I'm doing some more consolidating of the offseason awards I hand out.
Today, I'm cutting out the Gold Glove, mainly because fielding is hard to judge and checking out the UZR leaderboards on the Dodgers, I'm seeing Reed Johnson at number one, which seems acceptable except for how small the sample size is. Then, at number two, you have Casey Blake, which greatly surprised me.
So, I guess Casey Blake gets the Gold Glove award, but again, hard to judge.
Ok then. Rookie of the Year, another award with not a whole bunch of viable candidates.
Six players made their debuts this year: Carlos Monasterios, Russ Mitchell, Jon Link, John Lindsey, Kenley Jansen, and John Ely.
Russ Mitchell came up in September and didn't get a whole lot of experience. Jon Link got just 8.2 innings worth of work in.
You have to give John Lindsey an honorable mention for finally making it to the show but the poor guy got just twelve at-bats before breaking his hand. At least he got a base hit.
I give credit to Monasterios for jumping from the low minors and sticking the whole year on a major league roster. He had a couple of good moments, and was admirable for his ability to work out of the bullpen and make spot starts on short notice.
Unfortunately, not all of his 88.1 innings were of the highest quality. For example, he posted a 2.20 ERA in 28.2 innings in April and May, which was great. Then he posted a 5.43 ERA from June until the end of the season, which was not as great. Overall, he finished the season with a 4.38 ERA, which is pretty good for a guy who hadn't even sniffed the minors before this year.
That leaves us with our last two candidates: Ely and Jansen. This is actually pretty tough for me.
Jansen was fantastic. 0.67 ERA in 27 innings. 41 strikeouts to just 15 walks.
On the other hand, because Ely struggled through his last nine appearances (8.18 ERA in 44 IP) and raised his overall ERA on the season to 5.49, it makes it easy to forget that he was great through his first nine. After getting called up, Ely posted a 3.38 ERA in 56 innings through nine games, striking out 41 to 13 walks.
So, again, tough decision.
But I got to give it to Ely.
Taking nothing away from Jansen, because I thoroughly enjoyed watching him pitch this year and I think he's got a very bright future, but, at least for me, his 27 innings pitched can't trump the fact that John Ely was fourth on the list of Games Started for pitchers this year or that Ely racked up nine quality starts in his rookie campaign.
There's a lot of value in that, and as such, John Ely wins the "J's Dodger Blog 2010 Rookie of the Year" award.
Last week, in the recap, which I wrote before the game that day, I made some mention of the fact that if the Dodgers were really serious about trying to make the playoffs, it was really all in their hands. (In fairness to me, I did say there was only about a 2% chance of any of this happening.)
Anyway, that blog post was written before the Dodgers decided to roll over and die this week.
First, they lost the rubber match Sunday and the series as a whole to the Giants.
Then, and this is the really fun one: they went into San Diego to face a reeling, dying Padres team. A team that had lost ten straight games. And what happened? The Dodgers got swept by the Padres. Swept. They couldn't eke out one win in three? They couldn't, I dunno, continue the Padres anti-momentum and win the first game before dropping the next two? Nope. Guess not.
Oh, and then to finish it off, the Dodgers rode their losing streak to six games by losing the first game of four in Houston.
They did win the next two games, but it was too little, too late.
Put it like this. Coming into this week, the season's heart monitor was going "Beep ... beep ... beep ..." It was faint, but it was still alive. After the Padres series, it was more like "Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep..." And any win at this point is like the doctor who won't give up trying to hit the dead patient with more volts. "Clear!" Zap. "Clear!" Zap. The nurse comes running in. "Doctor! Stop it! Stop it! He's dead!"
Dramatic, I know. But inaccurate? I think not.
The Dodgers losing the fourth game of the series with the Astros, thus splitting the set, was like rigor mortis setting in.
Anyway, couple more things.
Good Decisions
Quickly want to make this point (again): how great is it that Ted Lilly, Hiroki Kuroda, Scott Podsednik, etc. are still on this team? Podsednik didn't even play in the last three games of the Astros series.
Pictured: A meaningful start.
This could be fun.
Actual Good Decisions
This was something I was going to promote this week because, frankly, I didn't expect that this would actually happen.
I was going to say that, with the season dead, you have got to play the call-ups and see what you got.
And what happens this series against the Astros? John Ely gets back into the rotation to see if he can make a few quality big league starts. Russ Mitchell gets some starts. Jay Gibbons gets some starts. Trent Oeltjen and John Lindsey get some starts (and Lindsey gets his first career hit in the majors, which, by the way, is one of the few good things to happen for this team in the last several weeks).
