2011 September « Mike Scioscia's tragic illness

Dodger Offense Bails Out Another Poor Billingsley Start

September 2, 2011 at 8:37 pm | Posted in Chad Billingsley | 37 Comments

I don’t usually include WPA (Win Percentage Added) charts from FanGraphs in these posts, but, yeah, tonight’s an exception:

You can chalk up the fact that the Braves were at something like a 95% chance of winning through three innings to Chad Billingsley, who continued his disconcerting second-half slide by allowing twelve baserunners and five runs (three earned, thanks to a Dee Gordon fielding error) while completing just four innings, getting yanked after letting Chipper Jones single to lead off the fifth. I would really like to see A.J. Ellis start the next time Billingsley goes; I hardly need to tell you that Catcher’s ERA is among the most useless stats around – yes, even worse than pitcher wins or RBI – yet the difference in Billingsley’s performance this year with Ellis back there as opposed to Rod Barajas or Dioner Navarro is striking. That’s not an excuse, of course; Billingsley has been lousy for over a month and it’s his responsibility to perform regardless who he’s pitching to. But if there is something there, it’s worth looking into.

Anyway, for an overwhelming majority of this season, the storyline on a night like this would be “starting pitcher gets hit, team rolls over with a whimper, nothing to see here.” But not the new Dodgers, who apparently hated Navarro even more than we did – this is their 9th win in ten games since he was cut (10 of 11 overall), scoring 71 times in the ten-game span. Tonight’s heroes in coming back from the 5-0 deficit were the same two who have been helping Matt Kemp carry the offense for a month, as Juan Rivera and James Loney combined to reach base five times and drive in six. Gordon also attempted to atone for the error by setting a career high with three hits and stealing two. Not to be forgotten is the bullpen, which came through with five innings spoiled only by Dan Uggla‘s solo homer against Javy Guerra in the 9th. The performance of the bullpen over the course of the season, coming back as it has from the decimating injuries, is a sorely overlooked bright spot of the year so far.

With the win, the Dodgers pull to 67-70, and a .500 season is now well within reach, though it’s too little too late for any sort of playoff run. It almost makes you wonder what could have been if the generally solid pitching had received any sort of similar support for the first four months of the season.

Juan Uribe Will No Longer Haunt Your Dreams

September 2, 2011 at 10:41 am | Posted in Juan Uribe | 30 Comments

…at least for the last month of 2011, anyway.

Surgeries are planned for Casey Blake and Juan Uribe in the coming weeks, with Blake scheduled for a neck operation on Tuesday and Uribe receiving a second opinion before undergoing a procedure to repair a sports hernia.

Whereas Conte described Blake’s surgery as inevitable, Uribe’s was something the Dodgers wanted to avoid.

“We think there is a slight tear and a nerve entrapped there,” Conte said. “There were two ways to go about this. One was to inject the area, see if it would heal, rest it and progressively get him back.”

That course of treatment appeared to be working — until Monday, when Uribe felt pain when sprinting.

“That told us the conservative approach was probably not going to work,” Conte said. “We suggested he get surgery.”

Conte said Uribe is on board with the plan.

“He would have a normal off-season,” Conte said.

Uribe ends his first season as a Dodger with a horrifically disappointing .204/.264/.294 line and nearly as many stints on the disabled list (two) as homers (four). The resulting .204 TAv is ahead of only Paul Janish, Alexis Rios, and Chone Figgins – that’s right, even worse than Adam Dunn – among the 233 big leaguers with as many plate appearances as Uribe had. (For the record, wOBA agrees, tying him for fourth with Rios, though also putting him ahead of Franklin Gutierrez.) It’s almost like you shouldn’t have given $21m to a 31-year-old coming off two one-year contracts totaling $4.2m, right?

No matter how you slice it, Uribe’s Dodger debut was an absolute disaster – but hey, at least he’s still got $15m more coming to him over the next two years plus a $1m bonus in 2014. It’s not even fun to apply actual analysis to Uribe’s season, so let’s instead delve into hilarious facts that exist concerning him:

1) Nearly eight years ago, he was traded straight-up for current teammate Aaron Miles. No, really.

2) The most Uribe-related fun we had this entire season was with a never-true-and-quickly-refuted rumor that the Giants might actually have been interested in taking him back in July.

3) There’s an entire Tumblr dedicated to how sad Juan Uribe makes everyone.

4) The best part of Uribe’s baseball-reference Similarity Score list is not that it’s a who’s-who of mediocre middle infielders over the last 20 years (Robby Thompson, Jeff Blauser, Jose Hernandez, Felipe Lopez, etc.) but that both Alex Gonzalezes make the list.

Don’t come back, Juan. We won’t miss you. Still, the fact that Uribe and Blake officially admit defeat on the same day does serve as a poetic reminder of what really had the most damaging effect on this club – that the original starting infield of James Loney, Uribe, Rafael Furcal, and Blake started just two games together, both in April.

