Tonight's lineup: No Kent, no explanation
Not yet anyway. I'm guessing it's because tomorrow is a day game and Joe wanted to give him one of the two games off. FWIW, Dodgers are 2-15 in St. Louis (counting playoffs) since I have been on the beat. And, as I have stated here before, that is basically the only time frame that matters.
Kemp. CF
Ethier. RF
Martin. C
Ramirez. LF
Loney. 1B
Blake. 3B
Ozuna. 2B
Berroa. SS
Lowe. P
Hmmmm ... and Ethier's starting again. What a concept. As for Kent, his defense was more stiff than usual last night, so it's time for him to have a day (or two) off.
Whatever keeps Kent's iron glove out of the lineup is a plus for me.
It was tolerable when he was actually hitting .280-.290 and 20 HR a year, but now that he's an old .250 hitter with 15 HR power, I see less reason to play the worst defensive 2nd baseman in baseball.
Here's a reason to play Kent: he's better han Pablo Ozuna. Three automatic outs at the bottom of the lineup. Time for some Chin-lung Hu who's tearing the cover off the ball in Triple-A.
Very good to see Pierre and his big mouth on the bench. By the way, if you're a Baseball Prospectus subscriber, there's a great article on Pierre v. Ethier by Joe Sheehan today.
The concluding couple of paragraphs:
Conclusions? How about three:
Andre Ethier is better than Juan Pierre.
Juan Pierre has a case for being the worst leadoff hitter in the game.
The Dodger offense grinds to a halt when Juan Pierre bats leadoff.
If the Dodgers fail to reach the postseason, it will be in part because Furcal got hurt. You can’t just ignore that part of the equation. But it will be just as much because Joe Torre elected to kneecap his offense by putting a bad baseball player in a critical role, and stubbornly sticking with that decision despite what it was doing to his offense. No amount of geniality, experience, speed, or hustle can counter the statistics above. When anybody but Juan Pierre leads off, the Dodgers score 50 percent more runs than they do when Pierre leads off. Consistently.