Tag Archives: Matt Kemp

Matt Kemp crashed into the same part of Dodger Stadium wall that injured Bryce Harper.

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Bryce Harper injury

Washington Nationals right fielder Bryce Harper is walked off the field by Nationals head athletic trainer Lee Kuntz during the fifth inning of Monday’s game against the Dodgers. Harper received 11 stitches in his neck after crashing into the right-field wall in pursuit of a triple by Dodgers catcher A.J. Ellis. (Andy Holzman/Staff photographer)

Matt Kemp has been where Bryce Harper was on Monday.

On April 9, 2007, the Dodgers played their first home game of the season and debuted the color scoreboard that’s embedded in the right-field wall — the same one that Harper crashed into nearly at full speed Monday.

Kemp, who was playing right field that day, acquainted himself by crashing shoulder-first into the scoreboard in pursuit of a fly ball by the Colorado Rockies’ Jeff Baker in the fourth inning. Kemp missed the ball and Baker, like A.J. Ellis on Monday, wound up on third base with a triple.

The scoreboard wasn’t padded that day, and no padding has been added since.

“It’s tough,” Kemp said. “I separated my shoulder doing that.”

Kemp didn’t return for two months after his injury.

Harper was examined and received 11 stitches in his neck. He did not suffer a concussion, as was originally feared, but was reportedly taken to a hospital.

“It looked bad,” Kemp said of Harper’s crash. “I was just praying that he was OK. Hopefully he doesn’t miss any time.”

(Click here for a photo gallery from tonight’s game)

Daily Distractions: Analyzing Matt Kemp’s power outage.

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Matt Kemp

Matt Kemp has evolved from a poor hitter to a singles hitter this season, and he may or may not be done evolving. (Associated Press)

Matt Kemp collected his 1,000th career hit yesterday afternoon. Good thing the Dodgers recognized the accomplishment on the video board, otherwise he might not have known until after the game.

Kemp collected the milestone hit on a single, which seems appropriate. Kemp has been stuck on one home run — against New York Mets phenom Matt Harvey, no less — for almost a month. If he hits one home run a month, Kemp will finish the season with six.

If I could have written more about Kemp in yesterday’s notebook, I might have touched on a number of topics that ESPN’s Buster Olney discussed in his podcast the other day, namely:

• Kemp is getting eaten alive by pitches down and away. His strikeout rate in that area is among the top five percent in the league.
• Kemp has less power. He’s lost 25 feet off his average fly ball.
• It’s not luck. His batting average on balls in play is .363, slightly above his .352 career average.
• Kemp seems to be avoiding putting stress on his left shoulder, just as he did last September when the shoulder was legitimately hurt.

Kemp started the year unable to hit the ball for power or average, so we could be looking at a snapshot moment in his road back from last year’s shoulder surgery. Maybe not. If we’re looking at the new Matt Kemp, how long before the Dodgers move him up (say, to 2nd) or down in the lineup?

Some more Monday bullet points:

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Daily Distractions: Are the Dodgers bringing up Scott Van Slyke today?

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Scott Van SlykeScott Van Slyke has been promoted from Triple-A Albuquerque, but the Dodgers haven’t announced it yet, tweets Rob Rains.

The move would come as no surprise. The Dodgers wouldn’t move Van Slyke from first base to both corner outfield positions –- right field on Tuesday, left field on Wednesday — if they weren’t getting him ready to give Andre Ethier and/or Carl Crawford a day off.

The Dodgers would have to make a roster move to add Van Slyke to the 40-man roster. Since he’s not on the 40-man, the Dodgers would technically be selecting his contract rather than recalling him from Triple-A. Moving Chad Billingsley, who’s out for the season following Tommy John surgery, from the 15-day disabled list to the 60-day disabled list would do the trick.

If there’s more to report, we’ll have it here.

Some bullet points for a Friday morning:
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Daily Distractions: Charting Matt Kemp’s struggles.

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ESPN Stats and Info gives Matt Kemp the Hot Zone treatment on its blog today.

Author Mark Simon highlights several things that have ailed Kemp this season; here’s one more: Kemp is getting behind in the count a lot and not making pitchers pay when he gets ahead. According to ESPN’s chart, Kemp is 10 for 37 (.270) when he’s behind in the count and 4 for 17 (.235) when he’s ahead.

Here is ESPN’s “heat map” for balls in play/strikeouts when Kemp was ahead in the count last season:

Matt Kemp 2012 heat map

That’s how you make a pitcher pay.

Onto some bullet points:

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Dodgers center fielder Matt Kemp gets his first day off of 2013, and he doesn’t like it.

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Matt Kemp“I don’t like days off,” Matt Kemp said as he bounded up the dugout steps before his first off-day of 2013, on his way to take batting practice for the second time Wednesday.

The last time he took a day off was Sept. 9, 2012. Kemp was nursing a then-undisclosed torn labrum in his left shoulder. This time, the problems aren’t physical. Kemp is batting .185 with no home runs and just four RBIs through the season’s first 14 games.

“Just body language, more than anything,” Dodgers manager Don Mattingly said. “Being around the game, you see guys struggle. Sometimes it helps to sit back and watch a game where you don’t have to be out there. … It gives him another day tomorrow, almost three days with the night game (Friday) in Baltimore. I wanted to give him 10 to 12 days off over the course of 162 anyway.”

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Daily Distractions: Will a day off cure what ails the Dodgers’ Matt Kemp?

