Hate to say I told you so...

... but I told you so. The Dodgers, post Man Ram are o-2. I know this is a small sample size... but as of right now I am not convinced things are going to be changing anytime soon after what I have seen the last two games. In all fairness, the presence of Manny Ramirez, or lack thereof in the loss to the Nationals had everything to do with our miserable bullpen and not much at all to do with the hitters. Now the 3-1 loss to the Giants on Friday night which I had the "pleasure" of witnessing firsthand at Dodger Stadium, this one kind of stings. Here we go, 9 hits, 5 walks, 1 HBP. A total of 15 baserunners, seems good except when you take the extra three seconds to see how many runs were scored. BA/RISP? A mind altering .111, translated into a 1 for 9 evening. Barry Zito, like we all know is not good, he allowed 11 baserunners in 6 innings, a 1.83 WHIP, yet somehow only allowed one run. The man is like Houdini, that sophomore in high school 84 MPH heater he was throwing all night had to be tainted with magic to not have been sent in the THINK BLUE sign across the parking lot. The only explanation for what happened here (besides magic and witchcraft) is that the Dodgers, particularly without Manny, are not that good.

Remember my rather lengthy recent post about only three Dodgers being worth a darn with RISP? Well we just lost the biggest one of those three for 50 games. The call I sent out to "not so big game" James Loney, Russell J.Martin, and Matt "slider down and away" Kemp must be answered now if the Dodgers want to have any chance of going 25-25 over the next 50 games. Luckily they are currently playing in the NL Worst so the .500 record might be enough to hold the lead until Manny gets back. Hopefully O-Dog can stay healthy and continue to out perform his own personal history.

I would like to hope that this was just one bad game that got away. I understand there are 162 of them, so you can't possibly have it all going for you in every one of those games. Yet, at the same time I am highly concerned now, because the holes that Manny covered up with his ridiculous production are now going to be exposed. His absence, obviously effects the the rest of the line-up, if for no other reason than the fact that there is no way on God's green earth that Juan Pierre is going to come close to replacing his run production. Especially when Juan D'Vaughn is hitting 9th, behind the pitcher.

I hope I am wrong, but just a fair warning so that none of you are shocked in a month or two, if the Martin, Loney, Kemp, Furcal platoon do not start playing up to their ability and producing at least average numbers (in the case of Russ and Raffi) and the slightly above average numbers they are suppose to be capable of then we are going to have a serious problem. As a side note, Kemp has actually been quite productive, he simply needs to remain as such, the sub-par BA/RISP is mainly why he has been lumped in with the salary thieves. If these three continue on the same production paths and O-Dog and/or Andre come back down from their magic carpet rides, where second basemen have OPS over 1.000 and Angry Dragons soar through the clouds with all those mashed homerun balls, Los Doyers are going to lick balloon knot.