2011 September « Mike Scioscia's tragic illness

Court Deals Yet Another Blow to McCourt Ownership

September 30, 2011 at 12:44 pm | Posted in Bud Selig, Frank McCourt | 18 Comments

After what seems to have been weeks of inactivity on the McCourt / MLB front, Bill Shaikin drops in with some concrete news, which I will display in a series of tweets even though I know that by waiting 20 minutes or so, I could just link to the inevitable LA Times article.

Bankruptcy court sets key #Dodgers hearing Oct. 31, Nov. 1, 2, 4. “The Court expects the Commissioner and Mr. McCourt to testify in person.”

That’s Halloween, of course. Selig will come dressed as a Stormtrooper, while expect McCourt to appear as Robin Hood. Oh, not because he wants to appear generous to those less fortunate, of course. He just likes the feel of the green tights.

Gross: “The Court will not permit [Dodgers] to take discovery into or of other baseball clubs. These cases are about the Dodgers.”

This is a big blow for McCourt, given the recent suggestion that he may try to drag the Marlins and the rest of MLB into this mess. No better way to try to deflect criticism of your own mess than to use the tried-and-true defense of every five-year-old, “but DAD! He did it too!”

BOTTOM LINE: McCourt: Selig has double standard in treatment of #Dodgers vs Mets, Marlins, etc. Gross: Other clubs not relevant.

BOTTOM LINE: McCourt: “Hey, an enormously huge part of my case rests on this one idea.” Court: “Get bent.”

Gross wants key issue resolved soon so #Dodgers can “utilize the approaching off season to prepare for the 2012 season.”

No. No, no, no. Don’t get sucked in by this, because I know it sounds lovely. As you’ll see in the next tweet, this is just about whether MLB has the right to be rid of McCourt if they choose to be. That does not mean that there would be any sort of new owner in place in time for this offseason, and if anything the finances could be even more of a mess.

If court schedule holds, we could have answer in early November about whether McCourt can hold onto #Dodgers or MLB can kick him out.

So tempting to be excited about this. Then we remember that McCourt almost certainly has about 27 more appeals lined up to last decades. Still, this is progress – and very, very bad news for Frank McCourt, which certainly brightens my day.

Forget Matt Kemp, as Jon Heyman appears to have already done. Bill Shaikin, MVP.

A Dodger Fan Guide to Rooting in the Playoffs

September 30, 2011 at 7:41 am | Posted in PLAYOFFS | 48 Comments

It is now… *checks watch*… 186 days until Opening Day 2012. And while we might all be anxious to see what the Dodger lineup will look like when the team takes the field in early April, there’s still a whole lot of baseball to be played in 2011. But in the seven hours or so before C.J. Wilson throws the first pitch of the playoffs against Tampa Bay (starting Matt Moore, a decision that – right or wrong – I just can’t get over because of the sheer bravado involved), Dodger fans have a decision to make: who are we pulling for to win the title this year?

First, the good news: it can’t be the Giants again. As someone (and I forget who, so sorry) noted on Twitter during Wednesday night’s wildness, “we don’t have to deal with Brian Wilson this October, so that means we’re all winners.” Truer words were never spoken. Even if they weren’t spoken, but rather Tweeted, and then paraphrased by me.

At ESPN, Jim Caple attempts to measure a team’s “Rootability Index” through a complex series of criteria, but sometimes it’s more fun to be subjective. Let’s look at the competitors through Dodger-tinged glasses, from most offensive to least.

Absolutely No Way In Hell Division

Philadelphia Phillies

Like I even need to explain why, right? The Phillies not only have a recent championship and two recent NL pennants, they crushed the Dodger postseason dreams in both ’08 and ’09 in the most brutal ways possible. That alone disqualifies them from consideration. Plus who among us doesn’t find Shane Victorino to be insufferable? Besides, it’s not that I haven’t enjoyed the collection of rotation aces they’ve put together from a fan point of view, but I do like the idea that simply having a roster like that doesn’t automatically equal victory.

Oh, and everyone from Philadelphia is a horrible, soulless subhuman. So there’s that.

Chances of Me Rooting For Them Are Roughly Equal to Eugenio Velez Getting a Hit Division

New York Yankees

Unlike most of you, I’m guessing, I don’t despise the Yankees. Yes, they have the most money, and they can be obnoxious at times, but they’re run by smart people and I don’t see the point in rooting against them just for the sake of it. On the other hand, I have absolutely no idea how you can claim to be an impartial fan and actually root for the Yankees. It’s not like they need more people on the bandwagon or are desperately in need of a recent championship, though considering their rotation is C.C. Sabathia and not a whole lot else, it’d be interesting to see them pull it off. Still, a whole lot of things would have to go terribly wrong for me to start pulling for the Yankees in the playoffs.

If you’re not a Yankee fan and you’re rooting for them this October, you’re dead inside.

