The Dodgers enter play on Wednesday with baseball's best record and best run differential, lead the majors in runs allowed, and are second in runs scored per game. Amazingly, the Dodgers have scored more runs without Manny Ramirez (5.75 per game) than with him (5.55), with a small sample size warning of course.
Casey Blake, who leads the team with nine home runs, gets immortalized tonight with his very own bobblehead. Every fan in attendance will receive a Casey Blake Bobblehead (right).
Per the Dodger pregame notes, the Dodgers can tie the modern major league record for best home record after 20 games, at 17-3, with a win. The record is held by many teams, most recently the Joe Torre-led 1998 Yankees.
From 1998 to present, no pitcher has thrown more major league innings than Livan Hernandez, the 34-year old pitcher starting for the Mets tonight. Over that same 11+ year period, no pitcher has come within 300 of giving up as many hits as Livan. From 2006 to present, only Carlos Silva and Odalis Perez have given up more hits per nine innings than the 11.23 allowed by Hernandez.
Livan Hernandez has been a classic innings eater over his career, and he hasn't pitched fewer than six innings in any start against the Dodgers since 2004, a span of eight starts. The opposing starting pitcher in that 2004 game was none other than Jeff Weaver.
Weaver, filling in for an injured Eric Stults and his jammed thumb, has pitched five innings in both of his starts this season. Stults, if healthy, is scheduled to start Monday in Colorado, meaning the Dodgers get to throw Clayton Kershaw, Randy Wolf, and Chad Billingsley against their "Los Angeles" rivals this weekend.
Tonight figures to be a night with a lot of contact made by batters, so who better to throw out the ceremonial first pitch than Matthew McConaughey?
Orlando Hudson, the only Dodger to start every game this season, bruised his shoulder last night, but is still in the starting lineup this evening:
| Mets | Dodgers | |||
| SS | Reyes | LF | Pierre | |
| 2B | Castillo | SS | Furcal | |
| CF | Beltran | 2B | Hudson | |
| 3B | Wright | RF | Ethier | |
| 1B | Murphy | C | Martin | |
| RF | Church | 1B | Loney | |
| C | Castro | CF | Paul | |
| LF | Pagan | 3B | Blake | |
| P | Hernandez | P | Weaver | |
Get your guesses in for "Just A Bit Outside" here .