Or perhaps "Team Appreciation Night", in honor of the Pirates' recent appearance at Chavez Ravine, which had nearly everyone from the home team looking good- even Ned Colletti.  Not that anyone is really thinking about that series after Monday night's battle of past and (very near) future Cy Young award winners, but both teams can probably use a reminder of what it's like to hit against...shall we say...lesser pitching, 2011 ERAs notwithstanding.  It's too bad the Giants are allowed to participate in this event, too, but...well, you know the deal by now.

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First, the two storied franchises' histories crossed paths to alter the Dodgers' managerial situation. Now it's the Yankees' turn. An interesting post from Rob Neyer, complete with a little history lesson on the Yankees' catching situation in the mid/late 90's, got me thinking about how it, along with the recent managerial changes, may have played a part with Russell Martin ending up in pinstripes...

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For a lot of Dodger fans, 2010 was just another run-of-the-mill year for James Loney offensively- nothing spectacular overall, pitiful for a first baseman.  Unless you want to put a huge emphasis on doubles and maybe RBIs, there's really not much evidence to refute that, if you look at the season as a whole.  Still, it's worth noting that, coincidentally or not, there's one exact moment- literally- that you can point to where things took a turn for the worse.

The conventional wisdom is that the Dodger offense was good in the first half, atrocious in the second half, and Loney was merely a byproduct of that.  Actually, Loney was quite good up until July 17th, well over half the season, at 91 games in.  He had come into that game against the Cardinals hitting .310/.361/.443- probably not enough to make a Cardinal or Padre fan jealous, but still very respectable, and close to what some of us kept saying he was capable of.  He was 1 for 3 at the time, when this happened:

http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=9988781

Yadier Molina kept him from falling over altogether (Would he have done the same for Brandon Phillips?  We'll never know), but the injury was serious enough for Loney to miss one game.  He was back in the lineup the following game, but essentially, in name only.  Even his biggest detractors probably never could have imagined that he could hit .206 over a span of 66 games, but that's exactly what's happened since. Perhaps even more telling- before the injury, he had 13 stolen base attempts. Since then, only 2.

Again, I'm not saying that there's a definitive link between what happened that day and what happened after.  If anything, it might even be worse for Loney if it was, as slumping because you're hiding, or at least not being completely open, about an injury is an even worse sin than just slumping all on your own.  But given how much discussion there was last season about Billingsley not being the same after his leg injury, or Manny not being the same after getting hit on the hand, or Ethier this year after HIS hand injury, it's at least worth considering that Loney's injury, while minor, may have been just enough to throw him off his game.  This probably won't change any minds about Loney, especially those who are convinced that we've already seen him at his best.  But at the very least, I think we can all at least agree that he's not going to be hitting .206 for the rest of his career.