Come on Man!

Has anyone seen Jorge? He’s been silent for the whole series.

The rest of you can blame poor bullpen execution or poor hitting for the 3-1 outcome, but I’m afraid I have to lay this at the feet of Jorge. Before the series started he wished injury on the opposition. I warned him about karma.

Karma is more powerful than baseball talent.

Do not wish ill health on opponents. It will come back to bite you in the ass.

All kidding aside, this was a great series. Yes, we came out on the losing end but we’re still in first place. If the rest of the season is as intense as April has been, baseball will be all the better for it.

I am not a Roberts hater and think he does a fantastic job with communicating with the players and getting them to play hard. However I thought he made a couple of poor choices last night. Pinch hitting Peters for Raley because righty/lefty thing in the bottom of the 8th inning didn’t seem right but he may have done that move in the top of the 9th for defense anyway. To me the biggest problem was pinch hitting Ríos for Neuse in the bottom of the 9th inning in a tie game. Ríos was your last positional player left and you had to realize that the game may go into extra innings and you had the pitcher’s spot hitting #6 which would allow the Padres to pitch around the 4th and 5th hitters which they did do. Ríos was needed if the game went into extra innings. Plus everyone can see Ríos is struggling mightily with one hit all year, a dribbler 60 feet down the third base line. Neuse had 4 hits in his last 3 games with 2 homers and 2 outs hit over 100 mph. Absolutely crazy to weaken your team like that and my son and I both said so at the time.

I get this feeling that Roberts (and by extension AF, because we all know he’s just a sock puppet ;)) doesn’t have a real sense of urgency about the regular season. It’s as if it’s all a big long Spring Training in preparation for the playoffs. I think he’s ok just coasting into the playoffs, and maybe putting in a little effort to get home field advantage, but otherwise it’s a case of tweaking a little of this, letting a pitcher work out some issues there, letting a player play through a slump, etc. It’s not a terrible way to approach things, because playoff baseball is just completely different, the season is long and workloads need to be managed, but there’s a danger of creating a culture of complacency with losing.

I still don’t really get the story with Graterol. So apparently he didn’t throw at all from the end of the playoffs until late, meaning he missed all of Spring Training, and now he’s being put in high leverage situations and he’s been whacked. I’m confused. Was he injured? Did he just not feel like throwing? What? I mean, his velocity is there, but clearly there were some things he needed to work on last year. He’s very similar do Dustin May. Both have elite velocity and that crazy sinker ball movement, but both have had issues with translating their stuff into swings and misses – and strikeouts. May has taken a big jump in his K/9% and has worked on his command and incorporating his curveball and cutter into his pitch sequencing, and he now strikes out batters at a K/9% of 13.50 , which is tied for 6th in baseball.

May has put in some work and has taken a big step in his game. Graterol has not, and it’s costing the team. This is what perplexes me about the game. You’d think that at this level, there would be a consistent off-season training program and more coaching collaboration between the team’s coaches and the players, but apparently it’s still pretty laissez faire. Guys like Bauer work their tails off in the off-season with outfits like Driveline, but it’s completely on their own. Kershaw apparently didn’t work as hard this off-season, but for him it’s probably just as much about managing workload over the course of an entire year.

Nevertheless, baseball is a profession that should be year round, at the very least to stay in consistent remote contact with coaches and devising ways to remotely measure workload and monitor pitching and training over the course of an off-season. The fact that the Dodgers are paying Joe Kellly 8 million dollars, he shows up to Spring Training and immediately his arm starts hurting indicates a problem to me. Spring Training is a preparation for the season, but a player ought to show up PREPARED for Spring Training. This kind of stuff should be implemented as an organization and there should be contract stipulations , IMO.

Speaking of Dustin May, his curveball is very good, and that’s starting to become his out pitch. He’s mixing in a cutter effectively, too. There’s just something weird about the shape of that sinker that allows right handers to square up on it if it’s in the strike zone. It works when a right hander is looking for something else and he comes in and jams him, which is what happened to Machado once when his bat shattered. I’m just a fan on the internet and know nothing about coaching pitching, but I’m still confused why May doesn’t throw a four seamer high in the zone more. When looking at heat maps of his pitches in the zone, that inside upper quadrant is almost completely neglected by May, mostly because of the shape of his sinker that he mostly throws. If he could command a four seamer with some rising action, and the spin rate he generates with his other pitches suggest he could, throwing that pitch high and tight would terrify batters looking for the tailing action of that 98 MPH two seamer.

May and Blake Snell have nearly identical inning pitched so far and identical K/9%. May has a much better ERA and has been the better pitcher so far.

The starting pitcher with the highest ERA in baseball is our old friend, Madison Bumgarner. BWAHA.

Why didn’t Kershaw bunt ?

Some observations;

The calling of balls/strikes seems to be the worst I can remember. I actually have to now wait and see what is called as I can no longer believe what I see. I can only imagine how confused the players are ( from both teams). This is a systemic problem for which there is no easy answer (electronic b/s is not ready for prime time although one could argue it couldn’t be any worse then what we are witnessing).

Peter’s is not ready for prime time. MLB pitchers have exposed a big hole in his swing.

Beaty I think is starting to come around but the rest of the Dodger OF depth is very suspect.

As Mark mentioned, Rios is lost. He’s hitting around 100. Of course if he reverts to his mean he will have one crazy couple of weeks hitting. Hope this happens but I am very skeptical. He’s had around 45 at bats. What he does over the next 45 at bats will dictate what the Dodgers need to do.

Cleavinger got the loss but was the best relief pitcher for the Dodgers last night. If Price is out for awhile it would be good to see what he can do.

Price evidently had some hamstring issue which is why he only pitched one inning.