http://baseballmusings.com/?p=81730 April 12, 2012 Blowing Away the CompetitionThe Dodgers moved into first place in the NL West Wednesday night with a 4-1 win over the Pirates. It’s becoming difficult to tell the difference between Chad Billingsley and Clayton Kershaw, as Chad struck out four and walked none in his six innings of work against Pittsburgh in the game. That gives him 15 K in 14 1/3 innings this season, walking one batter and allowing just eight hits.Pitcher strikeouts are the big reason the team is in first place. The offense owns a .240/.307/.373 slash line, but manages to score 4.5 runs per game. (They hit very well with runners in scoring position and two out.) The pitching staff as a whole, however, has struck out 54 batters in 55 innings, nearly nine per nine innings pitched. That’s a great rate for an individual, let alone a team. With the high K rate comes fewer hits. On top of that, only nine of the 35 hits against them have gone for extra bases. With all that, the Dodgers hold opponents to three runs per game.Posted by David Pinto at 8:08 am | Games, Pitchers | Permalink | No Comments
I think we all know that we are not the offensive juggernaut the 6-1 record indicates...we will see how this pretty mediocre offense plays out against better teams, when we go up against them. However, winning as many as we can now, and eschewing the "it's only April" BS that goes on and on, is really a good thing. You can't take back or change a L once it goes down. Early victories are so important, almost as important as getting hot just before and into the playoffs. The offense needs some more participants, as the workload is being shared amongst an elite few. All in all, pretty damn good so far, and the defense is really superb. I don't know when it all happened, but the team sure can catch and throw.
