Just a FYI, this is far and away the most viewed Skybox topic since we got the new software that counted posts and views. The next closest was a topic on the Pistons and the Heat. I wonder why.
8) If you turn on ESPN right now, you can see the Dodgers vs. Giants from Dodger Stadium: Greg Maddux vs. Jason Schmidt... Maddux just worked out of a 1st inning jam with another great play on a Barry Bonds line-drive that he turned into a double play... Dodger kids to watch who may be special: 1. Andre Ethier LF 2. Russell Martin C 3. Jonathon Broxton P 4. Wilson Betemit 3B 5. Jason Repko CF, RF Note: the Giants have 9 players who're older than 40... The Dodgers have 11 players who're 25 or younger... BTW- its almost impossible to see the ball at this time of night in LA. Games are NEVER scheduled for this time, unless national TV requests it... .................DD
8) Dodgers win (1-zip) for the 15th time in 16 tries on Russell Martin's walk-off HR in the bottom of the 10th... There was a lot of neat-o things going on in that game. Jason Schmidt is a wonderful power pitcher who will be a free agent at the end of the season and finally escape the dregs of Baghdad-by-the-Bay. He took some of the Dodger kids to school: especially Andre Ethier who struck out three times. Schmidt never threw him the same pitch twice in-a-row. He worked him in and out, up and down, and kept striking him out on pitches that weren't strikes. The kid better go back to the film room and watch what Schmidt was doing to him. Greg Maddux was nothing short of phenominal. In 8 shutout innings he only threw 68 pitches, 18 balls and 50 strikes! In fact, Maddux pitching in the damp Pacific Ocean sea breezes at Dodger Stadium is almost unfair. He put on a clinic for everyone. Today's LA Times describes how Maddux draws a crowd of other Dodger pitchers when he warms up in the bullpen. They all want to know how he does it and tonight he gave them a model of how its done. Lets hope that the rookie was one of them... Young Chad Billingsley is in danger of being kicked out of the starting rotation, because he's throwing too many pitches. Every 5 innings, he's tosses about 105, which puts stress on the middle relievers who have to come in earlier. In the first 5 innings tonight, Maddux threw 41 pitches. 41 friggen pitches... Billingsley throws fastballs at 95mph and has been clocked up to 97mph... Maddux was clocked up to 87mph tonight, with most of his "fastballs" in the 81-84mph range. This morning's Times reported that Brett Tomko can throw a baseball 81mph lefthanded... Derek Lowe began wearing his socks the same way that Maddux does tonight. Watch for others to follow. Its like a scene out of The Natural... If you love pitching, tonights game was a duesy. .....................DD
8) Furthermore... The Dodgers are now just a half game behind the St. Louis Cardinals for the 2nd best record in the National League. This is important, because if the Dodgers can pass the Cards and win the West, they would also have home field advantage in the 1st round of the playoffs... Dodger crowd tonight of 55,000 put them over 3 million in attendance again and its only mid-August. A home playoff series could put them over 4 million... ............DD
Great game. Watched the whole thing. Outstanding pitching duel. Bonds actually made a heckuva catch early on the line drive over his head. I love it....The crowd boos him every time he touches the ball in the field and of course every time he comes to the plate.
:shock: Dodgers beat the Marlins on Nomar's HR to win their 16th game in 17 tries. No Los Angeles Dodgers team has ever had a 16-1 stretch like this. The last Dodger team to win 16 of 17 was in Brooklyn back in 1953... The Dodgers now own the 2nd best record in the National League, trailing only the New York Mets... The difference in the Dodger pitching staff since Greg Maddux joined the team has been dramatic. Even the coaches were stunned to discover yesterday that the starters ERA is 2.22 in the two weeks that he's been here. All of the pitchers do what he does. If he watches film of upcoming opponents; they watch film too. If he writes out a game plan, they write out a game plan too. If he scratches his arse, they all scratch their arse too. His affect on Derek Lowe has been career saving, as the Dodgers other sinkerball pitcher showed tonight. Operaman got his first save in two years, as they decided to give the regular closers the night off... This is starting to look more like a movie than real life... ................DD
:shock: The Dodgers shut out the Marlins 4-0 behind 22 year-old Chad Billingsley. The kid was warned before the game that he would be kicked out of the starting rotation if he didn't cut down his pitch count. He responded by pitching 7 shutout innings and walking only one and looked like he belonged out there... The Dodgers amazing winning ways have now gone completely off the chart. This was their 6th win in-a-row and their 17th win in the last 18 games. The last time that they went 17-1 was 1899, when they weren't even called the Dodgers! They were known as the Brooklyn Superbas in those days... If the season ended tomorrow, the National League playoffs would be: Cincinnati at New York St. Louis at Los Angeles Give credit to new GM Ned Colletti for putting this package together. I've never seen anything quite like it... ...........DD
The season is now 3/4 over and the Dodgers are: 5-5 -- 10-10 5-5 -- 13-17 3-7 -4 20-20 7-3 -- 28-22 8-2 +6 33-27 5-5 +6 36-34 3-7 +2 41-39 5-5 +2 46-44 5-5 +2 47-53 1-9 -6 55-55 8-2 -- 64-56 9-1 +8 Last year at the 120 game mark the Dodgers were: 55-65 -10 George in Ct.
