Dodgers Digest Los Angeles Dodgers Baseball Blog
Baseball is always great, really, tonight’s game is great because it looks simultaneously dreadfully boring and fantastically intriguing. How can you not like a sport that can offer all that at once?
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Dodgers
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Rockies
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5:10pm PT
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Denver, CO
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2B
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Gordon
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LF
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Blackmon
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RF
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Puig
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SS
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Rutledge
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SS
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Ramirez
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3B
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Arenado
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1B
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Gonzalez
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1B
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Morneau
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LF
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Van Slyke
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CF
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Stubbs
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CF
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Ethier
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C
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McKenry
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3B
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Uribe
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RF
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Barnes
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C
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Ellis
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2B
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LeMahieu
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P
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Kershaw (L)
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P
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Jurrjens (R)
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To start with, there’s a lot to not like about this game. The Rockies are atrocious, having lost 15 of 17 (!) games, being in danger of falling behind Arizona by the end of the night (!!), freeing what used to be Jair Jurrjens from allowing 11 hits per nine at Triple-A Louisville (!!!) to make the start, and rolling out a lineup that doesn’t have Troy Tulowitzki. Unwatchable team gets even less watchable. Coors Field is still the worst. Both teams will be wearing the hideous red and dark blue holiday hats. We’re not even near first pitch yet and I already hate this game.
But of course, Clayton Kershaw exists, he’s rolling in with a 28-inning scoreless streak, and he’s facing the same Rockies that he no-hit just weeks ago. He is, somehow, more dominant than he ever has been before, and he’s a two-time Cy Young winner who had a decent argument for a third. The reeling Giants are holding players-only meetings to desperately turn things around as the Dodgers attempt to pull away in the NL West. Things, really, are looking great.
This is why I’m so terrified. An out-of-nowhere pitcher in Coors Field? You better believe I’m panicking.
The Dodger lineup is more or less the usual, with two exceptions: Hanley Ramirez is in it, which is absolutely not usual, and Matt Kemp is out of it, which is more unusual than you’d think. For all the drama about the week he spent on the bench in May, he hadn’t sat since. Kemp had started 35 consecutive games since his first shot in left field, and that gets Scott Van Slyke into the lineup against a righty.
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Carl Crawford will begin a rehab assignment with Triple-A Albuquerque on Saturday, reports Dylan Hernandez. It’s now been more than a month since he injured his ankle on May 27, and this is the first big step towards a potential mid-July return. Don Mattingly has been able to navigate the overstuffed outfield, more or less, because he’s rarely had them all available, but it may get more complicated soon.
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