It s a Long Season

Mark, no matter how hard you try, PANIC inevitably rears it’s ugly head for some people who live only in the moment. What have you done for me lately?

The take on this game would be completely different if that bum Buehler 🙂 had not had a bad day today.

Typical St. Louis trip. We always have problems with these guys. Hey, let’s take our lumps, learn from it, and get on back to Dodger Stadium this weekend against the Brew crew. It’s still too early to burn down the bullpen, and as far as getting help, Vasseghe was saying on Dodger talk that there is a reason Kimbrel and Kuechel aren’t signed yet. They want multi-year contracts, not one year deals. Plus, Kimbrel is an Alpha Dog, no way he will be Kenleys set up guy, or he would have signed by now. Another thing Vasseghe mentioned, which is very true. If either of those two signed today with any team, they would be at least a couple of weeks away from pitching in the majors, as they haven’t been built up yet to major league hitters. Good point. I also agree with Mark and a few other guys on this site, let the season play out a bit and see who comes up from the minors and kicks ass in the bullpen. We have a lot of arms, we just need to sift through and see who steps up. Still too early to jump off tall buildings, guys, still too early…

BP use is on Doc, BP construction is on the FO. Baez, Garcia are NOT ML quality pitchers and that’s on Friedman. Kelly looks hittable and that’s on Friedman. In short, the BP is garbage and I have little confidence they will turn it around.

Where’s JT’s power and Corey has just 1 HR and that was opening day.

Just a train wreck in St. Louis. When we can hit, we can’t pitch.

Bad pitching and bad fielding. But on a positive note the offense was better today. I would hope that when we score 7 runs we will win more games than we lose.

I haven’t like the Cardinals ever since they broke Hanley’s ribs (Kelly I’m looking at you) – although the way their fans treated Freeze was admirable.

What was that?

I’ve never seen Wacha pitch that badly, and yet we can’t win despite scoring 7 runs away from home.

So many things went wrong.

Two bases loaded HBP on the same non hitting batsman!

Oh well, at least it’s early….

I was going to write this earlier, remember this is essentially Corey’s spring training.

And here are Corey’s numbers against righties before today’s game, and he had a couple more hits today.

286/375/464/839.

And his numbers when runners are in scoring position, are even better.

After almost missing an entire year of baseball, and not being able to work out like he normally would in the off season, I think these are pretty good numbers.

He is just getting his timing down, and getting his plate discipline down too.

The power will come, you don’t want Corey to pick up any bad habits, trying to yank balls out.

And once it gets a little warmer the HRs will come from both Corey and Turner then.

Remember these two hitters, are hitters first, and the power will come as they warm up.

Last year the power came late, and we still ended up with 235 HRs. I don’t think the Dodgers started hitting HRs until May or June last year.

Roger, I pointed out in a post earlier in this thread, last year the Dodgers got swept in a 3 game series at Dodger Stadium the first time they played the Cards last year, and then returned the favor by sweeping the Cards later in the season in a 4 game series in St. Louis.. so yes, the Cards are always difficult to beat, but the Dodgers can take them. And we did beat them in the playoffs in 2009, and would have definitely beat them again in 2013 had Hanley not been hit.

If they remain healthy, I expect good things out of Turner and Seager. It always looks worse than it is when a hitter gets off to a slow start, as opposed to going into a slump after a fast start.

Is a team ever as good as it looks when they are winning or as bad as they look when they are losing?

The Dodgers are going to lose between 52 and 62 regular season games.

Hard to be lucky without good pitching.

Buns, what you said reminds me of something I’ve said in the past. And that is that you’re never as good as you are when you’re at your best, and never as bad as you are when you’re at your worst.

Mark, I lived most of my life in Brooklyn, and when I was a kid I lived within walking distance of Ebbets Field. And although I get back to Brooklyn pretty often, I haven’t lived there since 2006. Currently live in Rockville Centre on Long Island.

Yesterday scientists and astronomers produced a photograph of a Black Hole.

What they said was “We have seen what we thought was unseeable”. How many years since Galileo looked at the stars, the amount of work put in since, by these people to get to this point. Today it is taken for granted this enormous achievement.

Wow, this series was a $hit$how! Doc is still an idiot. The pen is overworked and the bats went cold. Play the hot hand and stop cooling guys. Seager needs to drink some milk. That dude looks frail. The rotation is also a mess. No one stepped up and Muncy is clearly inferior with the glove to Kike and Taylor. The Cardinals got a lot of breaks and we hit a ton of balls at people. This was just a bad and unlucky and injury filled series. With a little luck we could have won one of two of these games, but the baseball gods were not smiling down on us.

There was a lot of debate as to Joc not starting against lefties. He sat basically 5 days in a row and came back cold. I’m not sure his replacement did anything. So again, is it better to cool Joc, or to get him some ABs against a lefty when our opponents stack them against us to avoid derailing him?

Same thing with Verdugo, should have kept him in there when he was hot. Right now, Taylor needs to earn his playing time.

Doc can not manage a pitching staff to save his life and most of it is his own doing by not building up his pitchers in Spring Training, but a lot of it is just stupidity. His propensity to bring in a lefty to walk a lefty, 4 pitchers in one inning with a big lead. Giving shaky guys multiple innings after a single clean inning. I feel like throwing up just reliving it.

But, the sky is not falling. The rotation will get healthier and pitch deeper eventually. Hopefully he doesn’t break these relievers before then. AC, you are right. We needed another reliever.

This is a very good team that had a bad series. Doc, try this. Leave your starting pitchers in the game if they’re doing well. That way you don’t have to keep them in when they’re sucking. Also, try to stick with a few simple rules for the bullpen.

