Dodgers Blue Heaven: Blog Kiosk: 9/3/2018 - Dodgers Links

Monday, September 03, 2018

Blog Kiosk: 9/3/2018 - Dodgers Links - We're In First Place Now

Matt Kemp! Walk-Off! First Place! Wow!

Those are really the only words I have left after witnessing this weekends magic. The Dodgers now stand alone is first place with 25 games to go. Per Ken Gurnick at MLB.com:

"We have some weapons," said Kemp. "It's September and like I said last night, we got to finish strong and let's go. Two big wins we got, especially in those situations. We have a dangerous group of guys."

On a side note, I was far more worried about that cameraman trailing Kemp as he ran around the field following his walk-off double. You can watch a highlight here. Photo above of Kemp being tackled by Kike Hernandez via Jill Weisleder/LA Dodgers 2018 at Dodger Insider. Below are more links to check out:

This Day in Dodgers History: In 1917 Phillies ace and future Hall of Famer Grover Cleveland Alexander pitched both ends of a doubleheader against the Brooklyn Robins/Dodgers, and won both contest while throwing complete games (Boxscore - Game 1 & Game 2). He gave up just seven hits all day long. In 1957 the Dodgers play their last game in their New Jersey home, Roosevelt Stadium -- losing to the Phillies, 3-2. In 1965 it's notable that the Angels changed their name from Los Angeles to the California Angels. In 1985 the received Bill Madlock from the Pirates for RJ Reynolds, Cecil Espy and Sid Bream. In 1987 the Dodgers traded Rick Honeycutt to the A's for pitcher Tim Belcher.
Happy Birthday, Ed Konetchy, Lindsay Deal, Eddie Stanky, Morrie Martin, Dave Clark, Luis Gonzalez & Brandon Beachy!
Cat Loves the Dodgers shares her pics from last night fantastic walk-off victory, here.
WTF! Puig needs to move into an exclusive gated community. Via TMZ; "Dodgers Star Yasiel Puig Hit a Third Time by Burglars."
Let's hope it doesn't come down to this. Per David Pinto at Baseball Musings; "Massive Tie Scenario."

If you assume that these are evenly matched, .543 teams, then the probability of a three-way tie stands at 0.014. The most likely record for a tie would be 88-74. It’s a little early to be tracking this on a daily basis, but I will keep the spreadsheet up to date.

Per Kenny Kelly at Boyond the Boxscore; "The Dodgers are having trouble playing Max Muncy: Muncy has had some troubling developments in the second half, but those aren’t reason to keep him out of the lineup."

On a recent episode of Effectively Wild, Jeff Sullivan of FanGraphs pointed out that Muncy struck out 40 percent of the time in the month. Finally, Muncy turned back to normal—except, wait. No, he didn’t, because he had an OPS over 1.000 for the month. His wRC+ for August was 173, so it was his second-best month despite him striking out nearly half the time.

He had a BABIP of .375 in August so that buoys the slugging, but he also had a hard-hit rate of 53.3 percent in August so it’s not as if he has been getting by on dinks and doinks.

FYI, the Dodgers are bringing up catcher Rocky Gale from Triple-A Oklahoma City. Per a Dodger press release:

Gale, 30, appeared in 85 games with OKC this season, where he hit .281 (83-for-285) with four home runs and 34 RBI. Gale has played in 14 Major League games in the 2015 and 2017 seasons with the San Diego Padres prior to being signed by Los Angeles as a minor league free agent on February 25. The Portland, Oregon native has slashed .262/.306/.331 in 709 games over nine minor league seasons, and was named a Pacific Coast League Mid-Season All-Star with Oklahoma City this year.

Reliever Ryan Madson spoke with reporter Byron Kerr of MASN Sports about his recovery from lumbar nerve root irritation:

“First he found out how I was moving incorrectly,” Madson explained. “Mimicked the pain that I was feeling on the mound, and he could drop me like that if he wanted to, and he did, so that he would know that this is the problem. And they basically reverse-engineered the problem. Adjusted the pads and we just did work, reps. Reps, a lot, lot of reps of pitching into a net. Just as hard as I could, with him turning up the power gradually so that I would have to move properly.”