Monthly Archives: May 2008

MSTI Goes to Queens

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Yeah, I don’t usually do game recaps around here. That said, I don’t usually get to go to Dodger games live; so here we are.

That’d be the view from the cheap seats tonight at Shea. Looks like that’s the top of the first inning, with Juan Pierre on second and Jeff Kent hitting with one out. You can see the new CitiField rising out beyond centerfield, but this picture really doesn’t do it justice – you can’t imagine how massive this thing looks. As soon as I got off the subway I saw the Ebbets Field-inspired rotunda behind homeplate, and for a split second you nearly forget who the home team was tonight. This thing is going to be the park the Dodgers should have had. Burn in hell, Robert Moses!

I wish I’d thought to have taken a picture of this, but one highlight was the definitely the guy I saw wearing a home-made Kershaw “jersey”, by which I mean “white T-shirt with Dodgers logo and Kershaw written on it”. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that after only one start his masterpiece was out of date – he had 54 on it, not knowing that Kershaw has since switched to #22. Speaking of which, Kershaw’s number change was the subject of this LA Times story, which provides us with this awesome quote from #22′s former owner, Mark Sweeney:

Sweeney said he had no problem offering Kershaw his number, noting that Kershaw is “going to be in this uniform for a long, long time. It’s something important to do from an organizational standpoint.”

Here’s how that quote should have read:

Sweeney said he had no problem offering Kershaw his number, noting that Kershaw is “going to be in this organization for a long, long time, while I will almost certainly be DFA’d within the week, as soon as Andy LaRoche is recalled, so maybe I shouldn’t be getting too comfortable with any numbers. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go ground out weakly to second to lower my batting average to an almost unfathomable .093 while MSTI boos me lustily, confusing every Mets fan around him.”

That said, I can only imagine how awkward this must be for Sweeney. By all accounts he’s a really good person and teammate (let me add the obvious, that I’m only on him because of his amazingly terrible on-field performance, and nothing more), but he has to know his time is short, right? When you’ve got LaRoche hitting in Vegas and getting experience at new positions and you have one hit in May (this is true), you’ve got to know that you’re not going to be around to see whatever this team is going to accomplish this year. Not an enviable position, to be sure.

As for Clayton Kershaw… not exactly what I was hoping for. There were flashes of dominance, especially striking out David Wright in the first inning. But between walking the bases loaded in the 3rd inning and giving up three hits and a walk in the 4th, it’s pretty clear he’s not going to just show up and be Cy Young right away. Though I was obviously excited to have the chance to see him live so early in his career, I’m still not exactly sure why he was called up – especially when Chan Ho Park (has yet to allow more than 2 earned runs in any of his 16 appearances) and Hong-Chih Kuo (2 runs allowed and 22 strikeouts in his last 18 innings) have been so effective, not to mention that Jason Schmidt only gets one or two more rehab starts before returning.

And hey – how about Russell Martin and Blake DeWitt? I’ve spent enough time discussing the struggles of  Kent and Sweeney lately, so I’ve got to point out how great these two were tonight. Martin with a 4-4, including a double and a triple? The fact that he’s only 4th in the All-Star voting is a crime, people (hmm.. sounds like our next cause?) Plus DeWitt.. what more can you say about this kid? I have to admit I was pretty floored when I saw on the Shea Stadium board that he was hitting .382 against lefties – before he knocked an RBI single against Pedro Feliciano. I’m not sure what’s more amazing – the fact that he got off to such a good start when no one gave him have a shot; or the fact that he’s largely kept it up.

- Mike Scioscia’s tragic illness msti-face.jpg

Stats Don’t Always Tell the Whole Story

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Except when they do. Here’s some numbers that will in no way cheer you up:

* The Dodgers are tied for 4th of 16 teams in the NL in batting average at .267 (good), 6th in OBP at .338 (fine), and 14th in SLG at .384 (lousy). But here’s where the real problem lies: Dodger right-handed batters vs. right-handed pitchers (which is the biggest segment of LA at-bats) are putting up a truly abysmal line of .228/.296/.310 for a .606 OPS. Worse, that’s including Russell Martin’s success vs. RHP (.312/.417/.404), so everyone else is really dragging the line down. Unfortunately, this means we can’t blame Juan Pierre for everything. (from baseball-reference)

