The last time the Dodgers saw the Giants, back at the end of July, they walked into San Francisco and swept them by a cumulative score of 19-3, drawing into a tie for first place and leaving fans with potentially the best feelings of the season. The time before that, the Dodgers scored exactly zero runs across three games while being outscored 13-0 in late June, adding insult to injury as Andre Ethier injured his oblique and was eventually lost to the disabled list.
I’m not exactly sure what’s going to happen in the series which starts tonight, but I think it’s safe to say that it’s going to be somewhere in between those two extremes. Since both of those series were played in San Francisco, this is actually the first time we’ll be welcoming the Giants to Los Angeles in more than three months, and my how things have changed in that time: when they last played in Dodger Stadium on May 9, the Dodgers started Dee Gordon, Adam Kennedy, Juan Uribe, & Bobby Abreu; beyond them, Scott Van Slyke, Tony Gwynn, & Josh Lindblom also appeared.
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Giants
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Dodgers
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CF
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Pagan |
LF
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Victorino
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2B
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Scutaro |
2B
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M.Ellis
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3B
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Sandoval |
CF
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Kemp
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C
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Posey |
SS
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Ramirez
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RF
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Pence
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RF
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Ethier
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SS
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Arias |
1B
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Rivera
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1B
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Belt |
3B
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Cruz
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LF
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Blanco |
C
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A.Ellis
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P
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Bumgarner
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P
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Billingsley
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The Dodger lineup tonight looks much different than it did back then, of course, but tonight’s listing is mainly notable in that it includes Luis Cruz, who apparently only suffered a cramp when he pulled up lame in the ninth inning of yesterday’s finale in Atlanta. The simple fact that we’re breathing a sigh of relief that Luis Cruz is fortunately able to play still sort of blows your mind when you take a step back to think about it, yet here we are.
With Clayton Kershaw against Madison Bumgarner tonight, we have a real live marquee matchup. Kershaw ranks fourth in MLB in FIP at 2.94; Bumgarner is 17th at 3.37. (Still not as good as Chad Billingsley, though!)
In some not-totally-unexpected bad news, however…
Ted Lilly, who was scratched from his Rancho Cucamonga start Sunday, is here at Dodger Stadium to see Dr. Neal ElAttrache tonight
— Eric Stephen (@truebluela) August 21, 2012
Lilly is going to end up missing basically the entire season this year, and it’s a good thing the Dodger ownership seems to have unlimited pockets, because eating that $13.5m Lilly has coming to him next year is not going to be pretty.
