Category Archives: Dee Gordon

Happy Anniversary, Dee Gordon

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One year ago today, Dee Gordon made his major league debut, appearing as a pinch-runner and scoring a run in Philadelphia’s Citizens Bank Park. Gordon’s been through a lot since then – a slow start, a disabling shoulder injury, a fantastic September, an atrocious first third of 2012, and a “mental break” that wasn’t an outright demotion only due to injuries to others – yet for the second time this series, he’s directly contributed to a crucial Dodger victory. Tonight, he came up with two outs and the bases loaded in the sixth, down 4-3 and facing incoming Phillies lefty Raul Valdes.

I’ll admit that at the time, I privately questioned whether this was the right situation for Juan Rivera, reasoning that Gordon against the lefty almost certainly wouldn’t end well. I was wrong; Gordon smacked a single to right, driving in two, and giving the Dodgers a lead they would never relinquish. Yet Gordon wasn’t done there, for in the eighth, the Phillies put a man on against Scott Elbert as Hunter Pence strode to the plate. Pence grounded sharply up the middle, potentially putting men on the corners had it gone through, but Gordon made a fantastic play not only to get to the ball but to step on the bag and throw to first, completing the 6-3 double play and ending the inning. Don’t look now, but Gordon has hits in 13 of his last 15 games, though he still hasn’t been able to nudge his OBP within striking distance of .300.

Gordon wasn’t alone, of course, not on a night where Philadelphia walked seven Dodgers and even James Loney lucked into two hits and a bases-loaded walk. (And how about cult hero Elian Herrera, who walked twice and doubled, pushing his OBP up to .390 and into hearts of Dodger fans everywhere?) The contributions were more than welcome on a night where Chris Capuano‘s taterific road tendencies shone through and the 3-4 hitters in the lineup – Bobby Abreu, Juan Rivera (for one at-bat), and Andre Ethier – combined to go 0-9. Ethier in particular has been struggling lately, going hitless in his last seventeen at-bats.

The Dodgers, improbably, have taken the first three games of the four game set in Philadelphia, home of more than a few bad memories. Can we dare to dream that Aaron Harang outlasts Cole Hamels tomorrow for the sweep? With a three-game advantage, a matinee after a night game, and a cross-country trip to Seattle ahead without a day off, expect Don Mattingly to roll out the “house money” lineup. But hey, maybe we’ll finally get to see Shawn Tolleson, right? Kenley Jansen will almost certainly be unavailable after working tonight for the third night in a row and fourth in five – and making it uncomfortably interesting in finishing it off, needing 32 pitches and obviously laboring. Actually, tomorrow might not be enough. Let’s not see him again until Dodger Stadium, okay?

Don Mattingly Wants to Know Who To Hit Leadoff

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Note: I wrote this on Sunday night, planning to publish it this morning. Since then, Chad Moriyama had to go and completely steal my thunder, publishing what is essentially the exact same post. While we wait for news on Matt Kemp’s MRI, I’ll go ahead and post this anyway, but do be sure to check out Chad’s take as well.

I realize this is veering dangerously close to “beating on a dead horse” territory, because I made my feelings known in an April post and repeatedly in comments and on Twitter since; I also realize that the Dodgers are in first place and that the batting order does not have as much statistical importance as we like to think it does.

But with all those caveats out of the way, if Don Mattingly is going to ask the kind of question that he put to MLB.com’s A.J. Cassevell yesterday, namely…

“Dropping Dee in the order sounds really easy,” said Mattingly, who rested Gordon for Sunday’s series finale against Colorado. “But then who do you want me to hit there?”

… then I feel like I just have to go ahead and help him find an answer. Actually, Mattingly helpfully ran down the list for us:

Mattingly went through a list of other possible options for the leadoff spot but noted each had a drawback that leaves Gordon as the obvious choice.

Newly acquired outfielder Bobby Abreu could lead off, Mattingly said, but that would take a potent bat out of the middle of the order.

