Pitching and Hitting

 OK we are going to look at the week of August 3rd to August 10th.  Over those 7 games The Dodgers only hit .189.  The looked like they were not there to play baseball at all.  They looked like they were there for the free sunflower seeds.  Wait!  During this whole Covid deal they are not allowed to have sunflower seeds.  We might be onto something.  

Anyway

Of the 42 hits they managed, 12 of them were Home Runs so they still averaged 4.9 runs a game over that stretch.  They struck out and average of 6.7 times a game and that is well below the league average.  That's just always a good sign.

During those seven games the starting pitchers had an ERA of 4.48.  The bullpen has an ERA of 2.13.  A pedestrian result from the starters and a strong result from the relievers.

Somehow they went 4-3 over those seven days.

Things only got better from there

San Francisco Giants Again

 The Dodgers have five losses so far this season and three of then have been to the Giants.  The 7-10 Giants.  The Dodgers are surviving on good pitching and timely hitting.  They are batting .234 for the season.  They are batting .256 with runners in scoring position and .266 with runners in scoring position and 2 outs.  That's how they can hit .185 for a three games series and still win two out of three.

Who can complain.

Charlie Steiner is another really great broadcaster.  He brought up how it's not just Cody Bellinger and Max Muncy who forgot how to hit the ball.  There are several All-Stars that are not even close to what they are capable of doing.  

Here is how we are going to look at that.  If you take the stats of the top 10 guys from last season and added it all up they hit.321.  They were averaging .21 Home Runs, .58 RBIs, .36 Walks and .75 Strikeouts per game.

So far this season those same 10 guys are hitting .258.  The per game deal is .13 Home Runs, .44 RBIs, .46 Walks and .82 Strikeouts.

So it's not just Cody Bellinger and Max Muncy.  What a relief!

There's still time

55-5

San Diego Padres

 Someone on MLB Network said that the Padres were going to be good.  Since that turned out to be true let's assume it was Harold Reynolds.  That guy does a good job of liking baseball and talking about it.

The Dodgers won the series 2-1 and that's good considering how atrocious the offense was.  Over the three games series they hit .200 with 22 Strikeouts.  Let's give credit where credit is due.  The staring pitchers for the Padres looked really good.  Lamet and Richards both had velocity and serious movement on their pitches.  

The starters for the Dodgers had a 4.86 ERA over the three game set so the person that we have decided is Harold Reynolds was spot on.

It seems like the difference was that the Dodgers got the hits they needed when they needed them.  The other difference was that the Padres looked like they tried to do too much when it came to base running.  I don't if that was players losing their marbles or Glenn Hoffman just waving everybody through but it helped.

The Dodgers are 9-4.  Hopefully Mookie's finger is feeling better and Corey's calf is feeling better and Cody's whatever stops getting in the way.

Now the Giants are coming back to town.

They are the next step toward...

56-4

Seven and Three

OK seriously, so far so good.  If you take a moment and consider that one weird move by Dave Roberts, they could have swept the Diamondbacks and had an MLB best 8-2 record.  It might have been an insane, untreated syphilis crazy type of move but let's let that go.

Cody Bellinger was given a day off on Saturday and in his first at bat on Sunday he hit his first Home Run of the season.  That was great.

Mookie Betts has finally become Mookie Betts and that's great.

Starting pitching has and ERA of 2.66 making them the 5th best in MLB.  The bullpen has been out of this world!  They have and ERA of 0.99 so all together the pitching staff has an MLB best 1.84 ERA.

Now it's time to beat up on the Padres.  They have scored an MLB best 59 runs so far so we are about to find how good the pitching really is.

57-3!  Sure.  No problem.

What Was That

The first of this four game deal with the Diamondbacks started out nice and zesty.  They hung three runs in the first and another in the second.  Jumping out early like that made it look like it was going to be non-stop spanky spank but then the bats just went cold.  There was a run in the 5th and a run on the 6th but in the end there is nothing to complain about because they won 6-3.  

Good deal.

