Kuzul

As I followed the Dodgers game against the Padres last night, there was something slightly different about things, but I just couldn’t put my finger on it.

Was I glad that baseball was finally back after a brief hiatus? Possibly, but that seemed unlikely.

And then, everything clicked.

As Mark Ellis, Matt Kemp and Andre Ethier stepped to the plate in succession, my feelings were clarified: it wasn’t that I hadn’t seen baseball in a few days, it was that I hadn’t seen these guys play baseball in so long.

It always seems cliche to talk about off-the-field intangibles or thoughts and feelings that can’t be quantified with an average or a number, but the feeling of knowing the Dodgers were healthy, finally, was almost tangible.

The confidence I lacked with Adam Kennedy patrolling the middle of the order (or even playing at all) and Jerry Hairston as our best hitter had become borderline difficult to bear. In fact, when things finally caught up with the “miracle team” and the losses started piling up, I wondered if this day would ever come.

Would the Dodgers hold Ethier out for an extended period of time wanting to play it safe? Would Kemp’s hamstring cooperate with and respond to the treatment they were giving him?

Well, on a beautiful Friday night at Chavez Ravine, Friday the 13th no less, both of those questions were answered in a way that sent chills and goosebumps down the spine of anyone who claims to bleed Dodger Blue.

As Kemp stepped to the plate and promptly smashed a ball into the left-center field gap, fans throughout the stadium held their breath to see how his legs looked powering into second.

No problem.

So as Kemp jogged into second, a universal sigh of relief was taken and the game continued.

While two runs are hardly enough to make fans believe the offense has returned from its six-week hiatus, the positives were there.

For starters, one of the team’s true unsung heroes (and least-appreciated acquisitions of the off-season), Mark Ellis, was right in the middle of things. Now with 29 runs in just 42 games, Ellis raised his on-base percentage to just under .370 with a monumental two-run homer that got the second half of the season off on the right foot.

While many will remember this as the time when Kemp and Ethier returned from injury, Ellis wanted to remind them that he had been gone for a good chunk of time prior to returning before the All-Star break. Don’t think the celebration of the return of the two Dodger stars Friday night didn’t light a fire under him a little bit.

Regardless of what it looked like, and it wasn’t pretty, I couldn’t describe Friday night’s game as anything less than perfect.

The stars returned, the Dodgers won and hope in Dodgertown was restored. The dominant first-place team we remember from a couple months ago is back—and, man, it feels good to have the band back together.

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As the Dodgers lost their sixth straight game Friday night (and in impressive 9-0 fashion), rumors began swirling about a potential trade with the Houston Astros to land Carlos Lee.

While insiders like Buster Olney and Ken Rosenthal flip-flopped on who was in the deal and who the Dodgers were receiving, midway through Friday’s game, it appeared that Lee was the likely target. In fact, it appears that the only thing standing in L.A.’s way of receiving “El Caballo” is his waving of a no-trade clause.

On the surface, the trade makes perfect sense. Lee remains a feared bat among MLB circles and plays a position (1B) that the Dodgers are desperate for help at. Furthermore, because of his large contract ($9 million remaining this season), insiders point out that trading for Lee wouldn’t require anyone of the caliber of Zach Lee, the Dodgers’ No. 1 prospect.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean they’re quite giving him away either, which is where my worries hit high alert.

Ned Colletti + Dodgers prospects = Worry!

In fact, here are some examples of Colletti trades that worry me:

— July 31, 2010: Dodgers trade James McDonald and Andrew Lambo to the Pittsburgh Pirates for Octavio Dotel

Note: James McDonald, who was always among the team’s top prospects, currently has a 2.44 ERA and a 0.98 WHIP. Octavio Dotel appeared in 19 games as a Dodger and had a 3.38 ERA.

— July 26, 2008: Dodgers trade Jon Meloan and Carlos Santana to the Cleveland Indians for Casey Blake

Note: Santana hit 27 home runs last season as a catcher for the Indians. Casey Blake hit higher than .252 just once in four seasons with the Dodgers.

