Monthly Archives: October 2008

MSTI.com’s 2008 In Review: Left Field

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Welcome to day 6 of MSTI.com’s 2008 season in review.  Today, we review left field where we will discuss Juan Pierre, Jason Repko, Terry Tiffee… and some scrub called… I think, Manny?

Manny Ramirez = …
(With LA: .396/.489/.743, 17 HR’s, 53 RBI’s)
Yes, notice that there is no grade next to Manny’s name.  Why, you ask?  Because no letter grade could ever do Manny justice.  Manny just transcends grades, at this point.  So, instead, we then have to ask: what is the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen in your life?  Or perhaps the most beautiful thing that’s ever happened?  Something that fills your heart with joy and utter happiness?
Perhaps puppies:

Maybe you just won the lottery:

Perhaps you just landed two girls to have a threesome with who will finally love you:

Maybe you just saved hundreds of dollars by switching your car insurance to Geico:

Or maybe you’re even like the guys from “Pulp Fiction” after they open the briefcase…

We happy?  Vincent?  We happy?
Yeah, we happy.
Translate all of this into a grade and, well, there you go; except even that doesn’t do it enough justice.
Who the hell are we kidding?  After a year and a half of writing articles on this blog, this, by far, has to be the most superfluous article I’ve ever had to write.  I mean, writing an article talking about how awesome Manny Ramirez is and trying to put up stats to prove my argument is like trying to show how crapulicious Andruw Jones was this year.  In other words: you don’t need ME to tell you, as this is one of the instances where the eyes don’t deceive and it’s just pretty fucking obvious.
But I’ll give it a shot, anyways.
Simply put, if you were able to watch what Manuel Aristides Ramirez did for this team in even the slightest capacity over the past two and a half months, be thankful: for you saw offensive production from a player at a rate at which has never been seen before in Dodger history.  His production was historical in that context and also in the sense that we will never likely see what he produced again.  But let’s not be mistakened: it’s not as if the Dodgers haven’t had incredible offensive years from players in their prime, from the days of Snider, Garvey, Piazza, Shawn Green, Gary Sheffield, Adrian Beltre in 2004, and other offensive powerhouses in their prime, but this is just another animal.
When he started off with his incredible hot streak the first week and a half, I think it’s safe to say that most of us thought that it wouldn’t really last.  We were wrong.  During his stint with the Dodgers, Manny had an OPS+ of 219.  Two hundred and fucking nineteen.  For those aren’t familiar, if you have an OPS+ of 100, that’s considered average.  What this means is that Manny was 119% better than the average player.  That’s just freaking insane.  In fact, I’m going to show you the rest of the notable statistics not so much to prove an argument moreso than to show just how absurd he was.  It’s literally comical:
He hit .396, with 17 HR’s, and 53 RBI’s.  O.K., you know that. But how about the fact that he had a 47.6 VORP to rank him 24th in all of baseball?  Now “Vin,” you might say.  “What’s so impressive about that?”  Well, that’s just Manny in L.A.  In fact, to compare, Vladimir Guerrero’s VORP throughout THE ENTIRE YEAR was 44.3.  Aramis Ramirez’s was 44.8, Justin Morneau’s was 45.5, Miguel Cabrera at 46.8, etc., etc.  So Manny’s VORP from August 1st throughout the end of the year was better than what these high profile names did the entire year.  Relative to other NL left fielders, he only ranks second in VORP to Matt Holliday’s 60.4.  If we compare this relative to the other Dodgers, only Andre Ethier comes within striking range, with a 39.7 VORP.  But remember: we’re only comparing two months of Manny to 5-6 months worth of production from the rest of the league.  That’s what’s so mindblowing about this.  He made video game numbers look pedestrian.
In terms of MLV, L.A. Manny ranked 11th in all of MLB at 43.9.  Again, relative to other left fielders, he only trails Matt Holliday, but this is much closer, with Holliday at 45.0.  Ramirez also put up an EqA of .401 and here’s the especially absurd part: Manny’s RC27 this year was 15.2.  What that means is that if there were 9 Manny’s in the lineup, the team would score on an average 15.2 runs per game.

