Monthly Archives: August 2008

I Can’t Wait Until Vin Confuses the Blake Third Basemen

Posted on by 2 Replies

Tony Jackson with the scoop:

Blake DeWitt recalled, Pablo Ozuna DFA’d

Didn’t see this one coming. Guess is has something to do with the team’s sagging offense. DeWitt was batting .500 (11 for 22) over a four-game stretch that ended on Saturday, but according to his day-by-day stats on milb.com, he hasn’t played since. Not sure why, but I’ll try to find out. … Ozuna had become nothing more than a late-inning defensive replacement and pinch runner, but I would imagine if he clears waivers, he’ll be back next week. … A few minutes ago, the club also announced that Cory Wade was coming off the DL and that Tanyon Sturtze had been DFA’d, but they quickly retracted that. Not sure why, unless they decided to wait a couple of days because Cory is still sore.

The first move is a win all around, even though I had wanted DeWitt replaced for quite some time before he actually was. Forget DeWitt’s recent hot streak in the minors, because Pablo Ozuna is completely useless, and even a slumping DeWitt has more value than Ozuna does. Also, DeWitt is a superior fielder to Casey Blake, which has the dual value of A) improving the Dodger defense in the late innings and especially B) giving Joe Torre a viable alternative other than Russell Martin at third base. Plus, DeWitt’s been playing a lot of second in the minors, so perhaps we’ll get a chance to see if he can handle the spot and toss his hat into consideration for replacing Jeff Kent next year.

As for the almost move? Well, I have to say I’m impressed that it actually was going to be Sturtze rather than Ramon Troncoso or Jason Johnson. But the fact that they changed their minds worries me. Is Wade still hurt? Everything we had heard pointed to his stay on the DL being the absolute minimum. And if so, why was it announced and then retracted? There’s obviously a lot more to this story, so we’ll have to see.

Bottom line, Blake DeWitt > Pablo Ozuna, and I can’t imagine any argument to the contrary. Good to see the kid back.

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

This Would Be Funny If It Weren’t So Excruciating

Posted on by 2 Replies

Man, it’s one thing to watch your offense struggle… and it’s another thing to watch it struggle like that. You figure you’ve got a perfect opportunity to break out of your offensive malaise, because you’re up against the worst team in baseball, and not only that, the 22-year-old opposing moundsman is something called “Collin Balester“, who I’m not afraid to admit I had never once heard of in my life before tonight. But what do we end up with? One run on seven hits, plus another wasted outstanding pitching performance (Derek Lowe the victim tonight, as it seems he so often is.)

Make no mistake, though. Regardless of what the scoreboard said, the Dodgers were shut out tonight. Their one run came after loading the bases on zero hits – back-to-back hit batters and a walk - and only came around when Nationals catcher Jesus Flores had a brainfart in not tagging Nomar at the plate on Matt Kemp’s fielder’s choice grounder to third.

Really, I can’t describe this any better than Dodgers.com reporter Michael Schwartz put it:

The Dodgers’ run of offensive futility has gotten so bad, they’re inventing new ways not to score runs.

And against the worst team in baseball no less.

Tuesday’s episode included four double plays, 10 runners left on base and a lineout double play with the bases loaded, as the Dodgers dropped their season-high-tying fifth straight game, 2-1, to the Nationals at Nationals Park.

It’s unbelievable. It’s not outright futility, the matching 0-5′s turned in by Kemp and Andre Ethier aside. It’s the complete lack of situational hitting that’s destroying this team right now. Four for thirty-nine with runners in scoring position over the last three games is completely unacceptable. Another opportunity lost, with Arizona on their way to defeat against San Diego. I’m still not ready to jump ship, not when you still have six more games left with the team you’re three games behind. But clearly, this needs to get fixed now. And yeah, I do feel like I’ve written the same post four days in a row.

So what now? Obviously, just hoping guys turn it around isn’t enough, although you can’t really replace the entire lineup, either. Look for some lineup changes for game two, although this quote from Torre seems to say that it’s more about rest than performance:

Torre still hopes to give Kent, catcher Russell Martin and possibly third baseman Casey Blake a breather in Los Angeles’ series against the last-place Nationals to keep them fresh in advance of this weekend’s showdown in Phoenix against the first-place D-backs, who entered Tuesday leading the Dodgers by three games in the National League West.

Kent could use a break, although he is 4-9 lifetime off of Nationals starter Tim Redding. If you’ve read this site at all lately, you know I want to see Martin get a break. Here’s what worries me, though: if Blake takes a seat, is Torre going to put Martin there again? Because we’ve been through this. That’s NOT a break for Martin. Put Nomar at third and Angel Berroa at short, or don’t rest Blake at all. I cannot stress this enough. I also have zero faith that it’s actually going to happen.

