Well here it is the first official day of spring training, as pitchers and catchers are reporting to camp. Despite how the roster looks, as Tony Jackson stated in his new Dodger blog at ESPN, there's always hope, and things could look worse.
For the good news from Mattingly today,
1. Dee Gordon will bat leadoff. While many are worried about his ability to take walks, I believe that his patience will grow as he sees more major league pitching (remember Dee is still fairly new to playing baseball), plus his plus plus speed makes even routine grounders possible infield hits. If he can learn to add bunting to his batting approach expect him to have a great season.
2. Matt Kemp will bat third. This is also good news as Matt Kemp (hard to believe with the season he had) actually preformed better hitting in the three hole, using Either for protection. At 3 Kemp hit 331/418/647 (BA/OBP/SLG), vs 322/394/569 in the 4 hole. While he hits great in both places, the protection of Ethier helps Kemp recieve a more steady diet of fastballs and pitches in the zone. Also with Ethier behind Kemp, it leaves more room for Kemp to run wild on the bases. (With Ethier healthy expect this to be billed like the Braun and Fielder duo of last season.
3. Blake Hawksworth will be starting the season on the DL. It seems weird to take this as good news, but Hawksworth while being satisfactory, he was far from being excellent out of the pen. According to Baseball Reference the Hawk appeared in a high leverage situation in 17 games. In those games batters hit 375 with an OPS of 932. For comparison Jansen appeared in 20 games and held batters to a 116 batting average. In fact by the end of the season he had been relagated mostly to cleanup duty. So the silver lining of this is that depsite Ned's best efforts to block any changes Mattingly may want to make to the roster, Donnie Baseball will get the chance to go fishing in his large, but shallow pool of pitching talent invited to camp. (My bet is on Jamey Wright)
So team positives going into 2012, despite a lack of a proven #2 starter, the starting rotation is deep and decent as all five are established starters. The bullpen looks to be solid with Jansen, Guerra, Elbert, Coffey, and good backup arms in the minors with Eovaldi and Lindblom. Matt Kemp will be coming back, and Andre should be healthy. And Kemp's work ethic from last season seems to have paid off, as a number of Dodger's decided to show up early to camp (Kemp, Gordon, Ellis, Kershaw, Sellers)
Now even though the Dodger infield should be very slick with a glove, we can all agree that their offensive production is going to be equivilent to the amount of wind produced by a butterfly flapping it's wings. Plus with Ned "head up my a**" Colletti at the helm there has only been one spot left on the roster for a non roster invitee, or a minor league player to make the squad. Essentialy there is one spot and fifteen players trying out for it.
So barring injury who gets the spot. Seems to me, despite Sands massive numbers when coming back up for his second drink of coffee with the big team (342 BA and 908 OPS) Dodger management thinks he doesn't have enough seasoning. Since Sands projects to be an everyday, he will most likly start the season in AAA so he doesn't have to sit on a bench. Also with Ned's signings, there is a clear lack of a backup SS in case Dee goes down with an injury. As none of the NRI's strike me as a good backup infielder, my guess is that Sellers will find himself on the major league roster leaving camp.
Now for the wishful thinking aspect. With Kennedy's nearly minimal 800k contract we could all hope that he preforms pitifully enough that they DFA him before camp is over. That opens up one more roster spot. Currently I'm torn between NRI's Jeff Baisley and Josh Fields. Both men are over the hill in prospect terms at 29 (in fact Fields is just 4 days older than Baisley), however, at under 30 and playing the hot corners, both could add value for the Dodgers. Baisley has spent the last 8 years in the A's farm system. He hits for good average and hits for decent power as he hit 20 HR's in the minors last year, but has only played 14 games at the major league level. Baisley also has a good glove at first and third as well. Fields, does not have good fielding (despite his last name), but has shown great power, as he was onced ranked a top 50 prospect in 2007, and hit 23 HR's in the majors the same year. He has an OBP problem, but could have melowed out in his last couple of years floating back and forth between the majors and minors. If there were ever a Quad A player it might be Fields as he enjoyed a 350+ BA his last two seasons in the minors, but has yet to fully translate that in the majors. He could be a very interesting risk, and truthfully, could he be worse than Uribe was last year...?
