Results tagged “baseball”

Dodgers centerfielder Matt Kemp and second baseman Orlando Hudson won the National League Gold Gloves for their respective positions. This is the first Gold Glove for Kemp and fourth for Hudson becoming the first Dodgers duo to win the Gold Glove since Cesar Izturis at shortstop and Steve Finley in centerfield in 2004. Kemp led all center fielders and ranked third among outfielders with 14 outfield assists. Kemp becomes the second everyday Dodger center fielder to win the award. Willie Davis took home the award three straight years from 1971-1973. Congratulations guys!

MLB announced today that Dodgers outfielder Andre Ethier was named 2009 MLB Clutch Performer of the Year. The award voted on by fans recognizes the player who performed the best when the game was on the line.

For the second consecutive season, the Dodgers fall to the Phillies in the NLCS in five games. All that remains of a season filled with promise and optimism is a pool of disappointment.

One stinking out. That’s all the Dodgers needed. The Dodgers had closer Jonathan Broxton who has been one of the more reliable players they had to hold a slim 4-3 lead. He came in the eighth inning to get out of a two-on, two-out jam and got Jayson Werth to fly out to right field. Good going so far.

It's hard work watching baseball games on Fox. On the one hand, each contest always seems lasts an hour too long and, on the other, the Fox announcers over-the-top Yankee gushing (though mostly Derek Jeter) makes you feel less like you're watching a baseball game and more like an episode of the Dating Game. Plus, last night's classic not withstanding, game one of the ALCS was a slow, matter of fact contest between the dominant Yankees and the suddenly hapless Angels.

For seven innings, game two of the National League Championship Series was a game played to Renoir-esque beauty. For the players in the game and the diehard fans, the beauty of this pitcher’s duel couldn’t fully be appreciated. But from afar it was a complete piece of art. But the Dodgers stayed persistent and used the ugly strokes painted by the Phillies reliever and defense to come away with a 2-1 victory tying up the series 1-1.

The Dodgers walked seven Phillies, four of which would end up scoring. Offensively the Dodgers went 3-for-14 with runners in scoring position and leaving 10 runners on base while the Phillies went 3-for-5 with RISP with five runners left of base. Mistakes hurt teams more in the postseason. All of that was evident in the Phillies 8-6 victory over the Dodgers in the game one slugfest of the National League Championship Series.

t’s a rematch in the National League Championship Series! It’s the Dodgers and the Philadelphia Phillies! Last year the Phillies came to the series being the cock of the walk physically intimidating the young Dodgers by pitching inside. While Dodgers starter Hiroki Kuroda shot back in game three, the tone had been set. The Phillies were going to take the pennant, and the Dodgers could do nothing but stand there.

The Dodgers and the Philadelphia Phillies will meet in the best-of-seven National League Championship Series for the second consecutive year. Last year the Dodgers fell to the eventual World Series champion Phillies in five games. Game one will be on Thursday at Dodger Stadium at 5:07 pm. All games of the NLCS will be broadcast on TBS with Chip Caray doing play-by-play and Ron Darling and Buck Martinez doing commentary. Of course everyone can listen to AM 790 KABC with Vin Scully calling the game from innings 1-3 and 7-the end of the game with Charley Steiner and Rick Monday covering innings 4-6.

Down 5-1 after five innings, the Angels scored twice in the eighth and three times in the ninth to pull out a 7-6 victory over the Boston Red Sox for the three-game sweep of the American League Divisional Series. Down 6-5 Sox closer Jonathan Papelbon intentionally walked Torii Hunter to load the bases. Vladimir Guerrero responded by lining a single to center field to score Chone Figgins and Bobby Abreu. This marks the first time the Angels have swept a series, and the first time they have beaten the Red Sox in the postseason exorcising 1986, 2004, 2007 and 2008. The Angels will face either the Minnesota Twins or the New York Yankees.

Dodgers manager Joe Torre made sure that his team would not suffer a letdown after their miraculous 3-2 victory against the St. Louis Cardinals in game two of the National League Divisional Series.

For the second consecutive season the Dodgers sweep an NL Central team in the National League Divisional Series - this season the Cardinals played the role of the victim losing 5-1 in game three. Although Matt Kemp had a golden sombrero (four strikeouts), Manny Ramirez and Andre Ethier went 3-for-5 each. Manny knocked in two RBI while Ethier was a single short of the cycle, hitting a two-run homer in the second inning. Dodgers starter Vicente Padilla threw a gem of a game shutting out the Cardinals for seven innings giving up only four hits and a walk while striking out four. The Dodgers now face the winner of the Philadelphia Phillies and Colorado Rockies series.

After the stunning conclusion of Game 2 of the NLDS yesterday at Chavez Ravine, Cardinals’ shortstop Brendan Ryan told the St. Louis Dispatch "It makes me sick, absolutely sick to my stomach." Moments before Mark Loretta sent a looping liner into center field for a walk off winner, I knew how Ryan felt. Cy Young candidate Adam Wainwright had been tying Dodger hitters in knots for eight innings. It was a slow death he was dealing us.

Four hours after the Dodgers improbable 3-2 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals to give them a stout 2-0 lead in the National League Divisional Series, euphoria is still running through my veins. The Cardinals had the game won. All left fielder Matt Holliday needed to do was make sure James Loney’s line drive got into his glove. Instead he lost the ball which hit him right in the gut. Whether he lost it in the lights or in the swirling white rally towels the fans were waving around is irrelevant.

