Monthly Archives: January 2009

We’re About To Learn What’s More Important

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Update: apparently, Ausmus went ahead and agreed to terms with the Dodgers less than an hour after I originally posted this. He’ll get $1m for one year. Not to be outdone, the Padres then turned right around and signed Henry Blanco – who, as you’ll see below, is superior to Ausmus both at bat and defensively – for $250,000 less. Just in case you need to be bludgeoned over the head with it, the Dodgers just paid more for an older catcher who can’t hit or throw than the Padres did for a guy who can do a bit of both. Because, that makes sense. I strongly look forward to Vin Scully explaining that Ausmus went to an Ivy League school 50 times this year. The original post from this afternoon remains below.

Would you prefer having a backup catcher who can actually produce… or one that Joe Torre might actually play? We’re hardly alone in the Dodger blogosphere in calling for Russell Martin to get some more rest (check out his declining OPS by month last year, bouncing back only in September when he did get some time off); it’s been one of our recurring themes for quite some time. And no, Joe, third base does not count as a rest, though with Casey Blake around that’s unlikely to happen as much as last year.

While we’ve all spent countless words on Manny, Furcal, and starting pitching, it shouldn’t be ignored that backup catcher is a pretty important role if we want to see Martin live to age 30. In 2007, we had the Token Veteran Goodness of Mike Lieberthal, who had all of one RBI that year. In 2008, we had the Token Veteran Goodness of Gary Bennett explode in our faces
ausmus.jpg(and all over the infield), only to be replaced by Brotherhood of the Traveling Masks member Danny Ardoin. Clearly, the Token Veteran route hasn’t worked out. So what’s the plan for 2009?

Uh oh.

Free-agent catcher Brad Ausmus, seeking to play for a team near his home in Del Mar, Ca., is in the process of choosing between the Dodgers and Padres, according to major-league sources.
 
The Dodgers are Ausmus’ likely choice, sources say – they figure to be a stronger contender in the NL West next season than the Padres, who are reducing their payroll to $40 million.
Ausmus is going to be 40 years old in April, and hasn’t been a good hitter since… well, ever. Only twice in his long career has he even been a league-average hitter, and the last time came ten seasons ago in 1999 – when he hit the 100 mark right on the nose. Last year he sank all the way to an abysmal .218/.303/.296 with just 11 extra base hits in 81 games with Houston. ”But MSTI,” you might say. “A catcher who can hit is the exception, not the other way around. Ausmus is a good backstop with a strong arm, which is more important than his bat.” Well, that might have been true once upon a time. It’s just that now, he’s actually a detriment behind the dish – FanGraphs has his defensive value on a three-year slide, placing him at a negative value in the last two seasons. Plus, his 20.8% caught stealing ratio would place him third from the bottom of the catchers who played enough to qualify in 2008, if he’d been a qualifier.
 
Clearly, Ausmus isn’t going to help much whether he’s besides the plate or behind it, and it’s not like there aren’t other decent backstops out there. Former Dodger Henry Blanco is coming off a respectable .292/.325/.392 season with the Cubs, and has thrown out more than 45% of base stealers in four of the last five seasons. Former Red Javier Valentin put up a decent 2008 of .256/.326/.411 and is even a switch-hitter. So why are we considering a player that’s inferior to both at the plate and to at least one in the field?
 
Oh, right. Because he’s this year’s Token Veteran Backup Catcher. Maybe his name recognition will cause Torre to at least play him; but with those stats why would you want him to? You’d almost rather see a run-down Martin every day.  
 
(No, we didn’t miss today’s announcement that Jeff Kent was retiring. It’s just that it was basically a foregone conclusion and we’ve covered his career here already. Besides, now is not the time for looking backwards! We must move forward, not backward, upward not forward, and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom! Best of luck, Jeff. We’ll miss you. There were more than a few times where you carried this offense. You prickly jerk.)

On This, of All Days…

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 …let’s be thankful for the anti-capitalistic indentured servitude we still have over our young players.

