Chad Billingsley « Mike Scioscia's tragic illness

Winter Meetings Day Three: The Search for Offense

December 7, 2011 at 7:30 am | Posted in Carlos Lee, Chad Billingsley, Delmon Young, Josh Bard | 81 Comments

For about five minutes last night, the Dodger corner of the internet exploded into panic when Jon Heyman reported that they were about to sign soon-to-be-34-year-old catcher Josh Bard, owner of a .217/.282/.332 cumulative line over the last four years, to a $750k deal. The questions were immediate: another terrible veteran? Another catcher? Was A.J. Ellis about to be traded? Were they really going to try to set the all-time record for backstop futility by pairing Bard with Matt Treanor? Were my jokes about trying to assemble 2006′s best team suddenly not jokes?

And then Dylan Hernandez reported it was to be a minor-league deal, one that’s not even completed yet. So, crisis averted. For now.

Bard-gate aside, there was actually some juicy news coming, as Molly Knight reported the Dodgers might have interest in Chase Headley, and Tony Jackson & Ken Gurnick expanded on Hernandez’s tweet that the Dodgers were persuing offense via trade.

Jackson:

Tamin said two of those were the Dodgers’ hitting against lefties and what Tamin referred to as “ballpark effect.” By that, Tamin explained, he meant the fact the Dodgers play almost 100 games each year in three pitchers’ parks, those being Dodger Stadium, San Diego’s Petco Park and San Francisco’s AT&T Park.

Colletti also said, when asked if the player he is trying to acquire is an everyday player, “He has been.”

That would seem to suggest a veteran in the twilight of his career, a right-handed hitter and a guy who is more of a gap-to-gap, line-drive hitter than a power hitter. Colletti specifically said he wasn’t looking for a flyball hitter. The player likely would be a corner outfielder who could fill in for right fielder Andre Ethier against certain left-handed pitchers.

Okay, so righty outfielder, good against lefties, more of a doubles type than a homer bat, not named “Jerry Sands“. We can do some investigative work on that, right? Let’s fire up the list of outfielders with at least 100 plate appearances against lefties in 2011, an admittedly arbitrary bar. That gets us 93 results, so let’s remove lefties, free agents, players who have never been everyday starters, and the guys who obviously aren’t available – Jose Bautista, Ryan Braun, Justin Upton, etc. Now we’re down to 14, and wouldn’t you know it, the three guys who I had in my head at the start of this exercise are all on the list. We’ll cut out the bottom five, all of whom were terrible against lefties last year (so long, Marlon Byrd!) and that leaves us with 9 names, sorted here by wOBA against LHP in 2011:

Carlos Lee
Jason Bay
Jeff Francoeur
Torii Hunter
Vernon Wells
Ryan Raburn
Alfonso Soriano
Delmon Young
B.J. Upton

A list that mostly comprises over-the-hill, expensive veterans? Well, now I know we’re on the right path. (If you’re wondering who the three I had guessed at were, it was Lee, Bay, and Young.) But we can do better. Eliminate Hunter & Wells, since the two Los Angeles teams haven’t paired up on a trade since 1993, and that gets us down to seven. Francoeur is someone I’ve expressed interest in in the past for exactly this role, though he signed a two-year extension last year and Dayton Moore loves him, so I find that unlikely. I also doubt Raburn, generally a utility player, is the kind of move Colletti is looking to make, and that leaves us with a final five:

