Scott Kazmir – Audition number one
Back in July, it would have been hard to imagine that Kazmir would be auditioning for a spot on the postseason roster, but August came and everything changed.
Using Baseball Reference to get the game score and sorting by highest game score to lowest we can see that three of his six worst game scores came in his last three games before hitting the disabled list. We learned that when Kazmir hit the DL he had been pitching hurt for a while because the Dodgers had such few rotation options.
| Game Score | Date | IP | H | ER | SO | BB | Opp | Rslt |
| 76 | 31-May | 6 | 1 | 0 | 7 | 1 | CHC | W5-0 |
| 76 | 2-Jul | 6 | 3 | 0 | 10 | 0 | COL | W6-1 |
| 75 | 5-Apr | 6 | 1 | 0 | 5 | 0 | SDP | W3-0 |
| 73 | 19-Jul | 7 | 4 | 1 | 8 | 0 | WSN | W8-4 |
| 70 | 14-May | 8.2 | 5 | 2 | 7 | 1 | STL | W5-3 |
| 70 | 25-May | 6 | 4 | 1 | 12 | 2 | CIN | W3-1 |
| 59 | 10-Aug | 6 | 4 | 2 | 6 | 3 | PHI | L2-6 |
| 55 | 27-Apr | 6 | 7 | 2 | 6 | 1 | MIA | L0-2 |
| 52 | 3-May | 6.2 | 7 | 4 | 9 | 1 | TBR | W10-5 |
| 51 | 21-Jun | 6 | 8 | 2 | 4 | 1 | WSN | W3-2 |
| 49 | 30-Jul | 6.2 | 8 | 4 | 7 | 0 | ARI | L2-4 |
| 47 | 11-Jun | 5 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 5 | SFG | L4-5 |
| 46 | 16-Jun | 4 | 5 | 3 | 8 | 2 | MIL | L6-8 |
| 46 | 24-Jul | 5 | 6 | 3 | 3 | 0 | STL | W9-6 |
| 45 | 9-May | 5.2 | 6 | 3 | 6 | 4 | NYM | L2-4 |
| 45 | 5-Jun | 5 | 7 | 3 | 5 | 1 | ATL | W12-6 |
| 43 | 27-Jun | 5 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | PIT | W5-4 |
| 41 | 22-Apr | 5 | 6 | 4 | 3 | 1 | COL | L5-7 |
| 41 | 20-May | 5.2 | 3 | 5 | 5 | 7 | SDP | L6-7 |
| 41 | 17-Aug | 5 | 8 | 2 | 1 | 3 | PHI | W7-2 |
| 40 | 5-Aug | 5.1 | 5 | 4 | 2 | 4 | BOS | L0-9 |
| 37 | 8-Jul | 3 | 6 | 3 | 5 | 3 | SDP | W10-6 |
| 31 | 16-Apr | 4 | 7 | 4 | 3 | 4 | SFG | L3-4 |
| 28 | 22-Aug | 2.2 | 6 | 4 | 1 | 3 | CIN | W18-9 |
| 27 | 10-Apr | 4 | 7 | 6 | 4 | 1 | SFG | L6-9 |
Kazmir has been good and bad this year, and most people are remembering the bad because three of them came in his final six starts.
You could blame those bad games on the fact he was pitching hurt when the Dodgers couldn’t afford him to miss a turn and I would not argue with you. The question right now as he gets ready to pitch tonight, is he healthy enough to earn a spot on the postseason roster?
I hope so because a healthy Kazmir might be the best option the Dodgers have to follow Kershaw/Maeda/Hill.
One other note, you will notice that two of his best games this year came against the Cubs and Nationals. His best game of the year came against the Cubs.
Scott Kazmir was outstanding for six scoreless innings, going punch-for-punch with Arrieta. The left-hander struck out seven while only allowing one hit, a walk and a hit batter.
Kazmir struck out 46 batters in May, joining Clayton Kershaw (65) and Alex Wood (41) as the first Dodgers trio with 40 or more strikeouts in a month since July 1963.
No one expected the cavalry to be the kiddie corps
but that is what happened when the original calvary all came up lame while Clayton was shelved.
At first, it was going to be Ryu then McCarthy, then Anderson. None of them survived their charge and all went back to the DL they came from. Instead, it was rookies Urias / Stewart / Stripling who rode to the rescue. Later Kazmir went down, and Jose De Leon joined the kiddie corp cavalry.
Now as we head into late September the original cavalry is trying to make one more charge. McCarthy is throwing simulated games, and Brett Anderson talked his way into a start tomorrow night. Alex Wood was activated on Tuesday but only for bullpen duty. Scott Kazmir will be making a start on Friday.