Credit to Joe Torre for being smart and playing these guys instead of just running the regulars out there day after day. It's not like it hasn't been rewarding. Ely went 6.0 innings on Saturday giving up just three runs. Plus, it turns out Mitchell can't do much but fly out and Gibbons still has some power. Also, he's horrible defensively. See? We're learning.
Pictured: the Dodgers' 2011 4th outfielder
Anyway, I'd like to keep it up. I want to see more of these guys and start building toward next year. And if we lose, we lose. I'm not suggesting tanking for a better draft slot next year, but if we keep starting whoever and just let nature take its course, then I'm not going to complain.
So that was odd. It was a week that ultimately saw the Dodgers go .500, but I can't remember a week that had more highs and lows. And not just highs and lows, but highs that were really high, and lows that were really low.
I mean, look at these games. Dodgers get blown out on Tuesday after the Brewers score 9 runs in the second inning. Then on Wednesday, the Dodgers blew a close game late when the bullpen gave up 7 runs in the 8th and 9th innings. And on Saturday, the Rockies scored six runs in the first and shut the Dodgers out the rest of the way. Three games ... three ugly losses.
But the three wins? A walk-off Grand Slam on Thursday, a close back and forth game the Dodgers pulled a win out of on Friday, and on Sunday, the Dodgers won a pitchers' duel against arguably the best pitcher in the league. Three games ... three really nice wins.
And so, with that, let's take a look at the players who made it the week that was. It's going to be a little shortened because it's late and I'm coming off a Mother's Day high.
Andre Ethier - Ethier had another fantastic week, going 10-22 with a walk, two doubles, and a walk-off Grand Slam. Oh, and by the way, he's either in the lead (BA and RBIs) or tied for the lead (HRs) in all three of the Triple Crown categories.
John Ely - One start for Ely this week, and a pretty good one. 6.2 innings, one run, seven strikeouts. He was a stopper when the Dodgers needed one. And his reward? A demotion to AAA. Yep, Ely was sent back to AAA while Ramon Ortiz remains on the roster. A demotion for a young player in favor of a broken down veteran. On Joe Torre's watch? What?! But more on that later.
Clayton Kershaw - Kershaw's week mirrored the Dodgers' week in general. His low was probably the lowest of his career. 1.1 innings, 7 runs. Just an ugly, ugly, terrible, ugly start. But his high mark, 8.0 innings, no runs, 9 strikeouts, was arguably the best of his career. Two starts, one awful, one brilliant = two stars for the week.
Charlie Haeger - What's going to be forgotten in Haeger's week is that he did provide 4.0 innings of quality relief on Tuesday. Still, it's impossible to overlook his start on Saturday. He wasn't able to record an out and ended up credited with five runs. He most likely lost his spot in the rotation if not on the roster as a whole.
Garret Anderson - Anderson is my new Mark Sweeney. Especially because Anderson has now committed a similar crime to what Mark Sweeney did in 2008. He's unbelievably, impossibly bad, yet somehow manages to take up a roster spot that should belong to a younger player who deserves it better.
In Anderson's case, he's now occupies a roster spot that rightfully belongs to Xavier Paul. Now look, I'm not mad at Anderson personally. He's a baseball player just trying to keep his job and he didn't make the decision to send Xavier Paul back to AAA. But seriously, is there one thing Anderson does better than Paul? One single thing? Fielding? No. Throwing? No. Running? No. And at this point, not even hitting.
Admittedly, this is a small sample size, but in 29 at-bats for Paul, he hit .276, had a .323 OBP, and slugged .483 (that's a .805 OPS in case you were wondering). Anderson, on the other hand, went 1-6 this week, bring his season total (in 48 at-bats) to 6 hits. That brings his average for the season to ... .125. His OBP is .157! His slugging is .208! In case you are too lazy to do the math, that's a .365 OPS.
So ... yeah, there's absolutely no reason to keep Anderson over Paul unless, of course, the managerial staff has a thing for keeping around useless veterans at the end of the careers while sending down better younger players at the cost of making the team worse as a whole ... but that would be ... that would be just crazy...
The Dodgers head back on the road this week, where they are 4-11. It is, however, against two NL West teams (the Diamondbacks and Padres) and the Dodgers are 6-3 against NL West teams this season. Something has got to give, let's hope it's the horrible road record.
