base. Imagine adding Seager to this group! But I doubt they keep both Machado and Kemp, but who knows.
Baez did a great job pitching 2 innings. He even batted!
Utility players are alright, but when 2 or 3 are your starters, it’s a problem. Taylor, with 7 SB’s has been caught stealing 6x!, (Cody has 10 SB and 0 CS) and Hernandez are being used too much, and Muncy is not really producing anything but the occasional HR with no defense. Time to re-introduce some minor leaguers into the lineup. We need both defense and contact hitters. Do such animals exist for us?
More to the point, they don’t exist for FAZ.
“Anyone care to answer?”
I will.
Check his splits.
The team battled, I’ll give them that. 10 BB. (Thank you SF). 3 for 15 WRISP. That still sucks. Baez and Goeddel, 3.1 clean innings. Good sign.
Taylor needs to sit or be sent out. Post All Star he’s OPS’n .643 with a 38% K rate. I’d rather see Verdugo. He’s hitting .396 against lhp at AAA. He’s an every day player that should be in our lineup.
Seattle. In Seattle. That will be a test. Arizona at San Diego. That won’t be. We get the Cards after that. They are playing well.
This season will come down to how we play in September. That’s as it should be. We play 5 more games on the road than at home that month. We have another brutal 10 game road stretch ending with 4 in St. Louis. We end on the road with 6 against the Dbacks and giants.
If we are going to win this thing our squirrels need to wake the ef up.
Badger,
Ferguson has given up 4x(12-3) more rbi’s to RH batters than to lefties, and 4x(4-1) more HR’s! Oddly enough, he has struck out a lot more righties than lefties, 33-9.
Scott, what is the problem fixing the sign in? Between you and WordPress, it should have been figure out a while ago.
Selective stat based on number of plate appearances Jeff.
More importantly:
98 PA vs RHB – OPS .615, BA .202.
52 PA vs LHB – OPS .668, BA .205.
You asked the question, you got your answer. Ferguson has success against RHB. THAT is why Roberts went with him. You may not have liked the decision, but the numbers justify it. When it comes to Roberts’ decisions, there are always numbers behind them. It’s how the Dodgers and their manager operate.
It’s not a problem with the site Jeff, it’s either a wordpress problem, or something else. Plus there is no wordpress support line to call. It might help to reset your browser and or clear caches on your machine. Possibly try a different browser and see if it does the same thing. On my end, nothing has changed. I don’t have to log back in unless I reboot my computer. WordPress did release an update a few weeks ago, which might have effected. I’m sure we’ll figure it out soon.
The problem is that all year they have been playing with a 4 man bench. This I dislike immensely. It puts you at a disadvantage late in the game. But they feel the need to carry 13 pitchers. I think it is time that MLB adjusts the roster rules and increase the roster to 26 or 27. That makes more sense since teams now carry 5 or 6 starters. It also gives you a chance to have that emergency player on the team. Last night, Grandal came very close to getting tossed arguing balls and strikes. They had no one on the bench to replace him as Kike and Barnes were both out of the game.
Hey Scott
Do not know about others but my sign in info is back to the way it was before. Looks like some things have changed but not the sign in. Why did it change back like it was? It was doing good.
The jetpack commenting system is super limited, i.e. no support for adding attachments or videos, and other people were still having issues.
“The World of Managing according to Roberts”, never cared much for this book.
Badger
We don’t need just another hitter that can get on base, we need a hitter that can get key hits, when runners are in scoring position.
Verdugo’s numbers goes down quite a bit, in these situations.
Tole’s has been much better at AAA this year in these situations, and he has been good every time he has played at the major league level, in these situations too.
Verdugo didn’t have good numbers when runners were in scoring position, at the major league level this year, either.
In AAA, Verdugo with runners on base, 352 average, OPS 886.
In AAA, Toles with runners on base average, 374, OPS 952.
Runners in scoring position, Verdugo average, 318 OPS 776.
Toles average 396, OPS 1060.
And besides the fact that Toles OPS is 200 points higher in these situations in AAA, he has much better numbers at the major league level this year too, and he has more major league experience, then Verdugo.
First, Ryu pitched a very good game, considering how long he was out, but I wasn’t surprised, because he knows how to pitch.
I hope his curve was breaking like it did before he got hurt, because that was the difference this year then last year, although Orel talked about his cutter last night.
It was good to see the team do more on offense last night too, but I must admit, I am going to have to see more.
But Manny and Kemp, both of a history of hitting, so I wouldn’t be surprised, if they continued to hit.
But we didn’t do much against the leftie starter Holland last night, and we face another leftie starter, tonight.
And we usually don’t do that well when we have not seen a pitcher before, and I don’t think we have faced this starter from the Mariners before, although maybe Manny and Dozier, have faced this same pitcher, before.
It will be interesting to see what they do against the Mariners, tonight.
Color me totally skeptical about this win, starting with running out of position players and batting Maeda with two on in the bottom of the 9th. Overloading the roster with a bunch of middling relievers have been a verified and veritable disaster over the last 8 games, and having a very short bench almost cost us another win tonight.
