6-4-2 — an Angels/Dodgers double play blog

One of these days I'm gonna lose, but damned if Weaver didn't pull one out'n his posterior and win it, and against his old team to boot. Now, granted this was a lineup minus Pudge and their starting shortstop, Carlos Guillen (.355/.409/.485), but we will take our victories where we can get them; with the win, Jeff Weaver's ERA slips to 5.25. Hardly respectable, but better than when the day started, and perhaps the beginning of a run of something approaching reasonable. A two-hit, one-run game qualifies as no small feat for the Dodgers' star-crossed starter, and in the nick of time, too. Did the announcement that the Dodgers had come to an agreement with teammate Brad Penny amount to an incentive for him to pitch better? I surely hope so. It's a career year, only he's having the reverse reaction; at this rate, he'll have to pay the Dodgers to stay on.

Aside from pitcher Jason Johnson's solo homer -- the only real offense the Tigers would get on the night -- the Tigers performed as you might expect with two of their big offensive producers sucked out of the lineup. The magic tickets have changed location this year (thanks to lousy views from the new seats), so now we are field level, in the old yellow seats about five or six rows back, directly behind the opposition dugout. For the third night in a row, Gibby came out and, gentlemanly, tipped his cap to the crowd, who cheered and shouted behind him.

Partly because of Gibson and partly because of the interleague nature of the contest, the usual antipathy that might have resulted from someone in opposition colors was heavily neutralized. As with most interleague teams, the home crowd treats the other team as a curiosity rather than an enemy to be destroyed. I greet the Giants' arrival in town with less than full enthusiasm; if the crowd is that much more in the game, so is it also likely to go boorish and stupid, as witness the Giants fan killed at the park some while ago. The best defense against this is to buy the expensive seats; and so we saw, unmolested, a Detroit fan with a big foam paw with bright orange claws. Every top half inning, he would turn around to the other dozen or so Tigers fans behind him and do a little dance with his claws. Nobody said anything.

More alarming, though, was the continued inability of Kent and Drew to make much of anything from the stylings of Johnson, who threw a very good game. I couldn't tell whether he was on, or merely an example of the heart of the Dodgers order just failing to beat once again. Drew's 2-4 were both singles, and of course Kent's 0-fer night really chafes. Drew has a well-earned reputation as a postseason choker, easily seducing me into the idea that he's just another inflated Boras client.

So the Dodgers won against a weakened team; they don't count the W's or L's against what should or could have happened, though. Detroit isn't completely comprised of idiots, and not even their GM is a total fool, though Mike Carminati is convinced that Ed Wade is. We learned of a trade wherein the Tigers surrender setup man-cum-closer Ugueth Urbina and INF Ramon Martinez, and get back Placido Polanco in return. But I think Carminati complains too much; the Phils' bullpen ERA is 5.68 and 4-7, while their starters are 27-21 and 4.27. The bullpen is a problem, and a much worse one than the starting rotation. Polanco is a good player stuck on a team that doesn't know what to do with him; a trade seemed the most likely answer, and so there he is in Motown.

Recap

// posted by Rob @ 12:05 AM link  //  2 comments