It’s Vin Scully week! Even better, we’ll get another Vin Scully week next year, as he returns for his 66th season broadcasting Dodgers baseball. @CeeAngi did a great piece on Scully’s process and career last month, which is worth a read (or re-read).
The Dodgers were in on a bunch of players at the deadline, but didn’t end up making any deals. They’ve been in a strange sort of limbo that many thought would lead for them to make a deal to get rid of one of their four ‘starting’ OFs. Well, three guys who are being paid like starting outfielders and one guy who is actually producing (Puig). Even funnier is that their fifth OF, Scott Van Slyke, has outperformed all the highly paid guys as well. Carl Crawford, by the way, has put up a .244/.282/.358 line. Before being released by the Yankees in the final year of his deal, Soriano put up .221/.244/.367. Who is laughing now? Oh wait, it’s me.
Team Overviews
Cubs
- wRC+: 87 (13th)
- UBR: 5.7 (1st)
- UZR: -0.5 (10th)
- DRS: -9 (14th)
- SP FIP-: 91 (2nd)
- RP FIP-: 90 (3rd)
- Run differential: -46 (12th)
- R+RBI: 812 (11th)
Dodgers
- wRC+: 108 (1st)
- UBR: 2.1 (7th)
- UZR: -5.4 (12th)
- DRS: +2 (11th)
- SP FIP-: 97 (4th)
- RP FIP-: 101 (11th)
- Run differential: +60 (2nd)
- R+RBI: 888 (3rd)
News, notes, vengeance pacts, injuries, etc.
Not a ton of news on the injury front with the Dodgers, for once. Chad Billingsley is still on the DL following TJ surgery in April 2013, which required another surgery last month. Chone Figgins is on the DL with a strained quad, and Erisbel Arruebarrena is out with a hip flexor strain.
Kyuji Fujikawa is most of the way back from his TJS, and I’m a little surprised he hasn’t been called up already.
As a less sleep-deprived Brett points out in his bullets post from this morning, the Cardinals told their players The Right Way about being traded, namely, Joe Kelly and Allen Craig found out through media reports that they’d been traded. Craig in particular was pretty pissed off. I’m not linking Joe Strauss, because he’s a trolling douchebag, but his piece today was pretty much an ode to what a big swinging dick John Mozeliak is. I’m disappointed it didn’t include the line “I’m not here to make friends”.
Former Cub Darwin Barney is currently in ABQ, my local-ish team of the future. Maybe the high altitude will help him get over the .350 SLG hump.
That Clayton Kershaw guy is pretty good. Too bad he’s not pitching this series. His numbers for the last two months (h/t Riz)
Pitching Probables
Friday: Kyle Hendricks, RHP (2.33, 3.55, 4.39) vs Dan Haren, RHP (4.49, 3.70, 3.98), 9:05 PM CT
Hendricks put together yet another solid start, pitching into the seventh inning and allowing only a solo HR. That was enough to give him the loss against Adam Wainwright however, so the Cubs probably should have moved him at the deadline since he doesn’t have TWTW. He’s gone at least six innings in all three starts, and has a 2.33 strikeout to walk ratio in 19.1 IP on the year.
Haren was a guy we were hoping the Cubs would go after last offseason, but things worked out much more nicely with Hammel than they have for the Dodgers with Haren. He’s still doing Dan Haren things, namely, not walking any one, but his strikeout rate has seen a big drop and he’s giving up a lot of HRs, even relative to his past homer-prone ways. His cutter is down to 85 mph, down from 88 in his most successful seasons. The most surprising thing about his season is that he’s made all 21 starts without a DL stint.
Saturday: Tsuyoshi Wada, LHP (3.38, 3.97, 4.63) vs Hyun-Jin Ryu, LHP (3.44, 3.19, 3.63), 8:10 PM CT
After two indifferent to bad starts, Wada righted the ship and looked pretty good against the Rockies. He struck out six and walked one in seven innings, allowing just one run.
It feels like Ryu has been pitching for the Dodgers forever already, it’s hard to believe that it’s only his second season. He’s been even better than his solid debut season, getting both more strikeouts and issuing even fewer free passes. He throws five pitches all with more or less equal frequency, and all of them are above average, except maybe his curveball.
Sunday: Edwin Jackson, RHP (5.79, 3.99, 3.94) vs Josh Beckett, RHP (2.74, 3.75, 4.09), 3:10 PM CT
Dodgers Digest/fangraphs writer Mike Petriello tweeted this morning:
Edwin Jackson’s ERA is more than 3 runs higher than Josh Beckett’s. They’re the same pitcher. Have at it. http://t.co/u1m6MDpvxF
— Mike Petriello (@mike_petriello) August 1, 2014
Well, not really, though I can see where he’s coming from. Beckett’s had a ton of luck with his .249 BABIP, hence the low ERA. But he is being hit a lot less hard than last year. Beckett had a whopping 24.1% LD rate last year and not surprisingly an ERA above five. This year, it’s 18.1%. Jackson meanwhile is being hit even harder at 25.6%. I was one of the first guys in line to defend Jackson last year based on his peripherals, but this year there’s not much of a defense, he’s been terrible. As MO keeps pointing out on twitter Travis Wood has been just as bad, but his peripherals look way better and that stretch of something like 20 straight quality starts last year bought him a ton of rope with the fans.
Of course it’s also clear that Ejax isn’t as good because he has eleven losses and Beckett only has five, as the hilarious and nonironic conversation thread following up that tweet argues.