Arizona Diamondbacks

To be honest, I don’t hate the Diamondbacks either – most of them. Their worst-to-first run this year has been a great story for the game, and I’m glad to see Kirk Gibson & Kevin Towers having success as manager and GM, two guys I’ve always admired. Even their roster is mostly inoffensive, and toiling away in the desert means that megastar Justin Upton is woefully underappreciated on a national scale. If they win the NL pennant, it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world (unless you’re a television executive, which, who cares.)

Yet there are a few problems with rooting for the Snakes from a Dodger fan point of view. First of all, they are a division rival, so that’s hard to cheer for, and they already have a World Series championship despite being in just their 14th season. They’re also the team that collected Willie Bloomquist, Geoff Blum, and Sean Burroughs at various points this year, leading to untold levels of “grit” and “scrap” like the world has never seen before. That’s not a notion of victory that I want to reinforce.

But most of all? Gerardo Parra. Screw Gerardo Parra.

St. Louis Cardinals

Tony LaRussa manages the Cardinals. Ryan Theriot plays for the Cardinals. With apologies to Rafael Furcal, absolutely not.

Good Teams From Places I’m Glad I Don’t Live Division

Texas Rangers

Rooting for Texas holds some appeal, if only because they were in financial straits nearly as dire as the Dodgers and have been one of the best teams in baseball despite it. Jon Daniels is the kind of GM I wish the Dodgers had, and he’s one of the few who can say that he snookered Toronto GM Alex Anthopoulos by stealing Mike Napoli for Frank Francisco on the back-end of the Vernon Wells trade last winter.

That said, they were in the World Series just a year ago, and I like variety. Besides, if Michael Young is hilariously already receiving MVP support for what was a good-but-not-great season, just imagine what it’ll be like if he’s flashing a ring.

Detroit Tigers

Other than the teams who are facing the Tigers, if you’re rooting against Detroit, you hate America, freedom, and puppies. How could you not want to give some amount of joy to that barren region? Yes, the Tigers were in the World Series just five years ago, but they haven’t actually won one since Gibson and Jack Morris were rolling over the Burger King Padres nearly 30 years ago, and Justin Verlander is an absolute joy to watch.

On the other hand, Brad Penny would get a ring too. I’m not sure I can abide by that.

Jumping on the Bandwagon Division

Tampa Bay Rays

The funny thing about the Rays is, they’ve already been one of the best stories in baseball for years. Coming from the depths of the “Devil Rays” era, they’ve already been to a World Series (2008) and won a division title (2010) – hell, they’ve already had a book written about them. They could have done just about nothing else and still had their recent clubs be memorable, but no, they had to top that this season by ditching Carl Crawford, Carlos Pena, and their entire bullpen, falling nine games out of the Wild Card in early September, fighting back to tie on the last day before being down 7-0 in the 8th inning against the Yankees… only to tie the game on a homer by Dan Johnson and his .108 average and win it on an Evan Longoria walkoff, his second of the game, almost simultaneously to the Orioles coming back to topple the mighty Red Sox.

You’re going to root against that team? Really? Hey, their fans may not support them, so you might as well, though slight demerits for the team that turned fringe players (Danys Baez & Lance Carter) into a few years of just-above-replacement performance from Edwin Jackson (2.2 rWAR with Tampa) into Matthew Joyce (matching 132 OPS+ scores the last two years) at the expense of the Dodgers.

But while I’d be quite happy seeing them come out of the AL, I can’t quite root for them to take the whole thing just yet, because there’s still the…

“One Brat to Unite Them All” Division

Milwaukee Brewers

I am trying, and failing, to think of a single reason to root against Milwaukee this postseason. Despite being in a small market, they have outstanding fans who consistently support the team. They have arguably the best owner in baseball, one who is willing to reinvest in the club, and one who I’ve already hoped would come rescue the Dodgers. They might have a small window, because of their very risky (and very entertaining) strategy to go “all-in” this year on the Zack Greinke & Shaun Marcum trades, in addition to Prince Fielder‘s impending free agency. (To clarify, because I’ve seen this before, that doesn’t mean they’re losing 98 games in 2012, just that there’s little left coming from the farm and Prince is likely to be elsewhere.) Their closer, John Axford, has a wicked mustache and comes out to obscure Swedish hardcore, rather than the generic butt-rock so many closers use today, and one of his set-up men is our old favorite Takashi Saito. They have Nyjer Morgan, who – while loved and hated by many – has created a gentlemanly Twitter alter-ego, Tony Plush, which is so ridiculous that it’s amazing.

Like Arizona, they’re led by a former Dodger, Ron Roenicke, and none of the three-headed ace crew of Greinke / Marcum / Yovani Gallardo threw more innings than old friend Randy Wolf. Hell, they also have Matt Kemp‘s main competition for the MVP in Ryan Braun, and it’s hard to even root against him because Braun has had such an absolutely MVP-quality season himself.