The rest of my wishes depend on players getting injured in Spring training so that some prospects can play, and since it involves people getting hurt, I'm not gonna say it out loud. In conclusion I will leave you with a slight positive note about Colletti. Despite his major league signing's being aweful this year (minus the Kemp extension), at least he's getting some interesting NRI to camp.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Friday, February 17, 2012
Putting Either back in line
Well it seems that yesterday, Steve Dilbeck of the LA Times put up an article stating how the Dodgers should lock up Andre Either while he is still on the cheap after a disappointing 2011 and 2010 season.
Taking all the emotion out of the equation, and looking at the entire Dodgers' organization my first reaction is to wait for Either's value to rise and then trade him to a contender some decent near major league ready second base and third base prospects; things the Dodger system is in dire need of, and replace him with the abundance of outfield prospects the Dodgers are currently grooming. Looking from afar, Either is a player whose numbers seem to be declining drasticaly as he ages. His OPS has dropped nearly 100 points in the last 4 years from 885 in '08 to 789 in '11. He plays a mediocre to bad defense in right, and not only has his power number been dropping, but he is also notoriously bad against left handed pitching, and accoridng to last years stats, he is getting worse. In 2010 he had a BB% of 7.3 and a K% of 20.2 against left handed pitching. Last year his BB% dropped to 4.6, and his K% rose to 27.2, both numbers going in the wrong direction. He has also been shown as having a negative effect on the clubhouse, blaming managers, and waisting AB's with poor attitude. From a non-emotional position, I see a good bat against righties, with a subpar attitude, who can't hit lefties, who isn't a great defender, and who's patience at the plate is getting worse with age, not better.
On the other hand, baseball is something we can't help but be romantic about, and has their been any other player who has pulled on our heartstings more in the past three years than Either. Whether it was his tenure as "Mr Clutch" hitting 11 walk off hits during the '08 to '10 seasons, or his most recent 30 game hit streak from this year, the man most certainly knows how to get us to cheer for him.
So where does that put us... Well no matter what at this point Either will be a Dodger for the first half of 2012. So let's say his tryout will be the first two months of the season. I say bat him 4th behind Kemp, so Kemp has protection and room to run. If Either shows some restraint, get's his walks back up, and flashes some of his old power, then I say throw him a 3 yr / 36 mil deal right then and there at the begining of June. If he does not show some grownup restraint, and the clubhouse issues resurface, then I say trade him and gut him for all he's worth (even if his power is back).
Taking all the emotion out of the equation, and looking at the entire Dodgers' organization my first reaction is to wait for Either's value to rise and then trade him to a contender some decent near major league ready second base and third base prospects; things the Dodger system is in dire need of, and replace him with the abundance of outfield prospects the Dodgers are currently grooming. Looking from afar, Either is a player whose numbers seem to be declining drasticaly as he ages. His OPS has dropped nearly 100 points in the last 4 years from 885 in '08 to 789 in '11. He plays a mediocre to bad defense in right, and not only has his power number been dropping, but he is also notoriously bad against left handed pitching, and accoridng to last years stats, he is getting worse. In 2010 he had a BB% of 7.3 and a K% of 20.2 against left handed pitching. Last year his BB% dropped to 4.6, and his K% rose to 27.2, both numbers going in the wrong direction. He has also been shown as having a negative effect on the clubhouse, blaming managers, and waisting AB's with poor attitude. From a non-emotional position, I see a good bat against righties, with a subpar attitude, who can't hit lefties, who isn't a great defender, and who's patience at the plate is getting worse with age, not better.