Hell, he was even 2 runs above fielding average and had a 106 Rate2 in left field, which is more than adequate.  Actually, the above photo might be more pertinent with this than the offense.
But I could go on and on about the stats, but it’s rather futile: you KNOW how good he was, we all do.  However, what’s important to keep in mind is that it’s not just what he did at the plate that made these past two months so damn fun.  On July 31st, the Dodgers were 54-54 and, frankly, I don’t think many (outside of us diehards) cared much about them, nor were we particularly overly optimistic on their chances of a postseason berth.  Yes, the acquisition of Casey Blake helped matters, but once Manny arrived, the city of Los Angeles was just electrified.  I was fortunate enough to be there the night he debuted and, as I recapped about it, I had never seen Dodger Stadium as alive as it was and once the Dodgers won the final two games of the Arizona series to split, everything changed.  The city changed, the team changed and, in many ways, it really was Mannymania (or as he called it: Mannywood).
Having said that, let’s not completely get ahead of ourselves and only look at this through the rose colored glasses.  I think we’re all aware of what brought him to L.A. in the first place and his actions near the end of his tenure in Boston were hardly condonable and, while I do believe that some of this has been overblown since the trade and that he’s not 100% to blame, he is not exempt from it either.  But at the end of the day, you can argue all you wish about the reasons which caused Manny to leave Boston in the first place, and make some strong arguments against him in terms of how things ended, but what you can’t do is use that to take away the impact that he had on the field (and off) for the Dodgers.  When the trade was made, I said that its success was contingent on how well the Dodgers did.  Well, in retrospect?  I can’t say this trade was a failure.  At all.  While the team didn’t make the World Series, they accomplished at least the minimum of what they had to do: go deep into the postseason. If you told me at the beginning of the year that we would not only win our first postseason series in 20 years, but also win our first NLCS game in 20 years?  I’d be happy (yeah… we happy?).  We finally showed some big progress this season (in fact, our biggest in 20 years) and he played a huge, huge role in why that happened and also why this team was so damn fun to watch for the last month and a half.  He is really fun to watch on the field and he always looks like he’s having a ton of fun, which really makes him infectious, and not in the Jose Lima kind of way.  Manny was simply everything we could have hoped for and so much more.  He had the best offensive stretch in Dodger history and it’s kind of ironic and twisted that one of the other reasons we were able to land him was due to our center fielder having the worst stretch in Dodger history.  But even if Manny doesn’t come back and jettisons to another team, I will always be thankful to the man for what he brought to the team, to the city, and to all of us.  Unforgettable.
Thanks, Manny.
Juan Pierre = D
(.283/.327/.328, 1 HR, 28 RBI’s)
So, right after a competition in Spring Training between Pierre and Andre Ethier for the starting left field job, Joe Torre, in a surprising yet rare moment of competence, gave the nod to Ethier and regulated Pierre into the bench role.
Finally!  We rid ourselves of the Pierre Man!  The Juanster!  Herbert!  He’s sent to the bench in his rightful role and we will go on our merry way throughout the season with the three best outfielders!
Uh… no.  If only things were ever that simple in Dodgerville…
After some early season struggles by Matt Kemp and then, of course, the injury to Rafael Furcal, Pierre found himself back in the lineup and, more importantly, eventually back in the leadoff spot, where he would take over for Furcal.  Now I know Pierre has become the whipping boy here at MSTI and probably every other Dodgers blog out there since his arrival in L.A., last year.  So, with knowing this, why the D?  I mean, after all, if our grades have a lot to do on our expectations, what’s the deal?
Well, because in 2008, Juan Pierre even had trouble being Juan Pierre.