Finally, expect to see a roster move before the game, as Cory Wade is expected to be activated off of the disabled list. No word on who leaves town for him… but it has to be Tanyon Sturtze, right? The Dodgers are already carrying 12 pitchers on the roster, so it has to be an arm that goes down. I suppose it could be Ramon Troncoso too, optioned to Vegas until rosters expand, but Sturtze is barely…

Who am I kidding. Of course it won’t be Sturtze.

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

27-5

Posted on by 9 Replies

That would be the total in which the Dodgers were outscored in Philadelphia this weekend. What an embarrassment. This team doesn’t really deserve to make the playoffs – not that it ever really did – but Arizona did their best to help us out. If there was a half decent team in this division like all the others, by all rights the Dodgers would be 11 games out of first place and we wouldn’t have traded excellent prospects for guys like Casey Blake. There’s really nothing good you can take away from this series at all. The pitchers didn’t pitch (decent starts from Kuroda and Billingsley aside), the defense looked terrible at best and lazy at worst, and the offense.. my god, the offense. Who goes into Citizens Bank Park and has the offense disappear?

I can’t even talk about this debacle, so I’ll just leave you with some fun stats over the last 7 days, and while I’m not ready to say the season’s over just yet (not with two more series against Arizona), I will say that if the Blue don’t go into Washington and take at least two out of three, it’s time to pack it in.

Oh, and keep in mind with the stats below, the Dodgers played 7 games this week (some teams only played 5) and they were home against Colorado and in Philadelphia, not generally time you’ll see the offense fizzle. If they’d played against good pitching, they might somehow have scored negative runs.

Dodgers, Last 7 Days (MLB Rank):
Runs: 14 (30th of 30th)
BA: .250 (22nd)
OBP: .296 (25th)
SLG: .336 (29th)
OPS: .632 (29th)
RBI: 11 (30th)
ERA: 5.69 (25th)
Wins: 1 (tied, 30th)

If this team misses the playoffs and finishes at or below .500, there’s no way Ned Colletti can retain his job, right?

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

Have to Win Tonight…

Posted on by 5 Replies

…and even then, it might be too late.

I’m sure you’re expecting MSTI to blame Jason Johnson for giving up the game-winning homer to Pedro Feliz, but I can’t really do that. First of all, at least Joe Torre put in Johnson in the role he really should be filling – that of “extra inning long man after all the good guys have been used”. Johnson is what he is, and that’s a mediocre pitcher. You let him pitch in a field like Citizens Bank Park against a lineup like the Phillies’, and he’s going to give up some homers. You can’t expect anything else.

But Johnson is hardly the fall guy for this latest debacle. Look, there’s plenty of blame to go around here. I could question Torre being too conservative in taking out both Park and Kuo after just one effective inning each, but that’s pretty low on the list. Mostly, I have no defense for Jonathan Broxton on this one. Yeah, he can blame bad mechanics, but that’s not good enough. The leadoff hit to Shane Victorino was a killer, and the lack of control – especially the four-pitch walk to Andy Tracy – was brutal. Actually, that brings up the worst performance of last night, that of ESPN’s Joe Morgan, who insisted that Broxton was pitching around Andy Tracy. Who hadn’t seen the big leagues since 2004. In order to get to Pedro Feliz, who may be a mediocre hitter but does have a good bit of pop in his bat (6 consecutive double-digit homer seasons). Of course that was the plan, Joe!

No, I’m not going to excuse Broxton on this one. How could you? He blew it. But the bigger problem right now is the offense. 12 runs over the last 6 games just isn’t going to cut it. And it’s not like you can just point the finger at one or two guys, because other than James Loney and Jeff Kent, everyone has been awful.

Last 7 days:
Manny: .250/.375/.250 .625 OPS
Blake: .200/.304/.300 .604 OPS
Kemp: .192/.222/.346 .568 OPS
Ethier: .143/.217/.286 .503 OPS
Martin: .136/.136/.318 .455 OPS
Nomar: .167/.167/.167 .333 OPS

That, friends, is just a cavalcade of awful. Special bonus points of suck awarded to Casey Blake for doing just about the worst possible thing you could do with a bases loaded, no outs situation in the top of the 10th: grounding into a 5-2 double play. It’s not even that he didn’t do anything positive, it’s that he did the worst kind of negative action he could have, short of a triple play. A sac fly gets a run home. A double play to short or second probably gets a run home. A strikeout or a popup doesn’t get a run home, but it doesn’t accrue two outs and lose the lead runner, too.

