The Dodgers had an off-day on Monday, their second in five days, as they head to New York to face the Yankees. The inter-league series marks a halfway point in June, as it will be the fifth of eight complete series the Dodgers will play in the month.
The Dodgers are 6-9 in June, sending them 10 games under .500 and 7 games back in the NL West as of Tuesday. Some interesting trends are popping up with their bats in the month, most notably from Yasiel Puig, Andre Ethier, and Adrian Gonzalez.
While the team is hitting a lowly .243/.296/.378 in June, compared to .262/.324/.382 in May, Yasiel Puig has been the hottest bat on the team.
Since getting called up June 3, Puig is hitting an outstanding .479/.500/.771 with four home runs and 10 RBI. He has multiple hits in eight of his 12 career starts, and has reached base safely in 11 of 13 games played.
The problem the Dodgers have run into with Puig is bringing him in to score. He has scored seven runs, but four of them are on his own home runs. Hit him at the top of the lineup and he does not have runners on base to score, hit him in the middle of the lineup and there is nobody behind him to bring him home.
Stranding a runner on base too often is a good problem to have though. In Sunday’s game against the Pirates, Puig was on base, or scored, for all three Dodgers runs. He creates opportunities on the base paths and helps advance runners with his fantastic .500 on-base percentage.
Andre Ethier started the month sluggish, with just one hit in his first 17 at-bats, but has found some consistency of late. He is in the middle of a six-game hitting streak, and has a hit in eight of the last nine games.
While you cant claim this is the turn-around we have been waiting for from him, it is still encouraging. Six games is his longest hitting streak of the season, but he is 10-24 in that time.
Matt Kemp’s 14-game streak earlier in the season did not fix his swing, but he only had five games with two hits. Ethier has two games with two hits and one with three, so I am hoping it is not a fluke, and is a sign of him turning things around instead.
Adrian Gonzalez was the MVP of May for the Dodgers but is hitting just .235/.333/.333 in June. He has shown he can be streaky though, going through stretches of 11-27, 2-29, and 12-31 in May alone.
Hanley Ramirez returned from the Disabled List on June 4, but has spent a lot of time pinch hitting because he has been feeling tightness in his hamstring still. He has just four starts and is hitting 3-21 with just two RBIs.
