What once started as a promising season is now turning into a glimpse into the future, if the Dodgers don’t make a change for the better.
The Dodgers are 22 games into the season and are a sub .500 team, 409, to be exact. They don’t look so good right now. In fact they’re so bad that the lowly Giants are 1.5 games above them. The Giants were predicted by many to finish last in the NL West, but so far it looks like the Dodgers (if they don’t improve something) will be near or at the bottom of the division.
I think that more than anything, the Dodgers need to improve their starting pitching. Penny and Lowe are the only two of the five starters that have a winning record. Even Penny (3-2) and Lowe’s (2-1) records aren’t that good. Teams expect more out of their top two starters, especially from their ace.
Many will be quick to point to the offense as the problem; how they haven’t been scoring all that many runs. Even though that is a good point, of the 13 loses they have only scored 1+ runs 6 times, less than half. But, in those loses the Dodger pitchers have given up 85 runs. Do the math, 85/13=6.5 that’s a 6.5 ERA, high for any team. It’s hard to stay in the game if your team is almost always trailing from the start. The Dodgers will need to fix the pitching and that’s the bottom line.
The Dodgers started the week off well beating the Reds 9-3 in Cincinnati, but the next day they got beat up on 8-1. The next series took place in Dodger Stadium where they hosted the NL West leading Diamondbacks. They looked impressive with a 8-3 win. Derek Lowe pitched 5 innings and gave up only 1 earned run. The offense was led by Loneys two RBI singles and two stolen bases by Furcal. The Diamondbacks came back on Thursday and beat the Dodgers 6-4. Billingsley had a dominant 12 strikeouts, but gave up 5 runs in 6 innings, dropping his record to 0-4 with a 6.53 ERA.
Win-loss-win-loss, seems to be a trend with the Dodgers right now. Well it’s better than what they went through in Atlanta, loss-loss-loss, sweep.
Up next, the Dodgers will be hosting the NL Champion Rockies. The Rockies are struggling right now, so this will be a good way for them to start a winning streak and make up some ground on the Diamondbacks.
Photo and Logo via Wikipedia
Subscribe to our RSS Feed And checkout our coffee competition to win a $30 gift voucher to your favourite coffee shop : click here
(No Ratings Yet)
Loading ...
0 responses so far ↓
Subscribe to our RSS Feed and leave a comment to enter the commentator of the week competition and win a $20 Amazon.com gift voucher.
Leave a Comment