You don’t have a loogy, stop treating them like it.

Stop bringing in a guy for just 1 batter, even if he walks the first guy.

Try to bring in relievers at the start of the inning, you don’t have to pull guys for 1 walk.

Refrain from making mid inning pitching changes whenever possible.

Stop trying to get one more out out of a guy after he just got you three.

Floro and Ferguson are your most dependable guys use of them in the eighth.

So, Muncy and Seager were both hurt in today’s game. And I was scared someone was gonna get injured at Coors! This is a hiccup, good thing we came out of the gate hot.

How bad is Marcel Ozuna defensively?

Infirmary ward: Seager, Mucny, Ryu, Martin all in the same series. Did I miss anyone?

St Louis is our daddy.

Ok guys, before we run Doc out of town for being a crappy manager(still ahead of Alston and Tommy for winning games in his first 3 seasons) and Freidman for constructing this Titanic sinking ship of a team(No other Dodger GM has had the success in their first 3 or 4 years as he has), don’t forget, the Cardinals, Brewers, Phils, Nats, Cubs, are using us as a measuring stick at where they are as far being competitive for the NL pennant this year. We have a big ass target on our backs, every time we start a series we get that teams best shot, some even saving their best pitchers for us. We are not as bad as what happened in the Cards sweep. This too shall pass. Also, with all our pissing and moaning about the sweep, we are not giving St. Louis the proper respect. These guys are a legitimate contender this year, great young pitching and a tough lineup, especially with Goldshmidt. Give them their props, let’s reload for the Brewers. The beauty of baseball is that tomorrow is another game, another chance to make it all good,

Fangraphs really hates the Albies extension. I personally don’t give a shit.

I dont’ have much to add to the many comments above. Many of the comments are humorous and that’s always good to remind us that nothing should prevent us from being happy in spite of a baseball game. Personally, I shut the game off when the Dodgers were ahead 7-5 and Baez was collapsing. I didn’t want to subject myself to the pain of what was to come and the poor way the Dodger pitching allowed the wins to slip away from them. Yes, it’s mostly the pitching.

Starters have been very poor and are beginning to show their weakness with injury and loss of command. Buehler looked terrible although his HR was a thing of beauty. We talk about the return of CK and Hill but both have long histories of injuries. Who here doesn’t think about that and the question of how long till the next injury? Yes, they have depth but they don’t have health and command. Strength in numbers doesn’t apply to this team. The pitching has been nothing short of a disaster. How can it be fixed?

The timetable for promotion from the minors might be accelerated but that is unlikely as Kershaw and Hill return, two injury prone players. Add Ryu into the mix and we have 3 out of 5 starters who are not reliable due to degenerating or injury prone bodies. I keep hearing fans say that we must get at least 5 innings out of our starters. We do but they also have been giving up at least 4 runs most games! For the last 3 years, only Buehler has made a valid bid to crack the starting rotation. This is not good enough considering how injury prone and inconsistent our starters really are. Maeda, Stripling, and Urias are not really starters. Urias because of the pitch limit and babying that has accompanied his career, so far. He’s got great potential, but forget about Maeda and Stripling. They are BP bound or should be and our current crop of relievers need to be sent down or traded away such as Baez, Garcia, and Kelly (never gonna happen). Forget Chagois, Stewart & Schultz. Keep Alexander, Floro, Ferguson, Santana and add Strip, Maeda, and Urias. Jansen is a given. Now we need to add 5 starters to make 13 for the roster.

Kershaw, Hill, Buehler, May and Gonsolin. Or, sign 2 FA’s that are hanging in limbo somewhere, or effect some trades. This FO is blind to trades. It like the Buddhists denying God, a philosophy. Yet we see trades working all the time. It has been a mainstay of baseball and professional sports forever. You don’t need to wait for September to know what you’ve got long before it arrives. This is one of the blind spots of this FO. They refuse to see the dire need to change and constantly upgrade the talent pool.

There is nothing really wrong with our offense. We hit, we homer, we field. We have a lot of depth and versatility. The power outage of Seager and Turner do not worry me as both are starting to hit again and get on base. Those guys do their job. Pederson is back on track but only against RHP. He is also very slow in LF. He is not sharp and reactive to well hit balls. He doesn’t have the skills to chase and evaluate power hits and his arm is not good enough to throw any runners out at the plate. 3 years is enough to see he is not progressing in the areas that the Dodgers really need. He is a very good backup, not a starter. They simply won’t give Verdugo the chance to show what he’s got. I’ve seen enough of Taylor to last a lifetime. We don’t need many fixes on the positional players. If we need a utility infielder, Castro would be a decent sub at SS and 2B. Stop endorsing Taylor and thinking of the past. There are other players that could fit Taylor’s role. Time for change.

Rocky Gale as the backup catcher? Oh no. No offense. Not even the possibility of it. What’s wrong with Thole? They used him enough in ST and he improved. Why is this FO so opposed to changing things up? They are so timid and fixed in their views of things. Time does not heal all things. This is a fairy tale.

Dodgers: Josiah Gray, RHP (No. 18) — 5 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 5 K (Class A Great Lakes)

Gray was perfect in his second start for the Loons, retiring all 15 batters over five dominant frames. To go along with his five strikeouts, the 21-year-old also recorded six groundouts in the outing and threw 39 of his 52 pitches for strikes. Acquired in the offseason deal that sent Yasiel Puig and others to Cincinnati, he’s allowed just one earned run on three hits in 9 2/3 innings in his first two starts.