Well, “potent” seems a bit much, considering that Abreu is 38 and is barely more than a week off of being DFA’d by the Angels. Actually, I had never really considered Abreu in that spot, but now that I think about it, I don’t mind it, since he’s always had on-base skills and can still run a little. Hardly ideal, but not a terrible stopgap. I can see preferring him later on though, so who else?

Second baseman Mark Ellis could bat first, but Mattingly likes him in the two-hole, hitting ahead of Matt Kemp and Andre Ethier, and doesn’t want Ellis’ role changing on a day-to-day basis.

Certainly. I mean, who else is going to grittily ground out to the right side to advance the runner? I jest, of course, because Ellis has been surprisingly effective this year, though if you could make any statistical inferences from early season splits – which, ah, you can’t – you might be swayed by the ridiculous difference between Ellis hitting with men on base (.392 OPS) and the bases empty (.932). I could live with him moving up, though I’m generally fine with him at #2. Moving on..

Left fielder Tony Gwynn Jr. got the start on Sunday afternoon in the leadoff spot, but as a platoon player, Gwynn won’t be in the lineup with Gordon very often. When Gwynn does play on the same day as Gordon, Mattingly said he’d be fully comfortable moving Gordon down because of the speed and on-base ability Gwynn brings to the table.

Gwynn is a fantastic defender, but that’s really the only value he brings. As for moving Gordon down on days Gwynn starts, I’ll believe it when I see it; Gwynn’s start yesterday was his ninth of the year. Six of those coincided with a Gordon day off, and Gwynn did not lead off in any of the other three. Besides, this doesn’t even make sense – Gwynn may have some speed, but the “on-base ability” Mattingly refers to is all but nonexistent, and that, terrifyingly enough, means that Mattingly is only worried about speed on the top of the order, and absolutely nothing else.

And then we come to the fan favorite…

Another option is moving A.J. Ellis higher in the batting order. Ellis, a catcher, has been one of the Dodgers’ best on-base percentage guys at a .455 clip this season, but he isn’t close to a threat on the basepaths.

Mattingly dismissed that notion, saying he is content with leaving Ellis lower in the lineup, where he can drive in runs and turn the order over.

Here’s the fundamental problem with that statement, and I’m not even talking about the fact that you prefer to have one of the worst hitters in the bigs leading off your lineup rather than use one of the most effective on-base artists we’ve seen so far this year. Let’s say we’re not even going pie-in-the-sky by trying to get Ellis to lead off; let’s just say we’re merely trying to get him out of the 8th spot so that he can at least see some extra plate appearances. Let’s say we’d be happy with getting him up to 6th, so he’s behind Kemp, Ethier, & Abreu, a compromise I think we’d all take. If that statement is accurate – if Mattingly really views Ellis as a run producer who “can drive in runs”, rather than the table-setter I see him as – wouldn’t it make so much more sense to have him hitting behind three guys who can actually get on base, rather than the dreadful combo of Juan Uribe & James Loney? It seems that having Ellis 8th is the worst of all worlds, because his OBP skills are wasted ahead of the pitcher and Gordon, and his “run production skills” are under-utilized behind the lousy second half of the lineup. It just makes no sense, at all – and you’d hope that seeing Ellis’ success batting #6 on Sunday would help to illustrate that.

I agree with Mattingly when he says there’s no perfect option to lead off, but I also know that the lack of a perfect alternative is not an excuse to continue on with one of the worst possible options. The Dodgers have managed to make it this far with a leadoff hitter who can’t get on base, but that’s only going to last so long – especially if the lineup is weakened if Kemp is absent for any length of time due to his hamstring injury. I still have a lot of hope for Dee Gordon, and I think he can help this team. Just not in the leadoff spot, and not right now. The time is overdue to make a move.