On the other hand, baseball is something we can't help but be romantic about, and has their been any other player who has pulled on our heartstings more in the past three years than Either. Whether it was his tenure as "Mr Clutch" hitting 11 walk off hits during the '08 to '10 seasons, or his most recent 30 game hit streak from this year, the man most certainly knows how to get us to cheer for him.
So where does that put us... Well no matter what at this point Either will be a Dodger for the first half of 2012. So let's say his tryout will be the first two months of the season. I say bat him 4th behind Kemp, so Kemp has protection and room to run. If Either shows some restraint, get's his walks back up, and flashes some of his old power, then I say throw him a 3 yr / 36 mil deal right then and there at the begining of June. If he does not show some grownup restraint, and the clubhouse issues resurface, then I say trade him and gut him for all he's worth (even if his power is back).
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Building on a Budget/ AKA Misappropriation of Funds
Looking back on this offseason, things did not go well. Some (hopefully the new owner) needs to kick Ned out the door before he can do any more damage to the team. During the 2011 season the Dodgers were the third oldest team National league team averaging 29.8 years per player. Something hard to imagin when a few years ago in 2008 the promotions kept talking about the "young guns" and the wealth of talent under 30 avaiable (i.e. Kemp, Either, Loney, Kershaw, Billingsley, Martin, Kuo). At that time the Dodgers were the 7th youngest National League team and looked like they could only get better. Here we are 4 years later, with a few guns gone, and the team keeps getting older. Using the 25 man roster set up on TrueBlueLA the Dodgers of 2012 will average 30.4 years per player. Even worse most of these players are locked up for 2 years, so the team will continue it trend towards becoming gray into the 2013 season as well.
Looking at this information, you're most likly thinking that I'm about to go into a big rant about Ned having his head up his ass, or how he wants to use a time machine and go back to 2005 when these players were good, or even maybe he felt bad for all the vetrans who were going to be let go in the bad economy and he just wanted to charity them a finacial furture. All in all I'm not going to say any more about it, because frankly my desk is bloody and about to break from my head hitting it. So it could be the concussion that I've given myself talking, but I'm gonna have a fun little juant into fantasy land, and build myself a better team in my head.
For this exercise in futility I'm only going to use free agents, and will only touch the batting and fielding side of the problem for now.
For next season the Dodgers will be losing 4 relevent bats from the roster, Barajas, Carrol, Miles, and Blake. To fill those spots, Mark Ellis, Adam Kennedy, and Jerry Hairston Jr have been signed to join the team, as well as AJ Ellis is finally getting his first chance at being the main catcher. The other signing was bringing back Juan Rivera to block Jerry Sands (Thank you Ned). We'll start off with the one decent offensive signing this year (the rest are just offensive), which would be Jerry Hairston Jr. A true utility player who can play solid defense at any spot on the infield and outfield, look for him to be a Jamey Carrol 2.0 with not as good an OBP, but more pop. I can also get behind the Dodgers finally letting AJ Ellis get a shot at the majors. While Ellis has been know as a defensive specialist, he has a secret power: he get's on base. In the minors Ellis held over a 400 OBP for his career. And guess who had the best OBP of any catcher with more than 100 PA, that's right! AJ Ellis with a phenomenal 392 OBP. So why am I so high on AJ Ellis despite him being a light hitting catcher. Well, unless you hit home runs during every At Bat, then someone needs to be on base in front in order for a run to score. AJ is that man on base. So in summary, "Do I care how he gets on base?" looks over at imaginary Jonah Hill, and Jonah responds "No he does not".