After being inserted into the leadoff role, in order to bring about more “speed,” “experience” and “patience,” at least according to his manager, Pierre stepped up with a killer line of .261/.293/.299 in 268 plate appearanes in the leadoff spot.  Just to compare, that young, impatient, whippersnapper Matt Kemp in the leadoff spot, this year): .305/.360/.492.
But it’s not just Pierre’s horrendous lead off skills that took a further dive, this year.  In 2008, we saw a decline in nearly every statistic; his .283 average and .327 OBP were his lowest since 2005, while his .328 SLG% and 4.1 RC27 were the lowest totals he’s had since 2002.  His MLV was a ridiculous -10.1 (which means he costs his team 10.1 more than the average player), a VORP of 1.1, and an EqA of .247, also his lowest since 2002.  For a man who will be on the wrong side of 30 next year who has a game that’s dependent on speed and has shown a steady decline since his 2003-2004 heyday in Florida… that’s not good.
For the sake of not beating a dead horse, I won’t rehash the Pierre argument yet again, but even by his own standards, which many supporters of the signing like to point to in terms of what our expectations should be, he failed to meet them.  But I will give him props for not at least publicly bitching about getting demoted to the bench… I’m guessing he might have learned from the last time.
Ultimately, Pierre’s fate with the Dodgers has a lot to do with what happens with Manny.  If Manny re-signs, there’s no way Pierre will get the playing time, as Andruw Jones will have first shot at center field and with Andre Ethier and Matt Kemp finally climbing up the depth chart above Pierre, it’s in the best interests of the organization and Juan’s to just end this relationship.  It’s not working and, chances are, it’s not going to.
Calling Dusty Baker…
Jason Repko = Inc.
(.167/.250/.222, 0 HR’s, 0 RBI’s)
If there was ever a player who defined the “incomplete grade” for this year, it is Jason Repko.  He only came up briefly and had a grand total of 18 AB’s.  While this is an incredibly small sample size, he looked pretty shitty at the plate, with 9 of those official plate appearances being strikeouts.  But, hey, he did have 3 hits.  Look out, Mark Sweeney.
On the other hand, the good news for Repko is that after missing 2007, he did come back to put up a solid 2008 season at Triple-A Las Vegas, hitting .283/.373/.449, with 12 HR’s and 50 RBI’s.
Funny how things change, though.  Remember when he got off to that great start in 2005 and some people were calling for him to perhaps be the Rookie Of The Year?  Or even the great start he got off to in 2006?  Time hasn’t been kind to Jason Repko, due to injuries and, well, just not being all that impressive from either side of the spectrum (no, folks, even though Kevin Kennedy might say he’s one of the best outfielders in the game, taking a route from left field to Pasadena and then back again to catch it while taking out your shortstop, and then airmailing the throw into the stands does not make a great outfielder).
But, hey, I’ll give him a few points for not killing anybody on the team during his brief stint up.
Terry Tiffee = Inc.
(.250/.400/.250, 0 HR’s, 0 RBI’s)
Actually, I was wrong.  Terry Tiffee defines the incomplete grade this year, stringing together a whopping 4 at-bats, this season.  Although this hardly describes the year he had in Triple A Las Vegas, where he absolutely destroyed the league by hitting .378/.416/.561 with 9 HR’s and 61 RBI’s.  Sure, these numbers might have come in the PCL, but they’re impressive regardless.
Yeah… so that’s why after 4 at-bats with the big club, he was DFA’d to make room for Angel Berroa.
Thankfully, he wasn’t claimed, but you can add Tiffee to the list of people who should have saw MUCH more playing time than he did in L.A.  In fact, with the numbers he was putting up in Las Vegas, perhaps we could have used even a fraction of that coming off the bench, after it increasingly clear that if you’re hitting below .100 like Sweeney was then, chances are, you’re not very good? I mean, if he didn’t work out, then all you replaced was, again… Sweeney.
Wow.  What a loss that would have been.
Alas, it wasn’t to be, putting an end to one of our more vocal campaigns of the year: Free Terry Tiffee.

