At the beginning of Spring Training, a weird bacteria moved through the Dodgers' clubhouse. Doctors suspected it bred in the hot tubs. Half the team ended up on fluids in the emergency room. During Spring Training, where rosters top out at 65 players, they could barely field a starting nine.
After the Blue lost the first two games of the season 1-0, both on fluky Joe Panik home runs off the team's best pitchers, I began to suspect that the illness had alien origin, that the most important Dodgers had been replaced by something evil, like in John Carpenter's The Thing or in Invasion Of The Body Snatchers.
But given that the baseball season is vast and eternal, longer than most mammal pregnancies, the narrative has turned as I type this on Monday morning. On Saturday night, behind five smokin' shutout innings from Kenta Maeda, the Dodgers cruised over the Giants 5-0. And last night, they really laid a smackdown, winning 9-0. Cody Bellinger hit the Dodgers' first home run of the season, and then you had this moment of Maximum Puig.
[VIDEO] Dodgers score a run on ... whatever this is. https://t.co/bpAHbVN7Ob— Chad Moriyama (@ChadMoriyama) April 2, 2018
It was an extremely bizarre opening series that featured: The first time in baseball history that a player has hit home runs in two consecutive 1-0 wins, the first time in baseball history where a four-game series has featured four shutouts, and, on the Dodgers' end, the lowest number of runs allowed in a four-game series in baseball history. All that means is that baseball is basically a random collection of statistical occurrences, and we had some unusual ones during the opening bells.
Regardless, Hallelujah, the Dodgers are risen, for what that's worth. The first 20 games or so of the baseball season are always a kind of scrum, like the Cornucopia of the Hunger Games, where the kids run for the weapons.
On Thursday, the Yankees were ready to be crowned kings of baseball after Giancarlo Stanton hit two home runs, and then over the weekend they lost two in a row to Toronto. The Cubs split four with the Marlins. And the Dodgers and Giants split four as well.
Still, you have to like this 14-2 scoring discrepancy, and the fact that Dodgers starting pitchers have thus far given up one run. Last night's lineup including Joc Pederson and Kyle Farmer is probably the best thing the Dodgers have to offer until Justin Turner returns. Best to keep the "veteran presences" of Logan Forsythe, Matt Kemp, and Chase Utley on the bench, though Utley can play whenever he wants by edict of the commissioner's office.
The Giants, on the other hand, have got to be wondering about their magical new threesome of Evan Longoria, Andrew McCutchen, and Austin Jackson (depicted below), who went two-for-43 in the opening series. The new wisdom around baseball--which should have been wisdom all along--is that having a lot of older, expensive players around doesn't win games. Older players are called coaches.
In any case, Giants, good luck winning the pennant with Greg Holland in the rotation. Now the Dodgers go to Arizona tonight to play for "first place." Given the casino environment of the D'Bags ballpark, they can probably play some dollar slots as well. Let's just hope they don't catch anything in the outfield hot tub.
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