Daily NL Wild Card race update 09/09/16
Close games but everyone won except the Pirates so no real changes took place except that Miami is now even with the Pirates at 5 games back. Still Giants by 1/2 a game over the Mets and the Mets 1/2 game over the Cardinals, with Miami/Pirates both five games back of the Mets.
The Giants won a 12 inning game against Arizona even though the Giants started Bumgarner against Rubby De La Rosa. Rubby hadn’t pitched since May 25th and was only able to pitch two innings. The Diamondbacks gave it their all, using 12 pitchers including three pitchers who had started at least eight games for them but to no avail as the Giants won 7 – 6. To rub more salt into the wound, the much maligned Joe Nathan picked up the victory by pitching one inning of relief.
The Mets stayed hot, coming from behind to beat the Braves by scoring four runs in the eighth inning to win 6 – 4. Matt Kemp blasted his 29th home run and even walked twice for the Braves in the losing effort.
The Cardinals barely hung on to beat the Brewers 4 – 3 behind Carlos Martinez. Carlos went seven innings but only struck out one batter. Cardinals got two more home runs this time from Carpenter and Piscotty.
Magnificent home Fernandez to much for the Magic of the Starting Toles and the Return of the King
Dodger fans got a taste of what it is like when the rest of baseball faces Clayton Kershaw if they watched Jose Fernandez toy with the potent Dodger lineup last night.
As has been documented over and over Jose Fernandez is virtually unbeatable at home, and last night he showed why. Striking out fourteen in only seven innings Jose won his fourteenth game of the year and increased his incredible home record to 28 – 2. Jose now has 238 strikeouts in only 167 innings. His strikeout numbers are boggling because he never pitches more than seven innings.
- On June 5th, 14 K’s, zero walks, 21 outs, home start
- On July 18th, 14 K’s, two walks, 19 outs, road start
- Sept 9th, 14 K’s, three walks, 21 outs, home start
- April 6th, 13 K’s, one walks, 16 outs, home start
- June 26th, 13 K’s, three walks, 21 outs, start
Fernandez has struck out >= 13 hitters five times this year. It has been done 25 times this year but the only other pitcher who has done it more than one time is Clayton Kershaw who has done it three times.
Andrew Toles is now 12 – 3 in starts after running into the buzzsaw that was Jose Fernandez. This was the first loss in a starting game for Toles since July 30th. Toles struck out three times but he was in good company. Josh Reddick was the only Dodger not impressed with Jose as he picked up two of the three hits against Fernandez. Toles did drive that ball deep in his last at-bat against Ramos so hopefully, this was more of the case of Jose Fernandez than it was about Toles cooling off.
The Return of the King kind of went as expected, In was what basically a rehab game, Kershaw only went three innings though it looked like he wanted to go four. He had some good pitches and some bad pitches, but the most important thing that happened last night was Clayton Kershaw pitching in a major league game for the Dodgers.
The Dodgers lost a game in their lead over the Giants, but that should have been expected. The Dodgers were facing Jose Fernandez at home, the Dodgers were pitching someone who hadn’t pitched since late June other than one brief rehab game, and Bumgarner was facing Rubby De La Rosa who hadn’t pitched in months. The Diamondbacks still made it close.
Looks like the Dodgers just added a left-hand hitting outfielder
Just as Andrew Toles gets his second start in a row tonight, he looks in the rear view mirror and sees Andre Ethier coasting into Miami. According to the pre-game Dodger notes Andre is headed to Miami and at some point this weekend, possibly even tonight the Dodgers will be activating the longest tenured Dodger giving the Dodgers another left-handed hitting outfielder. Currently not exactly a position the Dodgers are short in with Reddick / Pederson / Toles, but at the very least Andre should give the Dodgers another weapon as a left-handed pinch hitter.
It has been speculated that Andre will DH when the Dodgers head up to face the Yankees after the three-game series with the Marlins. That makes sense, once that series is done, we will have to wait and see if Andre is able to handle defensive duties in LF.
