It's pretty obvious to me who the Los Angeles Dodgers early season MVP is... Rafael Furcal.
Rafael Furcal has missed the last five Dodger games due to lower back pain (he was placed on the 15 day DL yesterday retro to May 6) and the Los Angeles Dodgers are 0-5 with him out of the lineup!
Rafael Furcal was batting .366 with 5 Home Runs, 8 stolen bases and he also had a .448 on base percentage... yeah pretty much he was terrorizing opposing teams.
The LA Dodgers offense isn't necessarily sputtering without him but it doesn't have that catalyst at the top of the lineup the way it used to...
You have to remember that the Dodgers don't have an offense that's capable of scoring a lot of runs in a hurry aka they don't have big power hitters and they're basically a small-ball team.
With Rafael Furcal at the top of the lineup, the Los Angeles Dodgers have a guy who gets on base almost half of the time!
Think about that... Rafael Furcal has an on base percentage of .448!
And when he gets on base he's also a threat to steal, he has pop in his bat (5 homers and 12 doubles) and he has a good eye at the plate with 19 walks already this season.
So basically Rafael Furcal is a kick ass lead off man and I haven't even mentioned what the guy can do defensively...
Yup and the Los Angeles Dodgers being the cursed team that they are placed Rafael Furcal on the 15 day DL retro to may 6th so the earliest we may see Rafael Furcal again is may 21st.
OK and the sad thing is is that the Dodgers actually have a competent back up lead off hitter in Juan Pierre...
But Juan Pierre isn't Rafael Furcal... Juan Pierre is currently batting .281 with 13 stolen bases.
Here's the bad thing about Juan Pierre: Juan Pierre doesn't get on base.
Juan Pierre has an on base percentage of .360 (88 points lower then Furcal!), he strikes out alot and he doesn't walk alot for a lead off hitter (he has 9 walks this season).
And when you have Pierre who's not getting on base as often as Furcal used to... well you're left with Andre Ethier, Matt Kemp, James Loney and Jeff Kent all hitting base hits but there's nobody on second to be driven in anymore.
Yeah it's hard being a Dodger fan sometimes...
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