And yeah, that picture above is kind of old. But I can’t think of anything more appropriate than seeing a Dodger get kicked in the chest after last night.

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

Let’s Not Get Swept on National TV, Okay?

Posted on by 3 Replies

Since the less said about the Dodgers at the moment the better, there’s definitely a few things of note to mention from last night’s Las Vegas game (thanks to Torgy for pointing most of this out).

* Andruw Jones… played first base? Jones has played in 1835 games in the majors, 325 in the minors, and this is the first time he’s ever played the infield. Now, he had missed the previous four games with a sore knee, so this very well may have been a way to get him some at-bats without asking him to run in the outfield in a non-DH game. But who knows. Maybe with the outfield logjam, they might be interested in getting him some time as a right-handed option to James Loney at first base in September? That would be a sight to see. How weird does that picture to the right look, too?

* Why again did Tanyon Sturtze stick while Eric Stults went down? We questioned this at the time, and Stults was very good last night for Vegas in the high altitude of Colorado Springs, allowing just 2 hits and a single run over 6 innings, striking out 6. Stults is never going to be an All-Star, but he’s proven he belongs in the big leagues, especially with that complete game shutout of the White Sox. Besides, when you’ve got innings-limited guys like Kershaw and Maddux back-to-back in your rotation, wouldn’t you prefer having a guy who can go multiple innings like Stults rather than someone who’s basically useless in Sturtze – not to mention how annoying it is for poor bloggers to keep the names straight?

* It’s probably time to give up on Greg Miller, right? If you’re unfamiliar with Miller’s story, he was basically Clayton Kershaw before Clayton Kershaw was. He made it to AA in 2003 as an 18 year old, and was completely dominating in his 4 starts, putting up a 40/7 K/BB ratio. In Double A. At 18. He blew out his arm soon after that and hasn’t been the same since (a more indepth profile can be found over at FireNedCollettiNow from a few days ago). Anyway, after one of the weirdest lines you’ll ever see last night (in one inning, he didn’t give up a hit – yet allowed 4 runs thanks to 3 walks and some lousy defense), he’s now up to a 7.21 ERA and is walking more than a man per inning. I hate to give up on a guy who’s only 23, but with control like that, he’s barely an AAA pitcher right now, and he’s using up a valuable 40-man spot. This is definitely a situation that will need to be reviewed in the offseason.

Speaking of the 40 man roster, Tony Jackson discusses who might be called up when rosters expand on September 1st:

With apparently none of the Dodgers’ minor-league affiliates looking like they’ll be playoff bound, the team’s September callups should start arriving on Sept. 2, the second day of the upcoming homestand. It looks like A.J. Ellis will be coming up from Vegas to be the third catcher. He is hitting .309 this year, so he’ll edge out Lucas May, who is hitting .228 at Jacksonville, even though May is on the 40-man roster and Ellis isn’t. Although I have long been under the impression that James McDonald was a lock for a callup, that apparently is still being discussed and is far from assured. But it looks like Ellis will be the only guy not presently on the roster who will be called up. Dodgers don’t have a lot of flexibility. The 40-man is full, and there aren’t a lot of guys on it whom you can look at and say, “He’s expendable.”

When you’ve still got guys like Sturtze and Mark Sweeney on the roster, I don’t think it’s that hard to find guys to dump, but Jackson isn’t wrong about the tight roster situation, especially with all of the guys on the DL. But just to get Ellis on the 40-man, here’s an idea. You figure that Chin-Lung Hu or Blake DeWitt or both will likely be called up to add infield depth (DeWitt’s been playing mostly 2B in the minors lately), plus you hope to get back Rafael Furcal at some point. Once you get Hu and DeWitt up, there’s absolutely no need for both Angel Berroa and Pablo Ozuna, not that there’s really much of a need for either one right now. Hell, bring up both Hu and DeWitt, and DFA both Berroa and Ozuna. You keep the same amount of bodies in the middle infield, you immeasurably improve your infield defense, hopefully improve the offense too, and free up two roster spots on the 40-man. Makes sense, right?

Finally, I hate to get nit-picky and point out mistakes for the sake of it, but come on, Bill Shaikin:

Blake, who turned 35 Saturday, has stabilized third base for the Dodgers and said he had not ruled out returning to Los Angeles. When the Indians traded him, he said, they told him they hoped to offer him a contract this winter, to return to what was the only major league club he had known.

“The only major league club he had known”? I knew off the top of my head that Blake came up with Toronto and also saw some time in Minnesota; upon looking it up, I found that he played in Baltimore too. It may have been only 112 at-bats over 4 seasons, but still, you’re the Los Angeles Times. Do a little research, would you? He’d played for three other MLB clubs, so that makes you look pretty bad.

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