Dodgers Digest Los Angeles Dodgers Baseball Blog
Say what you will about A.J. Burnett, who starts tonight for Philadelphia — and he’s had a long, outstanding career — but at least he’s not Cliff Lee, who made the Dodgers look foolish last night and pointed out, once again, why he’s one of the absolute best in the game. Burnett has been battling a hernia, which is partially responsible for the fact that he’s walked more than he’s struck out, but he’s managed to at least keep runs off the board.
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Phillies
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Dodgers
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7:10pm PT
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Los Angeles, CA
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CF
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Revere
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LF
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Crawford
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SS
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Rollins
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RF
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Puig
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RF
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Byrd
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SS
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Ramirez
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1B
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Howard
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1B
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Gonzalez
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C
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Ruiz
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CF
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Kemp
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LF
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Brown
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3B
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Uribe
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3B
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Nix
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2B
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Gordon
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2B
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Galvis
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C
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Federowicz
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P
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Burnett (R)
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P
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Ryu (L)
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Also good news: No Chase Utley! The Phillies give Utley the night off against lefty Hyun-jin Ryu and start instead Freddie Galvis, who has a .225/.266/.365 line in parts of three seasons and is a charter member of the “fans only care about PED suspensions when it happens to good players” club, because remember kids, there’s no such thing as cognitive dissonance in simultaneously believing that PEDs made Ryan Braun and Mark McGwire stars while having little to no effect on lesser players like Galvis and hundreds of other guys you’ve never, ever heard of.
And more good news: Alex Guerrero had three more hits, including two triples, in today’s 6-4 Albuquerque win over Salt Lake City. That gives him 14 hits in 30 tries; when asked, via Eric Stephen, about Guerrero, Don Mattingly said that it’s really more about what he’s doing on defense, which was expected. And really, this is one of the great side effects of Dee Gordon‘s wonderful start: there’s no need to rush Guerrero. If Gordon had been struggling terribly, obviously Chone Figgins and Justin Turner aren’t really any kind of alternative. We’d have been deluged with “but .467 batting average!” demands. This way, you can let him play. You can see what he is. If nothing else, I’m appreciative to Gordon of that.
That said, something has to change soon. Not that I miss Figgins, but I don’t love the 13-man bullpen. You figure the short bench will come back to bite this team sooner than later. That may be especially true if Andre Ethier, out of the lineup tonight due to a cold, is unable to appear at all.
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