Monday, May 16, 2005 |
Get Me A Hefty Bag: Marlins 6, Dodgers 2
Jesus. H. Christ. All. #@&(**). Game. Long. The man was on the Dodgers last year! Couldn't Monday have slapped him a couple times after their first inning on the air?
Brad Penny reminds us that Paul LoDuca will at least give the Marlins a half-season of something, but Penny's busy adding to his ERA in a bad way, surrendering a gift homer to the pathetic Encarnacion, who the Marlins couldn't trade last year. Thank God nobody was on base at the time. Not that it mattered, because Tracy put up Dennis "Run Donor" Houlton on the mound, and that tossed the blindfolded, concret-overshoed Dodgers off the pier and into the ocean.
What an embarrassing game. You've already read Jon recounting the team's ills; they've now been mediocre-to-bad longer then they've been good. And as one of Jon's commenters wrote,
Wow, we aren't just losing games, folks, but we are losing games by huge margins. There's the 9-3 category, and then there's the somewhat closer 6-2 type loss. You can't say it's bad luck, or a hit here or there would make a difference. It's a combined collapse in hitting, pitching, and defense. I know we're playing good teams, but that's the point - we're clearly not in the same class.Yes, precisely. The NL West doesn't house the Cardinals. But also, it doesn't house the Braves, a team almost predestined to be squished -- again -- in the first round of the playoffs. The Dodgers couldn't even win two at home against them, and the one they did win was a matter of making fewer mistakes than the Braves, not to mention a lot of luck.
The NL West, however, does contain the Giants, who at present are playing .500 ball, more or less, minus the greatest active hitter in the majors and their best pitcher. The Dodgers' hot start a distant memory, if and when the Giants put their injuries behind them -- "if" primarily of concern for Bonds -- they could clean up.
Paranoiac raving aside (no, the Dodgers aren't a 61-101 team, what they would be if the 9-15 streak since opening 12-2 represented their true ability), it's becoming clear that 10.32 ERA D.J. Houlton has to go. He just has no use whatsoever. If the Dodgers plan on leaving him on the roster, he must not be used for the remainder of the month except in mopup situations. That would mean the first time he could be used against another opponent might come... oh, I don't know, against the Cubs, say, in two weeks? Whatever good the Dodgers might have seen in him, it's not worth wasting a spot on the 25-man roster for. The trouble with pronouncements like this one, of course, come when you realize you have to find somebody else to replace him. Wurtz? Schmoll? Eww. The same goes to a lesser extent for Erickson, who actually showed a glimmer of promise the other night, but to a greater extent for Jason Grabowski, who has shown no aptitude whatsoever as a productive pinch hitter.
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