Dodgers Start Fast But Barely Escape Coors With a Win

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On June 27 of last year, the Dodgers crushed the Twins 15-0 in Minnesota, with homers from Matt Kemp, Trent Oeltjen, & Casey Blake leading the charge among 25 hits. Coming as it did just hours after Frank McCourt steered the team into bankruptcy, this led to one of the more memorable quotes of the entire debacle:

This was, of course, laughably ludicrous lawyer-talk, and it earned a rightful place on the long list of McCourt-related sins. Yet it was all I could think of early in today’s game as the Dodgers got off to a fast start in Colorado. Hours after the paperwork was official and McCourt no longer had a claim to the club, the much-maligned Dee Gordon stepped to the plate and hit the fourth pitch he saw from Colorado starter Jhoulys Chacin out of the park for his first big-league home run. After singles from Mark Ellis (the first of four for him tonight) and Kemp, Andre Ethier also took Chacin deep, and four batters into the Guggenheim era, the Dodgers were up 4-0. If it wasn’t the official coming-out party that we’ve yet to see, it sure felt like the start of something special.

That wasn’t even the end of it from the offensive side of things. In the third, A.J. Ellis doubled in Tony Gwynn for the 5th run, then added two more by driving in Gwynn again on a two-run blast off Chacin in the fifth. Look, I know it’s Coors Field and magical things happen there, but this was a game where Gordon (7 HR in 1814 minor-league PA, and while I can’t back this up with facts, we all know at least one was inside-the-park) and Ellis (19 HR in 2119 minor-league PA) both homered. Meanwhile, Albert Pujols is still looking for his first. Life is awesome sometimes.

Yet while it sure seemed like this would be a party atmosphere to usher in the new ownership, life in Coors is never, ever that simple. Ted Lilly breezed through 5.2 scoreless, but then things went downhill quickly as soon as he served up a meatball that was crushed by Carlos Gonzalez for a bomb in the sixth. Oddly, the last homer Lilly allowed was also by Gonzalez, last August, and once he completed the inning, he left after just 79 pitchers after being seen talking to trainer Sue Falsone in the dugout. For the first time this season, Josh Lindblom was completely ineffective in allowing four hits and three runs in 2/3 of an inning; Scott Elbert cleaned up his mess, but Kenley Jansen allowed the Rockies to get within one after letting Troy Tulowitzki lead off with a triple. Despite allowing the tying run to get to third, Javy Guerra bounced back from recent troubles to nail down the save.

By the way, I can’t help but touch upon a somewhat bizarre sequence in the top half of the ninth. Ethier led off with a hit. James Loney then bunted… terribly… in a one-run game. It appeared that Don Mattingly made that call, based on his reaction when Loney returned to the dugout, and while that’s an awful call on his part, it also really speaks to how little confidence you must have in your first baseman to actually get a hit when you’re asking him to bunt. Yet even odder was that against lefty Greg Reynolds, the Dodgers sent up four straight lefty hitters – Ethier, Loney, Gwynn, then Adam Kennedy – without once calling on Juan Uribe. I have to imagine he was unavailable for some reason (especially since it was Justin Sellers who came out to play third for the ninth), but we haven’t heard anything to that effect yet, and if he was available but just not called upon, well, that says a whole lot about him as well. (Kennedy struck out to strand Ethier. Of course he did.)

Get some sleep, because tomorrow is going to be a memorable day; the ownership press conference is at 10am PT, and Clayton Kershaw goes in the series finale at 12:10 PT. If you’re not skipping work, you’re doing it wrong.

There’s Only One Place to Move Dee Gordon

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I have absolutely no idea why, but for whatever reason, the big news of the day seems to be Dee Gordon and his early season growing pains. Jon Weisman thinks patience is required. Steve Dilbeck largely agrees, though in part because “Justin Sellers, every day shortstop” is hardly an appealing alternative.

Everyone loves Gordon’s potential and the excitement he brings when he gets on base. The trouble, of course, is him getting on base.

After his 0-for-4 performance Thursday, Gordon’s batting average fell to .192, and probably worse for a leadoff hitter, his on-base percentage dropped to .263.