The Dodgers really weren’t supposed to win tonight’s game. “It just comes down to one really weird inning,” said Saint Louis Cardinals Cy Young candidate, pitcher Adam Wainwright, of the bottom of the ninth. “We were in the driver’s seat there. They had two outs, nobody on base.”

The kid gloves come off today for starter Clayton Kershaw. The 21-year old phenom with that devastating 12-6 curveball that Vin Scully called “public enemy #1” will be at the adult table in game two of the National League Divisional Series against the St. Louis Cardinals. While such a daunting could give a kid a case of the butterflies, Kershaw doesn’t envision any problems.

According to our friends at the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council (yes, that exists,) Los Angeles was the second highest consumer of hot dogs in 2008. We dropped $91,364,830. Wow. I’m sure a chunk of that is spent at Pink’s, but c’mon. Their line is so long one might catch black lung from the Melrose traffic. Why not have a Dodger Dog, where, should you wait in line, at least there's a Dodger game going on right behind you.

Maybe it’s the Dodgers’ turn to be champs. The sold-out Dodgers Stadium faithful vibrantly acted that way throughout last night’s 3:56 almost-marathon, which saw the Los Angeles Dodgers take the first game of the National League Division Series from the Saint Louis Cardinals. The Lakers felt that way too. The reigning NBA kings pledged their adoration for the Dodgers, and shared a slice of the city’s goodwill toward them, by participating in a series of rah-rah Go Dodgers! videos, shown on the left field jumbotron.

This game was supposed to be an exhibition by St. Louis Cardinals starter Chris Carpenter to display his dominance over a completely overmatched Dodgers club. But what was the name of the game? Let’s leave runners on base! The Dodgers and Cardinals broke an NLDS record combining for 30 runners left on base. Three times the Dodgers had the bases loaded only to bring home one runner - and that was on a hit batsman.

The speculation of postseason rosters, pitching rotation and all that rot is over. October baseball has finally arrived for your Los Angeles Dodgers. The club is feeling confident but ready for a good fight. “I obviously know that it’s a tough task obviously going against a guy who probably was the frontrunner for the Cy Young,” game one starter Randy Wolf said Tuesday about going against St. Louis Cardinal’s ace Chris Carpenter.

We always forget so quickly, but yeah, it's that time again when Mayors bet beloved city treasures when their sports teams hit the playoffs or finals. In this day and age, the bets happen on Twitter.

When we last left the Dodgers they had a lot of things to address for the playoffs. Manager Joe Torre had no idea who would start in St. Louis for game three of the National League Divisional Series nor who would start at second base. These two questions finally had some sort of closure today. The starter for game three will be Vicente Padilla while Chad Billingsley will start if there’s a game four in St. Louis.

This could be a bad sign for the Dodgers. A 49-year old male vendor died in the Vin Scully Press Box at Dodger Stadium of a heart attack. Being the first open workout a day before the National League Divisional Series against the St. Louis Cardinals, most media members were not in the press box when the vendor died. Access to the press box was blocked off pending the arrival of the coroner, however bags, laptops and cameras were retrieved for the media by several members of the Dodgers staff. More details as they come in.

Do you know what dozens of bottles of champagne and cans of beer do to a clubhouse? Well I got a nice whiff of it this morning and picture it: you’re back in a frathouse in the middle of spring semester just as the scents of spilt beer and worn socks, shoes and boxers comingle into a moldy suffocating mess. But that’s the price of victory which everyone in the clubhouse was willing to deal with.

“One win does a lot things for a team,” Dodgers starter Clayton Kershaw proclaimed on the field in front of the Dodgers dugout after the corks popped. It took a while but the Dodgers finally did it. In front of their 11th sellout crowd of 54,531, the Dodgers finally clinched the best record in the National League and the NL West crown with a 5-0 spanking of the Colorado Rockies. And with that the moribund Dodgers instantly became the toast of Los Angeles.

People are mopey here in the press box at Dodger Stadium today. The pall of failures from the last five games hangs around like an unwanted in-law. The Dodgers are in the midst of their worst losing streak of the season which encourages about as much confidence as the Hindenburg. However the players apparently don’t feel that same fog of disappointment.

It’s come down to this - a heavyweight divisional slugfest to duel for the National League West division title between the defending champions Los Angeles Dodgers and the little engine that could Colorado Rockies.

“Dodgers Forfeit Right to Celebrate” “Dodgers Wrestle with Inability to Clinch the West” “Skid Potentially Historic for Dodgers” “Dodgers Sleepwalking to Postseason” Etc. Etc. You get the idea. For as ominous and bleak as these headlines sound, you could imagine these were written by the dirty vicious bloggers. But no, these were written by the mainstream media: Tim Brown of Yahoo! Sports; Bill Plaschke of the LA Times; Doug Miller of MLB.com; Gary Miller of CBS2/KCAL9 respectively.

The Dodgers surely have a luxury item in infielder Ronnie Belliard. When he was traded by the Washington Nati(o)nals on August 30, I immediately thought he was this year’s Julio Lugo: an average player with experience but not much else. At Washington this season he had a .246 batting average and an OPS+ of 75 (100 being an average player).

X-Dodger Brad Penny gave the Dodgers Stadium crowd of 52,438 quite a thrill on Saturday afternoon. And in doing so he lost his first game as a San Francisco Giant, 12-1.