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Dodgers-Giants rivalry

The Giants-Dodgers Rivalry Ready To Add Another Chapter

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The Giants-Dodgers rivalry has always been the West Coast version of Red Sox-Yankees, two ancient foes with an abiding dislike for each other that have several great pennant race moments in their history. This year it’s even more so.

The Yankees are being more restrained with their money while the Dodgers freely flex their financial muscle. The Red Sox are a last-place team for the third time in four years while the Giants are the game’s gold standard when it comes to clutch performance.

Now the Giants and Dodgers come down the stretch in what looks to be baseball’s best division race in the final month-plus. Los Angeles holds a 1 ½ game lead. The wild-card is a longshot, with the Chicago Cubs seven games up on San Francisco. It looks like winner-take-all in the NL West.

To set the stage for the closing month, TheSportsNotebook is going to preview these teams with the same sort of comparison/contrast that this site uses for a postseason series preview. Let’s lay out how each team looks in the four areas that win or lose baseball games—hitting for power, getting men on base, starting pitching and the bullpen. Then close it out with a look at how Las Vegas views each team.

GETTING MEN ON BASE: Both teams have several players who excel at consistently keeping the basepaths full. For the Dodgers, it’s catcher Yasmani Grandal, first baseman Adrian Gonzalez, leftfielder Andre Ethier and third baseman Justin Turner, all of whom have OBPs over .360.

Other contributors include second baseman Howie Kendrick—currently injured, but expected back in September. Rookie centerfielder Joc Pederson’s year-long numbers are good, but he’s slowed considerably since an electric first half of the season and has begun to lose playing time to Enrique Hernandez. Either way, manager Don Mattingly has someone who can get the job done.

The middle infield is what’s intriguing, as the Dodgers have re-united the veterans of the excellent Philadelphia Phillies teams from 2007-11, with Jimmy Rollins and the newly acquired Chase Utley, who will stand in for Kendrick at second base. Neither player is doing anything this year, but accomplished veterans in September fighting for perhaps one last October moment aren’t to be dismissed.

San Francisco’s lineup has a similar profile. Buster Posey, Brandon Belt, Nori Aoki and Gregor Blanco all have OBPs ranging from .351 to .377. Second baseman Joe Panik sits at .374, one of the toughest outs in the game, although he’s injured right now.

The Giants, like the Dodgers, except their second baseman back in the first part of September. San Francisco is also missing Hunter Pence, whose .327 OBP isn’t great, but is above the league average.

Kelby Tomlinson has been plugged into Panik’s spot and in a very short sample size, has a .341 OBP. And third baseman Matt Duffy has been the precise opposite of the Dodgers’ Peterson—a rookie who has come on in the second half rather than the first half. Duffy sits with a .345 OBP.

San Francisco’s biggest strength, when compared to Los Angeles, is that there are no obvious weak points in this lineup. The only current starter with an OBP under .300 is newly acquired Marlon Byrd, and he’ll take a seat when Pence comes back, hopefully early September.

HITTING FOR POWER: Here again, there’s consistency up and down the lineup for both teams. The Dodgers have seven starters (if you assume Kendrick rather than Utley at second base) whose slugging percentage exceeds the league average and in every case except Kendrick, it’s substantially above that line. The Giants have six starters (assuming Pence and Panik in the lineup) who do, with Blanco right on the line. When you consider that both teams play in pitcher’s parks, it’s obvious that these are teams really built on power, in spite of their pitching reputations that we’ll get to in a moment.

The impact power hitters—defined by slugging percentage rather than home runs—for the Dodgers would Gonzalez, Grandal, Turner, Ethier and Pederson. But the post-All Star break struggles of the latter have been mentioned. Pederson hasn’t been the same player since he entertained the nation at the Home Run Derby, making the finals and nearly derailing hometown favorite Todd Frazier in Cincinnati.

You might be surprised to learn that San Francisco’s best slugging percentage is owned by shortstop Brandon Crawford, who’s quietly transformed from a pure defensive SS to perhaps the game’s best all-around player at the position. That grand slam he hit in last year’s wild-card game at Pittsburgh was apparently his coming out party as a power guy. Crawford is joined by Buster Posey, Duffy and Pence, whom this team really needs back in the lineup.

