The odds looked good for the Dodgers headed into last nights game. While Hiroki Kuroda has been ordinary since his return he had been stellar on the road, and the Met's anemic lineup hadn't scored in 22 innings. They were facing Oliver Perez who was making his first start off the DL, but his rehab starts didn't look promising. The only reason he was getting another shot in the rotation was that better pitchers were sitting on the DL.
When Perez walked Furcal on four pitches it looked like this would be a cakewalk. Perez did manage to only give up a run scoring single to Lorretta in the first, but in a disturbing trend that lasted the whole game, the Dodgers left two baserunners on. Perez would end up walking seven base runners but only give up two runs. It was a game of runners left on when a key hit by Andre or Hudson could have broken the game open. Andre Ethier grounded into a double play to end the game and ended up leaving eight runners on base. He certainly owned the goat horns for this game with Hudson a close second. Hudson maybe did more damage because we need him to keep an inning going so that Manny can come up as many times as possible with runners on base.
Kuroda didn't match his recent road warrior success and while he was a victim of an untimely error by Blake in the 3rd he did give up eight hits in only 4 1/3 innings. He was lucky that Wade extricated a bases loaded one out situation by only allowing one runner to score in the bottom of the fifth. By the time Hiroki had done his damage the Dodger were down 5 - 2 headed into the sixth. The bullpen of Wade/Mota/Leach/Troncos would only allow one hit and no runs but to no avail as the Dodger rallies kept falling short of scoring runs. They one got one back in the 8th, and Manny hit a home run to lead off the ninth to get them within one. Frankie would allow two more baserunners but Andre would hit into a game ending DP, leaving the Dodgers and their fans very frustrated.
Matt Kemp who collected three hits from the eight spot was left sitting in the on deck circle as the hot/cold Andre turned on the cold spigot. How long can our 2nd best hitter be left to garner as few as bats as possible?
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