Dodgers Digest Los Angeles Dodgers Baseball Blog
The Phillies? Again? I’m sick of the Phillies. You’re sick of the Phillies. Enough of the Phillies already. Bring on the Rockies already.
It’s possible that in the midst of talking about the greatness of Zack Greinke and Hyun-jin Ryu and the decided not-greatness of Paul Maholm and the absence of Clayton Kershaw and the existence of Josh Beckett that we’ve somewhat neglected Dan Haren, who has been completely fantastic. In four starts, he’s struck out 20, and he’s walked two. If we’re not properly crediting him for that, that’s on us, not him.
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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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2B
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Gordon
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C
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Ruiz
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LF
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Crawford
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2B
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Utley
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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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RF
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Byrd
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RF
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Puig
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LF
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Brown
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CF
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Ethier
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SS
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Galvis
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3B
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Uribe
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3B
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Asche
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C
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Federowicz
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P
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Kendrick (R)
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P
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Haren (R)
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On the other hand, his swinging-strike rate is among the lowest in baseball. The combination of that and “pitching really, really well” seems like something that’s difficult to keep up together.
Otherwise, in the nightly game of “as the outfield turns,” Matt Kemp takes a seat against righty Kyle Kendrick. I cannot imagine Kemp is pleased with that, especially after hitting two doubles last night, though I’ll admit that I don’t really know what we expect Don Mattingly to do. I imagine most fans would like to see Kemp and Yasiel Puig every day, but Carl Crawford and Andre Ethier aren’t exactly ideally platoon partners, and you can’t exactly bench Crawford every day and then expect him to produce. At the very least, the regular days off may help keep Kemp healthy.
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