I caught a good post on the TrueBlueLA site entitled, “It’s cool to hate” where the author speaks about how we went from hating the pitchers to lamenting the batting crew. As I mentioned in a previous post, the injuries are certainly playing a part in the lack of offense that the Dodgers have right now, but Andrew at TrueBlueLA had some other points that I think deserve some additional comment:

1. The lineup hasn’t adapted to address the team injuries – with Kent and Jones sidelined and/or unproductive, the Dodgers have had to rely on Maza, Hu, Pierre, and whatever pitcher we have up that day. If those guys are anywhere near one another in the lineup it’s going to be really hard to string two hits together and get a run across home plate. Not much you can do about the $50 mil that’s off your roster at the moment, but what about changing the order of things?

If Nomar, Tony Abreu, Furcal, Ramon Martinez and Andy LaRoche hadn’t gotten hurt, there’s no way we’d be carrying Maza and Terry Tiffee on the bench while starting Chin-Lung Hu. – TrueBlueLA

True enough.

Andre Ethier has been the silent giant as of late, getting on base more consistently than the rest of the lineup but with no one to help him, the Dodgers are struggling. Besides a change in the lineup, could a more aggressive pinch hitting strategy change things up? Tiffee was brought up to lend a hand in just these instances and, while still green, should be more of a go-to person on the team.

Got to run to the airport but will finish my thoughts on this tomorrow – or maybe Chris will jump in and continue the thought…