So… I guess I’m rooting for the 30th largest market (i.e., the smallest) to face the 26th largest market in the World Series. Oh, television people are going to love me.

82-79

September 29, 2011 at 6:45 am | Posted in Clayton Kershaw, Matt Kemp | 55 Comments

Now that the insanity of last night has subsided a bit, I can look back at the season and honestly say: what.. a.. year.

I can say with little hyperbole that 2011 had some of the lowest and most exhausting moments I can ever remember in my years of following this club. Every time you thought it was as bad as it could get, it would get worse. I mean, bad enough where we were pining for the good old simple days of a bitterly public divorce that was threatening to tear the organization apart. That was before Frank McCourt made as many deals with the devil to make payroll as he could, before MLB took steps to take over the club, before McCourt then took the club into bankruptcy to save his skin, before a list of his many embarrassments became the most-read post in this history of this site, before court dates became more important than playoff dates, before Bryan Stow was nearly beaten to death in the parking lot, and before thousands upon thousands of empty, empty Dodger Stadium seats.

That’s also all before we even got to baseball. A team largely built on older players who couldn’t get on base… got hurt and didn’t get on base. The projected starting infield foursome started all of two games together. Casey Blake couldn’t stay healthy. Rafael Furcal couldn’t stay healthy or perform before being traded. Juan Uribe, when he wasn’t busy also not staying healthy, was an expensive and horrific disaster. James Loney looked to threaten records for offensive futility, and the question was less “will he be non-tendered” and more “will he even make it through the season?” Andre Ethier complained about his contract status, had a 30-game hitting streak, and then hit just .265 with 8 homers over the next four months while continuing to say stupid things before ending his season early to have knee surgery. Eugenio Velez existed. Dioner Navarro got hurt, was awful, and then was cut due to a poor work ethic. Aaron Miles got nearly 500 plate appearances. The three-headed left field monster of JaMarcus Gwybbons, Jr., which was never ever going to work, didn’t work. Trayvon Robinson was traded in a deal that just about no one outside of Ned Colletti seemed to like. Ted Lilly kicked off his $33m deal by serving mostly as a butt of jokes about how many dingers or stolen bases he’d allow that day. Chad Billingsley infuriated us by continuing to be consistently inconsistent, and Hiroki Kuroda refused to be traded. Jonathan Broxton never recovered from Joe Torre’s abuse. Hong-Chih Kuo‘s demons returned. Ronald Belisario didn’t. Jon Garland and Vicente Padilla combined to throw just 62.2 innings, while Kenley Jansen had to deal with a heart condition. Rubby De La Rosa made a smashing debut and was then cruelly snatched away from us for a year or more.

By July, they were 14 games under and 14.5 out, lows that hadn’t been reached in years, and it was somehow even worse than that. It’s one thing to follow a bad team; Pirates fans, among others, have been doing that for decades. But the off-field disasters combined with an on-field product that was not only lousy but just flat out boring made for the worst combination of all. It was hard to care. That’s how you know the season has gotten away from you, when you’ve got the option to flip on the Dodger game, watch yet another rerun of “the Simpsons”, or just go to bed, and the Dodger game is no longer a no-brainer choice.

And yet, as the season slowly droned on… there was hope. Not off the field, perhaps, as the legal battles have no end in sight and long-time communications honcho and all-around good guy Josh Rawitch departed for Arizona, though Stow is thankfully showing signs of recovery. But on the field, things turned around. At one point starting in late August, they won 11 of 12 games; their 34-20 record in August and September was among the best in baseball. Matt Kemp and Clayton Kershaw busted out to battle for the highest individual awards and produce seasons that will go down in team history. Loney suddenly became the best hitter on the planet, while Juan Rivera came over from Toronto to give Kemp some much-needed aid. Even Lilly turned it around, finishing the year with six consecutive homer-free starts after having allowed 16 in his previous 12. On the bench, Don Mattingly began to earn our respect. Young arms like Nathan Eovaldi, Scott Elbert, Josh Lindblom, and particularly Javy Guerra arrived to join the unhittable and record-setting Jansen to reinforce what was a tattered relief staff. The next wave of hitters made their debuts, generally forced to do so ahead of schedule, and Dee Gordon, Jerry Sands, Tim Federowicz, & Justin Sellers all look like they could be contributors in 2012. Perhaps most importantly of all, Vin Scully announced that he’d be so kind as to grace us with his presence for at least one more season.

A season that could have easily been a 61-101 debacle turned into an 82-79 revelation – an actual winning season, which in itself is a minor miracle considering all that happened. While there’s a ton of uncertainty headed into the offseason, this is at least a team where if you squint hard enough and jam your fingers in your ears deep enough to drown out the courtroom battles, you could possibly see a playoff contender next year. That might not sound like much, but it’s something, and that’s a whole lot more than we had just a while ago. (I, uh, didn’t mean to paraphrase a semi-obscure punk rock band there, but it just sort of happened.) Where once there was merely despair and hopelessness, the second half rebound at least provided some measure of joy and a possible light at the end of the tunnel.

