LOS ANGELES, CALIF. – The Los Angeles Dodgers have a .500 record after 14 games, but if their pitching were worthy
of their hitters, the team would be on top of its division.
A glance at a box score from last night’s 14-6 victory against the Cincinnati Reds can get you giddy when you see the batting averages of their starting lineup.
Leading off, shortstop Raphael Furcal sports a .356 BA. The outfielders are all contributing with CF Matt Kemp batting .333 to go along with his seven home runs, RF Andre Ethier killing at .400 and Manny is still Manny with a .421 average. First baseman James Loney is holding his own with a .317 average, 3B Casey Blake is handling his business with a .313 average and even C Russell Martin, who is a notorious slow starter is batting a sizzling .317 this season.
So why are they 7-7 at this point of the season? It’s the pitching, stupid.
What was a concern throughout the off-season is now a reality, even this early. Without having picked up an additional starter, the rotation looks thin already unless everyone comes through with a solid 6-7 innings.
Ned Colletti, the team’s GM held the line, presumably on orders from ownership and failed to snag someone like Joel Piniero. The right-hander now pitching in Anaheim for the Angels was still available three weeks prior to spring training. He signed a two-year $16 million deal and has already paid dividends for his team with a sizzling 1.77 ERA in three games.
In some respects you could almost sympathize with Colletti since he hoped that Chad Billingsley and Hiroki Kuroda would return to form. The team also banked on Vincente Padilla continuing to pitch like he did when he arrived last summer as a cast off from the Texas Rangers.
So far Billingsley has been unable to pitch past the fifth inning, even in his only win and is struggling with an ERA over 7.0. No one can pinpoint what his problem is and his future contributions can only be considered iffy.
Padilla sports a 1-1 record but a whopping 8.04 ERA and has pitched a total of 15.2 innings in his three starts.
Kuroda is doing much better leading all starters with a 2-0 record and an ERA of 2.18, although he coughed up six runs last night against the Cincinnati Reds.
Clayton Kershaw has a win under his belt, but still needs too many pitches to achieve an ERA of 3.18. And therein lies the problem for the starters.
They can’t pitch deep into the game with an occasional exception and the middle relievers as well as last season’s darling, set-up man George Sherrill, have given up runs at a record pace.
Five of the team’s seven losses were recorded by the bull pen. Jonathan Broxton is the only exception. The young closer hasn’t given up a run in 5+ innings.
No one is running away with the NL West. The Giants got off to a hot start but have come down to earth losing 6 of the last ten, leaving the small market San Diego Padres atop the standings with a 9-6 record. And as they like to say in a sport that has a 162 game schedule. it’s still early.
Re-printed with permission of the author.
Paula Duffy is a national sports columnist for Examiner.com and the Huffington Post and regularly comments on sports/legal matters for radio affiliates of ESPN and Fox Sports. She founded the sports information site, Incidental Contact, is the author of a line of audio books designed for sports novices and in her spare time practices law in Los Angeles.
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