* Mark Sweeney is the single worst player in baseball. (Shown at right, wondering what exactly he’s doing on the field, too). He doesn’t play enough to accumulate the counting stats, so let’s go with some rate stats. Actually, I don’t even need to break out anything fancy to illustrate this – a .095/.204/.119 line is nothing more than a joke. He’s got 4 hits and it’s nearly June. But let’s get back to the part where he’s the worst player in baseball. MLVr is a fancy Baseball Prospectus stat, defined as “an estimate of the additional number of runs a given player will contribute to a lineup that otherwise consists of average offensive performers. The league average MLVr is zero (0.000).” There are 411 MLB players with at least 35 at-bats in 2008 (at-bat limit done to eliminate pitchers). Mark Sweeney is… wait for it… 411th of 411. His MLVr is -.685, which basically means if we had a lineup full of completely league-average players, Mark Sweeney would cost us .685 runs every single game. And that’s just an offensive stat; some of the other players who are high (low?) on the list are at least plus defenders, like our own Chin-Lung Hu (12th). Sweeney doesn’t even contribute anything on that side of the field, either. If there’s any reason he’s still on the team other than to give Andy LaRoche a few more days to play 1B and/or 2B in Vegas, it’s simply indefensible.

* “When your rotation is average and your lineup is average, it’s no surprise that your team’s record is average.” That would be the take-home quote from yesterday’s Baseball Prospectus preview of the Mets game last night.

Reasons for the Mets’ mediocrity have been covered in this space before, so now it’s the Dodgers turn to explain their .500 record. First, we have a team that isn’t playing good defense: they rank 22nd in the majors in Defensive Efficiency, converting 69.6 percent of batted-balls into outs. Though the bullpen hasn’t suffered much—they rank fourth in the NL in WXRL as a unit—that defense has contributed to the rotation’s ranking only in the middle of the pack via SNLVAR. The offense is hitting .268/.340/.383, which boils down to an EqA of .257. When your rotation is average and your lineup is average, it’s no surprise that your team’s record is average.

The bullpen has helped them out in one-run contests (8-5) and extra innings (3-1) during the first two months of the season, but they are going to need improvement in one of the three areas—pitching, fielding, or offense—if they are to rise above their current position and give the Diamondbacks a scare. Losing Andruw Jones to surgery should help the offense out, as his .165/.273/.271 line was the source of more headaches than runs. Another of the lineup’s old men, Jeff Kent, has issues of his own. He’s hitting the ball on the ground more often—43 percent grounders versus last year’s 38 percent and his career rate of 35—and has lost a bit on his power as well, dropping his HR/FB from 10.2 to 7.4 percent. Kent is also swinging at more pitches—with many of those offerings out of the strike zone—but he’s making contact less often and has seen his walk rate cut in half. Almost 40 percent of his batted balls have been grounders that were weakly pulled as well. Without some switching around—Blake DeWitt to second when Andy LaRoche gets called up, perhaps?—the Dodgers offense is not going to see the vast improvement it needs to keep up with their rivals out.

* What the hell is going on with Brad Penny? He hasn’t given up less than 3 earned runs in a game in over a month, since April 21st at Cincinnati when he gave up one run in six innings. Since then he’s given up 3, 3, 10, 5, 5, and 4 runs. His ERA in May is a robust 8.48. I wish I had a better answer for “why”, but if our erstwhile “ace” can’t turn it around, this team is in big trouble.

* Might Jeff Kent be turning it around? After quite some time as the worst cleanup hitter of the last 50 years, going 5-9 with a homer in his last two games has pushed his OPS+ to 76, which merely makes him the third-worst cleanup hitter of the last 50 years. Still, that’s the right direction.

* Okay, sometimes stats don’t tell the whole story: Also via Baseball Prospectus (yeah, they’re practically the lifeblood of this blog lately) news on some young Dodger catchers.

Last year at Low-A Great Lakes, catcher Carlos Santana hit just .223/.318/.370–not the kind of numbers that generate any kind of attention. Even so, scouts saw something in his raw tools, and those are starting to show some promise this year at High-A Inland Empire, as the 22-year-old Dominican switch-hitter is off to a .306/.421/.513 start in 47 games, with more walks (32) than strikeouts (24) in 160 at-bats. One West Coast scout who recently saw the 66ers walked away impressed: “For me, that’s an everyday catcher,” said the scout. “He’s a good hitter from both sides and he’s strong–there’s some juice in his bat.” Defensively, Santana also earns high marks: “The arm is great, and will be even better with some improved mechanics. He’s a little raw behind the dish, but he certainly has the athleticism to get better.”

Meanwhile, this year’s catcher at Great Lakes is also putting up unimpressive numbers, but is nevertheless intriguing scouts. A native of Curacao, 20-year-old Kenley Jansen is batting just .198/.270/.376, but also has five home runs in 101 at-bats. “He’s listed at 6-2, 220, but he’s even bigger than that,” said another scout. “He can really throw and has tremendous raw power. I know the numbers are pretty bad, but he’s pretty interesting.”