87toppsrussellmartin.jpgAccording to FanGraphs, Russell Martin was worth $21.5 million in 2008. I won’t get into their fancy description of how they arrived at that figure here, but it’s basically a calculation of  how many “wins” he was worth over a replacement player, and then multiplying that number by how much a win is worth. In Martin’s case, even though he slipped a bit from 2007, the fact that there are so few decent catchers out there mean that the replacement level for catchers is pretty low, so that’s why he’s so high. So how much did the Dodgers just sign Martin for, avoiding an arbitration hearing? Only $3.9 million, since Martin had almost no negotiating leverage at all. I’m just going out on a limb here, but I’m thinking that Turtle would get slightly more than that were he available on the open market. That being the case, how about we get him signed up long-term so that we never have to see what his value on that market would be like?

It’s much the same for Jonathan Broxton, who was worth $11.8 million last year according to FanGraphs. For 2009, he gets $1.825 million plus incentives. Think about that: Broxton is getting far less for 2009 than admitted cheat Guillermo Mota just signed with Los Angeles for. Now, I know the situations aren’t really comparable because Mota has earned free agency and Broxton has not. It’s just an insane situation to think about.

This almost evens out the fact that last year, Andruw Jones provided negative $2.4 million worth of production. That almost seems too generous, but then you have to remember that he missed a good portion of the year.

Speaking of indentured servitude, Tony Jackson points out that Jason Repko has been asking for a trade for two years. It’s hard to think an injury-prone outfielder with a .229 career batting average would really have that much to complain about, but I can’t really argue with Repko; if he’s never really going to get a shot in the crowded Los Angeles outfield situation, why not let him go somewhere else? That’s not the notable portion of the story, though – it’s the fact that Jackson claims that Repko, entering his 11th year in the organization, still has two minor league option years left. I’m pretty sure that Jackson made a mistake there (there’s no way that a player who’s appeared in the bigs in three of the last four years has only used up one option year), but if he’s not wrong, that will mean that Repko will have been tied to the Dodgers for twelve years before gaining his independence.

Well, At Least It Won’t Be With the Dodgers

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Are the major leagues really that desperate for pitching? Apparently they are, according to former FOX Sports/Monday Night Football eye candy Lisa Guerrero:

An excruciating experience to me is watching a baseball game from the stands, in say, Mexicali, while my husband, a 40-year-old pitcher attempting to make a comeback after a two-year hiatus, is on the mound doing his darndest to last five innings and locate the strike zone.

ericksonguerrerro.jpgIf you don’t know who Lisa Guerrero is, it’s wildly entertaining to imagine that her husband is actually Pedro Guerrero. Unfortunately, the truth is much more gruesome, as we’ll see later:

Every pitch he throws seems to be going in slow-motion, although surprisingly, he’s registering up to 90 mph on the radar gun. Pretty good after riding the couch for 2 1/2 years. Scott Erickson’s jersey number here is 53. Somebody else has his traditional 19.

Oh, Scott. If your wife is even ragging on how soft you’re tossing and you’re stuck with a number that you usually see on non-roster spring training invitees in the Mexican League, it’s really time to call it quits, no? Actually, I take that back, because in just looking up your stats, I see you haven’t even had a league average ERA+ since 1998 - which means you’re about a decade past your “expired on” date. How is it even possible you’ve stuck around that long? You’re not even left-handed. On top of that, I remember that he wasn’t even that good with the Dodgers in 2005, but a 6.02 ERA? I don’t remember him being that bad.

But hey, at least it’s working out in Mexico: his 7.71 ERA in 9.1 innings includes walking 10 while whiffing 2 (not a typo!), allowing 14 hits and 3 homers. On the other hand, who knows what the hell is happening in a league in which former Dodger infielder Oscar Robles (career OPS+: 78, 5 HR) is putting up an .894 OPS with 9 homers. Are they playing in Little League parks?

Back to the point, former Dodger Scott Erickson is attempting a comeback, which should normally have us dropping to our knees and praying to whichever lord you choose to that his desiccated corpse won’t end up back in Dodger blue. But no, friends! Not today! Why not? Well, it’s hard to get a job with an organization when your wife has just opened up her big yap to criticize the man at the top of the ladder:

Also being honored were George Brett, Goose Gossage, the Alou family and Whitey Herzog. The hosts were actors Brendan Fraser and Don Johnson.

All in all, a pretty impressive group of folks were in attendance. So who wouldn’t want to get dolled up, have a nice steak dinner and listen to these legends share baseball stories?

Apparently, Frank McCourt.