What scares me so much about the Carlos Lee trade idea is just how similar it is to these past deadline moves from Colletti. In the Casey Blake deal, for example, the Dodgers got decent production out of Blake, but the prospect they gave up turned out to be an excellent MLB player who made the Dodgers look bad.

The same goes for the Dotel trade. Sure, Dotel was a nice acquisition at the deadline, but to give up a guy like McDonald—who had shown serious promise—for a rental closer was crazy at the time and looks even more ridiculous now.

My problem with the Carlos Lee deal has nothing to do with Lee and everything to do with a lack of faith in Colletti‘s ability to work a fair deal for the Dodgers. When he’s desperate, his track record is far from reassuring.

So while the Dodgers will surely make a handful of moves over the next couple of weeks, I expect that they will improve for this season and hopefully make a run into the playoffs. Where the fun begins, however, is three years from now when we find out just how much they gave up to get there.

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Watching your favorite team get no-hit in person on the road is one of the weirdest feelings in the world.

At some point do you start rooting for a no-hitter? Are you required to remain loyal even in the face of history?

Regardless of what was going through my mind and heart, however, nothing would change what was going on at Safeco Field on Friday night.

As Kevin Millwood stormed through the Dodgers lineup early on, the expectations were low. I mean, this was Kevin Millwood after all.

Then, the zeros kept coming.

After a strained groin forced Millwood to retire early, the fate of the no-hitter was left on the shoulders of a series of unknown relievers: Charlie Furbush, Stephen Pryor, Lucas Luetge, Brandon League and Tom Wilhelmsen. 

Fortunately for Millwood and his relievers, their defense provided plenty of help behind them.

Kyle Seager was the first Mariner to preserve history in the fourth when Dodgers speedster Dee Gordon tried to bunt his way aboard. In anticipation of the coming bunt, Seager was already on the grass, but with a perfect bunt, Gordon put the pressure on the rookie Seager.

Charging hard, Seager bare-handed the ball and threw a strike to first baseman Justin Smoak that got Gordon by a half step.

While Seager’s play will likely go un-remembered, it was the eighth inning that provided all the drama that any baseball fan could dream of.

With runners at second and third with just one out after two walks and a sacrifice bunt, the Mariners turned to reliever Brandon League.

“We might as well go home now,” the Mariners fan next to me said.

In his final five save opportunities as the closer, League had blown three of them; and in the month of May he posted a dreadful 6.48 ERA.

Friday night, however, was a new day.

Amped up on the energy surrounding him, League hit as high as 97 on the radar gun as he jumped ahead in the count on A.J. Ellis. Then, on a 1-2 count, Ellis lined what I was sure would be the Dodgers first hit of the game towards the Mariners new defensive replacement, Chone Figgins.

As the Ellis liner seemed to just float in the air towards a charging Figgins, all of Safeco Field collectively held their breath. With the speed he was brought to Seattle to display, Figgins not only caught the ball but remained upright enough to rifle the ball towards the plate, keeping pinch-runner Alex Castellanos at third.

(On a side note, the same Mariners fan who lamented the appearance of League acknowledged that if Mike Carp had remained in left field there was little chance that the defensively-limited Carp would have made the same play.)

So with the unlikeliest duo in all of Seattle leaving the Mariners just three outs away from a no-hitter, the game rolled on towards the ninth.

First up was the pesky Gordon, who put first base umpire Ted Barrett in the most undesirable of situations. With visions of Jim Joyce blowing Armando Galarraga’s perfect game with a missed call surely fresh in his mind, Barrett was left to discern the outcome of a truly bang-bang play.

As Gordon dribbled a ball towards shortstop Brendan Ryan (a ninth-inning defensive replacement), Ryan made the best play he could to get the ball towards Smoak. While even replays seemed to leave the true outcome of the play unknown, Barrett signaled that the throw just beat Gordon, leaving the Mariners two outs away.

(As much as the Dodgers fan in me wants to argue he was safe, there’s no way a human umpire can be criticized for making this call. Even replay probably wouldn’t have overturned this call, and in reality, it’s better to be safe then sorry in a no-hitter as we’ve learned.)

