Winning is Fun

For the 9th time in 10 games the Dodgers came up with a win.  Today’s victory was even extra special because Dana Eveland, a journeyman pitcher simply trying to hold on to his baseball career, pitched an absolute gem.  Eveland went 8 innings, giving up 6 hits and one earned run, leading the Dodgers on to victory.

Dana Eveland makes his first start as a Dodger

As much as I’d love this team to be in the playoffs, the Dodgers dug themselves in such a deep hole early on that this winning string has not moved any closer to first place Arizona during the run.  The D-Backs have duplicated that 9-1 record also.  Perhaps the Dodgers can keep the streak going, but it would a streak of historic proportions to get back into the race.

The funnest thing I’m finding is watching the kids play well.  This isn’t something Colletti wanted, it was forced upon him by injuries and horrid play by the veterans.  It makes me wonder where they’d be had Gordon, Sellers, Ellis, Sands, Eovaldi, and Guerra received playing time at the major league level at an earlier point in the season.  Riding the likes of Uribe, Furcal, Thames, Loney, Navarro and others for so long cost this club some precious games early on.

Dee Gordon's two run double in the eighth inning gave the Dodgers a 6-1 lead.

Confusion with the MLB.com app

So I was at work today, following the game periodically on my I-phone using the MLB.com app.   Once in a while I take a look at video highlights of the game as they are posted.  What do I see?  A highlight titled, “Garland singles in his first run of the year.”  That seemed odd, so I clicked to watch it.  I thought, perhaps that they meant to put Eveland instead of Garland.  So I watched it and sure enough, there is John Garland singling home a run in Pittsburgh, against the Pirates.

I take a double take, and realize that it’s September 1st. “Perhaps they expanded the roster today and Garland was taken off the disabled list after miraculously healing,” I think.  But that simply can’t be.  “And Eveland is still pitching, so why would Mattingly pinch hit Garland when he has expanded rosters and would have a number of viable options before pinch hitting a pitcher.”  Then it hits me.

This was a makeup game of a rainout.  Garland was leading 1-0 when the game was called early in the year.  MLB somehow decided to post the video highlight from the original game, even though those stats were completely erased when the game washed out in May.  A weird sequence of events.

The Proposed Offer for the Dodgers

Bill Shaikin’s report that a Chinese investment group along with Bill Burke have made a $1.2 billion proposal to buy ALL of McCourts little enterprises is simply hard to believe.  First off, the team isn’t for sale and any group wanting to make such a move would need to do so with the approval of MLB.  There’s something fishy going on.  Burke is McCourt’s friend, why would he go public with such a high proposal?   Is this some type of posturing for the bankruptcy?  I have no idea, but it seems to me that something is being done publicly to perhaps help McCourt out with his troubles.  It is to his advantage to have someone make an offer that would trump any offer ever made for a major league baseball team.