I'm back, returned from the land of analytical papers. 'Tis a strange and lonely place, and it smells of despair.
In any case, I'm here to completely ignore the failure of the Dodgers the last half a week or so and just copy and paste some of my best tweets from the last month, you know, on the Twitter.
- Weird that Clay Zavada wasn't brought in to face Ethier. Maybe he needed the day off to rest his mustache.
- Zavada is in. Guess I was wrong. The mustache needs no time off. It is always ready to go.
- Sergio Romo's facial hair makes him look like an Aladdin villian.
- My Dad, on seeing Jim Thome getting ready in the dugout: "Oh good, Bigfoot is going to come up." Oh yeah, he went there...
- Can I just RT something I said earlier this season: "Over/Under: Juan Pierre finishing the season batting .300."
- Man, anyone know who that young third baseman is on the Pirates? That kid can hit! Though, hey, I guess Mark Loretta is 1-2 today...
- Dear Dodgers, you should have traded Blake DeWitt instead of me. Signed, Andy LaRoche.
- I totally get taking out Duke here. Best pitcher all season, 2 outs, 9th inning, 10 run lead, last home game for the Pirates. Good move.
- Plus, this 59th win is pretty vital to their season, so can't risk blowing a 10 run lead, at the expense of giving the fans something nice.
- I like Everth Cabrera's name. It's like someone with a lisp trying to say Everest.
Playoffs starting soon. Remains to be seen if we'll be the NL West champions or the Wild Card. Sadly, I'm only half joking.
The Giants pitching holds down the Dodgers and they take the rubber match of the weekend series.
Sergio Romo got the win, he's 3-1. Takashi Saito took the loss, he's 4-4. Brian Wilson picked up his 40th save.
Derek Lowe started for the Dodgers and turned in a solid outing, as has been the norm the last two months for Lowe. 
He went seven scoreless innings, giving up just five hits and three walks while striking out seven. Cory Wade added two scoreless innings in relief, and Jonathan Broxton pitched a scoreless 10th inning to keep the Giants tied. Takashi Saito came in to start the 11th inning and gave up a run, due in part to a questionable call on a close play at 1st base. With a runner on 2nd, Eugenio Velez hit a slow grounder to short. The throw to 1st was close, and he was called safe. Replays, though, showed the throw beat him by half a step. Rich Aurilia, the next batter, then proceeded to collected a base hit and drive in the go-ahead run.
The Dodger offense did not fare too well. They got only nine runners on base the whole game (five hits and four walks) and left eight of them. One runner was thrown out trying to score at home. Andre Ethier went 2-5, collecting two of the Dodgers' five hits. Manny Ramírez drew three of the Dodgers' four walks. The Dodgers last 16 batters were retired in order.
The Arizona Diamondbacks won today, so with the Dodgers' loss, they pull back within 2.5 games in the NL West race. The Dodgers have an off-day tomorrow, then begin a three game series against the Padres at Dodger Stadium on Tuesday, starting at 7:10 L.A. time.
Also: With the loss, the Dodgers fall back to six games over .500 (81-75)... The Dodger Magic Number remains at 5 games.
Opinion: Bad series. The Diamondbacks have now picked up two games on us in the last week. We looked so good yesterday... what happened? I, again, look to the bottom of the order. Our 4-9 hitters (nine different players) today went a combined 2-25. That's not good, we need their contributions... The only solice I can take from this whole thing is that we will play our next three games against the third worst team at home, following a day off. The Diamondbacks will travel to St. Louis to play a four game series there. If we play our cards right, and St. Louis gives us just a little help, we could, hopefully, look to clinch the division by Thursday (our last home game of the year). Here's to hoping... Finally, so much for my prediction of clinching the division by today's game. Instead of having our Magic Number at 0, our Magic Number is 5. I was a bit off. Of course, I wasn't expecting Arizona to do so well, nor for us to do so badly. We have only two wins in our last five games. Definitely not the time for us to slow down...