The Dodgers hope to make amends for the four-game sweep by the Marlins way back in April. It might be tough in game one with Kershaw squaring off against Jose Fernandez for several reasons. This will be Clayton’s first game in months and he can’t be expected to be either particularly effective or last very long, but this is Clayton Kershaw so who knows. The other reason is that Jose Fernandez is hard to beat at home as Vin Scully mentioned a few times in the past week. Just to iterate Jose is 27 – 2 at home, and if wins don’t matter to you, how about an OPS against of just .511. For context the best pitcher in baseball over the past five years, Clayton Kershaw has an OPS at home of .542.
After tonight it gets easier with the Marlins throwing two sub-par right-handers at the potent left hand hitting Dodger lineup.
Sound of the Dodgers – Starring Vin Scully
Craig Minami mentioned that vinyl was hot so I started going through all my vinyl and found this in my Mother-In-Laws collection. She actually had two, one used and one still plastic wrapped.
Need to get my turntable back up and running. I took apart my music center and when I put it back together it wasn’t functioning correctly.
Looking forward to giving it a listen
These are the tracks:
- Dodger Stadium with Maury Wills, Willie Davis, and Stubby Kaye
- Somebody’s Keeping Score with Maury Wills
- What is a Dodger with Vin Scully
- Soliloquoy Of A Dodger Fan with Stubby Kay and the Album spells Soliloquy that way.
- Dandy Sandy with Jimmy Durante
- That’s The Way The Ball Bounces with Willie Davis
- The Story Of The L.A. Dodgers with Vin Scully
From what I gather they sold this at Dodger Stadium, looks like 1963 so these two albums are 53 years old. I will admit right now, at this moment I have no idea who Stubby Kaye is. Now that I’ve looked him up, he is easily recognizable.
Jimmy Durante was famous for many things but the two things I remember were his huge Schnozzola, and gravely voice. I wonder if Louis Armstrong and Durante ever sang together?
Wild Card Race is Giants to lose
With the Giants playing so poorly that they have basically ceded the NL Western Division Championship to the surging Dodgers, can they even hold onto a Wild Card spot?
Every Dodger and Giant fan can tell you that the Giants won their last championship by getting into the play-in game but can they even get into that game this year?
As of right now the Giants have a 1/2 game lead over the NY Mets and a one-game lead over the lacklustre Cardinals. Pittsburgh and Miami are both headed backwards, and though they have a shot, it is such a slim one, I’m not going to bother with discussing them, except to say they both picked a bad time to go 2 – 8 over their last 10 games.
The Giants were, of course, the team with the best record in baseball at the all-star game and held a huge 6. 5 lead over the Dodgers in the NL West. Much has been written about how the Giants have been the worst team in baseball since the all-star break and that 6.5 lead over the Dodgers is now a five-game deficit. The funny part of this is that when you google “Giants worse record in the 2nd half” you have dates from August 22nd to Sept 8th. Which basically means that the panic button was hit on August 22nd, and has been held down for almost three weeks. Can a team that had to use Joe Nathan in one of the biggest games of the year in the bottom of the 9th be a team that has a reasonable shot at holding off the NY Mets and Cardinals?
the odds are statistically based, and they don’t include factors like “the Giants playing like absolute buffoons” and other technical details, but that’s probably a good thing. We hate the Giants right now because we have to watch them, but they probably aren’t this bad. The formulas and spreadsheets haven’t had to watch this unwatchable joy-prison night after night after night, so they don’t care. They’re just looking at a 1½-game advantage over the Mets with 24 games left, with 13 games remaining against under-.500 teams, and they’re liking the Giants’ odds.
Of course, Grant wrote this before that 1 1/2 lead over the Mets had shrunk to 1/2 game in 24 hours. This is what Grant wrote after that loss on Wednesday Night.
Disclaimer – Grant Bisbee is my favorite write these days and it is probably a good thing he writes about the Giants for SB Nation. If a hack had been at the helm during their three ring run it would have been a tad more annoying than it already was. I knew Grant was good but when he writes about his Giants as they tumble around as though they are in an endless dryer cycle he gets better and better. Who else could come up with the pain index?
So we have the basics. Yes, this Giants team is historically bad when trailing after eight innings. Yes, they’re historically bad when leading after eight innings. Just how rare is the combination?
