Winning combinations

Yesterday’s game points out the stupidity of the rules about pitching wins. Brad Penny pitches seven innings of scoreless baseball, while Joe Beimel pitches one inning, and who gets the victory? Beimel, since he was in the game when the team took the lead for good. What’s worse, let’s say Beimel had given up the go-ahead run, or say Penny had left a 1-0 lead and Beimel let the Cardinals tie the game before Loney’s two-run homer. He’d still get the win, even though he didn’t do his job at all.

This is all foolishness. When a starting pitcher fails to go five innings but his team still wins, the official scorer gets to decide who gets the victory, based on his assessment of which pitcher performed most effectively in relief. Why shouldn’t it be the same in games where the starter does go five but leaves in a tie game or on the losing end? If you pitch eight innings of scoreless ball but leave trailing 1-0, you should get the win if your team comes back and wins 2-1.

The rules for pitching wins are left over from the era when relief pitchers were the lousiest pitchers on the team, and a starter didn’t deserve a win if he didn’t go eight or nine innings. But these days, managers feel great if they can coax five innings out of a kid (even a kid with a rifle arm!) and hope the bullpen doesn’t blow it.

We trust the official scorer to make these decisions when the starter stinks. Why shouldn’t we do it when the starter is good?

Forrest finally gets it!

Juan Pierre dropped to seventh, FINALLY. Too bad it took four months of sucking for anybody in the organization to realize he was killing rallies. And what does Pierre do in response? One for five with no walks.

Now if only we could do the same for Furcal. He lost the game for the Dodgers several times before he won it. The season isn't a total loss yet, but unless they reel off another 15-game winning streak soon, the Dodgers are done. That will free them to play the kids every dy in preparation for next year.

Sweeney is a decent addition, seeing as how they need a pinch hitter who does something other than swing and miss at anything offspeed (sorry, Olmedo, I, and half of Mexico, loves you, but you've been lost at the plate lately). We needn't worry about a roster spot, however. The Dodgers could use another bench player, even if it means sending down the 13th or 14th pitcher on the staff. That guy, be it Houlton or Stults or Hull or Roberto Hernandez, isn't getting anybody out anyway.

The Dodgers limp into St. Louis, home of dreaded manager Tony LaRussa. He’s the worst thing to happen to baseball aside from steroids, and I'm not so sure we can't blame that on him too. Notice where all the juiced up players played? Oakland and later St. Louis. Think Tony didn't know what was going on? Baloney.

The guy thinks he invented baseball, what with batting McGwire in the top half of road games, then subbing for him inthe bottom halff becuse he couldn't play the field. How dumb is that? You waste a power hitter in the top of the first, insted of having him on the bench to pinch hit in a key situation. But Tony smiles as if he's put one over on the lords of baseball.

But his most shameful contribution to the game is all this lefty righty crap at the end of a contest. What used to take 2 hours now drags on for 3 and a half because of three-pitcher innings and seven trips to the mound per side. It must work, because everybody has copied him. But does it?

Who is the middle-inning specialist, other than Paul Assenmacher, who's continued to get out big league batters over more than a two-year stretch? If these guys were any good, they'd be starters or closers. They used to have middle relievers back in the 50s and 60s too; they were the guys who weren't good enough to start. All this specilization has made baseball more like football. Pretty soon, none of the fielders will be required to hit. We'll just have juiced up Cansecos at every DH position and Furcal and Pierre playing the field.

Thank goodness for Tivo. A LaRussa trip to the mound is over in a heartbeat, and a three-pitcher inning flies by with just the touch of a fast forward button.

A New Beginning for the Dodgers?

Are the Dodgers prepared to go to their graves with the failed experiments of Juan Pierre and Rafael Furcal atop the lineup? It sure seems that way. At the beginning of the season, there was a question about which man was the better leadoff hitter. After all, both players seemed to be the prototypical top-of-the-order guys: rabbits without a lot of pop who could steal bases and create runs.

There’s only one problem. These guys don’t get on base. Pierre’s refusal to take walks (he has all of 22 this season) is well-known around the league by now, so he hardly sees a strike. Furcal walks twice as often, but injuries have kept him from being a stolen base threat. Neither man is hitting, however. Furcal’s .284 average is right at his career mark, while Pierre’s .277 is significantly below his career mark of .300. The Dodgers’ offense depends on these guys getting on base, being moved over, and driven in by the bigger bats. The Dodgers have won 2 of their last 10 games; Pierre had two hits in each of those games, while Furcal had two hits in one game and a single and two walks (And scored three times) in the other.

But the plan doesn’t work when they go 0-for-8, like they did yesterday, or when they go 0-for-6 in Penny’s last loss, or when they go 1-for-7 in the losses to tthe Rockies or 0-for-8 in the July 25 loss to the Astros.

Those o-fers are taking away valuable at-bats from guys who ARE getting on base. Like Andre Ethier, who seems to get a hit, and often an extra base hit, whenever he’s in the lineup. Like Matt Kemp, who despite struggling of late still has a higher Batting average (.323) than Pierre’s on base percentage (a dismal .314). Even Brad Penny gets on base (.326) at a higher clip than Pierre. In fact, Pierre has the worst OBP of any Dodger starter. Furcal, at .348, leads only Pierre, Penny, and Nomar (.329).

If the Dodgers are to score runs, the guys who don’t get on need to bat lower in the lineup. Jeff Kent leads the team in OBP with .384, but he’s the team’s only legitimate power threat, so batting him leadoff seems a waste. Loney (.379) seems too slow for the role. That leaves Ethier and Kemp, who platoon but should be playing every day given their averages (.304 and .328, respectively) and their OBPs (.370 and .372). How about we try them in right and center and in the 1-2 hole? Could the results be any worse than the two shutouts over the weekend?

That would necessitate sitting Pierre and or Gonzalez much more often (Amazingly, Pierre leads the team in games played, despite his lack of production. Imagine if Ethier had another 100 at-bats this season; that could be 30 more hits!). But the Dodgers are at the point in the season where they have to admit they made a mistake in signing two old men with poor throwing arms to man left and center. The playoffs almost assuredly depend on it.