Alright on to disagreements. First order of business is Juan Rivera. Yes, it was great when you were picked up near the end of the year from being dropped and provided a boost of offense, but are you worth 4 million, sorry no. Especially when it becomes 4 million being paid to esential block Jerry Sands from playing. Looking at thier numbers, Rivera had a 333 OBP and 406 SLG for a 740 OPS for the Dodgers last season while Sands had a 338 OBP and 389 SLG for a 727 OPS. Not a lot of difference between those lines, plus Sands is nearly 10 years younger, plays better defense with a better arm, and can improve on last season's stats. Rivera on the other hand, is over the hill and will be lucky to be within 50 points of his stats. So Rivera get's cut, and guess what Ned, I just saved you 4 million on payroll.
Next, assuming Kennedy and Ellis are never signed, (wow that's another 9.5 million over 2 years or 13.5 million total over 2) left handed and right handed bench bats are needed as well as the every day second baseman. Here's where things get interesting, if I had my way I would drop Uribe from the lineup entirely to have him sit in the club house (He doesn't even deserve to sit on the bench), and occasionaly be allowed out to fan Kershaw on the bench, but the Dodgers wouldn't stand paying 8 million for someone to do nothing. So instead I turn to Justin Sellers, whose glove is just as good as Ellis's is, plus he's 8 years younger, and could be a potential plus with his batting. Basically, if you're going to have an offesive black hole at second, why not play the black hole that cost 400k (plus he may develope some offensive value) rather than the one that is costing nearly 9 mil over 2 years. Now for the bench bats I would propose picking up Wilson Betemit (he signed for 3.25 over 2, so we'll say 3.5 over 2 to get him, and subracting that we still save 10 million) and Brooks Conrad (he signed a minor league contract, so I'll say 800k major league contract would get him). Now you must be thinking, that I'm crazy, to grab two switch hitters, both who have never hit more than 20 HRs for bench bats. But here's the fun part, I'd only be paying them to hit from one side each. Conrad, most notable from his 3 errors during the playoffs in 2010 destroys lefties to the tune of 358 OBP, and 465 SLG for an OPS of 863, and Betemit rakes righties with a 347 OBP, 470 SLG for an OPS of 817. Also both have positional flexibilty to take over at second base or third, allowing for them not just to only pinch hitters, but role players as well. While Conrad and Betemit are not spring chickens they are younger than Kennedy and Mark Ellis, and bring the average age of the 25 man roster down to 29.7, making the Dodgers younger than they were last year. So in summary Blake, Barajas, Carrol, Miles and Rivera put together a line of 324 OBP, 375 SLG for an OPS of 699. My setup of Betemit, Conrad, Ellis, Hairston, Sands, and Sellers is worth 338 OBP, 381 SLG for an OPS of 719 for 9 million less. Which is worth more to you?
Looking at this information, you're most likly thinking that I'm about to go into a big rant about Ned having his head up his ass, or how he wants to use a time machine and go back to 2005 when these players were good, or even maybe he felt bad for all the vetrans who were going to be let go in the bad economy and he just wanted to charity them a finacial furture. All in all I'm not going to say any more about it, because frankly my desk is bloody and about to break from my head hitting it. So it could be the concussion that I've given myself talking, but I'm gonna have a fun little juant into fantasy land, and build myself a better team in my head.
For this exercise in futility I'm only going to use free agents, and will only touch the batting and fielding side of the problem for now.
For next season the Dodgers will be losing 4 relevent bats from the roster, Barajas, Carrol, Miles, and Blake. To fill those spots, Mark Ellis, Adam Kennedy, and Jerry Hairston Jr have been signed to join the team, as well as AJ Ellis is finally getting his first chance at being the main catcher. The other signing was bringing back Juan Rivera to block Jerry Sands (Thank you Ned). We'll start off with the one decent offensive signing this year (the rest are just offensive), which would be Jerry Hairston Jr. A true utility player who can play solid defense at any spot on the infield and outfield, look for him to be a Jamey Carrol 2.0 with not as good an OBP, but more pop. I can also get behind the Dodgers finally letting AJ Ellis get a shot at the majors. While Ellis has been know as a defensive specialist, he has a secret power: he get's on base. In the minors Ellis held over a 400 OBP for his career. And guess who had the best OBP of any catcher with more than 100 PA, that's right! AJ Ellis with a phenomenal 392 OBP. So why am I so high on AJ Ellis despite him being a light hitting catcher. Well, unless you hit home runs during every At Bat, then someone needs to be on base in front in order for a run to score. AJ is that man on base. So in summary, "Do I care how he gets on base?" looks over at imaginary Jonah Hill, and Jonah responds "No he does not".
