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This week on the podcast we got sidetracked a bit by Star Wars and by 1980s television theme songs, but we also got to some baseball talk as well.
Namely, we talked about the Dodgers starting rotation, the shuffling of players on and off the disabled list, a near major league record, plus who might come up to the team in September.
Short starts
This week’s Play Index question a bit of a holdover from last week, with Craig Minami asking about the Dodgers and starts of no longer than five innings.
The Dodgers have 54 starts of five innings or shorter through 117 games this season. Since 1913, the franchise record for most in a season is 63, held by both the 1953 Brooklyn team and 2007 in Los Angeles.
The 2007 team was just 17-46 in those games, and this year’s Dodgers so far are 24-30 in these games.
The 1953 squad was 33-30. That 1953 team is arguably the greatest in Dodgers history, though they lost the World Series. Brooklyn that year was 105-49, setting a franchise record for wins and modern (1901-present) franchise marks for both runs scored (955) and run differential (+266).
I looked back at the last 104 years available for search, dating back to 1913, and the only other Dodgers team to have even a .500 record in games with starts of five or fewer innings was the 1952 team, at 31-30 (.508). That team also made the World Series.
Dating back to 1913, the Dodgers have a .307 winning percentage when their starting pitcher doesn’t last longer than five innings.
At the moment, this season’s .444 winning percentage by the Dodgers in those games is the sixth-best in franchise history. Last year’s team ranked third, at 23-25 (.479), and the other two teams ahead of 2016 were World Series squads — 1965, 16-19 (.457) and 1949, 20-24 (.455).
Trivia
This week’s trivia questions, sent in by Craig, will test your knowledge of Dodgers no-hitters, 20-game winners and 30-home-run hitters, as well as recent U.S. presidents.
Questions
Feel free to send us suggestions for future Play Index searches. Keep those Dodgers related, but any other questions can delve into any topics. Send all to tblapodcast@gmail.com, or contact us on Twitter at @truebluela or@jacobburch.