I like all our players except some of the relievers. When a whole team goes bad at once, you look for some factor that seems to affect all of them. Quite often they fire the manager in those circumstances… In this case there seems to be some question of who is the actual manager… A humorous situation if Roberts gets fired for following the orders of his GM.
Is everyone able to comment without an email and name each time you comment?
Not me pack. Have to sign in every time.
Scott tried new software but it was temporary so he dropped it. Apparently whatever this is is above Scott’s paygrade.
Package
No one can do that, because Scott had to go back to his original way, because he was having to much trouble with others things, when he changed his site that time.
All of us are in the same boat, Package. The Discus software Scott tried worked fine for me, but some of our cohorts who use alternative receptors instead of computers had trouble with it. I really don’t think that anyone here makes such a large number of comments that signing in becomes a burden…
40 games left. That is all. Two tough series coming up against contending teams in the Mariners and the Cardinals. St. Loo is a hot team right now. They had better have their hitting shoes on.
Puig gets a two game suspension.
Warranted.
Dumb move. The team lost you for that game and now two more.
Puig blew it, for 2 games he barely got a love-pat with Hundley. Puig should have really smacked him around for the amount of cash he is having to cough up.
Gives us Toles and then let him play, and play and play.
All season we play with a revolving situation at 2B, then we trade for NotShyte and suddenly NotShyte is penciled in pretty much every night. I like a solid night in and night out line-up, for the most part. I am really impressed with NotShyte and only we wished we had gotten him earlier this summer. Think of it, the Dodgers signed ForShyte for 2 more seasons, geez!
True: You are dreaming. They are not going to call Toles up until September. And even if he was called up there are no guarantees he plays the way he has been playing at OKC. Verdugo is having a better season than Toles and there is no guarantee there either. I don’t want to hear the same lame argument that MJ gives about he has done well every time he has been up. That just is not true. The first time he was called up he hit over .300. The last 2 times he has not done that well, nor has he hit with the power he displayed that year. He also is a defensive down grade from Puig. No way he has that kind of arm out there. And Forsythe was not signed for 2 more seasons, that was Utley who is retiring at the end of the year and not playing that second year. They picked up Forsythe’s option. No matter what he was gone the end of this year. In 16 Toles hit .314 with 3 homers and 16 RBI’s, in17 when he got hurt he was hitting . 271 with 5 homers and 15 RBI’s. In limited action this year, .261 with no homers and 4 RBI’s. Not exactly glowing the last 2 trips to the majors, and certainly not Puig’s power or defense. Also with only a 2 game suspension, Puig will no doubt protest it and keep playing until some judgment is rendered. So who is he going to replace? Kemp, no way, Pederson? Even less likely. Taylor? Bellinger? There is not a spot for either Toles or Verdugo, if there were, one of them would most likely already be here.
Michael
Toles will not play right, and he hit as many HRs that Puig did last year, in the first month of the season, which was the most in the team.
And he was second in RBIs for the team too.
And he was just started to get hot when he got hurt.
You better check out his career numbers before you shoot your mouth off.
Because his career numbers are better then a few players on this team.
And he doesn’t have to be told to put the ball in play for four years, like some on this team.
He also has really good numbers every time he has played at the major league level, with runners in scoring position.
No one on this team, except Kemp, Turner, and Manny, have as good of numbers, in these situations.
And both Verdugo and Toles have better bat to ball skills then a lot on this team.
And we have players on this team, that has not even hit 250 for a season, and have not hit consistently for a season, either yet!
And the season isn’t over, we know some have not hit well in August in the past too!
And Verdugo has a very good arm!
Michael
Toles only had 24 at bats, when he came up this year.
And he hit in more runs then both Kike and Joc.
Even though they both had double the at bats, double the starts, and double the opportunities, to hit in runs!
In fact Toles hit in the most runs on the team that week.
He shared the team lead with Taylor.
We have players that haven’t even hit 250 for a season yet, and have not hit consistently for a season, after three plus years yet either.
And the season isn’t over yet!
You better check your the August numbers!
