Dodgers Digest Los Angeles Dodgers Baseball Blog
While the Braves trot out the same lineup we’ve seen the last two nights, the Dodgers’ definitely has a “we’re in the middle of a really long time between days off” feel to it.
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Dodgers
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Braves
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4:10 p.m. PT
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Atlanta, Ga.
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LF
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Crawford
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SS
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Bonifacio
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CF
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Puig
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2B
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La Stella
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RF
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Kemp
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1B
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Freeman
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1B
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Van Slyke
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LF
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J.Upton
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SS
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Turner
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RF
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Heyward
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3B
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Uribe
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C
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Gattis
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C
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Ellis
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3B
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Johnson
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2B
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Barney
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CF
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B.Upton
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P
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Haren (R)
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P
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Minor (L)
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Dee Gordon and Adrian Gonzalez both sit, as does Miguel Rojas. Justin Turner plays short for the first time since “the incident.” Darwin Barney gets his first start as a Dodger; I’m not entirely convinced that I wouldn’t prefer to have the two of them swapped, really. This all gets Scott Van Slyke a start at first base, and Carl Crawford leading off against a lefty, which is hardly ideal. It’s just Crawford’s seventh start atop the order all season, and the first six all came in March and April. He has, of course, been awful so far, but there’s at least some hope that there’s a bit of bad luck happening, since he’s been hitting the ball hard and finding few positive results despite it.
Working in his favor, maybe: Mike Minor, starting tonight for Atlanta for the first time since Aug. 1 after being skipped his last time, has been awful. His strikeouts and walks are about the same as always, but his HR/9 has jumped to 1.65, and when you see a BABIP go from .252 to .272 to 3.54 along with it, that’s generally not just about bad luck. It means you’re getting hit really, really hard.
Speaking of once-productive pitchers: Dan Haren! It sounds odd to say that he’s going to have to pull it together tonight in order to follow Roberto Hernandez and Kevin Correia, but, yeah. The Dodgers have 42 games remaining, including tonight, and he’s 46 innings short of his vesting option. I have a feeling that this one might end up being really, really close, and he really needs to build on last week’s solid outing against the Angels.
The game is on MLB Network tonight, but will be blacked out in Los Angeles.
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Unrelated but not worth a post for itself: SNLA has announced that they plan to air five Isotopes games in September. This is great, because a channel that is entirely dedicated to one team should absolutely be giving some air time to the minor league affiliates of that team. Except… the games won’t be live. They’ll be tape-delayed by at least a day. And… most of you can’t get SNLA. So… this is more baseball that you won’t be able to see. Huh. Forget I said anything.
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