It is possible the Dodgers will be able to add Brett Anderson, Scott Kazmir, Brandon McCarthy, and Alex Wood to the pitching roster.
Just like in the outfield Dave Roberts and the LAD front office will have some hard decisions to make if all of these pitchers prove capable over the next two weeks.
Vin Scully and the headfirst slide
If you watched the game on TV last night you heard Vin Scully spend a good amount of time lamenting the lack of sliding skills in the major leagues. This was brought about when Brandon Crawford slid headfirst into 3rd base and injured his finger.
At my house or at the ballgame or at a bar, anytime someone slides headfirst into 1st base or home I’ll bemoan the action. Even though science says you might get to first a tick faster by sliding into first base that is only in a perfect scenario and is not worth the injury risk.
It doesn’t actually matter if sliding is theoretically faster than running through if the sliding proposition requires precise timing and mechanics that no major leaguer employs
That one just seems foolhardy, unless one is trying to avoid an errant throw in which case anything goes if that hit is more important to you than being able to play more games.
The home first slide makes sense in that you can manipulate your arms to try to find the seam where you can touch home before the catchers touch you. However, the benefits of being safe at home in a 162 game season for one run, don’t seem to outweigh the possibilities of serious injury to your fingers or hand given you are sliding into a very protected player. A.J. Pollock put the Diamondback season on the rails even before the season started with such a slide.
Sliding head first at 2nd or 3rd is a different story. Back when you only had a few teams and everyone was vying for the postseason money share, players weren’t so friendly. You slid you got tagged hard. Much better to have that hard tag on your legs and feet than your head, arms, and hands. This is just an observation but as the hard tag went the way of baseball slavery, players stopped having to worry about a hard tag to the head or having their hands/fingers purposely stepped on if they slid head first. Maury Wills explains the mindset back in the early 1960’s. It wasn’t safe for African-American to slide headfirst. Can you imagine Jackie Robinson in 1947 doing a head first slide instead of his famous hook slide?
Wills was caught stealing only 13 times in 1962. He paid a tab physically with severe bruising in his legs, resorting at times to a rare headfirst slide to spare further pain. “They’d have brought a knee down and broken my collarbone,” he said, when asked why he so rarely went headfirst.
As the headfirst slide became a safer proposition and a much faster one to the bag you started seeing it more and more. I think Pete Rose had a huge impact on this as images of Pete Rose hurling his body head first at the 3rd base bag are ingrained in old time fans minds.
Sure, if you watch the brilliant sliders like Jackie Robinson, Maury Wills, or Junior Jim Gilliam you could see the art of the slide as they hook slid into their base evading the tag, but damn that head first slide was exciting. It is what I did and I expect what many kids did who played baseball in the 1970’s.
Vinny was lamenting that they don’t even teach sliding anymore in spring training, and to be honest, I’ve been wondering that myself for 30 years. Or at least since Pedro Guerrero almost ruined his Dodger career with one of the worst slides ever seen into 3rd base. Back when Puig looked to be the next Pedro Guerrero fans winced whenever he slid because it was always a trainwreck.
I think one of the answers is obvious. The other not so obvious. Vinny specifically mentioned the hook slide, and the answer to that one is that it is hard to learn and takes lots of work. Players would rather practice hitting/fielding than learning how to use a slide they probably would rarely use. Maury Wills tells us what he thinks:
Wills spent years perfecting his hook slide, reaching the Majors at 26.
Learning the difficult slides like the hook slide probably takes more time than any modern ballplayer wants to devote to a small part of his game.
Davey Lopes was not a head first slider, but he also wasn’t a hook slider. He did the simple slide hard and fast feet first into the bag.
It’s usually a guy trying to avoid a tag, and it just looks like a hook slide,” said Davey Lopes, who succeeded Wills as the Dodgers’ leadoff catalyst, making good use of his wheels on the basepaths. “A real hook slide is hard to do, very hard. You just don’t see it any more.
“Maury used to fade away with his hook slide, and he did it from both sides. More guys did it in the old days. Jackie Robinson used to hook slide. I never even tried it. I’d have broken an ankle the way I slide — late, straight and hard.”
So why has baseball simply stopped teaching their players the slide that Davey Lopes and thousands of ballplayers used to employ?
When you see a Puig, slide feet first you understand why they slide headfirst because given how bad they are at sliding feet first they are actually in more danger of injury than with the head first slide.
But really, when you are spending millions on your players, shouldn’t you make sure they can do the fundamental aspects of the game that will keep them healthier over the term of team control? Even if the players don’t want to learn how to slide, it would seem it would be in the best interest of the players, owners, agents, that they make this effort.