Alright on to disagreements. First order of business is Juan Rivera. Yes, it was great when you were picked up near the end of the year from being dropped and provided a boost of offense, but are you worth 4 million, sorry no. Especially when it becomes 4 million being paid to esential block Jerry Sands from playing. Looking at thier numbers, Rivera had a 333 OBP and 406 SLG for a 740 OPS for the Dodgers last season while Sands had a 338 OBP and 389 SLG for a 727 OPS. Not a lot of difference between those lines, plus Sands is nearly 10 years younger, plays better defense with a better arm, and can improve on last season's stats. Rivera on the other hand, is over the hill and will be lucky to be within 50 points of his stats. So Rivera get's cut, and guess what Ned, I just saved you 4 million on payroll.
Next, assuming Kennedy and Ellis are never signed, (wow that's another 9.5 million over 2 years or 13.5 million total over 2) left handed and right handed bench bats are needed as well as the every day second baseman. Here's where things get interesting, if I had my way I would drop Uribe from the lineup entirely to have him sit in the club house (He doesn't even deserve to sit on the bench), and occasionaly be allowed out to fan Kershaw on the bench, but the Dodgers wouldn't stand paying 8 million for someone to do nothing. So instead I turn to Justin Sellers, whose glove is just as good as Ellis's is, plus he's 8 years younger, and could be a potential plus with his batting. Basically, if you're going to have an offesive black hole at second, why not play the black hole that cost 400k (plus he may develope some offensive value) rather than the one that is costing nearly 9 mil over 2 years. Now for the bench bats I would propose picking up Wilson Betemit (he signed for 3.25 over 2, so we'll say 3.5 over 2 to get him, and subracting that we still save 10 million) and Brooks Conrad (he signed a minor league contract, so I'll say 800k major league contract would get him). Now you must be thinking, that I'm crazy, to grab two switch hitters, both who have never hit more than 20 HRs for bench bats. But here's the fun part, I'd only be paying them to hit from one side each. Conrad, most notable from his 3 errors during the playoffs in 2010 destroys lefties to the tune of 358 OBP, and 465 SLG for an OPS of 863, and Betemit rakes righties with a 347 OBP, 470 SLG for an OPS of 817. Also both have positional flexibilty to take over at second base or third, allowing for them not just to only pinch hitters, but role players as well. While Conrad and Betemit are not spring chickens they are younger than Kennedy and Mark Ellis, and bring the average age of the 25 man roster down to 29.7, making the Dodgers younger than they were last year. So in summary Blake, Barajas, Carrol, Miles and Rivera put together a line of 324 OBP, 375 SLG for an OPS of 699. My setup of Betemit, Conrad, Ellis, Hairston, Sands, and Sellers is worth 338 OBP, 381 SLG for an OPS of 719 for 9 million less. Which is worth more to you?
Good Morning to all
Welcome one and all, today is the day that I start my own Dodger blog. Even though I love to post comments on other dodger blogs, I've decided that it's time to take a bigger leadership role and start some of my own topics instead of hoping and crossing my fingers that one of the other bloggers picks up the issues I wish to address. On the site I will try to keep an objective and statistical approach to how the Dodgers and baseball is run throughout the year. Hopefully adding insight to what people see in the team, or just call attention to issues within the system (which currently their are WAY too many to count. I implore that any poster's please keep a friendly attitude so we can have constructive discussions. And once again welcome to "Dem Bums Blog"
-Jason
-Jason
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