Dodgers – Padres Recap

It was an ugly day for the Dodgers today as the Padres sent their B squad to Camelback Ranch and still handed the Dodgers an 8-2 beating.

Clayton Kershaw pitched into the 5th inning, before reaching his 75 pitch limit, and would have come through his outing completely unscathed were it not for a couple of ugly Casey Blake errors on routine plays. Fortunately it’s March 10 and not April 10 so hopefully The Beard gets his errors out of his system now.

The Dodgers actually led 2-1, behind a Juan Uribe double and a Rod Barajas Sac Fly. But then came the top of the 6th and in came Dodger closer Big Bad Jonthan Broxton. Brox certainly lived up to his nickname today as he was Big and Bad in fact he was down right awful. He was welcomed to the game by Jarrett Hoffpauir with a tying home run to lead off the sixth inning. Broxton, trying to rebound from a terrible second half last year, didn’t retire any of the five batters he faced, allowing three hits with a walk, he also hit a batter.

He was replaced by Stuart Pomeranz who gave up  a 3 run home run, which definitely didn’t help Broxton’s final line of 3 hits, 1 walk and 4 earned runs allowed.  Again its March 10th, if these things are still occuring on April and May 10th then look for Kenley Jansen and/or Hong-Chih Kuo to be closing.

On a positive note the Dodgers did get solid relief outings from Matt Guerrier and Scott Elbert, who rebounded from his previous Broxton esque  outing and only allowed 1 walk in his 1 inning of scoreless work.

No Jerry Sands sighting today, Russ Mitchell was called upon to finish up for James Loney and failed to hit the ball out of the infield. Aaron Miles also looked bad striking out in his first at bat on a ball in the dirt and making  couple of shaky defensive plays all part of a 3 error day by the boys in blue.

Jon Garland’s MRI results came back today and he is indeed headed for the DL. Ken Gurnick and MLB.com has all of the details, but Ned Colletti has stated that the club will not look outide the organization for a 5th starter. With off days the Dodgers more than likely will not need a 5th starter until April 12 and it’s possible Garland could be back by then but we will see.

Ken Gurnick at MLB.com also has a nice piece on Mattingly’s state of the Dodgers at the halfway point of camp. According to Mattingly , “I feel OK with where we are right now, I’ll feel better when we get through the split-squad games this weekend and we can thin [the roster] down a little bit.” Hopefully Jerry Sands isn’t part of that thinning.

Remember Lasorda’s Lair followers I begin my journey to Dodger Spring training, tomorrow morning. Mike will be back tomorrow with all of the Dodger news you need. I’ll be back Sunday night once I arrive in Arizona and beginning Monday we will provide you with photos, videos, and hopefully player interviews from Camelback Ranch. I’ve got my new Sony “Bloggie” HD camera ready to go to work and I hope to provide you with a behind the scene’s glimpse of CBR, and definitely will record every Jerry Sands at bat!