Results tagged ‘ Los Angeles Dodgers ’
Manny suspended for 50 games
Just a few days ago, I was asking the question whether Jeff Weaver might be the secret to success for the Dodgers.
Can he play left field?
The news of Manny Ramirez’s fifty-game suspension has sent shockwaves through the baseball world, with many focusing on the reprecussions on the player and his place in baseball history. The more pressing concern in LA is what impact his absence will have on the Dodgers.
Everything was going swimmingly for the Dodgers up until this morning. Their 10-3 victory over the Nationals yesterday was their thirteenth home win in a row to start the season: a Major League record. They top the NL West by 6.5 games ahead of the D-Backs with a Major League best record of 21-8.
What could go wrong?
Quite a lot, so it turns out. The fact that Manny will be missing from the lineup for the best part of a third of the season is a massive blow in itself. His production on its own is crucial to the Dodgers, but he makes their lineup more potent in other ways as well. Line-up protection is one of the many pieces of conventional wisdom that is up for debate among sabremetricians, yet it seems like common sense that a pitcher will look at an opposing lineup differently if he knows someone of the caliber of Ramirez is looming in the on-deck circle. You can also count on Manny to drive home baserunners more often than not. It will be interesting to see whether the Dodgers strand more runners in scoring position over the next fifity games without him in the lineup.
The impact of Manny’s absence could only be negated if the Dodgers had a comparable player in place to deputize for him. That is clearly not the case: no team has reserves of player talent to make that a possibility. The Dodgers have Juan Pierre, which is not a great deal better than having nothing at all.
However, the nature of Manny’s absence is also going to have a disruptive effect. It’s always a media circus in LA, but Joe Torre will need all of his experience to deal with this crisis.
Life is never dull in LA or in Mannywood.
The Dodgers’ Dream Weaver?
The Dodgers made it ten home wins in a row with their victory yesterday against the Padres.
Their ninth victory the day before had many people looking back at the great 1946 Brooklyn Dodgers team that also won their first nine home games. Ebbets Field was a true fortress that year. The Dodgers finished with a 56-22 record in their own yard, good for a .718 winning percentage. In contrast, the team was just two games above .500 away from Brooklyn. One more road win would have put them into the World Series. Instead, they finished level with the Cardinals and the resulting three-game playoff ended the Dodgers’ season in heartbreaking fashion.
As you will know, the Cardinals went on to face the Boston Red Sox in the World Series. Despite being the underdogs, St Louis took the title and the Dodgers had to watch another National League team triumph in their place.
Now that the 2009 LA Dodgers have gone one better than their ’46 counterparts, are they primed for a happier ending?
Anyone willing to stick their neck out and predict the rest of this season is a braver person than I am, possibly more reckless as well. If one thing epitomizes both leagues this year it’s that there are few certainties. While the Dodgers have earned themselves a 4.5 game lead in the NL West, they would do well to remember the lightning start that the D-Backs made just twelve months ago. Arizona went 19-8 during April last year, but then slumped to an 11-17 May. Their lead was such that they remained top of the division and stayed there until everything went wrong in September.
While things went wrong for the Snakes, everything went right for the Dodgers. Manny Ramirez was making the game look ridiculously easy and he played a significant role in carrying the team over the line into October baseball.
It would be tempting to say that the Dodgers have carried on where they left off. Ramirez isn’t hitting .396/.489/.743, as he did for LA over the last two months of the ’08 season, but his .349/.495/.614 line so far is close enough to almost defy belief. Plenty of other players are chipping in as well, with Ned Colletti surely being particularly pleased with his offseason work that produced the Keystone combo of Furcal and Hudson. Chad Billingsley has also cemented his position as one of the best young starting pitchers in the game. Perhaps a few more pitchers should try breaking a leg over the offseason.
Predicting glory is a foolish exercise, but this Dodgers team certainly has the potential to go all the way. The sight of Jeff Weaver taking the mound for LA puts a doubt in my mind, but then again baseball has a funny way of producing strange coincidences. Weaver was the unlikely hero in 2006 when he helped pitch his team to World Series glory. That team was, of course, the St Louis Cardinals; the same Cardinals who pipped the Brooklyn Dodgers to the NL in 1946.
For all the pyrotechnics and drama that Manny conjures up and the dominance on the mound by Billingsley, maybe Jeff Weaver is the key for the Dodgers.
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