Saturday, June 28, 2008

Ethier and Park team up for win

Well it's about freakin' time I wrote about a big win by the Dodgers that involved the offense doing something other than the usual nothing.

Russell Martin started the scoring in the 1st and Andre Ethier added a pinch-hit, 3-run shot in the 7th to carry the Dodgers in the first game of the final Freeway Series of the year, 6-0. I thought 1 homer was impressive enough, but 2??? Now that's just crazy!!!

Much like Eric Stults a couple of days ago, Chan Ho Park made a spot start and was simply brilliant. He went 6 IP, 4 H, 0 ER, 0 BB, 7 K. I laughed for a long time when I saw the Dodgers resigned him before the season, but my oh my was I wrong. His ERA is now at 2.52, and he's clearly been one of the team's top players. He deserves boat loads of credit for his results.

After Martin's homer in the 1st, there was no scoring until the 5th. Matt Kemp singled to start the inning, and an error by Eric Aybar put Kemp on 3rd and Martin on 2nd. Jeff Kent hit a sac-fly to score Kemp, and James Loney laced an RBI single to get the score to 3-0.

The great thing about Ethier's homer was that it came with 2 outs. Martin and Kent singled to start the inning, but the next 2 guys couldn't get on. It would have followed in Dodgers' tradition to strand both runners, but Ethier picked a great time to hit his 7th of the year.

Juan Pierre went 2-5 with 2 stolen bases. He hasn't taken a walk since June 6, which goes to show that if he didn't hack away at everything, he can be such a threat on the bases. Russell Martin went 2-3, raising his AVG to .312, which will most likely give him an All-Star game nod.

Brian Falkenborg pitched a scoreless 7th, and Jonathan Broxton and Takashi Saito K'd all 6 men they faced to close the game out. On the whole, everything went right.

The Dodgers now need to take this momentum and win this series. They already dropped 2 of 3 to both the Indians and White Sox, so they have to step up at some point. Chad Billingsley will look to even his record at 7 up by facing Jared Weaver.

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