It’s really the lack of a proper alternative which is a major driver here; while I think there’s a pretty good argument to be made that Gordon would be better served learning in Triple-A, there’s just no viable option to make it happen. Sellers? Luis Cruz? Please. Gordon may be having his issues both on offense and defense, but he’s doing enough on the basepaths and balancing out his mistakes on routine fielding plays with spectacular ones that no one else would get to to make it worth sticking with him for the immediate future. Call it lack of foresight or lack of options, but the Dodgers don’t really have anyone else they could stick there and say that it would be an immediate improvement, so you stick with the young player and let him continue to learn.

That said, that doesn’t mean there’s nothing which can be done, and this goes back to something I said many months ago. Even though I know there’s absolutely no chance of it happening, I’m going to say it anyway: Gordon & A.J. Ellis really need to swap spots in the order. If we’ve learned anything about the 2012 Dodgers, it’s that this offense lives and dies on Matt Kemp & Andre Ethier. (And no, Steve Lyons, I do not want to hear that Mark Ellis is great because he has the second-most runs scored in the National League, as though his position in the batting order directly ahead of Kemp & Ethier has nothing to do with it.)

If you can’t count on offense from James Loney, Juan Rivera, Juan Uribe, or just about anyone on the bench – spoiler alert: you can’t – then you really need to do what it takes to maximize your opportunities to allow Kemp & Ethier to put as many runs on the board as possible. Starting off the lineup with a guy who has the 12th-worst OBP (min. 50 PA) in all of baseball doesn’t really help put men on base for your two big bats.

The obvious retort to that is, “well, Gordon is so fast that he has to lead off. He’s so fast that he can score from first base on a Kemp single, which no one else can do.” That’s accurate. It’s also irrelevant if he’s not on base in the first place when Kemp & Ethier come up, and by and large, he hasn’t been. Even when he is on base, you can really only allow him to run when Mark Ellis is up, because do you really want to risk an out on the bases when your two big bashers are up? Of course not. If you drop Gordon to 8th in the lineup, you not only minimize the impact his poor on-base skills have on your lineup, you put him ahead of the one position in the lineup where it absolutely makes sense to take risks with stolen bases and sacrifice bunts. (No, smart guy, not ahead of Uribe.)

But if Gordon isn’t your leadoff man, someone has to be, and it’s here I’ll admit that the Dodgers don’t have a ready-made replacement. It’s certainly no surprise to any of you that I would put A.J. Ellis there, a man with a legend growing so quickly that he now has his own set of facts – in addition to being one of only 20 hitters with an OBP north of .400 in this small sample size of a season. It’s outside the box thinking, and I love the idea.

Yet I’ll admit that Don Mattingly is exceedingly unlikely to do something like that – hell, he won’t even put Ellis at #2, much less leadoff – so it’s here where I’ll offer another possible benefit to Uribe’s wrist injury, the severity of which we’re still unclear on: Jerry Hairston. If Uribe is out for any length of time, you’d have to hope (and pray… and bribe…) that Hairston gets the bulk of playing time at third base rather than the utterly useless Adam Kennedy. Hairston’s off to a great start so far in 2012 – not that I’m putting an overly large amount of importance on 24 plate appearances – and is coming off a season in which he had a reasonable .344 OBP for Washington & Milwaukee. He’s far from the perfect solution – hey, any situation in which we’re rather openly rooting for our third baseman to be out for a long period of time is hardly the perfect anything – but with the lack of viable alternatives, he presents something which would be at least acceptable for now.

Of course, you could further improve that by putting A.J. Ellis #2 behind him, and slide Mark Ellis down to the bottom of the lineup. That way, you could still have Mark Ellis hitting gritty grounders to the right side to advance Gordon, an outcome which always gives media types tingly feelings. (I’m joking here somewhat, since Mark Ellis has actually been relatively decent with the stick early on.)

Is any of this ever going to happen? Absolutely not. But as we’ve seen so far, this team can really only win if the bullpen and defense are both outstanding. If they’re not, they have little cushion from the offense outside of Kemp & Ethier, so making any sort of tweak to maximize that performance could lead to some seriously positive results.

