New York Nine

Probably one of the biggest surprises thus far is the Dodger's utter dominance early on this season, perticularly at home where they have tied the record for home wins to start as season 12, tied with the 1911 Detroit Tigers. Indeed, a lot of the pundits were high on the Dodgers after Manny signed with the team, but with so many pitching woes thus far its a bit remarkable that they have done as well as they have.

If you were to look at the pitching lines of some of the dodgers staff for the last month you'd be hard pressed to believe that they are the team to beat. With Kiroda down for a few months the staff has been shaky at best, relying on james mcdonald sporting a 8.16ERA and never lasting more than 5 innings, a feat he accomplished only once. After him it doesn't get a whole lot better, with the much ballyhooed Clayton Kershaw who has been dazzling at times, striking out 13 in seven innings agains the giants, but has been spotty, lasting less than five innings three times already and with a none too impressive 5.46ERA otherwise. Eric Stults has similiarly been unreliable, averaging barely 5 innings with an ERA of 5 as well. Now you take all of that, three of your five starters giving you less than five innings a game, and those innings being some pretty shitty innings, how are they possibly so good?


I don't have an answer for the question entirely but it seems the rest of the dodger team is playing at a very high level, with Torre getting spectacular performances from Orlando Hudson, who's smacking the ball with a line .311/.411/526, an improved Matt kemp hitting of .289/.369/.515 which has his on base and slugging going up considerable, and Andre Ethier smacking the ball at .327/.439/.574 coupled with manny's typically spectacular .348/.491/.641. Wow just collecting those stats is starting to make the reason for their success very clear, they're just obliterating the ball i mean to have all of those guys in the same lineup hitting at such a high level thats insane, wow. Add in some stellar bullpen performances despite Torre's best efforts you've got a team that despite some serious pitching fallings are off too an insanely hot start.



All this said, I don't buy this team being as good as they're playing. Sure they're not a bad team and judging how the rest of this division has been looking, perticularly my sleeper the Diamondbacks who have looked very bad so far, they could win the division going away. But when it comes to face the rest of the league and possibly in all of the majors they're going to have problems. If 3/5 of your staff is consistently sucking when its their turn to go, and the other side of your staff is injury prone and mediocre Randy Wolf and "due for a sophmore slump" Chad Billingsley (he's awesome but not as your most reliable starter, not yet at least) you're asking for trouble. Sure they're offense has been spectacular but can they honestly expect to keep this up all year? Hardly, such a performance would be record setting. As I am apt to say time will tell on this one, they've clearly got talent, but they need a whole lot more from their starting pitching to reasonably expect to compete come October.