* But there’s reason to watch the game tonight: because I’ll be in the upper deck at Shea. Oh, and the second start of mega-prospect Clayton Kershaw or something, I don’t know. At this point he’s going to have to throw a complete game shutout and hit 3 home runs. No pressure, though.

Update, AKA, I love the people who read this blog: After I finished writing this, I went to go get some lunch. While replaying the post in my mind, the thought occurred to me: “if Kershaw pitches a shutout, he won’t really have to hit three homers, will he? Bah, no one will catch that.”

Commenter Scott?

I understand the use of hyperbole in writing, but technically if Clayton pitches a complete game shutout, he only needs to hit one home run to win it.

I love it.

- Mike Scioscia’s tragic illness msti-face.jpg

… And I Swear That I Don’t Have A Gun…

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As I sat on Tuesday and watched the Dodgers blow a 1-0 lead in the 7th by Jonathan Broxton, only to lose 3-1, I asked myself: “Could it get any worse for this team?”

Turns out, it could!

Last night, the Dodgers went into the 9th with a 1-0 lead only for, out of all people, Takashi Saito to come in and pitch what, in my opinion, was his worst outing ever as a Dodger.  Sure, he only ended up only giving up one run, and he’s given up more in an inning before, but I’m talking about actual stuff.  His lack of control was hitting Ishii levels, it took him about 37 pitches to get out of the inning, and he was absolutely horrific.  In fact, it’s a miracle he only gave up 1 run, however, after that, it was pretty much a formality that we were going to lose, which we did after the Ho proceeded to give up the go-ahead winning run in the 10th.

So, the Dodgers get swept at Wrigley and have now lost 5 out of their last 6.  What the hell is going on?

Now, sure, there are the obvious things that we mope about. While many people say that a lot of this is due to the loss of Rafael Furcal, I am inclined to agree with them, but only to a certain extent.  Yes, it makes a HUGE difference when you have Rafael Furcal starting at SS over Luis Maza, but I still argue that our offensive struggles would exist, albeit maybe to a lesser degree.  Our lineup is still full of holes at the moment, with the exception of Ethier, Kemp, Martin, Pierre (in the: “he’s not a complete offensive liability, right now” sense) and DeWitt, and even DeWitt is slowly falling back to earth over the past 6 games.

Jeff Kent continues on the quest to become the worst clean up hitter of all-time, while his backup, Chin-Lung Hu, has been absolute merda at the plate; for God’s sake, the man has an OPS+ of 22!  I like Hu and feel he could be a solid contributor sometime in the future, but that time is not now and he would be best served back in Las Vegas to regain his stroke.

At first base, as much as I hate to say it, but, outside of his 15 game hitting streak to begin the season, James Loney has looked, well, average, at best; and that’s being slightly generous.  That’s not to say that he’s been horrible or that I’m having fantasies of having Nomar coming back to man first base while hearing “Low Rider” on an endless loop while curled up in my bedroom late at night in the dark, just that Loney hasn’t been what I hoped.  Sure, he’s tied for the team lead in HR’s with 5, but, through 51 games, Loney has put up a .274 BA, .329 OBP, and .432 SLG, .258 EqA, and a 95 OPS+. Not good.  And even worse, the person who is backing up him and who is supposed to be our best pinch hitter; Mark Sweeney.  Yes, beating a dead horse here, I know, but what else can be said?  He’s 4-42 this season!  How sad is it when you would be happy to see your alleged best pinch hitter raise his average to the levels of Andruw Jones?!  There is no reason in God’s green earth why he should still be on this team.  None.  What, are his “American Idol” chemistry building contests he puts together every spring training that good?  Does he have these hidden tapes of Ned serenading him with “My Funny Valentine” or something?  As said earlier by my partner in crime, it is criminal that Andy LaRoche has not been called up yet.  What the hell does he have to prove, still?

However, I can’t just put it all on the offense: the pitching staff deserves some blame, as well.  Brad Penny has been anything but a #1 with his 4.34 ERA, 82 ERA+, and I do not like his “pitch to contact” philosophy, as I feel it’s hurt him, in particular, his K/9 rate, which has dropped to a horrible 4.77.  That’s not good for any pitcher to have, especially if you have the stuff Penny has.  Derek Lowe, sans last night, has been a bust, while Billingsley has been erratic, although he is starting to rebound.  As mentioned in the Kuroda article, Hiroki has been the only constant this year.  Having said that, I do feel that the rotation will rebound and it’s gradually starting to with the emergence of Billingsley and hopefully Kershaw.