Oh well... The Dodgers went down the drain in a day game today while I was at work. I'm not sure what happened, but I can guess. Just last night, Vinny was saying how amazing it is that the Dodgers have owned young Marlins slugger Miguel Cabrera, who only had only a few hits in over 40 at-bats against Dodger pitching despite clobbering everybody else. Well the odds finally caught up with the team today and Cabrera hit two HRs and our rested pitching staff was shelled 15-4 in the worst defeat of the year. Former Dodger super prospects Cody Ross and Reggie Abercrombie came back to haunt those who unloaded them, but what the heck... You can't keep everyone and it was expected that both of them would do that sooner or later... ...............DD
8) Dodgers have entered the make-or-break part of their schedule that includes 20 of 25 on the road. They lost yesterday at Frisco when Schmidt pitched a gem. Today they slaughtered the Giants 14-7 as Greg Maddux won his 329th game, tying Steve Carlton for 10th place on the all-time list. This was Maddux's 4th start since the trade and his Dodger ERA going into today was 0.90. He retired the first 10 Giants in today's game and he had retired 22 Giants in-a-row in his previous start, giving him an incredible 32 consecutive batters retired. That's better than a perfect game, which would be only 27 consecutive batters... Maddux latest heroics brought these comments from manager Grady Little after the game: "This guy brings with him some intangibles you may never see -- you just see the results," manager Grady Little said. "Just his presence. It's instant respect. A young player is foolish not to pay attention." The Giants defense looked like the circus was in town. Rafael Furcal had a Little League style "home run on errors" when he came all the way around to score when his sacrifice bunt was thrown into rightfield, then leftfield on the same play... re: impact of the rookies Andre Ethier went 4 for 5. The Dodgers are 27- 5 when Ethier scores a run and 24-7 when he has an RBI... ..............DD
:shock: BTW... Here's an interesting stat that I ran into the other day. The Detroit Tigers have a rookie pitcher named Justin Verlander who is tied for the MLB lead with 14 victories. If he finishes the season as the win leader for both leagues, he would be the first rookie to do so since Grover Cleveland Alexander in 1911...
8) Dodgers take 2 of 3 in Frisco, for 19 wins in the last 23 games. Derek Lowe pitched his greatest game (the Maddux factor?) and took a 5-0 lead into the 9th. With one on, Jeff Kent let a routine doubleplay ground ball go between his legs to keep hope alive for the local savages. They got a run in and loaded the bases for pinch hitter Barry Bonds, as they chanted "Beat LA!" "Beat LA" "Beat LA!" As the camera surveyed this mayhem, Vin Scully noted all of the thousands of men wearing orange shirts saying "Beat LA!" and sardonically observed, "It looks as if the San Francisco Men's Choir is here today." Saito walked Bonds to walk in a run, then struck out the final two for his 14th save. Now on to visit our little buddies in San Diego... ............DD
:? The Padres have been beating up on the Dodgers all year. I think they've won 10 or 11 in-a-row against us now and they're about 25 games over .500 against the Dodgers in the last few years... I just can't see this Dodger team doing much at playoff time and I've felt that way all season. Where are the stars? They don't have a true closer or a true stopper on the pitching staff. They've hit the fewest HRs in MLB. Their best players are either too old, Kent (39) Lofton (39) Maddux (40) or too young Ethier (24), Martin (23), Broxton (22), or always hurt (Garciaparra) or too unhappy (Lugo, Hall) or too brain-muerto (Penny)... The chemistry has been dicey to say the least and it shows. Last night, we had three guys ejected in various incidents. I have yet to see this bunch beat a good team. St. Louis swept the season series from them. They were wiped out in Minnesota in a horrible mismatch. The Padres have owned them. They've had both long winning streaks and long losing streaks. There's no consistency there at all. Grady Little is probably the worst manager I've ever seen here. I just don't understand some of the things he does, because they're not percentage plays. They're "hunch" plays like a Little League coach trying to catch lightning in a bottle... This has probably been the hardest Dodger team to root for since Daryl Strawberry or Eddie Murray was here. In fact, Eddie Murray IS here, as a coach.... .........Not Happy............DD :x
:roll: Dodgers lose again on a walk-off in the bottom of the 15th inning. They're now 0-8 in extra-inning games on the road. Greg Maddux had no decision and he went into the game 1-9 lifetime against the Dbacks... We don't have the talent. What we need now is some pure, unjustified, syrupy luck... re: good news/bad news Most of the Dodgers remaining opponents are playing under .500 baseball. The bad news is: they're all in our division and we can't beat those guys! .............Waaaaaah!...........DD
8) Dodgers beat the Dbacks to go up by two games over the Pods... This team is coming in on a wing and a prayer and so is the National League. The Western Division is awful, but it's probably better than the other two divisions and the Wild Card may come from the West. Everybody looks average except the Mets... Lugo's agent is criticizing the Dodgers in the media, "play my client or trade him." Everybody is unhappy. The LA Times calls these guys the "sourpusses." Brad Penny being compared with Milton Bradley...by his teammates! Greg Maddux came at the right time. This was a team that had no leadership. It was just a collection of players... .............DD
The season is now 13/16 over and the Dodgers are: 5-5 -- 10-10 5-5 -- 13-17 3-7 -4 20-20 7-3 -- 28-22 8-2 +6 33-27 5-5 +6 36-34 3-7 +2 41-39 5-5 +2 46-44 5-5 +2 47-53 1-9 -6 55-55 8-2 -- 64-56 9-1 +8 68-62 4-6 +6 Last year at the 130 game mark the Dodgers were: 59-71 -12 George in Ct.
8) Dodgers beat the Reds again tonight and they've pretty much owned Cincinnati all year. This gives them a three game lead on San Diego and makes the Wild Card a virtual dead heat between several teams. Penny won his 14th. Ethier had another bunch of hits and I continue to believe that he should be named Rookie of the Year... Dodgers still looking to obtain a HR bat before Saturday... The National League is still mediocre by comparison... Dodgers running out of home games fast... ..................DD