STARTING PITCHING: The biggest names in baseball are right here in this rivalry. Continue reading “The Giants-Dodgers Rivalry Ready To Add Another Chapter” »

NL West Report: Showdown Series In Los Angeles

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It’s fair to say there are no truly big baseball series in May, but it’s also fair to say that some are bigger than others, and surely one of those that at least catches the eye is the one starting tonight between the Giants and Dodgers in Los Angeles. The NL West standings show LAD holding a four-game lead over San Fran. TheSportsNotebook takes a look ahead at this series, as well as the rest of the division…

Both Los Angeles and San Francisco are swinging the bats better than expected, ranking sixth and ninth in the National League respectively when it comes to scoring runs. But the Giants have lost third baseman Pablo Sandoval—as has my Fantasy team—to a broken bone in his hand. Buster Posey, whose overall numbers are good, has been in a funk for the past week. Ultimately the problem San Francisco is dealing with is that they don’t get runners on base consistently. Their respectable results in scoring runs have been more about hitting for power, both home runs and into the gaps thus far. That’s less likely to sustain itself over the long haul to begin with, and even less likely without Sandoval, the team’s most complete offensive player.

As long as we’re on the subject of unsustainable, we may as well shift over to Los Angeles centerfielder Matt Kemp. His start to the season is in the stratosphere, with a MLB-leading 12 home runs, a .470 on-base percentage and .816 slugging percentage. You can believe in Kemp—I thought he should have been NL MVP last year—and still acknowledge that these numbers will come down and pretty sharply, just bringing him back to the human race. Someone is going to have to pick it up. And someone who’s started is shortstop Dee Gordon, who hit .316 the first week in May, including three doubles and a home run. The Dodgers are also getting surprising production from the unrelated Ellis boys—second baseman Mark and catcher A.J. might not hit for power, but they churn out on-base percentage. Finally, we come to Andre Ethier, the rightfielder who is Scottie Pippen to Kemp’s Michael Jordan, and Ethier is swinging a good bat right now.

The bullpens are a little iffy both ways right now. Santiago Casilla has become the closer for the Giants in the wake of Brian Wilson’s season-ending injury and is doing an admirable job, But the team hasn’t taken advantage of its formidable bullpen depth to get the job done in front of the closer. Los Angeles is the reverse—Kenley Jansen and Josh Lindblom are pitching well in setup, while Javy Guerra has been inconsistent at closer.

Therefore the attention shifts, as it should with these two teams to the starting pitching. The matchups for this series are as follows…

Mon: Barry Zito-Ted Lilly
Tue: Ryan Vogelsong-Clayton Kershaw
Wed: Tim Lincecum-Chad Billingsley

All three LA pitchers are having good years, as is Zito. Vogelsong, and especially Lincecum, got off to slow starts, but each has settled down their last three outings. Thus, we can conclude we’ll get good-pitched games, and the spacious environment of Dodger Stadium will only aid that. All six pitchers are averaging about six innings a start, and with the bullpens question marks, the series can be won by the starter(s) who picks his team up and just gives one extra inning above the average and gets the pen into the eighth, where the depth issues won’t be so evident.

The only this series is really landscape-altering is if it’s a sweep either way—the Giants could pull to within one and send the message that the race is on, or fall seven out and have their back to the wall quickly. But even if it follows the norm and goes 2 of 3 either way, both teams are likely to be fighting each other for some type of playoff position throughout the year, be it one of the two wild-cards or an NL West crown. The wins you get now are the ones you don’t sweat in September.

Here’s the rundown on the other three teams in the NL West. Their records are in parentheses and by way of comparison the Dodgers are 18-10 and the Giants 14-14…

Arizona (14-15): I continue to believe that Arizona can’t be unhappy. They survived a 10-game Eastern road swing with a 5-5 record and they host San Francisco on the weekend with a possible chance to move into second. The start of the week won’t be easy with St. Louis in town. Just last week, TheSportsNotebook discussed the problems the D-Backs were having at the corner infield spots. As though responding to criticism, young first baseman Paul Goldschmidt, opened up, hitting .333 over the past week and  third baseman Ryan Roberts went 4-of-14 with a home run. Cody Ransom, who can bounce between third and short, continued to hit well, going 5-for-14 with a couple home runs. I’ll be sending a bill to Kirk Gibson for my motivational ploys.

Colorado (12-15): A series win over the Dodgers early last week proved to be just a drop in the desert, as the Rockies’ pitching was quickly hit hard by Atlanta in a three-game sweep over the weekend. Troy Tulowitzki and Todd Helton are slumping—Helton particularly slow, and Carlos Gonzalez has the burden of carrying the offense. This team needs to get its pitchers healthy, especially Jorge de la Rosa and Jeremy Guthrie. The bright spot is young Drew Pomeranz, with four starts and a 4.05 ERA, including a strong outing against Los Angeles last Wednesday.

San Diego (9-20): The Padres have some guys hitting, with Yonder Alonso spraying the ball, and Cameron Maybin and Chris Denorfia both looking in rhythm, but none have home run power and other than Edinson Volquez, the pitching shows no signs of coming around. The Padres play the Rockies at home to start the week, so just as there’s a key series at the top, we also have one at the bottom as San Diego tries to avoid making last place a settled issue in this division.