Dodgers place Rafael Furcal on bereavement list
Reporting from Cincinnati — At about 1 a.m. Thursday, Dodgers Manager Joe Torre was informed that shortstop Rafael Furcal had to leave the club.
Furcal had an ailing relative in the Dominican Republic and had to go home.
Before taking the field at Great American Ball Park for what turned out to be a 7-1 defeat to the Cincinnati Reds, the Dodgers placed Furcal on the bereavement list.
The least amount of time a player can spend on the bereavement list is three days, meaning Furcal almost certainly will miss all three of the Dodgers’ games in Boston, the first of which is Friday. Furcal can be out for as long as a week.
His place on the active roster was taken by former minor league player of the year Chin-lung Hu, who was recalled from triple-A Albuquerque.
Hu didn’t arrive at Great American Ball Park until the sixth or seventh inning. About 10 minutes after dressing and walking into the dugout, Hu was sent into the game by Torre as an eighth-inning defensive replacement.
“It was weird,” Hu said. “But you have to be ready every time.”
Is Elymania over?
John Ely is still smiling. And if his confidence has taken a hit, he’s sure hiding it well, using the low points of his latest start as joke material and laughing when told by a reporter that his run-scoring single in the second inning was a miracle.
“The best thing I can do at this point is move on,” Ely said.
The rookie who became the symbol of the Dodgers’ The-Little-Engine-That-Could pitching staff is in a rut, having given up 15 runs in 14 2/3 innings over his last three starts.
Ely’s latest appearance was his worst yet, as he was charged with a career-high seven runs in a career-low 4 2/3 innings. He gave up three home runs, including a three-run shot by Reds pitcher Bronson Arroyo that put the Dodgers in a 3-1 hole.
Two of the three home runs, Arroyo’s and Joey Votto’s, were preceded by walks.
Asked if he was hurt by the walks, Ely replied, “I felt like the home runs are what hurt me.”
His audience laughed.
Torre said Ely would remain in the Dodgers’ rotation, though he acknowledged that part of the reason was because there were no other viable options. Chad Billingsley was placed on the 15-day disabled list Wednesday.
Ely said he knows he can still get major league hitters out.
“I got away from what I do best — changing speeds,” he said. “There’s no reason to lose confidence. If I started to lose confidence, there’s a problem there. I still know that when I make pitches, I can get outs. I showed that in the first inning. You have to learn from something like this.”
MLB on Shpunt: No comment
Like Torre, the commissioner’s office is refusing to talk about Vladimir Shpunt, the 71-year-old Russian healer who was on the Dodgers’ payroll for five years to channel positive energy to the team. A spokesman for Major League Baseball said this week that the league would not answer questions pertaining to the Dodgers’ use of Shpunt’s “V energy,” which an associate of Shpunt claimed could increase a team’s chances of winning by 10% to 15%.
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