Dodgers have plenty to worry about

Phil Gurnee ♦ April 5, 2018 ♦ 1 Comment

It is only five games but here are some concerns.

Kenley Jansen – not only has Kenley been ineffective, his skills don’t look good, and possibly worst of all, no one wants to see a pitcher rubbing their pitching shoulder for as long as Kenley was doing the other night. The velocity is down, that can tick back up. The cutter, however, isn’t doing much. Mechanics? Our Kenley strikes our everyone and walks no one. This Kenley is walking everyone and striking out no one. Kenley went at his own pace this spring and hopefully, he just did a terrible job in getting himself ready and none of this has to do with a sore shoulder.  This one would worry more if I didn’t remember that Jansen hasn’t been the best in April for just about all of his career. The baseball-reference split tool bears this out showing his April OPS being the highest of any month over his career. As long as he’s not hurt, I’m not worried. But damn man, stop rubbing your shoulder.

Split          PA  H HR BB  SO SO/W  OPS
April/March   322 61 10 26 116 4.46 .632
May           255 42  6 17  98 5.76 .557
June          294 45  4 12 119 9.92 .452
July          322 47  8 22 120 5.45 .482
August        310 44  4 23 144 6.26 .453
Sept/Oct      355 53  5 28 144 5.14 .482

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 4/5/2018.

Clayton Kershaw – Clayton has been brilliant when he hasn’t faced lousy hitting left hand hitters.  We have seen this before where Clayton gets taken deep by the dregs of baseball but those folk were normally right-handed dregs. If the Dodgers had scored a few runs in his starts this would just be a funny tagline, but they didn’t and those dregs put two losses on the Dodgers.  This one does not worry me, though I do think this is the year that Clayton stops getting better every year.

The Dodger Offense – other than Yaz the man Grandal and Austin Barnes the offense has been basically non-existent.  Seager can’t hit. Bellinger can’t hit. Forsythe can’t hit.  Can we blame all this on Justin Turner? Sure, go ahead.  This does not worry me. Really.

I can be positive. Two one-run losses on explicable home runs.  Well, I guess the second home run was not that inexplicable given what we saw Jansen throwing Monday night. Which brings us to the other loss, blowing a 3-run lead in the 9th.  Right now that looks like a 4 – 3 record.

But, the real record is what counts and this Diamondback team looks very good. We finally might have a horse race this September.

That would be cool.