Dodgers Finish Off Sweep of Padres Thanks to Bizarre Triple Play

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One of the most… let’s say, “interesting” parts about writing about every game is that you try to have about 90% of the story written by the time the game is over. For most of the afternoon, my game recap was going to include mention of Dee Gordon‘s up-and-down day, pointing out that while he scored the game’s first run and had two stolen bases, he also had just one hit, struck out to leave the bases loaded in the 7th, and hurt Clayton Kershaw with one error & at least two more plays that probably should have been counted as such.

…and then Gordon finished off the Dodgers’ second consecutive series sweep with a walkoff single with two outs in the bottom of the 9th on Jackie Robinson Day, and all seems right in the world.

Kershaw may not have had “it” on a sunny Sunday afternoon against San Diego, but whether it’s just because the Padres are atrocious or that 80% of Kershaw is better than 100% of most other pitchers (or both), it rarely seemed to matter – at least until the sixth inning. Though Kershaw had allowed seven hits through the first five innings, it seemed like all of them (save a first-inning Chase Headley double) were of the “BABIP gods are evening things out” variety; well, that, and some interesting defensive work by Gordon. If Kershaw wasn’t what he normally is, nor was he going out there and making it impossible for his team to win despite the lack of his best stuff.

But the wheels started to fall off for Kershaw in the sixth inning in every way imaginable. Working within umpire Dale Scott’s tight strike zone, he walked three of the first four batters around a Will Venable sacrifice that loaded the bases with one out. Orlando Hudson came up and hit a grounder to the left side, potentially setting up an inning-ending double play, but Gordon was unable to come up with it, with the ball charitably being called a base hit. That was enough to call in Josh Lindblom from the pen, and Lindblom did little to help out Kershaw by allowing Jeremy Hermida to tie the game by driving in two on a single. (As Vin said when Kershaw left the game with a two-run lead, the bases loaded & one out in the sixth, Kershaw could still get a win, a loss, or a no-decision – even after he was in the showers. Pitcher wins are the best.)

Kershaw may not have had his best stuff today, but Matt Kemp always does. Kemp crushed his sixth homer of the year in the third inning – all six having come against San Diego, by the way – and reached base four times on three hits and a walk. He’s now hitting .487/.523/1.026. I don’t even know what to say about him anymore. In fact, the only time that Kemp made an out today may have been on his hardest hit ball, other than the homer. With the game tied in the bottom of the 8th, Mark Ellis led off with a single. Ellis broke for second with Kemp up – which is a conversation for another time, but can we please stop him from ever doing this, ever? – and that drew second baseman Hudson to the bag to cover… which just so happened to be exactly where Kemp ripped a grounder into what became a rally-killing double play.

But while that may have been the luckiest double play the Padres will get all year, it hardly compares to whatever the hell happened in the top of the 9th. Javy Guerra came in and promptly allowed the first two men to reach. Jesus Guzman attempted to bunt – because why wouldn’t you want your cleanup hitter to bunt with two on in a tie game? – which proved difficult when Guerra’s pitch nearly hit him in the face. Guzman, maybe more out of self-preservation than anything else, got the thinnest part of his bat on the ball, which seemingly landed behind the plate. Though umpire Scott seemed to clearly wave the ball foul, A.J. Ellis alertly jumped on it and threw it around the horn for the triple play. San Diego manager Bud Black argued vociferously – and correctly, to my eyes – but was ejected for his troubles.

Judge for yourself…

That kept the game tied headed into the bottom of the ninth, where Juan Rivera walked and James Loney singled. Juan Uribe sacrificed – because why the hell not, he’s not going to help you doing anything else – and A.J. Ellis was intentionally walked. Jerry Hairston hit for Javy Guerra with an opportunity to be the hero, but popped out. With two outs, Gordon ripped a single into left field to complete the victory.

What an afternoon. What a game. What a… really, really, lucky break.

The Dodgers head into the travel day on Monday with a best-in-baseball 9-1 record, as they prepare to toss Chad Billingsley against Yovani Gallardo in Milwaukee on Tuesday.