BA/RISP

Because of the ongoing discourse amongst all of our readers (Ryan, I am taking the liberty and saying you are all of our readers), I have decided to further investigate this thing we cal batting average with runners in scoring position. As several week and 16 games have passed since I first explored this issue the Dodgers have as a team progressed and are currently hitting .286 RISP. Good enough to place them 10th in the major leagues. Slightly above average, ok, this is fine I guess. Currently their over BA is .285, good enough for 3rd in the major leagues, this is certainly nice, but here is where I my concerns still mount.

Since Mr. Plum was so kind as to introduce me to a place where I could find the necessary statistics I decided to see how each individual was producing in the aforementioned situation, and to my dismay (albeit I still had my suspicions) things were not as peachy keen as the overall numbers might indicate. Please allow me to expand upon this, of the Dodgers hitters only the 2-4 hitters are really doing work here, O-Dog, Manny and Andre are all raking and carrying high OBP's at .308, .333, and .326 respectively. I am happy with this production, but unfortunately these three gents are always the once on base, so who is knocking them in? Well nobody really, Loney and Martin have a .429 and .405 OBP/RISP, seems nice, but this is kind of the one time where an out is better than a walk, i.e. a man on third and you walk, now the double play is on. I'd rather see a productive fly out than a walk in this case. Anyone that has even watched a few of the games where Loney has come to the plate late in the game with RISP cannot honestly tell me he was looking to make a clutch hit... he looked more like a frightened school boy about to cop his first feel. Russ Martin also has 10 K's out of 37 plate appearances with RISP, I mean come on Russ. At least give me a fly out, the only thing worse than that would be hitting into a DP.

So to summarize, outside of the three top performers, the next best hitter with RISP is Matt Kemp, coming in at .267, not good considering his .289 batting average, which was significantly higher just a week ago (he has been having a tougher go of it in his last 7, hitting .240). The point is, although we are winning right now, we are relying quite heavily on 3 players, one of which is somewhat injury prone, and a career .284 hitter. Orlando might come back to earth at some point, don't be shocked if he does, not to mention the fact that he is hitting behind the lackluster Raffi, the pitcher's spot and the ever so riveting Casey Blake. Honestly if he was hitting 1.000 we can't really expect to many RBI's from him. Manny will continue to be clutch, I am not worried about that at all, but I do fear that he will be taking or be given more days off now that he is creeping on 40 years old, when it counts though, he will be in the game and I have every bit of confidence in him at the plate. When it comes down to it, I am almost as confident in Andre, the guy has been nothing but solid since he came up. The guy is a rock, he will play everyday and you can pretty much always count on him when push comes to shove.

By the way, Andre Ethier has 20 of his 26 RBI's with RISP, this is what you are supposed to do. Hit when guys are on base and help your team out, the liner to the gap with two out and nobody on in the third inning... although nice, reminds me of the Nancy Drew days. I really like this guy, that is why I voted to have him as my friend if I could choose amongst Dodger starters, always know what you are going to get, he is going to show up when you need him, and he is like WAY sexy... except he kind of runs funny I think, that's just me though, nobody is perfect.

Ok, back to the topic at hand. We know Manny and Andre are everything we had hoped for, and should remain that way. As for O-Dog, due to know fault of his own, I just don't think he can be counted on to produce a lot of runs, it's got to be some sort of law, let's call this the law of averages, no one has ever used that term before. Realistically, Raffi will pick it up, but the pitcher's spot and Casey Blake... ain't gonna happen, and to top it off he is probably not going to continue hitting in the .330's (I hope he does, it might completely negate the Juan Pierre debacle created by Ned Coletti, luckily we can still hate him for Jason Schmidt and Andruw Jones, to name only a couple). The fact is if the Dodgers want to be considered a viable threat in the playoffs and have a shot at winning the World Series, James Loney, Matt Kemp, and Russ Martin are going to have to sack up.

Let me give you a scenario in an important game that as of right now strikes only the deepest of fears into my heart. Top of the 9th, O-Dog gets out this time, Manny draws a walk. Man on 1B, 1 out. Dre works a great at-bat into lined single... Maybe Manny gets to third... maybe. So runners on 1B and 3B, one out. Loney comes up, still not comfortable making a move on his old lady, does the yawn stretch arm around the shoulder move, and draws a walk. Russ Martin... double play, game over we lose. Or Russ Martin strikes out... so bases juiced, two down... the stuff dreams are made of when you were a kid tossing the ball in the air and hitting it into your neighbor's back yard!!! You won it all!!!! Oh, wait, Matt Kemp is up... the count is already 0-2, what? I didn't even see the first two pitches, I guess he just starts 0-2. it's like some messed up men's city league softball rule. You all know what happens next, so I am not even going to say it, but whoever leaves a comment with the right answer first has earned themselves a beer compliments of yours truly. Either way we still lose that game.

It seems hard to complain when your team is 19-8 and one out from 20-8 as we speak, but we are playing against bad teams right now and bad pitchers (for the most part), we should have these inflated numbers if we think we stand any kind of chance of being a contender. This kind of lackluster clutch hitting by everyone not hitting 2-4 will not cut it, I promise. Let me put show it to you this way in case you still completely disagree with me, the "best" team we have played right now... this is ridiculous... (we are in May and this is the best team we have played) the San Francisco Giants at a lightning 13-12, also against the same bad teams for the most part. Pretty sure all 13 of those games were pitched by Timmy Lincecum too, I know it doesn't seem possible, but it is the only explanation.

On second thought, please disregard my last post, it is no wonder why the rest of the sports world doesn't give a hoot about the Dodgers, they have played their first months worth of games against AA teams at best.