But the offense is another story.  I really wish that I could brush off this current losing streak as something early in the season or a simple aberration.  However, we are almost in June and it is not getting better.  Through May 28th, the Dodgers’ offense has a .269 BA, .340 OBP, .387 SLG, and 92 OPS+.  Now, the first two are alright, but, again, the slugging percentage shows the lack of power.  Once again, the Dodgers find themselves in the same position as last year: they don’t have any power in their lineup and if you don’t have power in your lineup, you will likely lose.  Slugging percentage matters.  Now, sure, you have some folks who still think it’s 1965 and say: “Well, pitching and defense is what matters, you don’t really need that power lineup, because back in my day, we had Maury Wills steal a bazillion bases.  We manufactured runs, and that was good enough for us, dammit!,” but power is a must in this game.  And, without that power, it will be 2007 all over again: we will have to string together 3-4 hits at a time to score a minimal amount of runs.  When everyone is hitting, this works great and we’ll win games, but, when it doesn’t, we will be horribly inconsistent and we will have these stretches.  The problem is, barring some big trade (which always scares the crap out of me, considering our GM), where will our power come from?  The guy we are banking on is probably sitting on his ass turning into the long lost sibling of El Guapo, and even some of the people who are hitting, such as Matt Kemp and Andre Ethier, have disappointed in the power department (Kemp: 3 HR’s, Ethier: 4 HR’s), It’s not going to get the job done, for, shockingly, you cannot Sally slap a team to death.

So, now it’s on to Shea for 4 games.  Last night’s loss was a tough one, probably the worst one of the year, but having a good series would be a good remedy and hopefully can jumpstart them and propel them to a long winning streak!

Yeah, I always say that…

- Vin vinscully-face.jpg

Reminiscing On Lord Clayton

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Ah… doesn’t looking at that photo give you chills?  The guy on the right passing the torch on to the kid on the left?  The Master and The Kid?  The Jedi and The Padawan?  What could possibly be?

A couple of days late on this, but worth reminiscing on.

Unless you were living in a cave this past weekend, Clayton Kershaw made his MLB debut.  Make no question about it, Kershaw’s debut was the most anticipated start EVER for a Dodgers’ prospect.  Sure, Fernando came out rocking it in his rookie year, but no one had even heard of him before his start.  Nomo probably had a more anticipated debut, yes, but for different reasons.  Either way, Sunday was a great day to be at Dodger Stadium… not that I was there, mind you, but I digress…

Kershaw began his Dodger debut by blowing away Skip Schumacher (Skip?  Poor guy…).  After getting a huge round of applause for that (I’ve never seen that before for a pitcher), and tossing the ball back to the dugout, he proceeds to walk the next hitter. The jitters set in during the first inning, it seemed, and it affected his pitching, as he ended up throwing 32 pitches. Despite that, he still struck out the side.

However, after that shaky first inning, he was anything but that for the rest of the game.  In fact, for the next 5 innings, he put up the following stat line: 6 IP, 5 H, 2 ER, 1 BB, 7 K.

I remember watching the debut of Edwin Jackson against Randy Johnson in 2003, and I still have it in my tape archives.  However, I was left more impressed with Kershaw.  Kershaw’s fastball is absolutely explosive and you really can’t say anything more about his curveball that hasn’t been said already; it’s already amongst the best.  As has been said about him, he could work a little more on his change up, but that pitch is not a liability either and he used some of them quite effectively as the game went on.

David Golebiewski of the Transaction Guy puts together an interesting study of the start of Clayton Kershaw using an F/X chart.  Here’s some of the criteria:

The chart on the right shows the vertical and horizontal movement (in inches) that Kershaw got on his pitches against the Cardinals, relative to a pitch thrown without spin. The X axis shows the amount of horizontal movement on Clayton’s pitches, while the Y axis shows the amount of vertical movement on the pitches. The chart is from the view of the catcher, so pitches with a negative horizontal (X axis) value are tailing in on a righthanded hitter. Pitches with a low vertical (Y axis) value are moving down in the strike zone; the lower the Y value, the more downward movement the pitch has.

Here’s some of the findings that he found, which is quite interesting.

