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With four straight victories and eight in their first 10, this Dodger vessel is looking more seaworthy on the rough oceans of the media. Tossed about through much of the winter and on the verge of capsizing at both their road and home openers, the Dodgers should find the media waters more forgiving even if they tilt a bit much to starboard at some point. They've bought themselves a little time.
(Impressive paragraph, isn't it - considering my entire knowledge of sailing comes from Gilligan's Island.)
With that in mind, there's one point that might be made without taking away from the Dodgers' early-season achievements. If there is something the team could have done during Spring Training to prevent Eric Gagne from injuring himself as seriously as he has been - Tony Jackson of the Daily News writes in his latest update that Gagne is still about a month from returning - let's hope the Dodgers have learned to do it for the future.
Now, eventhough we are still not running on all 9 cylinders, the pitching and especially the hitting has really been in synch.
Also, in past years the Dodgers have really had a terrible bench. Esp. during the Claire years, our bench consisted of mostly marginal players. Last year we really had a bench that could contribute, and that has been evident this year as well.
Individual hot streaks are also important in a team surge, and this year we have also had several exceptional individual starts (Izzy, Kent, Ledee), and some of our pitchers seem more focused than in the past. I.e., Odalis had a great mound presence on his last start - his body language was really saying he was going to get everybody out. (I've long noticed that trait in Pedro).
So even though Drew and Choi got off to a slow start, the others are doing well to pick up the slack. It is a very exciting start, especially with those come-from-3-runs-behind wins. A teams ususlly has 1-2 of those a year, and we've had 2 in our first week. Baseball players are at least as superstitious as sailors, and those comebacks have to be felt by the players as a very good omen, indeed.
BTW, I cast Steve Smoll as Gilligan, Wison Alverez as Skipper (altough David Wells is better) and Frank as Mr. Howell. . .NOT!!!
Hopefully, a month or two down the road we'll still feel good about this team.
I also saw the piece on this morning's Baseball tonight. But, the credit that Steve Phillips was giving the Dodgers was somewhat backhanded.
He made it seem that the Dodgers were winning despite themselves. And that the defense was still poor. Yet, they have only given up three unearned runs so far this year.
And he also mentioned that other teams in the past got off to fast starts, then faltered like the Royals a couple years back.
The media is still not giving credit where credit is due, with Depodesta and Tracy.
BTW, Tracy is doing a great job giving all 25 guys at bats and playing time.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/17/sports/baseball/17score.html
AVG .405
HR 3
RBI 12
R 14
SB 2
Answer is ... Jeff Kent.
Source: Yahoo! Sports.
Choi has had chances,but looks bad.He needs to prove he can a productive hitter,Drew plays because he makes 11,000,000 dollars a year.
i didn't realize that a grand total of 17 plate appearances in 12 games scattered over three whole years constitutes "lots of fruitless chances" at the major league level.
and chen's spring wasn't so bad either, though he only had 20 at-bats there as well. but he still had 2 doubles and 2 homers in those 20 at-bats (that's a .600 slg% compared to repko's .525 in 80 AB)
And the Sunday night crew of Baseball Tonight went on again about the Dodgers, saying "these guys are better than we realize" and adding that DePo obviously made some good moves.
Stephen, I think you're on to something about the bench. I used to cringe every time we had to go to the bench in the past, but not now. It's been said that Oakland's success under Beane is due in no small part to his strong collection of bench players. DePo seems to be doing the same thing here, and it looks like he's come up with the deepest Dodger team I've seen in ages.
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