As for this side of the screen, it’s been a good year. The blog has broken every previous traffic record it ever had, thanks to you all, and I was lucky enough to win an award I had no business winning, to be interviewed on SNY, do a few video podcasts with Jon Weisman of Dodger Thoughts (yes, you can all relax, my goofy beard is long gone), and fulfill a lifelong dream of being called a goof on the radio by Pat O’Brien. Yes, that Pat O’Brien. I was also able to conduct a fun interview with Christopher Jackson of the Albuquerque Baseball Examiner (who provided invaluable AAA insight all season), get interviewed a few times on Sirius / XM radio, and continue my duties at Baseball Prospectus.

All of which is to say… it might not have been the brightest year on the field, but sometimes that makes it all the more fun. Cheers to all of you for sticking it out with me and keeping me honest. Baseball never stops, of course; we’ll be starting to look at arbitration decisions, 2011 reviews, and 2012 plans before you know it, probably early next week. See you there.

Dodgers Say Goodbye to 2011 on Greatest Night in Baseball History

September 28, 2011 at 9:27 pm | Posted in Matt Kemp, Ted Lilly | 62 Comments

I was going to put up a post after this game that served as a quick season recap before we get into offseason business, but after everything that’s happened tonight, that’s going to have to wait until tomorrow. Who, myself included, could honestly focus on the relatively meaningless Dodger game tonight, even though it was the final one of the year?

Sure, I had it up on MLB.tv on my computer, and I cheered when Matt Kemp hit his 39th homer of the year. But I also had the Red Sox / Orioles game sharing half the screen, with Phillies / Braves & Yankees / Rays (once the Yankee bullpen started to fall apart) sharing time on my television. As if having four must-win games with vital playoff implications wasn’t enough, three of them were nailbiters, with two going into extra innings. I absolutely cannot remember a night of baseball more entertaining than this, to the point where the “OH MY GOD” I posted on Twitter when Dan Johnson completed the Tampa comeback with a 2-2, two out dinger in the 9th was matched by a similar verbal exclamation in my living room, even though it was a game I had absolutely no vested interest in.

Honestly, part of this has to be the times we live in. Simply watching 3-4 amazing games on multiple devices simultaneously (plus the Dodger game) wasn’t enough, because the magic of Twitter meant that I was watching them with about 150 of my closest friends. As I joked at the time that Johnson’s ball hit the foul pole, I wish I could have printed out the last 200 or so tweets and framed them.

And then it got even better. The Braves choked away their game in the 13th inning in Philly. About 15 minutes later, Jonathan Papelbon gave up the tying and winning runs in Baltimore. Less than five minutes after that, Evan Longoria was walking off in Tampa. Is that even all accurate? Who can tell – it all happened so fast, and so hilariously, because in the span of about 20 minutes we witnessed the two worst collapses in baseball history.

I loved every minute of it. Seriously. I can’t remember the last time watching baseball was so absolutely joyful, and I’m not sure we’ll ever see anything like it again.

And the Dodgers? Yeah, that happened. Ted Lilly threw seven solid shutout innings, and five Dodgers had two hits, including James Loney‘s 12th homer of the year. Really, the game was in no way as close as the 7-5 final would indicate, because it was 7-0 until Ramon Troncoso decided it was time to allow a grand slam and then a solo homer in the ninth. Oh, and we saw another kind of history: when Eugenio Velez grounded out weakly to second, it was his 46th consecutive hitless at-bat, a new major league record. So, uh, congrats there, Eugenio.

But let’s not pretend any of that is more important than this, Rod Barajas holding Gordon in some sort of bizarre baby cradle before the game. For a guy who writes hundreds (or more) words about the Dodgers every day, I am, for once, speechless:

Back tomorrow with the farewell to 2011 post. For now, I’m breathless from an absolutely outstanding night of baseball.

That Loss Was More of an Oddity than a Disaster

September 28, 2011 at 5:46 am | Posted in Blake Hawksworth, Javy Guerra | 122 Comments

Before we all start beating each other up over Tuesday night’s historic loss, let’s turn it over to commenter Paul for some much-needed clarity:

I tried really hard to be bummed out about this, but just couldn’t. This game means basically nothing, and I was almost amused by the statistical oddity of overcoming a win expectancy that high. Plus watching Ryan Roberts making fun of Kirk Gibson was pretty great.

It’s true. In previous, more competitive seasons – or lord help us, if it had been Jonathan Broxton on the mound – we’d have heard untold doomsday predictions and suicide pacts after this one. But now, in the penultimate game of a generally mediocre season after they’ve already clinched a winning record? It’s definitely more of an “wow, that happened” sort of feeling.