Wild Card in a Carls Junior Three Way
With the Giants winning, the Cardinals winning, and the Mets losing, every team in the Wild Card hunt have the exact same record of 80 – 71.
- The Cardinals are 5 -5 in their last ten games but have won four in a row to force their way into the three-way tie.
- The Mets are also only 5 – 5 in their last ten games but have lost two in a row to the last-place Braves.
- Meanwhile, the Giants are 4 – 6 in their last ten games, and even though they beat the Dodgers last night they have lost their Wild Card lead and are hanging on. The biggest question for the Giants is, “can their rotation make up for their bullpen?”. Last night both the rotation and bullpen were stellar, but that was a rare night for the Giants in Sept.
Jose Fernandez pitched at home last night and threw eight scoreless innings against the Nationals. The last time Fernandez pitched at home he threw seven scoreless innings against the Dodgers. In his last two starts at home against the two teams that seem destined to play each other in the NLDS, Jose has thrown 15 IP, given up just six hits, three walks, and an astounding 26 strikeouts.
Miami doesn’t have much of a chance to make the post season but they have won four games in a row to at least make their presence felt. Four games back with 11 to play while needing at least two of the three teams to stumble ahead of them seems like a tough task, but maybe Don Mattingly’s crew has some magic left in them.
I’m a Madison Bumgarner fan
and have to admit that may seem weird as a Dodger fan. I don’t mean I’m a fan as though I like Bumgarner. I’m a fan in that I respect him and what he bring to the table for the Giants.
As I watched the game last night, it was easy to come to the conclusion that Bumgarner is an asshole. If you look at his extra-curricular activities from the mound when he’s not pitching it is easy to come to the conclusion that Madison Bumgarner is an asshole.
- Picking his nose
- Hocking everywhere
- Yelling while he pitches
- Instigating confrontation time after time.
Sure he’s an asshole.
But he’s a baseball asshole, everything he does that pisses everyone off is done between the lines of baseball. I’m unaware of anything he’s done outside of baseball that would warrant anyone to call him an asshole to humanity.
It was amusing/interesting to read all the tweets from the Dodger fans I follow. You’d have thought Madison was the devil himself instead of simply being a big ass baby.
And I respect the baseball asshole part of his game, and if you don’t think that part of his baseball personality isn’t a reason the Giants have three rings since he joined the team, you haven’t been paying attention.
This is an old story about where Madison comes from, I was looking for insight into his particular temperament but didn’t find any. Still a nice read if someone wants to know something about where a man comes from.
When Kevin and Debbie divorced, they worked out custody so that Madison could stay at the best high school and continue on his team. Divorce lingers in the heart of a son for years after the fact, and there was the added pain of losing a sister to cancer during his first major-league season.
That said, I sure would have enjoyed Puig/Madison going at it without teammates holding them back. We haven’t had a Ventura / Ryan confrontation in a while, though the Odor/Batista punch was something for the ages.
Now that is how you start a big series
That Bumgarner / Kershaw matchup may have been the best since Kershaw bested ………….
aw snap, don’t you hate it when you feel a good story forming in your mind and when you go to write the story, reality blows your story out of the water.
I was planning on writing about how this was the best matchup between Bumgarner/Kershaw since opening day in 2013, but dang if Matt Cain didn’t start that game.
Oh well these writers did cover the great game last night:
There was Andrew Toles — Roberts with his praise: “He’s a baseball player.” — in the middle of another Dodgers comeback rally. Or at the start of one in this case, leading off the ninth inning with the first of four straight Dodgers hits to steal the win.’
“Maybe because it was the only hit made him get angry,” Puig said. “Every time I face him it seems like we have those problems and it seems to work out because we win.”
The Giants have nine losses when leading after eight innings this season. That’s … unbelievable.
More Dustin Nosler at DodgerDigest on one reason why the Dodgers are winning the West
Admittedly, these were stats specifically chosen by yours truly, but they really tell the story. The Dodgers lead the majors in ERA from their relievers, while the Giants are more than a third of a run worse. They get more strikeouts than ‘Frisco, much, much less zone contact, many more first strikes and swinging strikes and benefit from a better BABIP. Then comes the win probability added … yikes. The Giants are 20th in baseball, while the Dodgers are eighth, and the difference is significant.
Giants / Dodgers give possible rotational postseason preview
As the Giants come into town for their most important series, the Dodgers will be throwing at them what should be the exact same three pitchers that the Nationals will see when the NLDS series opens.
Even the order might be the same as Kershaw / Hill / Maeda are scheduled to pitch the three-game series with the Giants.
Is that trio any better than the past two postseason trio?
2014 saw the Dodgers use Kershaw / Greinke / Ryu and lose in four games to the Cardinals.
