Wednesday, May 14, 2008 |
Games, Games, Games
Snatching Defeat From The Jaws Of Victory, Or, The Grabowski Principle Rides Again: Brewers 5, Dodgers 3
Brad Penny has a career first half ERA (3.74) over half a run better than his second half (4.32). If that were the good news, it would be bad enough, because so far he's only had three games you could call quality starts this season. If the 5.09 ERA he left the game with today is going to deteriorate further, that's just another reason the Dodgers might have to call up Clayton Kershaw, ready or not. Penny was just plain ineffective in this game, and it seemed like Joe Torre was determined to rub his nose in it, or at least to preserve most of his bullpen. It was pretty clear in the top of the fifth with the Dodgers still leading 3-2, when Penny surrendered a leadoff walk to pitcher Carlos Villanueva that he was gassed.Ironically enough, Penny beat the Dodgers 6-2 on May 16, 2005, almost exactly three years ago, and shortly after the original formulation of the Grabowski Principle, q.v. Once more, we had that same principle in action, only Joe Torre failed to recognize it, possibly because he is unaware of the catastrophic nature of the thing, or maybe he just doesn't know who this Jason Grabowski is. Either way, Penny has been sufficiently wobbly this year that a quick hook, especially on a short lead, isn't unwarranted.
Eric Gagne came in to pitch the ninth, kind of a surprise considering how only last Saturday he told reporters "I don't deserve that ninth inning right now. It's pretty simple." But they turned him right around and he tossed the ninth, not a particularly compelling one, but it helps when you have Juan Pierre — er, sorry, Slappy McPopup — first-pitch-swinging to pop out weakly to short to end the game. How appropriate for the team's fifth straight loss.
Incidentally: Jeff Kent hitting .250/.298/.402 going into the game, with three dingers? Remind me again, why is he still batting cleanup?
Napoli's Sacrifice Wins It: Angels 2, White Sox 0
A great, well-pitched game by both sides, it represented Jered Weaver's best effort all year, for which he was unfortunately unable to get a win because of the punchless offense behind him.One of the best moments of this game was watching the exasperated look on Ozzie Guillen's face as Nick Swisher made a weird, offline throw that allowed both Torii Hunter to score from third and Garret Anderson to tag and reach second. You didn't have to have a microphone to know he was swearing.
Robb Quinlan drove in the Angels' other run, but Frankie made it superfluous with a scoreless ninth.
That Would Be First Place Tampa Bay Rays To You, Or, Ned Colletti, You're Fired: Rays 2, Yankees 1 (11 Innings)
I have been under the supposition for some time that Edwin Jackson, the author of this evening's win against the Yankees, would have been traded anyway because he was out of options and his major league service clock had been started prematurely in 2003. In today's DT thread, CanuckDodger had this to say about that:It is completely false that we had to trade Jackson. He had another option, so we could have kept him in the minors for 2006. We would have had to have him in the majors for 2007, though, and would he really have been worse than Tomko/Hendrickson? I say he would have been better. Not great, but better than what the Dodgers seemed happy to go with. And Jackson probably would have had an easier time in the NL than in the AL East last year. I said when we traded Jackson it was a huge mistake and I expected to be vindicated in the course of time.I'm not about to go hunting that quote down, but I was nonplussed with the deal at the time, thinking Jackson had become overrated and hadn't proven himself well outside of his early showings, but yet the deal smelt of "desperation". Well: Jackson, who at one time this year had an ERA as high as 4.63 is now entirely respectable at 3.47 and dropping. Meantime, Danys Baez is out of baseball after a 6.44 ERA with Baltimore last season, and Lance Carter's last season in the bigs was with the Dodgers; God knows where he is now.
Update: Edwin Jackson, for his part, didn't get the win (that came as the result of a Gabe Gross RBI single in the bottom of the 11th), but he pitched admirably, giving up five hits in seven shutout innings, and was in line for the win before Troy Percival's blown save, his second of the year. Percival's other blown save was also of a lost Jackson win, on May 8.
And, yeah, that laughing sound you're hearing from Tampa is the first place Rays on May 14, seven games over .500 and leading the AL East in a week other than the first of the season, something they've never done before. Well, congratulations to them.
Labels: angels, brewers, dodgers, ex-dodgers, rays, recaps, yankees
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