I mean, look at the FanGraphs WPA chart and try not to laugh:

And “happen” it did, somewhat disappointingly for Hiroki Kuroda, if this was indeed his final start as a Dodger, since he was outstanding through six shutout innings. Just look at the hijinks that took place in the top of the 10th, when the Dodgers scored five to bust open a one-run game. Dee Gordon “doubled” on what was really a well-placed (though well-struck) ground ball through the right side, then when Jerry Sands did his best to sacrifice himself with a foolish bunt (don’t get me started), Micah Owings gifted them a run by throwing the ball away attempting to get Gordon at third. That was followed by another error – Chris Young kicking around a single by Matt Kemp - and then after a groundout, single, and a walk, A.J. Ellis tripled in two runs. And by “tripled”, I of course mean, “he blasted a ball off the right field fence that ricocheted back into Justin Upton‘s face,” which is the only way Ellis is hitting triples. (When I first saw that, my initial throught was, “Chad Moriyama‘s going to gif that.” Yep, and it’s glorious.) Owings retired Jamey Carroll and Justin Sellers to finish off his nightmare frame, but the damage was done. (And more on him in a second.)

As fun as it was to see the Dodgers take such a lead in the top of the tenth, it didn’t come without a large amount of Arizona assistance, particularly Owing’s throwing error, so when Blake Hawksworth made his own mistake by failing to cover first on what would have been a game-ending bouncer to James Loney it almost seemed poetic. But still, that only put one man on, and he was still able to come within one strike of ending the game against Miguel Montero… and he couldn’t do it. Montero singled. Young walked. Aaron Miles booted a grounder to third – and I don’t want to hear any more about Miles, who’s a brutal third baseman and who is hitting .234/.292/.313 since the All-Star break – and that was it for Hawksworth.

Javy Guerra, who’d already been up and down at least once, entered as the eighth Dodger pitcher of the night. I don’t need to tell you what happened after that. But I do find it entertaining that no one is asking if Guerra has the “ice in his veins” or the “guts” to be a closer, right?

As Paul says, this was an embarrassing but ultimately meaningless loss. If anything, I think it illustrates much of what we talked about earlier yesterday as far as the bullpen goes: 1) relievers are inherently volatile; 2) veteran relievers don’t automatically mean superior performance, since even though Guerra gets the loss, it was Hawksworth who really choked this game away, and Matt Guerrier allowed the first run by failing to record a single out.

It probably says a lot about this season, I think, that on the list of “awful things that happened,” this can’t be higher that 15th or 20th on the list. Ted Lilly tries to end it on a high note later today.

******

Reason #1390138910 why pitcher wins and losses are stupid: Kuroda entered the game 13-16, and he didn’t factor into the decision. That record represents a career high in both wins and losses. So, he’s had both the best and worst season of his career? Got it.

Reason #1390138911: I mean, Owings allowed five runs in one inning before heading off to the showers. He got the win. I can’t believe I still have to argue with people about this. (Jon Weisman amusingly pointed out that since Owings had a 45.00 ERA in the game but won, that must mean the ERA stat is flawed. Ha.)

******

Good news: Ned Colletti noted that the entire coaching staff is expected back in 2012. You know what a big proponent I’ve been of this group, particularly after the ineffectiveness of Joe Torre’s crew, so this is a big win.

Youth In the Bullpen Is Still the Way to Go

September 27, 2011 at 7:58 am | Posted in Javy Guerra, Kenley Jansen, Matt Guerrier, Ned Colletti | 65 Comments

I hate to ever, ever use T.J. Simers as a source for anything – hell, in the same column we’re about to discuss, he says he’d choose Ian Kennedy over Clayton Kershaw for the Cy Young because “without Kennedy the Diamondbacks don’t win the division”, as though A) that makes sense or B) Cliff Lee and Roy Halladay don’t exist – but the LA Times‘ resident clownshoe did manage to elicit an interesting quote out of Ned Colletti yesterday:

He’s hoping Hiroki Kuroda returns and will look to add a veteran to the bullpen, “but not a closer,” he says. “I think we’ll go with a combination of Kenley Jensen [sic] and Javy Guerra.”

For such a short sentence, there’s a whole lot going on there, and I’m not talking about Kuroda. Let’s take the second part first, where he says they’ll stick with Guerra and Kenley Jansen (not that Simers knows who that is) in the back of the bullpen. This is unquestionably the correct decision, because Jansen has been one of the most dominating relievers we’ve seen in years – decades, perhaps – and Guerra, for all of our uncertainty about his underwhelming peripherals, has consistently gotten the job done as the closer. While Jansen fits the prototypical mold of the fireballing closer more than Guerra, I agree with Jon Weisman that using him as the fireman in the highest leverage situations is a much better use of his time than shoehorning him into the 9th inning because that’s simply what closers do, which is often not when the game is won or lost. Going out and spending big dollars on a closer just because he has “saves”, like Francisco Rodriguez, Matt Capps, or Heath Bell, is not the most efficient usage of money when you have Jansen and Guerra, and good on Colletti for recognizing that.

