[PilotMan]

9/16 6-2 W over the Reds
Valenzuela (18-10) owned the Reds today. With the exception of one inning, he completely dominated them, with 11 K's in the game. The offense actually gave him some support today too, every player except Valenzuela got a hit today. Lasorda has opted to go with Tony Bernazard back at short and not UL Washington, which can't make Washington happy. Either way, Bernazard went 4-3 leading off. Bobby Grich piled on in the 7^th with a 2 run shot, his 18^th of the year.


9/17 12-9 W over the Braves
Sloppy defense and good hitting put the hurt on pitching today. Neither Rhoden or Jeff Robinson lasted 5 innings and both allowed a total of 8 UN-earned runs. LA put up 5 in the first, 4 on a Mike Scioscia grand slam, his 7^th dinger. Bobby Grich hit #19 in the 3^rd, and after 3 LA lead 7-2. Another pinch hit homer from Ron Kittle (5) in the 5^th gave LA another one. The Braves fought back with 4 in the 4^th and 3 more in the 7^th and took the lead 9-8 off of Kelly Downs. Scioscia got 2 more ribbies and LA retook the lead in the 7^th and he finished with 6 on his 3-5 day. Niedenfeur pitched the 9^th for his 31^st save. John Franco threw 5 pitches and got the win (3-0).


9/18 4-3 (12) W over the Braves
Down 3-2 in the 9^th with 2 out and the tying run on third, Mike Marshall hit a difficult ball to third. He charged toward third and just beat out the throw by Brook Jacoby that tied the game. Marshall had 3 hits on the day to lead the team. They almost gave it back in the bottom though as Atlanta put the winning run on third with 0 outs. Steve Howe worked his way out of trouble with a strikeout and a couple of weak ground balls. In the 12^th a Franklin Stubbs triple scored Dwight Evans and that was the difference. Hooton pitched 2 and got the win, moving his record to 2-0.


9/19 4-2 L to the Astros
The Astrodome isn't the place where balls fly out normally. Even the acquisition of Dale Murphy in the offseason hasn't helped this team, who only had 91 team homers coming in. Even having Alejandro Pena, in a potentially Cy Young Award winning season didn't matter, and today you didn't even need to be a power hitter. The never dangerous Rudy Law lead hit his 10 career homer in the third, followed by Brian Downing (still playing catcher) and his 15^th on the year. LA closed with a couple in the 8^th, but Houston hung on and then added a cherry when the never dangerous, Steve Jeltz hit his first career homer off of Jerry Reuss. Pena took the loss and dropped to 18-5.


The Twins won their 11^th straight and clinched the AL West. They look truly dangerous for the first time all year. They are closing in on the .600 winning percentage. Meanwhile, the Blue Jays are up 1 on the Yankees, but both teams are struggling with 3-7 records in their last 10 games. The magic number is 10, and the Blue Jays have the slight advantage. The Expos just won game number 108. The second place Pirates are now 30.5 games back, Cubs 51.5 back. Expos lead LA by 6 games with 10 to play. Twins are only down 2.5 for home field in the AL. Another insane stat about this Expos team. The top 4 NL leaders in WAR are all Expos. All of them.


9/20 3-1 W over the Astros
Wilcox (15-8) went 8 solid innings and threw less than 100 pitches to get there. Dwight Evans hit #27, only his second homer of September. His slump is still hurting, but he went 3-4 with 2 rbi's in this one. Niedenfeur pitched the 9^th for his 32^nd save. We are closing in on the franchise record for wins for the third straight year, but will certainly go into the playoffs as the underdog. Damn.


9/21 4-2 W over the Giants
Fernando picked up win #19. He pitched 8 good innings, and really cut the Giants down after allowing 2 in the first. Dwight Evans went 3-4 again and scored 3 runs, perhaps he's starting to break out again? This LA team is so deep off the bench right now. They had a string of pinch hitters that went like this: Kittle, Marhsall, Sax, and Brewer. Earlier they had Stubbs, Bream, and Madison. There's just something about being able to bring multiple guys in a row off the bench who can go deep. It really adds to the late game possibilites. A strong wind blowing in from left helped Valenzuela today. No less than 3 right handed batters took balls to the fence off of him. Niedenfuer pitched another 9^th for his 33^rd save.


9/22 4-3 W over the Giants
Rhoden recovered from his poor outing last time to go 8 tonight, while only allowing 3 hits on 89 pitches. In the 9^th Steve Howe made us reach for the Rolaids though. The Giants got the winning run to the plate before Howe finally go the strikeout to seal it. It was his 2^nd save on the year. Willie Randolph got us on the board in the first with his 6^th homer of the year, and in the 5^th Sid Bream added his 2^nd shot. Bream was getting the rare start at first in this one. Floyd Banniser went down for the Giants. He struck out 7 over 6, but 4 walks, 2 homers and a high pitch count did him in. He's 14-8 now on the year combined (KC and SF).


The Blue Jays lead is down to ½ game with 8 to play. Money is starting to go toward NY to win the division. LA has cut the Expos lead to 4 with 7 to play.