At exactly 9:28 p.m. the Dodgers owner stood up and made his exit — right in the middle of Dave Winfield’s speech. Guess he didn’t want to sit through the rest of the honorees. The ones he missed were Herzog, Brett, Gossage and Tommy Lasorda (although, to be fair, McCourt can listen to Lasorda’s speeches any time he wants).

McCourt missed some great moments, including Gossage ribbing Brett about “the pine tar incident” and calling him “a cheater,” and an off-color joke by Herzog that I’d love to pass along here but Sports Editor Randy Harvey would just edit it out.

Guess you had to be there, but McCourt wasn’t either. Maybe he had to rush home to catch “Saturday Night Live?”

Excellent work, Lisa. Way to stunt your husband’s already slim comeback chances by insulting 1 of the only 30 people who could give him a job. Why stop there? Maybe next you could write about how Little Caesar’s Pizza gave you the runs or that the Nintendo Wii just flat-out sucks. Still, as Dodger fans: we thank you for saving us from the inevitable disaster to come. Please insult the McCourts at every opportunity.

   

 

You Saying Jesus Christ Can’t Hit a Curveball, Cerrano?

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christ-rbibaseball.jpgLet’s do a completely insane roundup to kick off a holiday weekend…

* Mouthpiece Sports has a great collection of the absurd updates people have made to one of the greatest old-school sports games of all time, RBI Baseball for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Sure, the “Friedrich Nietzsche pitching to Jesus Christ” version at right is pretty entertaining, if not completely confounding, but I especially like the “dead musicians version”, which they explain to include:

In case you’re wondering, that’s Kurt Cobain taking a conservative lead off first. The pitching rotation consists of Elvis, Dimebag Darrell, Sid Vicious and Ol’ Dirty Bastard.

* We’re venturing into “completely obscure degrees of separation” territory here, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity. Remember the early 90′s television show, Parker Lewis Can’t Lose? No, of course you don’t. In the third season, a new character was added, played by Harold Pruett. The character, described in Wikipedia as an “athletic, good-looking bricklayer” was named Bradley “Brad” Penny. But wait, we’re not done there. Harold Pruett later starred in 1994′s Embrace of the Vampire, which is mostly remembered only for being the movie in which the female lead (Pruett’s character’s girlfriend) finally took her clothes off. That female actress? Alyssa Milano. Which means that she went from being naked on-screen with a guy who’d previously played a character named Brad Penny to dating the actual Brad Penny. There’s something just entirely too creepy in all of that.

* Finally, we’ve all been enjoying the new Andruw Jones-free lives we’ve been given, aren’t we? Well, just to add slightly more salt in that expensive wound, Diamond Leung has an account of Jones’ interview with an Atlanta radio station in which he blames you. Yes, you, specifically.

Asked about fan reaction to his struggles, Jones said, “I think they went a little overboard with it.”

Have you lost your mind? You got paid $36 million to hit .158 with three homers and strike out in nearly one third of your at bats. You admitted in that very same interview that you weren’t in good shape. Hell, none of those three dingers even came in front of the home fans. How can you possibly think the fans went overboard? I’d say that the lack of violent assaults against you constitutes remarkable restraint on behalf of the fans.

So Long, Fatty

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We’ve all known it was coming, but according to Tony Jackson, it’s official: Andruw Jones, aka “Hindenburg”, aka “that fat sack of crap”, aka “BOOOOOOOO!!!” is no longer a member of the Los Angeles Dodgers, having been released today as agreed to when he deferred most of his salary for this season.

I, for one, hope he catches on somewhere in the National League. Rumor has it that not only is he dying to go back to Atlanta, but that he was actually seen wearing a Braves hat on television at a college basketball game the other day, though it’s unclear about Atlanta’s level of interest. Mainly, I want the chance to see him come back to Dodger Stadium and receive a welcome not seen since John Rocker’s first trip back to Shea Stadium. You think Dodger fans don’t have emotion? You just wait for that. 

Which will, if past tradition holds, be quickly followed by him hitting three monstrous home runs. But that’s a worry for another time. For right now? We’re so happy you’re gone, you utter disgrace. I’m happy to be able to reuse this picture from last week, and I look forward to you being completely out of baseball by July.

jonesmanatee.jpg