If that was the end of the story, we’d be sitting pretty, but unfortunately, Colletti had to add that he wants to add a veteran to the bullpen, and that’s where the problems begin. We’ve talked ad nauseum around here about the unfortunate Matt Guerrier contract and how handing out multi-year contracts to decent-ish middle relievers rarely works (particularly when, as shown in that last link, better veteran relievers were signed for less money last winter).

It’s not even that Guerrier has been bad this year, because he hasn’t, just that there’s almost no way he lives up to the money committed to him, as Chad Moriyama broke down a few weeks ago:

Guerrier was the big money free agent signing, and he was actually decently productive in 2011. Unfortunately, the only reason he clocks in at positive value is because of the deferred nature of his overall contract (4 Y/12 M), so he’ll have to get better in a hurry if he wants to continue breaking even. The more likely scenario is that it ends up being a neutral to poor overall transaction.

-

Over the course of the 2011 season, the Dodgers relief corps has proved that bullpen arms are indeed a fickle and fungible group, with production to be found from a multitude of sources, and that the most value out of the pen is commonly derived from those making the least. Sticking with cheap team controlled building blocks in the bullpen can be highly effective, and the money used to sign costly relievers can frequently be better used elsewhere.

This is especially true because relief pitching is one of the few areas that the Dodgers are relatively deep in as far as young arms on the way up. In addition to Jansen, Guerra, Guerrier, Scott Elbert, & Josh Lindblom, all proven at the big league level (we’ll have to get back to whether Hong-Chih Kuo gets tendered a contract another time), the organization is full of nearly-ready names like Shawn Tolleson, Steven Ames, & Cole St. Clair, moderately useful filler like Blake Hawksworth (if tendered) and Jon Link, plus who among us doesn’t believe that Mike MacDougal and his shiny ERA will be back? That’s a pretty full bullpen right there, and it’s not like this team doesn’t have a dozen other holes to fill in the upcoming offseason.

Now, if signing a veteran bullpen arm means another scrap-heap type like MacDougal, then fine, since for all his warts he made just $500,000 this year. Colletti does seem to be able to find at least one arm like that every year. If it means handing out another multi-year deal to one of the members of this year’s non-elite reliever free agent class – I’m looking at you, Jon Rauch, Mike Gonzalez, Jason Frasor and Chad Qualls – then we could be in trouble.

Matt Kemp Matt Kemps the Diamondbacks. Matt Kemp.

September 26, 2011 at 9:35 pm | Posted in Dana Eveland, Matt Kemp | 29 Comments

Matt Kemp‘s pursuit of the Triple Crown is all but over tonight, since Jose Reyes had three hits and Ryan Braun came off the bench to grab a hit, while Kemp went just 1-4 with two strikeouts, pushing his average down to .324.

That sounds like bad news, but the one hit… well, bask in the glory of Kemp’s 38th homer and fifth in the last eight games:

What a blast. I particularly like the guy in the dark gray shirt who nearly gets beaned by the missile from about 430 feet away. As ESPN/LA’s Tony Jackson noted:

Of Kemp’s now 38 HRs, that was one of the most majestic.

Other things happened tonight, of course, as the Dodgers guaranteed themselves a winning record by moving to 81-78 with two games left. On the offensive side of the ball in addition to Kemp, Jerry Sands extended his hitting streak to 14 games and James Loney hit his 30th (!) double of the season. On the mound, Dana Eveland was impressive in going 5 2/3 scoreless innings, aided by Josh Lindblom getting the final out of a bases-loaded, two-out jam in the sixth. Nathan Eovaldi and Scott Elbert did their best to blow the game in the eighth with four walks, and Dee Gordon did his best to give it away with an error and a botched double play in the ninth, but come on. Matt Kemp. (Actually, back to that eighth inning for a moment; as if on cue, after I dedicated an entire post to praising him today, Don Mattingly chose to bring Mike MacDougal into a tight spot – bases loaded, one out – rather than Kenley Jansen, because of course he did. Jansen did pitch the night before, but only eleven pitches and was off the day before; MacDougal, rather predictably, allowed a run that was not charged to him by walking Geoff Blum.)

Kemp now has two more games to hit two more dingers and become the fifth player in history to have a 40/40 season – which, by the way, would all but guarantee him the MVP award – and the first since Alfonso Soriano did so for Washington in 2006. Mattingly said he’d consider hitting Kemp leadoff on Wednesday in an effort to get him an extra at-bat, though he also said he’d like to continue Joe Torre’s tradition of letting the players manage the final game. In that case, I propose letting him hit in every spot in the lineup, like Bugs Bunny. While Kemp has never seen rookie Jarrod Parker – obviously, since Tuesday is Parker’s MLB debut – he has hit three homers of off Wednesday’s starter, Joe Saunders.

