Observations from the Dodgers and Diamondbacks Series

Puig and Pederson need to make adjustments.

After struggling through the first two games of the series going 1-for-7 with 3 Ks and bringing his season average down to .176, Joc Pederson regrouped in Game 3 with a multi-hit game and his first home run of the year. It appears that Pederson is over-swinging at the plate. He takes big cuts and looks off-balance at times. The next few days will tell us a lot if the young man can make adjustments to his swing and begin forcing the opposition to rethink how they pitch him.

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Yasiel Puig’s problems appear to be more mental than mechanical. During the broadcast of Game 1, after a terrible swing by Puig on a first-pitch fastball, Orel Hershiser made the point that if you’re “expecting a first-pitch fastball, you get one, and you’re still swinging off-balance then you’re overthinking it.” It’s hard to say exactly what could be causing Puig his early season grief. Even with his first home run of the season in Game 3, I still don’t believe the right fielder is completely out of his funk. With the loss of Hanley Ramirez and Matt Kemp, Puig might be trying to carry too much of the offensive burden on his own broad shoulders. He may benefit from taking a similar approach to teammate Adrian Gonzalez. The first baseman claims he’s not trying to hit home runs, he’s simply trying to hit line drives that just happen to go over the fence. Whatever works.

The bullpen continues to impress.

Even after Game 2’s 6-0 butt-whooping, I was shocked at the number of irate post-game radio show callers who wanted to strip this team down from stem to stern and rebuild. “We don’t have the offense to contend for a title,” some people said. “We don’t have the bullpen,” said others. After the first two losses in the series I jotted down some notes regarding how strong the pen has looked so far. But then Game 3 happened, particularly Chris Hatcher’s third of an inning where he gave up 3 runs on 3 hits and a walk making the 2-run homer by Alex Guerrero in the top of the 9th all the more vital.

Los Angeles Dodgers third baseman Alex Guerrero (7) celebrates with Yasmani Grandal (9) after hitting a two run home run in the ninth inning against the Arizona Diamondbacks. Rick Scuteri-USA TODAY Sports

The fact is very few MLB bullpens are going to lock down 2-3 innings every single night. Even the best of them will falter now and then. At this moment, without their first choice closer in Kenley Jansen, if the Dodgers get three good bullpen games out of every four they should be happy. If they can have a poor pen game like Game 3 and still win, that will wash out the good pen games they lose like Game 2.

Six games in, even the most suspicious fans should be pleasantly surprised, if not with the pen as whole, at least with many of the pieces, Pedro Baez, Juan Nicasio, Yimi Garcia, and Joel Peralta in particular. If these guys continue to perform it bodes well for when Jansen returns to the fold and can help shrink the time the other relievers are needed.

Shifts are looking a little shifty.

In 2014, there was very little shifting going on when Clayton Kershaw was on the mound. So far this season he’s pitched two games and we’ve seen at least 3 runs caused by shifts (including Matt Kemp’s first hit on Opening Day) and maybe 1 run saved. Kershaw didn’t appear to be happy with the shifts during Game 2 of the Diamondbacks series and appeared to have them called off after the 4th inning.

“Well, a lot of people do a lot of research and a lot of homework to put guys where they’re supposed to be and you execute your game plan,” Kershaw said. “The theory is they’ll hit it where they are. Sometimes, that works, sometimes it doesn’t.

In Game 3, with Zack Greinke on the mound dealing like a seasoned Vegas croupier, I noticed the ace taking extra walks around the mound, making note of where his defense was positioned. The new-look defense didn’t appear to bother Greinke as much as it did Kershaw, but who cares where your defense is playing when you’re pitching to the tune of 7 punch-outs and your four-seamer is generating nothing but dribblers by opposition batters. So will these shifts continue? You better believe it. This is part of the Andrew Friedman game plan and Don Mattingly appears to be fully on board, at least for the time being.

Other random observations

After the season he had last year, and the hype generated for Clayton Kershaw heading into this season, sometimes it’s difficult for fans to remember this guy is still human. In Game 2 Kershaw had a below average line even for a below average pitcher: 6.1 IP, 10 hits, 6 runs, 5 earned, 5 Ks and 3 walks. Every so often, roughly the time Halley’s Comet makes its return, Kershaw has a game like this where he reminds us that he’s not perfect. In a similar scenario last season, Kershaw faced Arizona and collected his first loss by surrendering 7 earned runs in only 1.2 innings on 50 pitches. A couple starts later, Kershaw was well on his way to delivering his MVP season. Dodger fans hope a similar pattern emerges this year.

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Call to the Pen

Yimi Garcia is pretty good.

Best dry Rick Monday line from a radio broadcast: Bottom of the first and Greinke gets Paul Goldschmidt to ground to third base. “And the Dodgers actually get Goldschmidt out. Someone get that game ball.” Goldschmidt had gone 4-for-8 with 2 homeruns in the first two games of the series.

Yasmani Grandal is a great pitch-framer. He appeared to fool home plate umpire Ángel Hernández a few times yesterday. He’s even got me questioning my own reality sometimes.

Jimmy Rollins already has 4 errors this season and an abysmal fielding percentage of .846. While I don’t anticipate that trend to continue, there is more irony here than a Shakespearean drama considering that Rollins was brought in as a defensive improvement over Hanley Ramirez.

Speaking of abysmal, Adrian Gonzalez went 4-for-10 in the Diamondbacks series, dropping his average from .769 to .609. Time to make adjustments.

Next up for the Dodgers, tonight they host the Seattle Mariners with Brandon McCarthy taking on James Paxton.