2015 saw the Dodgers use Kershaw / Greinke / Brett Anderson and lose in five games to the Mets.
Maybe
Clayton is Clayton, he should enter the postseason at full strength, and Clayton at full strength is the best pitcher in baseball. He’ll be matched up against Max Scherzer, and Max is pretty damn good himself. Game one could be decided by the bullpens if Kershaw/Scherzer cancel each other out.
Rich Hill is not Zack Greinke, but in a short game series he might be able to put up a reasonable facsimile of our 2014/2015 postseason Greinke. I’ve often been told that soft pitchers have a tougher time in the postseason. I don’t know if that is true or not, but I do know the Nationals haven’t seen Rich Hill since 2012 and can’t imagine anyone is on the team that has had many if any at-bats against him. Advantage should be Rich Hill, but that is assuming that two weeks from now that Rich Hill will even be healthy enough to pitch in the postseason. Rich Hill has made one postseason start, and that was back in 2007 when he was with the Cubs. That did not go well but we all know the 2007 version of Rich Hill is not the 2016 version. If Rich Hill is healthy enough to pitch, I think the LAD front office should get some major accolades for landing Rich Hill without giving up any of Julio Urias / Jose De Leon or even Alvarez / Buehler / Stewart. I honestly don’t think someone like Chris Sales or Chris Archer would give the Dodgers anymore of a chance than this version of Rich Hill.
I don’t think Kenta Maeda brings anything more than Ryu did in 2014, but he probably brings a lot more than Brett Anderson did in 2015. Maeda is one of the few pitchers who is actually better on the road than at home, but not a significant difference. Maybe Maeda pitches game two instead of game three so that they break up the two lefties.
Anyway, as you watch the Giant series, just remember these are the three guns that Dodgers will be using against the Nationals. The Dodgers have not used the fourth starter in either of the last two NLDS and I don’t expect them to do so this year.
Mets topple Giants from top of the Wild Card race
From May 15th until Aug 9th the Giants were on top of the NL Western Division, at times the lead was eight games. When the Dodgers sliced that one time eight game lead to even stephen on Aug 9th, the Giants went from being the NL West leaders to the Wild Card leaders. For a few weeks the Dodgers / Giants traded being on top of 1st place but on Aug 21st, the Dodger took command of the NL West, and from that point on the Giants were now in the MLB standings under Wild Card.
Even as they fell into the Wild Card race the Giants had a comfortable lead, but that lead has now been vanquished. Just like the Dodgers, the Mets have chewed off that lead and now the Mets are the number one wild card team.
The Cardinals put the Mets in 1st place by defeating the Giants, so for the first time since Aug 21st, a new name sits atop the Wild Card standing. It is now the Mets / Giants / Cardinals with the Cardinals just one game back of the Giants. Only two of those three get to play in the play-in game, and even with a four deep rotation the Giants just aren’t playing like a team who is going to be one of those two.
The Mets won back to back one-run games, this time behind the offense and great defense from TJ. Rivera. The Mets are doing this without Matt Harvey and Jacob Degroom in the rotation and an AAA player at 2nd base. The rotation is as patchwork as the Dodgers has been with Thor & Colon being their only constants.
The Cardinals shut out the Giants behind their top pitching prospect Al Reyes. Diaz is back and slugged a home run to help the offense get going.
The Dodgers, Mets, and Cardinals all used rookies to start on Sunday in big games as rotational injuries continue to wreck havoc among the teams with post season aspirations.
Cardinals and Mets stage late innings comebacks
The Cardinals were down a run in the 9th inning but they had one thing going for them, the Giant bullpen, and once again that bullpen failed to hold a lead. The Cardinals rallied for two runs to beat the Giants 3 – 2. It was almost a must-win for the Cardinals because if they had lost they would have been four games back of the Giants and three games back of the Mets, but with that win, they are still within striking distance, just two games back. Those two game switches are big when you are playing the team you are chasing. The Giants will get a taste of that starting Monday when they take on the Dodgers.
The Mets also rallied for an extra-inning victory. The young Twin team had shut them out for seven innings, but the Mets tied it in the 8th. In the 11th, Brian Buxton hit his sixth home run of the month, but Curtis Granderson tied it in the bottom of the 11th with his own home run. Granderson would be the double hero by hitting the walk-off home run in the 12th, and propel the Mets into a tie with SF for the two wild card spots. Granderson became the first Met to hit a game tying and game winning home run in extra-innings. He hit the game-winning home run off of O’Rourke.
It was only the second homer O’Rourke has given up to a left-handed hitter in his 49th appearance over two years. Left-handers were previously 0-for-18 against him this year.
Dodgers, Yesterday and Today 