Saturday, August 20, 2005 |
Two Games
Revenge Of The Heart & Soul: Marlins 3, Dodgers 0
You wonder how the Heart & Soul of the team would have handled this, had he still been with the Dodgers to be there.Okay, so I meander into Plaschke-land for a moment, and as the furious commenters on Dodger Thoughts were wont to note, he'll no doubt be in fine dudgeon. The Times' favorite monosentence-paragraph writer hasn't turned in his predictable, cliché-laden column about LoDuca beating his former team, but Paul Gutierrez has beaten him to it:
Paul Lo Duca, one of the more popular Dodgers of recent years, was playing with a tender right hamstring. So when the Dodgers ran a double steal on the battered Florida catcher in the pivotal second inning Friday night, Lo Duca could barely stand up, let alone make a play.It's actually not nearly as bad as I'd feared based on the headline, and at this point a little funny to still be reading."I tweaked it coming out of the crouch," Lo Duca said. "It felt like somebody stuck a knife in my leg."
Later, Lo Duca would stick a dagger in the Dodgers' heart.
Lo Duca's bases-loaded flare single down the right-field line in the seventh inning broke a scoreless tie and lifted the streaking Marlins to a 3-0 defeat of the Dodgers in the opener of a four-game series at Dolphins Stadium.
Anyway -- poor Houlton stuck out there and held up through six in fine shape. For a guy essentially salvaged from the scrap heap, he's been a useful fifth starter, but nothing more; the tears shed about his poor run support hide the fact that he's not that good a pitcher. Seven of his twelve starts haven't been quality starts, a fact that's made plain by his lousy 5.24 ERA. In that light, complaints about a lack of run support in his last couple starts would seem ungentlemanly, but fortunately, Houlton isn't like OP in that regard:
"That's just part of the game," said Houlton, who has not won since June 27. "I can't control it.Dodger bats vs. A.J. Burnett? Not so much, though surprisingly the Blue managed to outhit Florida 6-4, but couldn't string anything together.
In related news -- and echoing the apparently warranted speculation I posted earlier -- the Dodgers are likely to call up Edwin Jackson to make Odalis Perez's next start. The ostensible reason for this rather than having Dessens make a spot start?
Tracy's other option would have been long reliever Elmer Dessens, but he said he did not want to risk disrupting bullpen chemistry.Sorry, but what kind of crap is that? This is why you have a swingman! Jackson has proved he can't hack it at AAA -- let him have more time in the minors. What's he going to prove -- that he isn't ready for the majors now?"Because of the … youth in it," Tracy said. "I think you infringe … on your bullpen if you do that."
Red Sox 4, Angels 3
Getting into the Red Sox' notoriously bad bullpen didn't make any difference for the Angels as the overworked Scot Shields collapsed once again, giving up the winning run. Shields now has a losing record (8-9), and more generally, the bullpen is 4-8 since the All Star break. Is that a surprise? Not if you listen to Buster Olney, of all people, who points to the overtaxing of the Angels' formerly phenominal bullpen. I was also worried about that possibility prior to the season, and while I'm not going to break something patting myself on the back for predicting this pen wasn't going to continue its dominance indefinitely, the signs were pretty clear before the season started.All three of Gregg's outs were hard hit line drives right at gloves. No way does he get that lucky twice. A sobering thought for those considering putting Gregg into the closer role.
The Angels offense did a good job of forcing the issue of the Red Sox' weak bullpen, but never fully capitalized on it. For all his lousy ERA, you had to know that Schilling would eventually recover from his bad recent outings to start closing games out. Bloody sock aftereffects or no, he's still got some miles left.
Relevant to my earlier meditation about Casey Kotchman: .260/.393/.580, and 2-3 with a walk in last night's game. That's a major league contributor, kids.
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