Saturday, July 31, 2010

Your basic Broxton choke job

Chad Billingsley battled like a warrior on short rest, Casey Blake broke out of a long slump with a solo homer, and the Dodgers looked like they were going to get another narrow win.

Leave it to Jonathan Broxton to mess it all up.

Once again, Broxton could not get the big out when he needed it. Pat Burrell hit a two-out, two-run shot in the eighth to lift the Giants to a win, 2-1. While the Dodgers may not have much hopes of winning the NL West, their Wild Card aspirations also took a hit with the loss. They are 7 1/2 in back of the Padres and 5 1/2 behind the Giants.

As is typical with any Dodger game in the second half, there aren't much offensive highlights to report on. Anytime the Dodgers got a threat, they'd strike out and generally look lost on how to get runners in. In other words, it was another day at the office for the bats.

Thanks to Billingsley, the Giants suffered much of the same. As I said before, he really battled and deserves a ton of credit for not only volunteering to pitch on three days rest for the first time in his career, but for putting forth a great start. He finished with 6 2/3 innings pitched, two hits, no runs, two walks, and five strikeouts. His ERA is down to 3.78.

The first threat for the Dodgers that they blew came in the fourth. Rafael Furcal reached on an infield hit, then stole his 18th base of the year. Matt Kemp hit third and drew a walk. Then bang, bang, bang: Casey Blake popped up, Raffy got caught trying to steal third, and James Loney grounded out.

With Bills and Barry Zito dealing, it took until the seventh to get the game's first run. I listened to the game on XM Radio, and announcer Dave Campbell was saying how Blake was awful in the month of July against fastballs. Sure enough, Blake took a Zito fastball out to left for a solo home run for the 1-0 lead.

Things got interesting in the bottom of the seventh, but the Dodgers survived. Pablo Sandoval grounded out, but Raffy made a throwing error to let Edgar Renteria reach first. Eli Whiteside then struck out in Billingsley's last batter.

In came Hong-Chih Kuo, who gave up a single to Aaron Rowand pinch-hitting. A wild pitch sent both to scoring position. Taking a page out of the Dodgers' book, Andres Torres could not come through in the clutch by striking out to end the inning.

The Dodgers could have increased their lead in the eighth, but that would require getting a clutch hit with runners on. You didn't think that would happen, did you? Foolish person, you. Anyway, Kuo (yes, Kuo) drew a walk with one out, and Scott Podsednik followed with another one.

Guillermo Mota came in and immediately struck out Raffy and Kemp.

The eighth is when the Giants took their first lead of the day, and for good. Kuo was still on, and he got Freddy Sanchez popping up and Aubrey Huff grounding out. Kuo then beaned Buster Posey. There was a question if it was on purpose considering the beanball war that's been going on between these two teams. Who knows.

Joe Torre chose to go with Broxton to get Burrell. Like Broxton ALWAYS does, he couldn't rise to the occasion. A two-run homer to left made it 2-1, and the Giants would never look back. Mota got the Dodgers in order to end the game.

It should be noted that Andre Ethier missed the game due to the birth of his second child. Congratulations to his family. But with all due respect to him, with the way he's been hitting lately, I doubt it would have made any difference if he was there, especially against the lefty Zito.

Today was just the latest example of the ineptitude of the offense. They've played 16 games since the All-Star break, scoring 36 runs. That's an average of 2.25 runs a game, which is downright pathetic. They simply don't have the big run producers that can carry the team when times are tough.

Then there's Broxton, who has a 6.75 ERA in July with two blown saves. He may have been an elite closer at one point, but that's not at all the case now. I think Joe Torre needs to accept the fact that Broxton is not the same pitcher right now, and not use him in save situations for the time being. Let Kuo, Kenley Jansen, and newly acquired Octavio Dotel give it a shot. It can't be any worse.

Broxton's fastball is his calling card, but hitters no longer are in fear of him. The fastball is still a wicked pitch, but when hitters know it's coming most of the time, they're good enough to adjust at this level. He needs to go watch tapes of guys like Eric Gagne and Trevor Hoffman to see how effective off-speed pitches can be in getting the final outs. Relying exclusively on the hard stuff is not cutting it anymore.

All the Dodgers can hope for now is that their new players (Lilly, Theriot, Podsednik, and Dotel) give them a shot in the arm to get on a roll again. We all need to remember that there's about two months left in the season, plenty of time to improve. But, that also means they can be out of pretty quickly as well if they keep losing.

Clayton Kershaw and Matt Cain will be the main event of ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball. The Dodgers won right before the break on Sunday night, dismantling the Cubs. This time won't be nearly as easy, so hopefully Kershaw is on fire and someone, ANYONE, carries the offense with a big night.

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