For that, I developed the Pain Index, which is nothing more than:
———————————–
Losses when leading after 8 innings
–wins when trailing after 8 innings
————————————
So the higher the number, the more painful the ninth innings in that season. How do the 2016 Giants rank?
The Giants have the lead but it would be hard to say they the best shot. For one thing, they play the Dodgers six more times, and for the second thing. They are playing historically horrible.
Lucky for the Giants, one of the teams chasing them are the Cardinals, and the Cardinals are not exactly a safe bet to play well enough to even catch a team like the Giants. The Cardinals are 5-5 in their last ten games after being pounded by the Brewers tonight. The Cardinals have three more games with the Brewers, and then get to play the Cubs. Once they are done with the Cubs, they embark on a West Coast trip where they get to play the Giants head to head in a series that could decide who goes home first in October. If they are still in good shape after the Giant series, they have to go to Coors, and nobody wants to play the Rockies at home. At that point, they can breathe easy and finish the season at home against the Reds and Pirates.
The Mets are the one team in the Wild Card race that is playing very well. Buoyed by the return of Jose Reyes atop the lineup the Mets are 8 – 2 in their last 10 games and have climbed past the Cardinals and are sniffing right up the Giants wazoo. Over his last 100 at-bats, Reyes has a .862 OPS from the leadoff spot and has scored 21 times in those 24 games. The schedule also looks kindly toward the Mets. They start off this weekend at Atlanta, then head up to Washington. After that, they probably get the easiest paper matchups, as the Twins / Braves / Phillies (all lottery teams) play the Mets at home. The Mets end the season by playing Miami and Philly on the road. By that time Jose Fernandez will probably have been shut down unless the Marlins go on their own explicable run.
If I was handicapping this race I’d expect the Mets due to the schedule/pitching/lineup to end up at the top of the Wild Card race.
I’m having a harder time on picking between the Cardinals and Giants. The Cardinals have gotten great work from Gyorko and more recently Grichuk. Gyorko has hit 26 home runs in only 330 at-bats, a ridiculous hr/ab ratio for a middle infielder. Until you notice that Brandon Moss has 25 home runs in only 340 at-bats. But I’m not done. Randall Grichuk has 22 home runs in 359 at-bats. Are they playing in Coors? Grichuk was doing so poorly he was sent to AAA on two separate occasions this summer, but since returning on Aug 11th,he has an OPS of 1.066 with 10 home runs in 94 at-bats.
The Giants on the other hand still have a formidable rotation of Bumgarner/Cueto/Shark/Moore and a team that has Posey/Belt/Pence. If just doesn’t seem probable that they can be this bad for this long but they have been. Three weeks to turn it around and games against the Dodgers and Cardinals.
I’m not normally a fence sitter but as a baseball fan, I’m really looking forward to the Cardinal / Giant series later this month.
And if the Dodgers can knock them out of the postseason in that last series in SF so much the better. I just hope that when that last series comes around the Dodger lead is at least four games. Things look good right now for the Dodgers, but as baseball keeps reminding us:
shit happens
Dodgers two-headed platoon in RF is tearing it up in September
Right field was a black hole for the Dodgers in August, with Josh Reddick having one of the worst months in LAD history this century for an outfielder, and Yasiel Puig doing his thing in AAA. The only saving grace for the month was the work of Toles who came up on August 21st.
September is a different beast as Josh Reddick has shaken off whatever ailed him (bad luck) in August and has hit in all four games this month including his three starts. Puig has also hit in every one of his three Sept starts.
This is all SSS but still fun to look at. Puig has an OPS of 1.650 built upon a triple stat line of .444 | .538 | 1.111 which includes three walks in only 13 plate appearances.
Josh Reddick has been just as productive. Josh has an OPS of 1.500 built upon his triple stat line of .583 | .583 | .917. As you can see Josh has not drawn a walk this month. Remember all the talk of Josh’s bad luck in August(BABIP of .194). In Sept he is getting paid back in spades with a BABIP of .600. Puig , on the other hand, has a BABIP of only .250.
The two of them are a combined 11 for 25 for three walks, one double, and three home runs. Add in the seven RBI and the two headed right fielder is averaging a RBI a game. That’ll get it done, after the two combined to drive in all of one run in August.