So, ultimately, what does all this mean?  Well, there’s still a long ways to go, but what is definitive is that Kershaw has excellent stuff, already.  It will be mighty tough for hitters to deal with a 95 MPH fastball and a curveball like that.  What’s also been impressive is how he’s handled everything.  He seems to be very composed, level headed, and also seems to have the right attitude to handle all of this, at the moment.  He more than lived up to the hype on Sunday and, while I was not the happiest about the call up due to the effectiveness of the Ho and the Kuo in Anaheim, as long as Kershaw keeps pitching like this, he’ll be staying in L.A. and will provide the team with a needed boost.  He’s the real deal.

Pity they won’t ever score for him, though.

- Vin vinscully-face.jpg

Yet Somehow, the Dodgers Are Only 3.5 Out of First

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Quick hits to wrap up a holiday weekend:

* Baseball Tonight on Kershaw: 100% positive reviews. I’m not totally sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. 

[vodpod id=ExternalVideo.571243&w=425&h=350&fv=]  

* Cubs blog Wrigleyville23 linked here and to the other usual suspects (SOSG, 6-4-2, DodgerThoughts) as part of their series preview, along with the note,

By and large, the Dodgers blogs are of a much higher quality and quantity than others we’ve seen lately (I’m looking at you, Houston).

I couldn’t help but wonder about their distaste for Houston, so I went back to their Astros preview post:

It’s hard to play Around The Blogs when opposing team’s blogs aren’t doing their part – namely not blogging. Such is the case with the Houston Astros. Nobody seems to be following them (cyberly).

There’s an SBN blog, an MVN blog, and a place called Spikes ‘n Stars, which doesn’t seem to like interleague play too much.

Other than that, I found a few blogs that haven’t been updated in months. Am I missing others?

You know what? With all of the quality Dodger blogs out there, maybe I picked the wrong team to follow (20 years ago…) Stay tuned for the relaunch of Jeff Bagwell’s Tragic Illness.

* As excited as I was to watch Kershaw’s debut, I got about 150% more pumped when I realized that a standard 5-day schedule would put him in Shea Stadium against the Mets on Friday night… which, not so coincidentally, is where I will be on Friday night. Score!

* Re: today’s loss to the Cubs. I was keeping an eye on this one while at holiday festivities, and its not hard to say that I had a few “issues” with Torre’s game management today. That said, Rob at 6-4-2 beat me to most of them:

  • Why didn’t Chad Billingsley attempt a suicide squeeze in the fifth with one out and runners on the corners? The Dodgers have been having trouble scoring runs; it seems like smallball is eminently called for in that circumstance.
  • Why was Chin-Lung Hu held at third on Kemp’s double? It would have taken a perfect throw to get him.
  • Why did Mark Sweeney get the start at first? Loney may be scuffling, but … c’mon…

    • To which I would add, why did Loney pinch hit for Luis Maza in the 8th? Maza’s only hitting .438 since his recall. I’m certainly not suggesting that Maza’s a better hitter than Loney, just that Maza’s not a guy who needs to be hit for right now. Had Torre held onto Loney (or had him hit for the next batter, Park, rather than sending up Delwyn Young) then either Loney or Young would have been available to hit for Chin-Lung Hu with 2 outs in the 9th as the tying run at the plate, rather than letting Hu go up looking completely overmatched, and have him predictably strike out to end the game.

    * By the way, Mark Sweeney? Yeah, he’s now hitting a solid .100. Come on; this is getting embarrassing. Why is he still taking a place on this team? He can’t hit; he can’t field. He serves zero purpose whatsoever. I know there’s injury issues right now – I get that. But still. You can’t tell me there’s no one better to take up a roster spot right now. Like, oh, I don’t know: Andy LaRoche?!

    * Which brings us to our newest cause up top, with Andruw Jones out of sight and out of mind. It’s time to get Andy LaRoche up here. (Westsidedodger the first to point this out). Make no mistake, this is not a criticism of Blake DeWitt, who deserves to keep his job. But this team has been struggling on offense for quite a while, and it’s starting to not look like a slump anymore. It’s really time to get the best bats available up in the bigs. And guys who are OPS’ing .932 and getting on base almost half the time (.476 OBP) in AAA count as “best bats available.” In terms of the 25-man roster, it’s simple. Less Sweeney, more LaRoche. As for playing time, it wouldn’t kill DeWitt to only start five days a week, and it’s not like we couldn’t use another third baseman when Russell Martin is still in the conversation for getting time there. Usually I’m staunchly against in support of the  ”don’t bring up a young guy if he may not see a ton of time because it’d hurt his development” theory, but LaRoche really has absolutely nothing to prove in the minors any more. Get him up, let him hit. He can play 3B once or twice a week and get some on-the-job training at 2B. Risky? Hell yeah. But I really believe it’d be worth it.

    - Mike Scioscia’s tragic illness msti-face.jpg