9/23 8-1 W over the Giants
This is win number 106 for the boys in blue. Tanana went 7 shut out innings and struck out 8 to run his record to 15-9. UL Washington, Willie Randolph and Dwight Evans all had 3 hits. Evans hit number 28 and had 4 RBI's. This game really should have been a bigger blowout. LA had 12 hits and had to set some kind of record for walks. As a team the Dodgers drew 13 walks from Giants pitching. That's 25 baserunners. They left 15 runners on in the game.


9/24 8-6 L to the Astros
This was not the start that Cy Young hopeful Alejandro Pena was hoping for. Pena (18-6) loses for the second time in a row, sees his NL leading ERA climb above 2 for the first time in a long time, strikes out 7, but can't get out of the 6^th inning. LA would have won if John Franco and Dennis Eckersley could have figured out how to pitch to Bill Doran, who went 3-5 with 2 home runs. Scioscia hit #8, but it was Willie Randolph (making that Sid Fernandez deal look not awful) again, who had it going on for LA. Randolph went 4-4 with a walk. Bernazard reminded us why he lost the starting shortstop job, when he committed 2 errors in an inning.


The Yankees pull into the lead in the East on a 3-1, 17 inning marathon that saw Ron Guidry pitch 5 scoreless innings of relief against the O's. The Bjays fell to the Red Sox. The Expos have clinched home field. They hold a 5 game lead with 5 to play and the tie breaker.


9/25 10-7 W over the Astros
The Astros batted around in the first and put up a 5-0 lead right off the bat. Lasorda stuck with Wilcox (16-8) though and while he settled down, he still had to scatter 12 hits in 6 innings of work. Not his best day. Luckily the offense had a nice answer for the Astros. LA got 3 back in the 3^rd and then they took the lead in the 6^th on a Tony Bernazard dinger. His first of the year. LA would add 2 in the 7^th, thanks to Dwight Evans and number 29, and another pair in the 8^th to pull away. Evans, Grich, Marshall and Randolph all had 3 hits, that was 75% of the offense on the day.


The Blue Jays are back in front by a game, but the race is still looking to come down to the last day. The Dodgers have now tied the club record for wins with 107. That equals our 1983 record. The Expos are up to 111.


9/26 6-3 W over the Astros
Fernando went looking for his 20^th win, and got it. Despite giving one up in the first he settled down, going 7, striking out 9 and walking 4. The Dodgers did commit 3 errors, 2 by Bernazard....again. Niedenfeur came on to close it out, but would leave in short order. Hooton finished for his 2^nd save. Bobby Grich went 2-3 and hit his 20^th homer of the season that put LA up 6-1. Valenzuela went 2-2 and raised his avg to .241 on the year. This win sets the LA Dodger record for wins in a season. There are 4 to play.


Niedenfeur has an injured abdominal muscle which is going to keep him out for a while, but the timeline is unclear at this point. Lasorda has ruled him out for the remainder of the season at least. The Yankees are still down a half and have 4 to play. They suffered a huge blow though as Mattingly is lost for the rest of the year with an Achilles injury. He'll be back for 1985 though.


LA moves Niedenfeur to the 15 day DL. So it looks like he's going to miss the entire NLDS. That's a blow. He's been just dominant all year, and Howe hasn't been. No one else has been.


9/28 3-2 W over the Giants
The final homestand of the regular season starts against the Giants. We see Floyd Bannister, who finally pitches a great game against us as he threw 8 shut out innings. Rick Rhoden matched up well going 7 and striking out 8, but gave up 2 runs and left with a solid lead. Al Holland, one of the best closers in the game in 1984 with 44 saves came into the game to face Randolph, Evans and Grich. That would be all he would face too. Randolph lead off with a single to bring Evans up. He went opposite field and went right over the first baseman putting runners on 2^nd and 3^rd with nobody out. Bobby Grich came up and he put the ball over the left field fence, 381 feet, for his 21^st homer and in walk off style.


9/29 10-1 W over the Giants
The final game of the year for Pena saw him back in form. He came within an out of a shut out and struck out 7 to put him over 200 for the year, and didnt' walk any. His 19 wins are a career high. In the game he threw 99 pitches, 72 for strikes. That's no-hitter level accuracy. The order of the runs doesn't matter, LA hit 4 homers, 2 of them by Mike Marshall, who finished 4-5, 3 runs and 3 rbi's. He's got 18 homers in just over 300 at bats. Greg Brock hit #3 and Roy Smalley hit #11. It was the kind of game that we'll need to have against Montreal.


September 29^th will go down as the day the AL East race was decided. The Yankees had a double header against the Tigers and the Blue Jays were on the road against the Brewers. NY fell in both games, 6-2 and 7-3 in front of all the home fans at Yankee Stadium while the Blue Jays got it done on the road winning 7-5. Toronto has won the East and won 100 games.


9/30 4-0 W over the Giants
LA goes out just the opposite of last year with 5 wins in a row. Milt Wilcox (17-8) was brilliant. He took a no-hitter into the 6^th inning and for some reason was yanked with 1 out in the 9^th for Steve Howe. Howe needed a big throw from Dwayne Murphy at the plate to preserve the shut out. Scioscia and Evans had 2 hits, and Kittle knocked in 2 rbi's while pinch hitting.


And with that. Poof. The regular season ended.