The middle of the first inning, the Dodgers looked up at the scoreboard at Chavez Ravine and saw a 4 spot from the Phillies. They put one run back on the board in the bottom, but next thing they know, it’s a 6-1 game after 2 innings. Brad Penny has not been the same pitcher this season as he has been in the past. He has been plagued with injuries and had stints on the DL. His velocity has been around 91 MPH, which is noticeably lower than his normal 94-95 MPH and the Phillies were hammering it.
In the preseason, I saw the Dodgers lineup with so much potential from their young players such as James Loney and Matt Kemp, however they were not maturing as fast as the Dodgers thought they would. They were quickly hit with a huge injury, losing Rafael Furcal early in the season who was red hot and an unstoppable force. Andruw Jones did not have the bounce back season the Dodgers hoped for and has found himself either on the DL or on the bench. Nomar Garciaparra has been hurt for long stretches of the season. There were a lot of setbacks that could have derailed any young team.
Ned Colletti, the Dodgers general manager, got on the phone at the trading deadline and added a deadly bat in Manny Ramirez, which moved around all the Dodgers batters and added depth where a current .289 hitter in Russell Martin can bat eighth in the lineup.
This offense quickly jelled and saw Brad Penny struggle early in the game and stepped up their game to back their pitchers. Manny Ramirez and Andre Ethier each hit home runs in the third and fourth innings respectively and after the fourth inning it was a 6-4 game and back within reach.
Penny was gone only after 3 innings clearly not having his best stuff. Afterwards, the bullpen only surrendered one run over the next six innings. The Dodgers bullpen has been spotty as of late, but stepped up in a big spot. Jonathan Broxton had not been getting the done, but against the Phillies last night, he was back to his dominating form. He came in to the game in the ninth and pitched a perfect inning while striking out two of the three batters. He threw 9 pitches; 8 of them were strikes.
Now we’re back to the Dodgers offense. Nomar Garciaparra, in the bottom of the ninth, rewarded Broxton by hitting the walk off home run off Clay Condrey with one out. Broxton gets the win, Condrey gets the loss, and the Garciaparra gets lifted off the ground after touching home plate.
This is the kind of win that only good teams can make. The first-place Arizona Diamondbacks lost and the Dodgers have now joined them atop the National League West. Coincidentally, the Phillies loss came a few hours after a New York Mets thrashing of the Washington Nationals and found their place alone at the top of the National League East leave with that final pitch of the game.
Two questions arise from this game, however. To win in the playoffs and down the final stretch of the season, quality pitching is a necessity. How will Brad Penny fair during this time? He didn’t look sharp. He hasn’t looked sharp all season and now has a season ERA of 6.05, which is deplorable. At least the Dodgers have other solid pitchers with Hiroki Kuroda, the breaking out of Chad Billingsley and the young phenom of Clayton Kershaw, but Penny has the experience. It’ll be a matter of time to see what the Dodgers will do. I don’t think Penny is in danger of losing his spot in the rotation yet because no one is there to replace him. Joe Torre, the Dodgers manager will not want to mess around with the bullpen, however, Hong-Chih Kuo and Chan-Ho Park are capable of the spot start if they want to help Brad Penny fix things later on and skip his spot in the rotation.
The second question is: how soft was the Dodgers celebration after the homerun? I’ve seen many walk-off homeruns in my day. The runners round the bases and the team comes out of the dugout and swarms around home plate, which the Dodgers did. But what the Dodgers didn’t do was smash player. You typically see the batter get creamed after he touches home plate. Most of the time, you wonder how the player didn’t get injured after the celebration. Maybe, it’s because Garciaparra has been injured a lot this season and the team was being very cautious with him, but they smack him as if their hands were made with feather dusters. I guess they made up for it, by lifting him in up in celebration and thankfully not dropping him, or else there would have been another story here: something to the like of “Nomar place of 15-day DL after being dropped by teammate”.
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