The next game was a fiasco.  It started out nice.  Tony Gonsolin looked like a pro and Mookie Betts finally put one in the seats.  Mookie gunned Ketel Marte down at third with a throw that made Yasiel Puig look like Johnny Damon.  It was nice to see him start doing the things that made Freidman give him all that money.

On to the fiasco.  Why on earth would Dave Roberts walk a guy hitting .133 to load the bases for a guy hitting .308?  Walking a lefty to get the right handed matchup is normal baseball but the Dodgers would have had better luck if they just asked Blake Treinen to pitch to Eduardo Escobar lefthanded.

Cody Bellinger still looks awful.  He is hitting .139.  He has only struckout 6 times but he is missing on good pitches.  He came up with the tying run in scoring position and popped up on one pitch to end the game.  It's probably time to move Cody Bellinger back in the lineup.  Have him switch spots with Corey Seager.  That guy is going to get a bill for breaking empty seats with how hard he is hitting the ball.  I think if he hit one off of your cardboard cutouts you would feel while you were sitting on the couch.

Speaking of cardboard cutouts, AJ Pollock looked at a couple of strikes and then swung and missed.  The next time he looked at a strike and fouled a couple off and looked at strike three.  He hit .467 over the previous five games so it was tough to watch him go backward.

Anyway

Tough loss

We'll have to settle for 57-3

Houston Asterisks

Who would have thought that Joe Kelly would be the guy that would start throwing at Houston Astros.  He was still in Boston in 2017.  Of course that Boston team lost to the Astros in the 2017 playoffs so maybe he's still sore about that.  Either way an 8 game suspension is preposterous.  

Of course the nice thing is that The Dodgers swept the adorable little two game mini-series.  They did with an offense that has not come together.  They are leaving a ton of tunner out there and they are looking at a lot of strikes.  It feels like they haven't been able to rinse all the of Turner Ward off of them.  Mookie Betts and Cody Bellinger are hitting a combined .196 with only 5 RBIs.  On the bright side they have only struckout a combined 8 times so they are going to figure it out.  It's just that the 60 game season makes it all so urgent.   

It should also be in here that AJ Pollock deserves an apology for that cardboard cutout joke.  He's only had 12 ABs but he's hitting .500 and some of those have been absolute rockets.

So right now they are 4-2 and that has been mainly around starting pitchers have a very decent 2.96 ERA and a bullpen with an outstanding 1.14 ERA.

Once the offense really gets going they will probably go 58-2 for the season.

Right?

Evaporated Optimism

Splitting a 4 Game series with the Giants just didn't seem like a thing that could happen.  It really doesn't matter that the Giants always look like Disney child actors that outgrew their TV shows.  It mattered that they really looked like a bad baseball team in the first two games.

Julio Urias didn't look too sharp.  Overall it was a good outing.  He gave up only one earned run in 5 innings.  If he wants to do that every fifth day I'm sure the almighty Friedman won't be looking for a replacement.  He walked three.  He threw 78 pitched and 51 of them were strikes.  I don't know, maybe it was just that the walks ended up really hurting and maybe it was that a lot of the pitches were nowhere near the zone.  Who knows.

The other alarming detail is that The Dodgers sure did look at a lot of first pitch strikes.  That was new. 

Also

What is going with the #11?  Who remembers the agony of watching a Logan Forsythe plate appearance?  Who remembers the unwashed grouch that Josh Reddick was in his short time with The Dodgers?  How many letters did they waste putting Erisbel Arruebarrena's name on the back of a #11 jersey.  Manny Mota must have run out of middle fingers to give these guys.

Now AJ Pollock goes up there, looks at the ball and refuses to swing.  I thought they sent a cardboard cutout to take his place in the batting order. 

Well he drove and exquisite double into the gap to leadoff the 9th but a popout, a flyout and a strikeout later left things at 3-1 and the Dodgers with a 2-2 split in their opening series.

So they aren't going to win all 60 but they can still go 58-2 and that would be just fine.