- Vin vinscully-face.jpg

Okay, I Kind of Want that Dodgers Money Clip Now

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You know, one of the most interesting things about this post-World Series, pre-free agency period is that the early odds on MLB betting for 2009 have already come out. I always love that, because there’s so much that can change between now and then – I mean, just look at the Dodgers and their infield, since right now all they know is who the first baseman will be. Probably. Anyway, let’s check out some of the early early odds I found at this sportsbook, which I’ve reordered from lowest moneyline to highest:
Yankees: 600-1
Cubs: 1000-1
Angels: 1000-1
Red Sox: 1200-1
Phillies: 1200-1
Rays: 1200-1
Tigers: 1400-1
Mets: 1400-1
Dodgers: 1400-1
So the Dodgers are currently tied for the 7th best bet to win the 2009 World Series, which I suppose isn’t too bad. On the other hand, they just made it to the NLCS and are tied with two teams that didn’t make the playoffs and are behind one team they swept out in the first round.

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

MSTI.com’s 2008 In Review: Third Base

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Blake DeWitt (A+!)
(.264/.344/.383 9hr 52rbi)
Dig this: Blake DeWitt had a 91 OPS+, meaning he was 9% worse than the average ballplayer. He had a month (June) in which he hit just .182 with two extra base hits. He ranked 25th in VORP among third basemen, behind such notables as Martin Prado and Ramon Vazquez. Worst of all, he got demoted to AAA for over a month in the heat of the pennant race. This sounds exactly like the prescription for a “F-, let’s get rid of this guy” rant, right?

But no: Blake DeWitt gets an A+, and if anything that’s too low.

In order to really judge how DeWitt performed in 2008, you have to go back to the beginning of the season and see how frightened everyone was at the prospect of him being forced into the job after injuries to Nomar, Andy LaRoche, and Tony Abreu (remember him?). This is what ESPN’s Rob Neyer had to say:

DeWitt’s just not ready. He spent most of last season in the Class A California League before moving up to Double-A. Also, he wasn’t great at either level, and in 128 games he drew 27 walks and struck out 88 strikeouts. The major league wolves would eat him alive.

This wasn’t a case of Neyer being biased or anti-Dodger; this was a very reasonable outlook, because how could you expect a guy who flopped so bad in AA in 2006 that he had to start 2007 in A-ball to have a prayer? More importantly, there was no backup plan. If he couldn’t hack it for the first month until Nomar “returned”, we’re looking at… what? Chin-Lung Hu? A highway robbery trade for Joe Crede? It may seem crazy to say it, but Blake DeWitt may have been the most vital player for the Dodgers this season (non-Manny division), because if he doesn’t come up and perform to some level of adequacy, the season is over before it starts.

Here’s the best part, though. He wasn’t just passable; he was good. In April he OPS’d .761; in May it was .896. I mean, I went so far as to say this on May 6:

Let’s make it as simple as possible: the kid who was decent but not great in A/AA ball last year is statistically one of the top 5 offensive third baseman in MLB right now. He’s 2nd in batting average at .321, behind only Chipper Jones’ insane .425. He’s 4th in OPS, behind only Jones, Aramis Ramirez, and David Wright.  How about this? He’s on pace for 101 RBI this season. Think about that for a second.

Not only that, DeWitt showed a plus glove at third base – Baseball Prospectus has him down for 11 runs above average on the season. Now it’s true, he went off a cliff in June and July as the league caught up and ended up with his demotion to Las Vegas. And you know what? If it had ended there for him, that would have been fine. He would have played a large role in the Dodgers’ success, proven to himself that he has what it takes to succeed at the top level, and gone into the offseason with a lot to work on. I mean, it couldn’t get any crazier for him than being the Opening Day 3B and having two hot months, right?

But no, DeWitt had to go top it all by coming back up from Vegas having reinvented himself as a second baseman, and not only that, became the team’s starter at the keystone through September and the playoffs with Jeff Kent recovering from knee surgery. Even better, DeWitt’s bat returned, as his September OPS of .872 was his second best month of the season. Finally, for a guy who’d tried the conversion to second in the minors once before and had failed, his fielding was a pleasant surprise – just two errors in 27 starts.

Really, I’ve got nothing but good things to say about Blake DeWitt, and that’s really odd for me. Maybe, however, we shouldn’t have been that surprised, because he was a first round draft pick, so it’s not as though he was a completely unknown commodity. It’s just that he’d shown so little of his talent in the minors, to the point where his huge increase in the bigs just floors you. I mean, his OBP was higher than that of James Loney, Jeff Kent, and Matt Kemp. For 2009, it remains to be seen if DeWitt will be a second baseman, third baseman, some combination of both, or if he’ll even get a shot at a starting job. But here at MSTI, you can consider us: Big Blake DeWitt Fans. Now let’s get rid of all those positive thoughts and move on to…

