Cha Seung Baek picked up the win, he's 5-9. Greg Maddux took the loss, he's 7-12.Greg Maddux's start was a bit sub-par. He went six innings, giving up four runs on seven hits and two walks. He struck out four, but struggled all night getting called strikes on the corners and down low around the plate where he normally lives. The Dodger bullpen pitched two scoreless innings in relief to keep the Padres to four runs.
The Dodger offense, meanwhile, presented more problems today than the pitching. The Dodgers managed to get only seven runners on base today. Andre Ethier managed about half of that amount. He went 3-4, with two doubles. Matt Kemp and Casey Blake drew a walk each, and Blake DeWitt had a 5th inning single. DeWitt also reached on an error in the 3rd. Unfortunately for the Dodgers, two of those runners were eliminated by double plays,
and the other five were left stranded. And that was the offensive output for the Dodgers.The Arizona Diamondbacks lost as well tonight (they now fall to one game under .500 on the season: 70-71) so the Dodgers will retain their 1.5 game lead in the NL West. The Dodgers will to start up a new winning streak tomorrow at 7:05 L.A. time.
Also: With the loss, the Dodgers fall back to two games over .500 (73-71)... Coming into today, the Dodgers' magic number (ie. the combination of the number of Dodger win and/or Diamondback losses that will clinch us the NL West division) was 19. Though the Dodgers lost today, the Diamondback loss lowers that magic number to 18.
Opinion: I said about a week and a half ago that sometimes we have trouble winning games we should win. Now, that was before we swept the Padres last week. That said, the message still stands. We look at the schedule and say: "Wow, we play the awful Padres nine times in September." That doesn't mean: "Wow, we have nine extra wins to look forward to in September." We still have to come out and play. We still have to win these games. I'm not going to put too much into the loss.
...Though, honestly, Cha Seung Baek? Guy had a 5.36 ERA coming into today. We ripped him for seven runs in 3.2 innings last week in L.A. So how did he shut us down for seven innings today? Chalk it up to being tired? Physically tired from traveling? "Emotionally tired" (???) as Jim Watson of FSN Prime Ticket just asked Joe Torre (literally, that happened on the TV as I was writing this). Yep, that's it Watson. We're emotionally tired from having such a great weekend, in which we swept our division rivals and moved into 1st place for the first time in months. No, no, that's probably it. We blew all our excitement and energy in the weekend series and had none left to take down Cha Seung Baek. Sheesh... In any case, the Diamondbacks bailed us out by continuing their bad play and their crusade to hand us the division. So, Dodgers, how about this: let's come out the next two days and beat down the Padres and win this series? No more of these losses to guys like Cha Seung Baek. It's not good for the collective Dodger soul...
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