Don Mattingly’s Surprisingly Strong Season

September 26, 2011 at 1:03 pm | Posted in Don Mattingly, Matt Kemp | 51 Comments

I was filling out an award ballot for Howard Cole’s (of Baseball Savvy and the OC Register) IBWAA this morning (fun facts, I placed neither Ian Kennedy nor Prince Fielder in the top five of the NL Cy Young or MVP, respectively), and came upon the “NL Manager of the Year” section. Now, Kirk Gibson is going to get a ton of praise for turning around an Arizona club that lost 97 games last year (including a 34-49 record on his watch) into a runaway division winner this year, and rightfully so. He was my choice, and I imagine he’ll win the actual award. Aside from Gibson, you’ll probably see Milwaukee’s Ron Roenicke garner some support for cruising past 90 wins to a division title in his first year as a manager (despite a clearly superior roster to most of his NL Central competitors), and Charlie Manuel probably deserves some notice for taking a Philadelphia team that everyone thought was going to win 100 games and actually living up to expectations.

And then… well, you could argue that Don Mattingly deserves a pretty large amount of credit, right? Remember, this is a first-year guy who many of us didn’t want to see get the job over Tim Wallach last year, worried as we were about his inexperience, proximity to Joe Torre, and the humiliating “double mound visit” fiasco that helped to blow a game against the Giants while he was filling in for an ejected Torre last July. In addition, he managed in the Arizona Fall League last year, an extremely unusual step for a major league manager.

But he got off to a pretty good start in the spring by naming Clayton Kershaw the Opening Day starter on the first day of camp, rather than letting it linger as Torre had, and (along with Ned Colletti) putting together a coaching staff including Wallach & Davey Lopes that we felt far, far better about than the old-school curmudgeon types like Larry Bowa and Bob Schaefer that Torre had the previous year. Despite another ultimately-meaningless-but-embarrassing gaffe in camp where he filled out the lineup incorrectly, we at least had some hope that Mattingly could be the new, younger leader the club needed after three years of Torre.

And then the season started.

Besieged by injuries, weighed down by awful performances from the Navarros, Uribes, and Cormiers of the world, and assaulted from all sides by the McCourt devastation, the Dodgers sank. They were 14-14 at the end of April, but that was just the beginning. They won just 12 games in May and 10 in June, with 12 more in July. Technically (since they won the season opener on March 31 and went 13-14 in April) they were losers in each of the first four full months of the season. As they reached their low points, falling 14 games under and 14.5 games out in the NL West at different points in July, most of us had all but given up on this team and begged them to sell.

And who could really even blame Mattingly at that point? The roster he’d been given to start with wasn’t a great one, and the injuries and off-field mess eventually made the situation untenable. But, to his credit and that of his coaches, we never saw the team give up. Oh, they were still bad, and oh good lord were they boring for quite a while, but they never quit. We never saw players loafing between the lines, and – other than Andre Ethier‘s annual and completely expected outburst about his contract – we rarely if ever became aware of issues within the clubhouse or with the media. For a team that’s recently lived through Manny Ramirez, Jeff Kent, and popular-if-perhaps-not-totally-accurate suggestions about Matt Kemp, that’s impressive on its face in the light of the outside distractions.

Now that’s all well and good, but it doesn’t really mean too much if the team doesn’t perform on the field, and don’t forget that we all spent the majority of the first four months writing about the potential for the 2011 Dodgers to be remembered on a historically bad level. After a loss on July 22 to Washington, their fourth in five games, the Dodgers had sunk to last place at 43-55, on pace to lose 270 games. (Conservatively.)

But they won the next day. And the next, and the next, and the next. Despite being swept by Philadelphia in the middle of the month, August was the first winning month for the Dodgers, at 17-11. September has been even better, at 15-8, headed into the final three games of the year; all told, the Dodgers are 37-22 since that July 22 game, a .627 winning percentage which would be a 101-61 pace if kept up for an entire season. From the depths of July which few of us had ever seen before, this is a team that needs just one win in the last series to come away with a winning record. There’s not a soul among us who would have believed that midway through the year.

Now let’s be clear, because we talked about this last week when discussing Jeff Pentland vs Dave Hansen: with the exception of the new-and-improved James Loney, this team largely turned around because they turned over their roster. They had more Juan Rivera & second takes of Jerry Sands and Dee Gordon, as opposed to hundreds of plate appearances wasted on the gimpy and useless like Juan Uribe, Dioner Navarro, Marcus Thames, and a less-than-healthy Ethier. A manager, no matter how beloved or despised, can only have so much impact on a game. But had things been allowed to fall apart even more than they had in the middle of the season, there might not even have been the opportunity to rebound.

No, he hasn’t been perfect, because this is the same guy who has killed us with bunts, used Mike MacDougal in big spots, and who once chose Juan Castro over Sands and others to pinch-hit with the bases loaded, which also meant Kershaw came out too early and Lance Cormier had to be used to blow the game. Then again, what manager is? Perhaps I’m colored because I was very vocally disliked Joe Torre, but complaints with managerial decisions seem to be cut by a factor of five this year.