Casey Blake (B-)
(.251/.313/.460 10hr 23rbi)
You know what? I don’t even need to go back and find previous posts in which I said I hated the Casey Blake deal, because I have no problem with saying it again: I hated the Casey Blake deal from day one. Oh, it’s not so much that I didn’t like the idea of acquiring Blake, with DeWitt struggling, Nomar unreliable, and LaRoche apparently untrustworthy. It’s just that the price of catcher Carlos Santana and reliever Jonathan Meloan was so astronomically out of line with what Blake was worth – and his BA and OBP, by the way, were each lower than what Blake DeWitt put up over the course of a season in which he never should have been in the bigs in the first place and got demoted to AAA. Don’t forget, Santana got named MVP of the California League (and he’s a catcher!) after putting up a .994 OPS, and then proceeded to put up a 1.042 OPS with Cleveland’s affiliate after being traded. Meloan completely dominated the minors on his way to making his MLB debut at just 22 in 2007, before struggling a bit this year thanks to the ill-advised attempt to make him a starter. And for that? We got 211 at-bats of league-average (100 OPS+) performance from Casey Blake, although I do hear his charisma can be seen from space.

I keep trying to remind myself while writing this to not be unreasonably hard on Blake, because he didn’t make the trade (but you better believe this is coming up again in Ned Colletti’s review). So Blake gets a B-. He really deserves a C-, because we had a certain expectation for him when he came over from Cleveland, and he didn’t quite live up to it. After starting 2008 with a line that was more or less similar to the player he’d been in the last few years, he came over to the NL (the easier league, remember) and lost 48 points off his batting average and 52 points off his OBP, although he did keep a nice amount of pop. However, even that was still an improvement over how lousy DeWitt was playing and the dearth of other 3B options, so for providing some measure of stability – and for being the most interesting man in the world - we’ll bump him up a bit to a B-.

You know what? I can’t do it. Any time I think of Casey Blake, I think of how much I wish we still had Carlos Santana and Jonathan Meloan. Because it’s not like any team ever has need of a young slugging catcher and a fireballing reliever, do they? So long, Casey. Enjoy going back to Cleveland or whatever other outpost you end up in – just don’t come back to Los Angeles.

Andy LaRoche (inc.)
(.203/.319/.322 2hr 6rbi)
And thus ends the short, complicated Dodger career of Andy LaRoche. Unlike the other members of the highly-touted Dodger farm system, LaRoche was never able to turn his minor league potential into major league performance. But there’s no simple solution as to why; in 2007 he was kept down with a bad back, and when he did get a shot in LA, his performance was uneven (a .365 OBP is outstanding, but a .211 BA isn’t really getting the job done).

2008 looked to be the year he finally broke out; unfortunately, we know that didn’t happen for a variety of reasons. First and foremost would be his inability to stay healthy, because after 2007′s back problems, his 2008 was dealt a huge blow with Danny Ardoin’s errant throw into his thumb on March 7. It’s almost impossible to imagine how much that one throw in a meaningless game changed the entire course of the franchise. If that never happens, then LaRoche is likely the Opening Day 3B. Which means: maybe we never see Blake DeWitt; maybe we never have to deal for Casey Blake; maybe LaRoche isn’t included in the deal for Manny and another young player like Andre Ethier is. You want chaos theory? Danny Ardoin might have been the most important player in the last ten years of Dodger history.

After injury, you’ve got lack of opportunity. It’s absolutely incredible how much LaRoche was jerked around by the Dodgers over the last two years, but especially in 2008. After his rehab stint at the end of April, LaRoche was optioned to AAA for over a month until June 10. At the time, DeWitt was still playing great, so no one was suggesting that LaRoche be handed the job back. But as you can see in any number of our posts at the time, there was no reason for LaRoche to be stuck in the minors. He had absolutely nothing to prove, and with the eternally useless Mark Sweeney taking up a roster spot in LA, it seemed more than reasonable to let Andy get a few starts a week between first and third base. It took just barely a week for me to make this post asking for more playing time:

Why isn’t Andy LaRoche playing more? He’s been back up for over a week now, and he’s gotten all of 8 plate appearances, in which he’s garnered a homer and two walks. I thought the entire point of recalling LaRoche after letting him get some time in at 1B and 2B in the minors was to be somewhat of a super-infielder – the righty yin to the lefty yang of Loney and DeWitt at the corners, and as a way to keep Luis Maza from playing whenever Kent needs a rest at second. But what have we gotten so far? One start at first base, one start at third base, and two pinch-hitting appearances.

