{"id":16468,"date":"2011-07-16T15:59:07","date_gmt":"2011-07-16T20:59:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/?p=16468"},"modified":"2011-07-16T15:59:07","modified_gmt":"2011-07-16T20:59:07","slug":"the-hot-l-a-dodgers-take-on-arizona-in-2nd-game-of-a-3-game-road-set","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/the-hot-l-a-dodgers-take-on-arizona-in-2nd-game-of-a-3-game-road-set-16468\/","title":{"rendered":"The Hot L.A. Dodgers Take on Arizona in 2nd Game of a 3 Game Road Set"},"content":{"rendered":"

Los Angeles Dodgers (42-51) AT Arizona Diamondbacks (49-44)<\/strong>
\nJuly 16, 2011 at 8:10 PM EST<\/strong>
\nOpening Line:\u00a0 ARI -133, LAD +113<\/strong>
\nCurrent Line:\u00a0 ARI -135, LAD +114<\/strong>
\nOpening Total: 8<\/strong>
\nCurrent Total:\u00a0 8<\/strong><\/p>\n

SP:\u00a0 LAD- Hiroshi Kuroda; ARI- Ian Kennedy<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"
Ian Kennedy has already equalled his win total from last season.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As mentioned last night, the Dodgers have a lot of reasons to be pleased for a team that is so far below .500.\u00a0 They won last night by a count of 6-4 and have now won five straight and will be looking ot hand the Diamondbacks their fourth straight loss tonight.<\/p>\n

Dodgers players are trying to look past the off-field issues of the bankruptcy of the team and such, and focus on what actually matters:\u00a0 winning.\u00a0 Matt Kemp, in particular, is enjoying being on the right side of games for once:<\/p>\n

\u201cIt feels good,\u201d Kemp gloated. \u201cWe closed out the first half strong, winning four games in a row, and to come back and get another win, we\u2019ve just got to keep going.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kemp has every reason to expect his success to continue, after having hit a two run homer and having driven in four runs last night.\u00a0 In his 34 games at Arizona’s Chase Field, he has hit .313 with 6 HRs.\u00a0 On the season, Kemp is batting .315 and he already has accumulated 71 RBIs.\u00a0 Last night’s homer was the first in a while for Kemp, but he seems – like many baseball players – to be a player given to streaks, so to expect another shot from him tonight would not be out of the question at all.<\/p>\n

Clayton Kershaw gave up four runs last night, but all four were unearned and given the fact that the Dodgers finally produced something offensively (6 runs no less), it proved to be enough.<\/p>\n

Sending Kuroda to the mound tonight should produce similar results.\u00a0 Kuroda is 6-10 with a 3.06 ERA.\u00a0 Kuroda has a good bag of tricks from which to pull his pitches and is less reliant on his fastball than he has been in the past.\u00a0 Last season, he ranked ninth in the majors in percent swinging strike rate, though he doesn’t strike out an unusual amount of batters given the amount of innings he pitches.\u00a0 It is his ability to keep hitters off guard that makes him successful, not by a means of overpowering pitches.<\/p>\n

In his last seven starts, Kuroda has gone 1-5 despite an outstanding 2.32 ERA.\u00a0 It’s just that the Dodgers shoddy offense has only provided him with an average of 2.53 runs of support.\u00a0 His last outing, still, was not very good, as he gave up 4 runs and 8 hits in 6 innings of a 5-3 loss to the New York Mets.\u00a0 In his six career starts in Arizona, he has produced a 1-3 record with a 6.08 ERA, which isn’t exactly reason for optimism for Dodgers fans and players, but Kuroda’s ERA has been under 4.00 for the last three seasons and will be again this year, so perhaps the performances at Chase Field are a mere anomaly.<\/p>\n

The Diamondbacks will send Ian Kennedy to the mound.\u00a0 Kennedy is 9-3 on the season with a 3.44 ERA.\u00a0 In his last outing, he gave up 3 runs in 6 innings, as the Diamondbacks went on to defeat the Saint Louis Cardinals 7-6.\u00a0 The victory, his ninth, matched his total from all of last season when he went 9-10 despite a decent ERA of 3.80.<\/p>\n

\u201cI needed to find something just to grind through it (his last outing),\u201d Kennedy remarked. \u201c(It) was one of those games where you don\u2019t feel very well but you have to get through it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some betting trends:<\/p>\n

The Los Angeles Dodgers are 5-0 SU in their last 5 games and the total has gone UNDER in 4 of the last 5 games.\u00a0 The total has gone OVER, however, in 8 of the last 11 on the road, while the Dodgers are 2-4 SU in their last 6 on the road.\u00a0 The Dodgers are 14-6 SU in their last 20 against the Arizona Diamondbacks and the total has gone UNDER in 4 of the last 6 against the Diamondbacks, as well.\u00a0 The Dodgers are 10-4 SU in their last 14 road games against the Diamondbacks.<\/p>\n

The Arizona Diamondbacks are 2-4 SU in their last 6 games and the total has gone OVER In 6 of their last 9 games, while they are 1-5 SU in their last 6 at home.\u00a0 The total has gone UNDER in 4 of their last 6 against the Dodgers and they are 6-14 SU in their last 20 against the Dodgers.\u00a0 The Diamondbacks are 4-10 SU in their last 14 games at home against the Dodgers.<\/p>\n

The total is set at 8 for this game, and it seems reasonable, but Kuroda has struggled at Chase Field, as mentioned.\u00a0 If the Diamondbacks can get things cooking early, then there’s a good chance they can rattle Kuroda and crank out enough runs to put this total ‘over,’ though it is still a somewhat risky proposition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Los Angeles Dodgers (42-51) AT Arizona Diamondbacks (49-44) July 16, 2011 at 8:10 PM EST Opening Line:\u00a0 ARI -133, LAD +113 Current Line:\u00a0 ARI -135, LAD +114 Opening Total: 8 Current Total:\u00a0 8 SP:\u00a0 LAD- Hiroshi Kuroda; ARI- Ian Kennedy As mentioned last night, the Dodgers have a lot of reasons to be pleased for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40250,"featured_media":4476,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1444],"tags":[50,429],"class_list":["post-16468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","tag-arizona-diamondbacks","tag-los-angeles-dodgers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40250"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16468"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16470,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16468\/revisions\/16470"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}