In a season where the Dodgers have gotten good to excellent contributions from 1st base, 2nd base, SS, 3rd base, Catcher, CF, and even LF, it is good to see RF finely holding up its end of the bargain.
If it continues, watch out
An almost perfect Puig and a plethora of pitchers are too much for the Diamondbacks Ray of sunshine
Puig ruined my headline by making an out in his final at-bat but that was his only fault on a night when he reminded Dodger fans once again that they now have a potent right-hand bat back in the lineup against left-hand pitching.
For the second time in the past four games Puig blasted a home run against a left-handed pitcher, and once again was a big part of the reason why the Dodgers have beaten a left-hander two games in a row.
It certainly wasn’t the rest of the mostly right-handed lineup who succumbed to Ray. In only six innings Ray struck out twelve Dodgers, tying Johnny Cueto for striking out the most LAD while pitching six innings or less. Only 19 pitchers have struck out at least ten batters while pitching only six innings. Ray struck out every starting Dodger at least once except Puig. Until Puig hit his home run in the 6th inning the only other hit was a double by Cory Seager in the 1st inning. Puig cashed in Seager with a sacrifice fly tying the game at 1-1.
Brock Stewart won his first major league game, giving up one run in the 1st but doing just well enough to go five and qualify for the win. Once Stewart left, Dave Roberts decided to try to use everyone he had in the bullpen and almost succeeded. Seven pitchers followed Stewart, and they all played their part in keeping the Diamondbacks at one run and giving the Dodgers a 3 – 1 victory.
The whole inning took 17 minutes, which prompted a lot of “still faster than Pedro Baez!” jokes.
Add in the collapse of the Giant bullpen against the Rockies last night, and the Dodgers now have a season high five-game lead over the Giants. It was fun to hear how shocked he was that the Giants were going to Joe Nathan in such a critical situation. A feeling I’m sure that was shared by the majority of Giant fans.
Cory Seager ended with two hits, including his 39th double which has him tied for the NL league in doubles with Daniel Murphy. That was Cory’s 3rd straight multi-hit game after his mini-slump last week.
When starting, Toles just keeps on hitting and winning as Shelby gets shelled
Andrew Toles now holds a 12 – 2 record when Dave Roberts decides to start him. In a rare day off for Howie Kendrick, Roberts was able to find a spot for Toles in LF.
Well, not quite a day off for Howie, as Dave felt Howie needed to pinch hit even though he had a comfortable lead and a plethora of other pinch hitting options. Howie obliged with a double play giving him 23 GIDP for the season, which is good for 3rd in the NL and only one behind the leaders Martin Prado and DJ LeMahieu. If it seems that Howie is hitting into a lot of GIDP lately it is because he is. That was his 3rd GIDP in only 18 plate appearances in Sept.
Back to Toles. Toles had two more hits last night, giving him multiple hits in his last four starts since he was recalled in August. Toles is 5 – 0 in every start since being recalled. It is very clear to me that Dave Roberts knows exactly when to start Andrew Toles. He’s brilliant.
Dodgers maintain the four game lead over the Giants as the Giants finally managed to score in Coors and win.
Brock Stewart will be going tonight, and he’ll be the fourth straight Dodger rookie to make a start following Jose De Leon, Kenta Maeda, and Ross Stripling. This is the second time this year that four LAD rookies will have made consecutive starts when Stewart toes the mound.
Baseball America checks in on Cody Thomas
Raw tools galore for the ex-quarterback, Baseball America gives an update on his progress:
Cody Thomas, cf, Dodgers. The former Sooners backup quarterback has shown the rawness you’d expect from a player who skipped playing baseball in 2015 to focus on football, but he’s also shown athleticism and power. Thomas blasted his 15th homer—second in the Pioneer League to Ronnie Gideon—and had three hits in Ogden’s 12-10 win over Grand Junction (Rockies). Thomas has holes in his swing—he has struck out 83 times in 220 plate appearances—but the raw power and athleticism make him a player to dream on.
And this inside the park home run by Dansby Swanson as Shelby Miller was getting shelled once again can’t be sitting well with Diamondback fans.
Dodgers, Yesterday and Today 