Don Mattingly isn’t going to win the NL Manager of the Year award, nor should he, yet he probably will get some back-end support, and it’s well deserved. If a year ago at this time, nearly to the day, we were worried that with everything else the Dodgers had going on, they’d also have to deal with an inexperienced manager no one could count on, now we’ve seen that Mattingly is capable of keeping the players focused and working, no matter what kind of garbage is coming from the outside. In a season of small victories and big defeats, that’s one to be proud of.

******

Other news: Kemp, unsurprisingly, won the NL Player of the Week award today, his second such honor. He’s still not going to win the Triple Crown. Mattingly, among others, is featured in a new “It Gets Better” anti-bullying Dodgers video out today. And yes, the rumors are true, the Dodgers have slightly updated their logo, and when I say “slightly”, I mean “slightly”. With an understanding of the behind-the-scenes functional reasons the changes were made, however, it makes a whole lot of sense, even if casual fans may not even notice.

Clayton Kershaw All But Wraps Up the Cy Young

September 25, 2011 at 4:00 pm | Posted in Clayton Kershaw | 28 Comments

Clayton Kershaw reached the halfway mark of his 23rd year about 2 weeks ago, and with today’s 6-2 victory over San Diego, he’s merely just finished off what is arguably the best non-Koufax season in the long history of the Brooklyn & Los Angeles Dodgers.

21-5, 2.28 ERA, which is the lowest ERA in all of baseball. 248 strikeouts, the most by any lefty Dodger pitcher other than Koufax in team history, the sixth-highest total overall, and enough for a 2011 National League K crown (assuming Cliff Lee doesn’t whiff 17 in his final start, a number he has never reached.) At 23, it’s the highest strikeout total for someone his age or younger since Dwight Gooden had 268 in 1985. And since June, he’s 14-2, propelling him to an almost certain “pitching Triple Crown”, as much as it makes me cringe to type that phrase.

We can argue about whether those numbers all matter (spoiler alert: they don’t) but those numbers, more than WAR, FIP, or ERA+, are the ones that are going to get engraved in the public memory when you think about Kershaw’s outstanding 2011 season – in the same way people immediately can spout “23-8, 2.26″ when asked about Orel Hershiser’s 1988.

Back in February, I included him among the six reasons for optimism headed into the season:

Last year he made a marked improvement in his major weakness by walking 10 fewer batters despite pitching 30 more innings than in 2009. Don’t forget, he’s not even 23 yet. I’ve been arguing that he turned potential into performance last year, but the greater accolades haven’t quite come yet because of his mediocre (and pointless) win-loss record. This is the year that the greater baseball world recognizes Kershaw in his rightful place as one of the dominant starters in the game.

I’d say he achieved that and more – with the “triple crown” (ugh), in place, the Cy Young seems likely to be in his future in the coming weeks. Kershaw’s season has been so dominant that it hardly feels like spouting the numbers does him justice, and since I have sausages, chicken, and corn on the grill, I won’t attempt to any further.

Thank you, Clayton. Thank you.

Chad Billingsley Tries to End His Season on a High Note

September 24, 2011 at 7:44 am | Posted in Chad Billingsley | 9 Comments

Apologies for interrupting the well-deserved lovefest over Matt Kemp, Clayton Kershaw, and Kenley Jansen (and the freakshow that is Eugenio Velez‘ march towards futility), but let’s take a break to check in on another topic for the moment: Chad Billingsley‘s final start of an uneven season.

Billingsley’s given us a lot to worry about this season, as his K/9 rate has fallen for the third year in a row as his BB/9 rate is up over last season, and he’s run off a string of high-pitch count, low-satisfaction starts in the last month as his velocity has dropped. He’s been claiming that it’s “mechanical issues“, rather than any injury, and that’s something we’ll need to look into deeper in the offseason, particularly since his second half (.764 OPS against, 1.53 K/BB) has been clearly worse than his first half (.711 OPS, 2.04 K/BB). But he did bounce back to allow just one earned runs over five against the Pirates last week, which was both encouraging and slightly disappointing that he couldn’t go further in a 15-1 victory, and it’s hardly like his season has been a John Lackey-eqsue disaster – his 3.81 FIP is 29th in the National League, ahead of Hiroki Kuroda and Wandy Rodriguez.

Billingsley has somehow made it through the entire season without pitching in San Diego, though he did hold the Padres scoreless over eight innings in Dodger Stadium on July 8. (Yes, he allowed five walks that day, but two were intentional.)

One generally meaningless start in a game between two non-contenders really shouldn’t hold that much importance, and maybe it doesn’t. But a solid start to finish off 2011 would do a lot towards helping our outlook on Billingsley headed into the winter.