Dan Haren has just been fantastic. As Jon Weisman at Dodger Insider noted, Haren has a 1.70 ERA over his last seven starts, and has gone 94 batters since he last gave up a home run. All of this is translating into end of the season success, and increased confidence that we can enter the playoffs with a solid four-man rotation. Hilariously, those who had previously predicted his demise are now eating crow - including me, although I was far from being vocal about it.
Last night, Haren threw seven shut out innings, gave up just four hits and struck out five for his tenth win of the year. The photo above of Dan Haren was taken by Jon SooHoo/LA Dodgers 2014. Go here to check out more photos of his from yesterday. To back him up was a hot-handed Carl Crawford who recorded four hits (three of them doubles), two RBI's and a run scored. He has nine hits over the past three games.
The Dodgers defeated the Padres 4 to 0 and maintain a 2.5 game lead over the Giants. We have a day off today, but the Giants play. So come Friday we will either have a 2 or 3 game lead over them at the start of our weekend series in San Francisco. Below are some links to check out:
- Something to keep an eye out for, this is usually the time of year the Dodgers will hold their annual rookie hazing event. Usually they will dress up their rookies for the roadtrip to San Francisco, and I suspect we'll see that again today. Stay tuned, photos are sure to invade the 'net like a hurricane.
- Cary Osborne at Dodger Insider takes a look at the, "Lead candidates for Dodger Minor League Player and Pitcher of the Year."
- Via Ken Gurnick at MLB.com, "Rodriguez closer to returning to Dodgers' bullpen."
- Jeff Passan at Yahoo names YahooSports All-Minor League team, and several Dodger prospects made the cut. They include Joc Pederson (OF of the year), Corey Seager (SS of the year) and Julio Urias (as honorable mention as pitcher of the year).
- Via Dustin Nosler at Dodgers Digest, "Carlos Frias could positively impact Dodgers now, in postseason."
- As always, Night Owl Cards writes something I found thoroughly entertaining. Check out his "The worst of the best" as he talks about the bad Ron Cey Baseball cards.
I've always felt that Ron Cey takes a great baseball card. No matter who was issuing the card, or what the design was, Cey's card always turned out great. I'm biased, of course, because he's my all-time favorite player and basically can do no wrong to this very day. And the card you see at the top of this post is example one. It's my all-time favorite card, and I think if folks look at it objectively, they would agree that Cey makes this card and every card better.
Since Cey's retirement and the rise in retro cards of past all-stars, he's never let me down. Every card is great even 25 years after he played his last game.
And then I saw this...
- Via Bill Plunkett at the OC Register, "What's Dodgers' Ramirez thinking? Don't ask."
“There are a lot of things that happen in your career and he may look back on that (his current media blackout) and go, ‘I shouldn’t have done that.’ … But I can’t speak for him. I can’t put words in his mouth or tell you what he’s thinking.”
- Here's a great story about the MLB Authenticators. Via Megan Ryan at the StarTribune, "Keeping it real: MLB authenticators ensure legitimacy of game-used memorabilia."
MLB is the only major sports league with such a vast and comprehensive authentication program. It has collected about 4.8 million individual unique items, averaging about 500,000 new authentications each season.
That's a lot of stuff. BTW, all of the MLB authenticators are current or former law enforcement officials.
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