In Jake Peavy’s young career, he has absolutely dominated the Los Angeles Dodgers. In 20 career starts, he is 11-1 against LA with a 2.31 ERA — 5-1 at Dodger Stadium, 6-0 at PETCO Park. And even when he doesn’t have his best stuff against LA, he might as well be goddamn Juan Marichal.
Case in point: last night. The Dodgers strike first, scoring one run each in the first and third innings while Penny kept the Padres quiet. And then the first Dodgers/Padres game of the season seemed to repeat itself when Penny gave up four runs in the top of the fourth inning. The Dodgers never got the lead back as Peavy won his third game of the season and Brad Penny fell to 1-2.
It isn’t just that Peavy is a great young pitcher, because he definitely is and it’s difficult to argue with that contention. It’s that when he’s just “okay” on a given night, the Dodgers still can’t beat him. They haven’t beaten him since 2003. And the only thing he’s done in the interim is get better. It’s hard to fault the Dodgers fan for wondering if the Dodgers will ever beat Jake Peavy.
I made the Marichal reference up top primarily because Marichal pitched most of his career for the Giants, and then I looked at the numbers, and it so happens that Marichal did regularly defeat LA, and often embarrasingly so (for LA, not Marichal). Marichal was 37-18 against the Dodgers in his career, boasting a 2.36 ERA. The only franchise he used to kill with such frequency was the Mets, against whom he was 26-8 with a 2.13 ERA. He didn’t lose a game to the Mets until 1967, when he was in the middle of a pretty mediocre (for him) season. And the Mets didn’t even beat him with eventual Rookie of the Year Tom Seaver — Jack Fisher got the win. Maybe the Dodgers need to send Derek Lowe out there and see what happens.
And of course, the other cause for concern for LA is Brad Penny, who had a fine first start of the season and has looked pretty bad since then. Indeed, he has had the bad luck of facing Jake Peavy the last two games out. Conversely, he faced Barry Zito and the punchless Giants in his first game, so maybe that’s not a good measurement of success, either, especially when you consider that the Padres are not exactly the 1927 Yankees out there when it comes to hitting.
Doesn’t seem like LA is at this point, either, anyway. Rafael Furcal is hitting .432 with six doubles and two triples; James Loney has two home runs and a .351 average. After that? Nothing. Russell is not hitting at all; Andruw Jones is worse. Grouchy McMoustache has two home runs and not much else. The team is tenth in batting average and twelfth in slugging percentage. This sounds a lot like the end of last season. Fortunately, it is only April — but this is not the way one wants one’s team to start out.
They’re not poised for much of a rebound tonight, either, as Derek Lowe faces Chris Young. Yes, the Dodgers won the last time these two squared off, but it wasn’t Lowe or Young getting any decisions — instead, the Dodgers had to get past some guy pretending to be Trevor Hoffman. Let’s see if they have it in them to go for it again tonight.
