Dodgers news: Angels have their number

Another game, another day of wondering, how are the Dodgers going to manage to lose this one?

Sunday saw the Dodgers get approximately a gazillion runners on base, give or take two or three, and only plate four of them. Monday the Dodgers couldn’t get anyone into scoring position until they finally got four runs in the eighth, but it wasn’t near enough as the pitching staff allowed seven runs mostly from an uncharacteristically bad outing by Yoshinobu Yamamoto.

So this leads one to wonder just how are the Dodgers going to manage to not win Tuesday’s game? e

Tyler Anderson was slated to pitch for the Angels on Tuesday, but late Monday evening it was announced that Anderson is dealing with some back stiffness. Victor Mederos will go instead for his first career start.

Mederos has only pitched in two games for the Angels this season – one scoreless inning against Texas on July 7th, and three innings in Minnesota on April 25th. where he gave up two earned runs. However, his most recent outings for the Triple-A Salt Lake Bees, were going seven innings of one run ball, and four scoreless allowing three hits and six strikeouts.

While in the PCL, Mederos has a 3.55 ERA where the average ERA is 5.48. He has a 1.73 ERA since July 11. Mederos has reworked a lot of his delivery, dropping his arm slot 10 degrees, and adding a true sweeper to his arsenal. In short, with this being his first career start and the Dodgers history with these sorts of instances, expect the Dodgers to make him look like a superstar in the making out there.

For their part, the Dodgers will be sending Emmet Sheehan to the hill. Sheehan had a nice outing his last time out against the St Louis Cardinals, going five scoreless.

The Angels have had the Dodgers’ number so far this season. The cross town team swept the Dodgers in Dodger Stadium in May, and have won the first of this three game series in Anaheim. I guess we should all be happy the Dodgers will not face the Angels in the playoffs.

Fans hope that the Dodgers finally start to figure out how to beat the Angels, as the divisional lead is only down to one game. The San Diego Padres are playing the San Francisco Giants, who are back to just not playing well at all.

There is a lot of chatter about ’urgency’ from this team, but not a lot of it actually being shown on the field. Now is the time to get the momentum going, to head into the upcoming Padres series with a sense of confidence instead of a sense of dread.