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Matt Kemp gameday view

(courtesy of MLB.com)

By the looks of things, the Dodgers ought to worry less about Matt Kemp‘s mechanics at the plate than what’s going on inside his head.

That image, courtesy of MLB.com’s Gameday tool, shows Kemp’s final at-bat Tuesday against Jason Marquis. Appropriate to the picture, the bat did not leave his shoulders. Kemp took an 83-mph slider, an 88-mph sinker, and an 82-mph changeup for strikes, ending the sixth inning with a whimper.

I didn’t have a chance to speak to Kemp after the game, but Kemp typically isn’t introspective in the midst of a slump. Most hitters aren’t; if they could explain why they were slumping, they would be hitting the ball better. Based on that sixth-inning at-bat, it would be tempting to pin Kemp’s problem on poor pitch selection. It might not be that simple.

Here’s how Marquis struck out Kemp to end the third inning:

Matt Kemp

In this at-bat, Kemp’s pitch selection is pretty good. He took two pitches low and out of the zone with two strikes (#3 and #4), then swung a pitch (#5) that might have been a strike — it was about an inch higher than the pitch before. Yet Kemp missed. You have to wonder what he was thinking on the second pitch of this at-bat, a swing-and-miss on a slider over the fattest part of the plate.

Kemp saw two sinkers from Marquis in his first at-bat. The pitch chart isn’t integral here — Kemp took a ball 10 inches off the plate then flew out to right field on the second pitch, which was in the strike zone. Both pitches were sinkers.

By the time the sixth inning rolled around, Kemp should have figured he wasn’t getting any fastballs from Marquis. Yet he took three breaking balls in the strike zone without swinging the bat.

Don Mattingly said after the game that he’s considering giving Kemp a day off, even though the Dodgers have an off-day Thursday. The manager seems to believe Kemp’s slump (he’s hitting .185) begins and ends between his ears.

“Matt’s pressing pretty good,” Mattingly said. “Tonight he seemed really frustrated. The game didn’t help. It’s one of those games that you jump behind early, nothing kind of seems to go your way, and he seemed to be — obviously it didn’t go very good for him.”

From struggling superstars to …

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Dodgers pitcher Zack Greinke fractures clavicle in brawl with San Diego Padres.

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When the Dodgers retained a surplus of starting pitchers in anticipation that their top five would not make every start this season, they could not have imagined a scenario like the one that unfolded Thursday night.

Zack Greinke left his start against the San Diego Padres after fracturing his left clavicle in the midst of a benches-clearing brawl that started when the Padres’ Carlos Quentin charged the mound after being hit by a Greinke pitch in the sixth inning.

Here’s the video of the brawl from tonight’s broadcast:

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Jackie Robinson gets a weekend, not a day.

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Tomorrow is Jackie Robinson Day in Los Angeles.

Monday is the actual 66th anniversary of Robinson breaking the color barrier with the Dodgers in 1947. It’s also Jackie Robinson Day in Major League Baseball, when every player on every team will wear Robinson’s retired 42 on his back.

The list of local Robinson-related events this weekend is so long, the Dodgers issued a 1,338-word press release today to list them all. Here are the highlights:

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Daily Distractions: This is a strike now; Gangnam Style, Jamie Moyer comeback?

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Here’s the set-up: Two outs, two strikes, bottom of the ninth inning. Joe Nathan is pitching for the Texas Rangers with a 5-4 lead over the Tampa Bay Rays. Nathan is stuck on 299 career saves. Home-plate umpire Marty Foster has a dinner bet riding on Nathan picking up number 300 tonight and his reservations are for 20 minutes after the final pitch.

OK, we made that last part up … or did we? Here’s where the pitch was relative to the strike zone (h/t MSimonESPN):

Joe Nathan strike

And here’s what the pitch looked like in real life:

Joe Nathan strike

Wait, watch that clip again.

 

Foster’s call reeked so foul of dinner-reservation theories, he second-guessed himself.

“I saw the pitch and, of course I don’t have the chance to do it again, but if I did, I wouldn’t call that pitch a strike,” Foster told a pool reporter after the game. “Joe [Maddon, the Rays' manager] was not violent. Joe was very professional. He was frustrated and I understand. He acted probably the best he can under that situation.”

Nathan didn’t disagree.

“It’s pretty safe to say we got fortunate, but I’ve seen plenty of them go the other way,” Nathan noted diplomatically. “I threw the pitch where I wanted to. He just didn’t offer at it like I wanted him to. Did I draw it up this way for my 300th? No, but I’ll take it.”

Not only did Maddon tweet about it, he still hasn’t deleted the tweet a day later.

Protect the outside corner as you peruse these links:

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Dodgers’ Carl Crawford is on track to play Opening Day. What does that mean for Yasiel Puig?

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Yasiel Puig
Carl Crawford is playing his third straight game in left field tonight as the Dodgers visit the Kansas City Royals in Surprise.

The Dodgers didn’t want to pencil in Crawford as their Opening Day left fielder until he passed a threshhold for throwing distance, mentioned previously at 125 feet. He has passed that threshhold “and he’s still got five days of throwing,” Dodgers manager Don Mattingly noted Monday. That’s great news for Crawford, who underwent Tommy John surgery just last August and was initially speculated to be out until May.

That’s not great news if you were hoping to see Yasiel Puig in left field come Opening Day.

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