And it never got any better, because nearly a month later (July 14) I was writing this for him in my first half review:

Seems like LaRoche is shaping up to be part of the next Dodgers holy war, following in the footsteps of Juan Pierre and Hee-Seop Choi. No, he hasn’t done much in the bigs. But the people who want to write him off are insane – he’s gotten just 44 at-bats this year. Look, he’s got nothing more to prove in the minors (career .895 OPS). The Dodgers need power. Blake DeWitt is slumping badly. So then why can’t LaRoche ever start more than two games in a row? Why has he been benched the day after hitting a home run both times? Some things, I’ll never understand.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, he got sent back to the minors on July 27 in order to make room for… that’s right, Mark Sweeney, which is just indefensible, especially when you still had Pablo Ozuna and Angel Berroa sucking up roster spots. I will never know why it was that Andy LaRoche was never given any sort of decent shot as a Dodger, but for a player who had a track record such as he did, it really stands out as a glaring mistake for this team – especially since we yet again have no idea who’s going to be the third baseman next year.

And then he was gone. Yeah, it’s true, I did say before the fact that I didn’t want to see him get moved for Manny, but it’s hard to pretend that this wasn’t a worthwhile deal in retrospect. Really, it didn’t matter what LaRoche did in Pittsburgh with how Manny performed here, but in the first chance Andy’s had to play on an every-day basis in the bigs… he was absolutely terrible. Amid whispers about his work ethic, he put up a brutal .152/.227/.232 line with the Pirates and made 9 errors in just 45 games. So I can’t absolve Andy of all blame here, because in 316 career at-bats he’s hitting just .188, and at some point you have to stop coasting on that minor league record and start producing. I just know that if and when he does, I’ll be a little sad that it’s not going to be happening in Dodger blue.

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

MSTI.com’s 2008 In Review: Shortstop

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Ahh, shortstop. Or as we like to think of it in 2008, “the Valley of the Damned.”

Angel Berroa (D+)
(.230/.304/.310 1hr 16rbi)

I have to say, I never expected to be reviewing Angel Berroa as the shortstop who got the most at-bats for the Dodgers this season. To be honest, I think this grade might be the one that differs the most from the mainstream perception. How many times did we have to read stories saying how great Berroa was in stepping in for Rafael Furcal? In particular, there was the heart attack I nearly had in August when Joe Torre started spouting insanity like “I tried to reason who was going to give me the better at-bat – Berroa or Loney.”

On the other hand, you’ve got me, who thought acquiring him was a terrible idea in the first place, laughed when he went his first 21 games without an RBI, and campaigned in August to give Chin-Lung Hu another shot.

Look, I’m not blind to the circumstances that caused Berroa to get such playing time in the first place, and sure, I enjoyed his decent hot streak where he hit .333 in 20 games between 8/24 and 9/17. I just don’t understand why so many people considered him to be, well, good. I mean, we’re talking about a guy who was so bad that even though the Royals signed him to a 4-year contract and had indisputably the worst shortstop in baseball (Tony Pena), they still wouldn’t let Berroa out of Triple-A. Despite that track record, he still underperformed in 2008 – his BA and SLG was far under his career averages, and while his OBP was almost identical to his career number, at .304 that’s hardly anything to be proud of. Putting up a 62 OPS+ when the career average that got you demoted was 77 is hardly a good thing, nor is the fact that of the 42 shortstops who had at least 200 plate appearances, Berroa’s VORP was 35th, at -3.7. That’s right, negative.

“But MSTI,” you might say. “Everyone knows he can’t hit. At least he was a good fielder, and that’s what was most important.” Which is all well and good, except that it’s not particularly true. Baseball Prospectus has his FRAA (Fielding Runs Above Average) at 0, which makes him exactly average. I suppose that’s a nice step up from his career -44 number in that regard, but it’s certainly not the sublime level with the glove that Chin-Lung Hu offers, which is basically what I was saying in August when I wanted to replace Berroa with Hu.