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One of my favorite Twitter feeds is that of Matthew Kaminski, aka @BravesOrganist, who plays the keys in Atlanta. He’s often coming up with clever songs to play for opposing players as they walk up to the plate, and with the Dodgers in town this weekend, he needs our help:

#Braves vs. #Dodgers – any song ideas for the Dodgers’ players?

Hit him up on Twitter or leave your best ideas here. The Mighty Mouse theme for Miles? “Cryin’” for Andre Ethier? The possibilities are endless.

Dana Eveland Ships Casey Blake to China

September 1, 2011 at 4:08 pm | Posted in Bill Burkle, Casey Blake, China?, Dana Eveland | 42 Comments

There’s so much news today that the fact that the Dodgers won 6-4 over Pittsburgh in today’s rare one-game stop almost seems like an afterthought. Okay, I suppose it wasn’t for Dana Eveland, who allowed just one run over eight innings in his first major-league appearance in over a year. (As rain clouds loomed before the game, threatening to rain out a rain out, I briefly pondered whether Eveland would lose his chance to be a Dodger at all this season.) Eveland wasn’t what you’d call dominating, striking out just three, but whenever you can avoid a single walk and keep the ball in the park against a lowly offense like Pittsburgh’s, you’re going to have a good shot at success. (And whenever you’re inserted into the ninth inning of a 6-1 game, Blake Hawksworth, it helps to not allow a hit and a dinger in your two batters.)

On the offensive side, the Dodgers essentially put the game away in the top of the first, as singles by Dee Gordon (in his first game back off the disabled list), Matt Kemp, & Andre Ethier, along with a sacrifice fly from Tony Gwynn, put them up 3-0 before the Pirates came to bat. James Loney, continuing his hot streak with two more hits, would add the fourth run when he came home on a Ryan Doumit passed ball in the seventh inning. That was followed by Dee Gordon doubling in two more in the eighth after Chris Resop somehow walked Eveland to load the bases, which I think is grounds for deportation. Along with Loney, A.J. Ellis, Gordon, and Kemp each had two hits; for Kemp, that came along with his 35th stolen base of the year as we watch to see if he can somehow get to 40/40 on the season, which may just be the only way he can grab that National League MVP award from a losing team.

Of course, the game wasn’t even close to being the biggest news of the day… and you know I’m talking about Casey Blake‘s decision to have neck surgery to resolve the pinched nerve which has plagued him for weeks. I suggested this was inevitable weeks ago, though that was mostly for roster purposes at the time; now, it’s a disappointing end to one of the more popular Dodgers we’ve seen in recent years. As I mentioned in the piece linked, Blake was by most measures one of the better third basemen in the club’s history, in addition to his reputation as an excellent person. The miniscule chance that the Dodgers were going to exercise his $6m option for 2012 is now all but officially zero, and it remains to be seen whether his baseball career will end alongside his Dodger career. He will be missed.

…and then there’s the news that set hearts aflutter, as Bill Shaikin of the LA Times reported that Frank McCourt had received a $1.2 billion – yes, with a b, and yes, you do need to read that in a Dr. Evil voice – for the team from a group headed by Bill Burke and Chinese investors.

It’s hard to ignore that dollar figure, since it completely destroys the previous record sale price of $845m for the Cubs several years ago, and since not even Frank McCourt could thumb his nose at that much money. It’s also hard to think there’s a snowball’s chance in hell of this happening:

The bid terms proposed by the Burke group call for an all-cash payment to buy the Dodgers, all real estate related to the team and the team’s media rights, according to the letter. Attorneys for McCourt have said he could try to keep Dodger Stadium and the surrounding parking lots even if he sold the team.

The bid would expire in 21 days, according to the letter, with the goal of closing a deal within 90 days, subject to the approvals of the bankruptcy court and Major League Baseball.

The letter did not specify who would finance the Burke bid, other than to say the money would come from “certain state-owned investment institutions of the People’s Republic of China” as well as unidentified American investors. Foreign investment is not necessarily an obstacle to MLB ownership; the Seattle Mariners’ ownership group includes a significant Japanese presence.

So let’s get this straight: a bid with a short timeframe, coming from “state-owned investment institutions” in China? Oh sure, nothing shady about that. (Shaikin added on Twitter that MLB is “skeptical” of the offer, with more detail to come.) Though the Shaikin column references Seattle and their Japanese ownership, that’s a little different, since the M’s are owned by the public company Nintendo, and not an unknown “state-owned” source. (That said, the wealth of Communism jokes to be made as applied to baseball would be endless.) Either way, foreign sports owners – not just coming into America, but also Americans owning teams elsewhere, such as in European soccer – never seem to work out well. Until we know more, this is a great example of not just rooting for any sale, we need to be rooting for the right sale.