So with two outs between him and a no-hitter, closer Tom Wilhelmsen retired Elian Herrera and Andre Ethier with little fan-fare, sending the city of Seattle into jubilation they surely haven’t felt in years.

Nine innings, 27 outs and six pitchers later, the only number that mattered was zero.

As a baseball fan, I rejoiced.

For just the 27th time since 2000, a major league game contained a no-hitter and while many fans see hundreds of games in person without ever witnessing a no-hitter, here I was witnessing one first-hand.

As a Dodgers fan, the feeling was more bitter. My team had lost in the most frustrating way possible—a 1-0 game in which they logged exactly zero hits. 

In a way, this was actually the second no-hitter I had witnessed in person. The last, in June of 2008, was at home against the Angels, except that contained one brief catch: the Dodgers won.

After reaching on an error, stealing second and advancing to third on an error, Matt Kemp scored without a single hit from the Dodgers. The reason the game isn’t in the history books, however, is because the Dodgers only batted eight times (leading heading into the bottom of the ninth, they didn’t come back up).

The moral of the story, however, is that witnessing your team get no-hit while they win isn’t a hard mental situation to discern. It still doesn’t explain what one should feel while witnessing history performed against their team.

So it begs the question: With your team losing in the last inning of a game you’re at, are you rooting for a no-hitter?

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It all made perfect sense for Dodgers fans.

With new ownership on its way and an underwhelming pitching staff to begin the season, the presence of Roy Oswalt in free agency seemed too appealing to pass up. Having not found a place to pitch by opening day, Oswalt announced he would wait a couple of months before deciding where he would play in 2012.

While his numbers were still very good last season (3.69 ERA), two separate stints on the disabled list left some teams questioning how much he had left in the tank.

For the Dodgers, their offseason pitching problem was solved by the signing of Chris Capuano and Aaron Harang, however neither pitcher brought much excitement to town. Capuano was a 33-year-old with two Tommy John surgeries in his past who had made just 40 starts since 2007.

Even more alarming, however, was his lack of effectiveness in those 40 starts, posting an ERA of 4.39.

Harang on the other hand, was coming off of a career year with the Padres in the friendly confines of Petco Park, where he posted a career-low 3.64 ERA. It was the first time since 2007 that his ERA dipped below 4.21.

So with the fourth and fifth spots filled by underwhelming newcomers, optimistic fans dreamt of Oswalt in Dodgers blue.

Then, the improbable happened.

With his first full season in four years behind him, Capuano has been incredible in 2012. In 10 starts, the southpaw is 7-1 with an ERA of 2.14 and a WHIP of 1.00, all numbers that rank him among the league leaders.

While Harang has been less impressive (3-3, 4.14 ERA), he has still managed to post five quality starts and given the Dodgers a chance to win ball games.

Although Oswalt would be a definite upgrade over the likes of Harang, and insurance in case the injury to Ted Lilly were more serious, the real reason I don’t think the Dodgers needed Oswalt was because of the youth throughout their system.

Take tonight’s starter, Nathan Eovaldi, for example. The 22-year-old right-hander was surprisingly effective in his first taste of the big leagues last season, finishing with an ERA of 3.09 in six starts.

The other young arm who could use some experience is Rubby De La Rosa. 

Like Eovaldi, De La Rosa got his first taste of the major leagues in 2011 and was a bright spot in an otherwise depressing season. In 10 starts, De La Rosa notched a 3.91 ERA and a K/9 ratio of 8.97.

Unfortunately, De La Rosa’s season ended prematurely when he needed to get Tommy John surgery, however there have been positive reports hinting that he might be able to return around the all-star break (see: notes at bottom).

So sure, it’s disappointing to hear that the Dodgers apparently made an offer to Oswalt and came up empty, losing out to the Texas Rangers, but there are positives everywhere in this situation. First of all, the idea that the Dodgers are pursuing someone like this indicates the new direction of this ownership group, and secondly, the Dodgers have a couple young guns that are ready to pave the way for a new future.

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