Really, there’s a reason that Berroa gets a D+ and not a straight F, and that’s because we all knew he was a terrible player as soon as he was acquired, so it’s hard to act surprised when he was terrible and somehow underperformed his already lousy career marks. If anything, it’s the media that deserves the F for trying to fool people into believing that Berroa was a useful player. His 2009 option was declined, but that doesn’t neccessarily mean the end of Berroa in LA – it just means that he’s clearly not worth $5.5 million. Let’s hope the front office realizes he’s not worth a roster spot, either.
Rafael Furcal (I take the 5th)
(.357/.439/.573 5hr 16rbi)
Well, I don’t even know where to start with this one. After the worst season of his career in 2007 (thanks, Jason Repko!), Furcal got off to an absolutely blazing hot start. Just how good was he over the first month? Remember, VORP is a counting stat, and despite playing in just 36 games, Furcal still was the 14th-best shortstop – beating out guys like Miguel Tejada and Orlando Cabrera, who played full seasons. I don’t need to tell you what happened after that, with his back injury keeping him out for nearly five solid months, and nearly taking the Dodger season along with it.

But you know what the worst part was? The uncertainty. It’s one thing when you see a guy blow out his knee or break his arm, because you know right then and there he’s out for quite a while. You mourn the loss, but you move on and start making plans to get by. However, with Furcal, at first he was just kept out as a “precaution”; then it was “he’ll be back this weekend”, and then “in a week”; and then the next thing you know we’ve been watching Berroa, Nomar, and Hu suck the life out of shortstop until practically October. It’s not too much of a stretch to say that of everything that didn’t go right for the 2008 Dodgers, this one stung the most – even more than Andruw Jones’ epic chokejob.

It really makes you wonder what a Dodger offense with a healthy Furcal and a happy Manny could have looked like, right? I’m still holding out hope that we’ll see that in 2009, but it sounds like we’ll at least get Furcal back, since interest in his return is mutual. Hey, maybe we’ll get one benefit out of Furcal’s injury and it’ll drive his price down a little.

Nomar Garciaparra (D)
(.264/.326/.466 8hr 28rbi)
Man, and I thought Jeff Kent’s 2008 was eventful. Remember, at the beginning of camp, the biggest question was, “who’s going to win the third base job – Nomar or Andy LaRoche?” Well, that lasted as long as March 7, when both Nomar and LaRoche got hurt in the same spring game, with Nomar suffering a microfracture of his right wrist.

So okay, Nomar’s season debut is delayed until April 16th (injury #1), at which time he reclaimed the starting 3B job from Blake DeWitt…
…which Nomar kept for all of 9 days before injuring himself again. But hey, at least during those 9 days he hit .226 and asked Chip Caray if he could shake left-handed because that’s how much his right hand hurt! On April 26th, Nomar popped his calf (injury #2) and missed over two months. Okay, so far: nothing crazy, because Nomar gets hurt all the time.

But this time, Nomar returns on July 4th….as the starting shortstop! Which is doubly hilarious when you remember that half the reason a red-hot James Loney couldn’t get out of AAA in 2007 is that first baseman Nomar was deemed too fragile to move across the diamond and replace Wilson Betemit at third base. This time Nomar lasts all of 18 games before injuring his knee on July 27th (injury #3). He returned on August 12th and regained his starting SS job for the next few weeks until August 29th (hitting .167 over that time) before being benched for Angel Berroa’s one sign of life. He miraculously made it all the way until September 27th before…

…injuring his knee again (injury #4), though this one didn’t land him on the DL, thanks to expanded rosters. Finally, other than one start at 1B against Jamie Moyer in the NLCS, he was last seen riding the bench for all of the playoffs and striking out feebly to end games. In the rare moments Nomar was actually able to play this year, he wasn’t completely terrible: a 105 ERA+ is actually slightly above average, and his .466 SLG was higher than anyone except for Manny, Ethier and Furcal. He did also mash lefties (1.067 OPS), although I’m hesistant to call that a repeatable skill because in 2007, he was actually markedly worse against lefties than righties.

