A Week At Home Playing the “B” Teams – The Brewers And The Braves
There aren’t too many highlights for the Dodgers, as a team, this past week. Well, there is always highlights. Matt Kemp made some fabulous catches, as well as Juan Pierre and Andre. Rafael Furcal and Orlando made some fantastic plays at their respective positions. And Casey Blake hit a three-run homerun on Friday night. Then there is Andre, who had another walk-off homerun, which was obviously a remarkable thing to see and hear as Vin Scully and Charlie Steiner announced the dramatic end to Thursday night’s game against the Braves. As good as those highlights were, we only took 2 of the last 7 games at home. One of those games was on Tuesday. We pounded the Brewers 17-4, where Andre went 3 for 6 with 3 runs and 2 RBIs. Our second win of the week came on Thursday, when Andre, in his 5th dramatic fashion of the season, belted another walk-off hit (his 3rd walk-off homerun) to beat the Braves 5-4. He now leads the majors in walk-offs this season. Another tidbit about this past week was on Saturday, Andre was walked 4 times. That’s the most he has had in a single game in his career. However, this week was all about the Brewers and the Braves, who seemed to do everything right and catch all the well-deserved breaks for the other five games.
As far as the Dodgers, going 5 and 5 in the last ten games and going 2 and 7 in the series with the Brewers and the Braves together doesn’t actually represent a winning team right now. There is alot of debate on Inside the Dodgers on the cause, along with all the other Dodger blogs as well. Most of the debate is over our pitching and where it is heading and/or the Dodgers issues with RISP. It seems like when pitching is working, we can’t score runs, and when we are scoring runs, the pitchers are imploding. I guess that is why everything looks good on paper until the game is actually played.
Well, how did Andre do this week? He didn’t do too, too bad in terms of total numbers for the week. He reached base safely in 6 of the 7 games played this week, with 7 hits (1 monster walk-off homerun), 7 runs, and 6 RBIs. He also had 5 walks (4 in one game), and he struck out 5 times. Some other good news as well. Andre only grounded into one double play this week. This is the one category we would rather somebody else take the lead in the NL.
Some noteworthy stats for the week…………………
Andre leads the entire league in walk-off hits, in which three of them have been homeruns. It was great seeing his name splashed all over ESPN and any other news program that featured sports that day.
Andre leads the team in homeruns (23) and is 9th in the NL. Pujols and Reynolds (co-leaders) currently have 36, and then it drops to Adam Dunn at 3rd with 30.
Andre leads the team in RBIs (73) and is 11th in the NL. He is also only 4 away from matching his career high (77) from last season.
Andre leads the team in runs scored (69) and is 10th in the NL.
Andre leads the team in BB (54) and is 17th in the NL. He is also only 5 away from matching last season’s total.
Andre leads the team in SLG % with .510 and is 18th in the NL.
Andre leads the team in total bases (212) and is 11th in the NL.
Andre leads the team in GIDPs, but he has moved down to tied for 4th in the NL. That is a good sign.
So, Andre, with his two NL Player of the Week nods, is still keeping up the pace, and hopefully the Dodgers, as a team, will pick up the pace and start getting into their winning ways again. However, no matter how badly things go sometimes, they are still our team………………… The Los Angeles Dodgers.
Until next week, have fun watching America’s Pastime.
Debbie ~