Randy Johnson got the win, he's 9-7. Chan Ho Park took the loss, he's 4-3. Brandon Lyon picked up his 24th save.Clayton Kershaw made a good start opposite future Hall-of-Famer Johnson, matching him for six innings. Kershaw gave up only four hits and a walk over those six innings, allowing no runs, and striking out three. Unfortunately for the Dodgers, though, the bullpen allowed two runs. Chan Ho Park gave up a homerun to Tony Clark to lead off the 7th inning. He allowed a few more runners on before being pulled by Joe Torre. Joe Beimel came in and offered no help, giving up an RBI double to Stephen Drew, and a lead to the Diamondbacks that they would be able to hold until the end of the game.
The Dodgers only collected six hits on the day. Manny Ramírez went 2-4, though both hits came in odd circumstances. His first was a shot towards Stephen Drew that saw Drew lift his glove too quickly and the ball travel right under it. The second was a check swing grounder that pulled Tony Clark off the bag enough for a single.
He also came up in the 9th inning as the winning run, but grounded into a double play. Matt Kemp had the only RBI on the game, a double in the 6th inning that gave the Dodgers a 1-0 lead.With this second straight loss, the Dodgers fall to three games back of the Diamondbacks in the NL West, and fall to a game under .500. The Dodgers can only hope now to win the next two games in this series and cut the deficit in the playoff chase to one game by weekend's end.
Also: Matt Kemp, with his RBI double, went 1-4 today, extending his hitting streak to 19 games... Mark Sweeney's two hits in his last two at-bats streak came to an abrupt end when he struck out swinging pinch hitting in the 8th. His average went down to .118.
Opinion: Not too react too dramatically to just one game, but this is what I'm worried about: having Manny means nothing if the rest of the team still isn't hitting. One player alone cannot carry a team in baseball, that's why a guy like Alex Rodriguez doesn't have any rings. It takes a team, of which Manny should just be a part of. We need to start hitting because we can't keep asking our pitching to win when we only give them one run in support. And seriously, why is Sweeney still on the team?