I don’t like to blame Nomar for all the injuries, but he gets the grade he does simply because he wasn’t there when we needed him to be. We needed him to hold down third base at the beginning of the year with LaRoche hurt, and his absence contributed to the Dodgers having to turn to Blake DeWitt (and remember, DeWitt’s success doesn’t make it right – there were plenty of us who thought he was going to put up Jonesian numbers). We needed him to take over from DeWitt when the league started to catch up, and Nomar couldn’t answer the call. We needed him to prevent having to play Berroa at shortstop every day, and he was unable.

As for the future? Well, Nomar hasn’t decided if he’s retiring or not. But if he chooses to return, I can’t imagine there’s a whole lot of other teams clamoring for his services; conversely, I would think he wouldn’t want to leave his young family and his hometown. If he’s willing to play on a one-year deal at a markedly reduced salary, with the understanding that he’s the backup at 1st and 3rd (i.e., the new Big Sexy), I would find that acceptable – if only so I can keep using that picture!
Chin-Lung Hu (F)
(.181/.252/.233 0hr 9rbi)

This, I must say, is one review I’ve really not been looking forward to, because I had such high hopes for Hu entering the season, and he couldn’t possibly have failed more miserably. Just to show I’m not above bashing myself, this is what I said in last year’s season reviews after Hu had a breakout 2007 in the minors, which won him the Dodgers Minor League Player of the Year award:

So now in the space of one season, Hu has gone from “great glove/might not hit enough to stick” to “great glove/may be one of the better hitting SS around”. So much so that I wouldn’t mind seeing Furcal get dealt for something good and letting Hu get a crack at SS.

Hold on a second, it’s hard to type with all that egg on my face. There we go. After starting the season as Jeff Kent’s caddy at second base, Hu got the first crack at the shortstop job when Rafael Furcal was lost in early May… and it’s hard to overstate just how badly he fared. At the time of his first start at SS on May 6th, Hu was hitting .229/.325/.229 in mostly part-time duty. 76 at-bats later, he’d nabbed just 10 hits and was at .159/.224/.206 when he was sent down on June 7th. Really, if Hu had been able to just be decent, we might have been able to avoid the Angel Berroa era entirely. On the plus side, his glove was as good as advertised – in 75 career games, he’s made just 2 errors.

Hu’s brutal 2008 clearly torpedoed any chance of him getting the starting gig in 2009, but I’m not ready to give up on him yet, and there’s two reasons why (besides for his fantastic defense):

1) Hu’s lousy hitting might be traced back to vision problems. In last season’s review, I noted that Hu had a terrible offensive 2006, was diagnosed with an eye issue, and had a monster 2007. In August of this year when I campaigned for his return, we’d heard that the exact same thing had happened this season:

Hu hit the minor league DL with vision problems soon after he got there, and since getting that taken care of has been killing the ball, putting up a .361/.400/.475 line. There’s precedent for this with him, too; after struggling through 2006 (.660 OPS) problems with his vision were first made public, and after getting his eyes healthy in the offseason, he busted out with an .871 OPS in 2007.

Now I know it’s a small sample size, but in eleven plate appearances after his recall to LA in September, he reached base six times. I don’t know what keeps going on with his eyes, and obviously if he can’t get this taken care of more permanently it’s going to seriously impact his career, but it really seems that there’s a clear cause-and-effect relationship here, now that it’s happened twice. If he can get this fixed, he might be able to return to his 2007 form. Besides, while no one expected him to OPS .871 in the majors this year, I have a hard time believing that the same guy who did that in the minors in 2007 could only put up a .485 mark in 2008 unless there’s some other issue involved.

2) He’s only had 145 career at-bats, and is still just 24. I hope that Hu’s absurdly poor showing at the plate hasn’t completely poisoned him to the average Dodger fan, but 145 at-bats is hardly enough time to give up on a player who could be a rare blend of excellent defense and productive offense. That said, his lousy 2008 has almost forced the Dodgers to try and retain Furcal, but it remains to be seen what that deal will be. If it’s only a one or two year deal, then maybe Hu gets a chance to regain his prospect standing in AAA or on the LA bench until Furcal is gone. But if it’s longer than that, Hu probably will have to get his shot elsewhere, and personally I don’t wish to see that – regardless of my including him in a trade in my offseason plan.

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