His minor league stats or his major league? Ok, in 224 at bats he is hitting .290 with 8 HR’s and 35 RBI’s Not bad, that translates to maybe 17HR’s and 75 Ribbies over a full season. No where close to Kemp’s career numbers, and as for Puig, you throw out his injury years and he is much better. CF is where he might fit in, BUT, and this is what you and everyone else seems to forget, THERE IS NO ROOM FOR HIM ON THE ROSTER! Period, end of story. And his last stint up here was not all that great as I pointed out. Look, I like the guy, he plays hard, but he is not going to get a real chance on this team unless something drastic and major happens, and once you get that into that thick skull of yours you will realize that he is where he is on the pecking order for a reason. Same thing with Verdugo, and to some extent, Farmer. They all have skills and have had some success at the big league level. So since you are no fortune teller, you have no clue what Toles would do over an entire season in the majors and neither do I. Success over an extended time in the majors is not all that easy. Look at how far down Bellinger and Taylor have slid. And they have pretty much a full season under their belts. So I am not shooting off my mouth, I am stating facts. Once the league adjusts to a player, his stats usually trend downward and unless he makes adjustments, he will stay in a prolonged slump. Even a player like Kemp, who has 13 years of experience goes into a slide. It is how they handle that experience that either makes them better or worse players. AAA stats mean nothing. Unless you are just one of those Mike Trout kind of players who make the transition without too much trouble. Look how long it has taken Joc Pederson to get it. Everyone was screaming for his head and wanting to send him down and bring up Toles or Verdugo, they didn’t and the kid has become a much better player because of their patience. Toles would be better served in an organization where he was not blocked by so many talented players. You guys seem to act like all they need to do is call this kid up and he is going to hit from day 1. Maybe he would. But with only 14 days left in the month and the September call ups right around the corner, it is not going to happen unless someone goes down with an injury. The weakest link in the outfield right now is Taylor. He is striking out way too much, and not being the same hitter he was last year. You mentioned how good Toles was until he was injured….great, glad for him, but that means nothing this year. Since April, Puig is hitting close to .300, providing stellar defense, has hit all of his home runs and is striking out less than he ever has. He only has 66 for the year. Toles is hitting .312 at OKC and has not hit for power at all with 4 dingers and 28 RBI’s. Pederson is having his worst month so far, but still has decent power numbers and is not striking out much. If your wondering why I said that it is because he has 6 hits this month and 4 of them are homers. Taylor is also having his worse month so far. But do you honestly think that FAZ, or Roberts, are going to sit down, send down or release any of those guys so Andrew Toles or Verdugo gets a shot? Not the way they work kiddo. I do not care how much talent you or anyone else thinks Andrew has, he is # 6 or 7 on the depth chart, which means he stays right where he is until at least September, or a catastrophic injury occurs. And no wishing by you or anyone else is going to change that. You have seen how FAZ works, what makes you think that is going to change? You are dreaming. And I predict, Toles will never be a starter on this team for the simple reason that they have too many good outfielders in front of the guy. He is no prospect anymore and they have a bunch of very talented outfielders coming up through the ranks, including guys like Tim Locastro who was promoted before Toles was this year because of his speed. So get over yourself MJ, you are not all that frippen smart. Oh by the way, since Toles has never played a full season in the bigs and only has a little over 200 big league at bats, comparing him to anyone over a full season is moot.
We are facing a leftie starter in the first game in that series, against the Cards this weekend.
And it looks like that starter might have reverse splits, and because of that, this might not be a fun game to watch, depending on the line up.
Like Michael said, the Cards have been hot, they have won 9 straight games, and they have also won one more game then us, now.
I think the wild card comes out of the central division, so we have to win the West, if we want to play in the post season.
It isn’t going to be as easy as it has, for the last few years.
And I hear the Cards are playing the game like baseball use to be played, not simply going with the odds, and using only saber metrics, to win games.
And we know the Cards always seem to have good young, starting pitchers.
We do not play the Cardinals until Monday. They are playing the Mariners this weekend in Seattle.
Michael
That is no fault on his own, and we all know he wasn’t given four years, to learn how to hit consistently.
And we know that some on this team still hasn’t hit consistently for a season yet, or even hit 250 for a season yet, after three plus years.
And they are only hitting a point over 250 right now, but in August they are hitting below 200, and August has always been a problem, in two of the last three years.
And if you didn’t forget, this team has had trouble scoring runs, because most of these hitters can’t get hits, when runners are in scoring position!
And a lot of players on this team, don’t hit lefties, including a lot of rightie hitters!
Michael
The players on this team are not getting the job done.
Most of this team can’t get a hit, when runners are in scoring position.
And most on this team can’t hit lefties, including three players in the outfield, and including a lot of righties.
And they will be facing more lefties for the rest of the season, because of these issues.
And the team has had trouble getting hits, when runners are in scoring position, against both lefties and righties!
You can say what you want, but the team isn’t providing any offense, at all, and because of that, the team is not winning many games.
And just because we won this last game in 12 innings, doesn’t change any of this!
And we all know here, the history of these players and how they have produced, When they were given a chance.
Badger
I also was looking at splits, and I noticed that Verdugo has not hit lefties as well, at the major league level too.
Granted it is only 16 at bats, a small sample, but in those 16 at bats, Verdugo only got three hits.
Toles had 6 at bats against lefties when he was briefly up, and he got one hit.
But you also mentioned Taylor, Stanton has had 40 more at bats then Taylor, but Stanton has only struck out 14 more times.
Taylor has hit 13 HRs, and Stanton has hit 30 HRs.
Taylor has already struck out more this year, then all of last year.
I just had a long post disappear on me because I made an”error” on my address.
The error is being made by the administrator of this site. Fix the problem Scott.
test
New post, Package. It’s called Mannywood in Seattle.
Badger, this system works OK with computers. It’s not as good as it used to be, but who among us is? I’m sure Scott is trying his best to solve the problem but this cybernetic crap is awfully hard to understand and it probably is a case of Word Press changing their software and totally beyond Scott’s control. I know you and MJ are deeply attached to your cell phones but the Internet protocol is designed for computers and only works to a small degree with cell phones and tablets. This is OK for me or I’d be equally happy if he had bit the bullet and bought the Discus Software.
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