Carlos Lee
Jason Bay
Alfonso Soriano
Delmon Young
B.J. Upton

My lord, that list is the most Ned thing that ever Ned’d. Can we go further? Upton’s in his prime and would take a massive haul to acquire, whereas this sounds like more of a complimentary piece. Soriano is a noted flyball type, which doesn’t seem to fit… and that leaves us with Lee, Bay, and Young. (I swear I didn’t rig this to end up with those three.) The obvious issue with Lee & Bay is that they’re both very expensive, since Lee still has $18.5m coming to him in the final year of his contract, while Bay has $16m in each of the next two years, plus a vesting option for 2014 – though each team is awful and should clearly be very motivated to move those salaries. Young is arbitration-eligible and will probably make $6-7m in 2012, though he’s a very un-Ned-like 26. Despite the negative connotations all bring, they all did well against lefties last year, so as long as we’re talking about “platoon player” and not “everyday starter”, there’s some chance of value there. Obviously, this is all far from scientific on my part; I’ve assumed that James Loney is staying put, and that the bat being looked at isn’t an infielder like a Placido Polanco. If Loney is potentially traded or non-tendered, then that opens up discussions to players like Mark Reynolds and others.

Since we’re talking about salaries, now’s an ideal time to bring in Gurnick’s contribution:

Without offering a name, he said one player he is targeting has been a starter at his position and would be “payroll neutral,” indicating that either the player he would send would be of similar salary or the other club would pick up part of the incoming salary. Colletti said he didn’t expect a deal while at the Meetings, which end Thursday.

Now things get interesting, and let me be clear – what follows is rampant speculation on my part, as this entire post has been. The Dodger roster is constructed in such a way that there’s not a whole lot of money that can be moved. None of the recent free agent signings are eligible to be traded before June, and of the players making big money, you’re obviously not moving Matt Kemp or Clayton Kershaw – and I’d argue that the club has no interest in moving Ted Lilly or Andre Ethier, either. That leaves players with very little trade value (Juan Uribe, James Loney, Matt Guerrier)… and Chad Billingsley. As infuriating as he can be sometimes, I’d argue that he’s underrated by Dodger fans, and it’s hard to ignore the fact that Colletti just locked up two more veteran starters through 2013. Just a thought, of course, and you’d have to do better than Lee or Bay or Young to make it worthwhile.

As for Headley, if it’s at all true, I love it. He’s a good defender who is under team control through 2014 and made just $2.3m last year, though he hit only four homers while putting up a .289/.374/.399 line. Of course, he’s one of the players who is greatly affected by Petco, putting up an .864 OPS at road and just a .674 OPS at home. He’s not a superstar, and I don’t know what the Padres would want in return, but remember: all you have to do is pass the “is he better than Juan Uribe” test, and that’s not a high bar to clear. I suppose a dream scenario here would be to package Uribe and a mid-level young pitching prospect to Houston for Lee, thus saving the Astros a few million and opening up a spot for Brett Wallace, and then acquiring Headley to play third. Even that’s not perfect though, because Lee’s money is all due in 2012 while Uribe has two more years, though I’m sure some financial shenanigans could make it work.

Of course, there’s no way any of that is happening. Aren’t the winter meetings fun…ish?

MSTI’s 2011 in Review: Starting Pitchers, Part 2

October 27, 2011 at 10:35 am | Posted in Chad Billingsley, Dana Eveland, Rubby de la Rosa | 21 Comments

Chad Billingsley (C-)
4.21 ERA, 3.83 FIP, 7.3 K/9, 4.0 BB/9

Billingsley just never makes it easy on us, does he? When he signed a new contract just before Opening Day that ties him to the Dodgers through 2014, most of us roundly applauded it as being a reasonable deal for both sides which give the Dodgers some degree of stability in their starting rotation. Through the first half of the season,that seemed to be working out well for all involved, as Billingsley threw out mostly consistent starts with a few outstanding ones (11 Ks over 8 scoreless against St. Louis in April, for example), though the medicore Dodger offense meant he was rarely repaid with victories, picking up just two in his first ten starts. That meant I was dropping lines like this on a consistent basis:

(Obligatory: 11 K’s, 8 shutout innings, and no win. This is why he’s going to end up 13-11 and people are going to say he was just okay this year.)

Billingsley began June with a bit of a rough patch, failing to go more than five innings in any of his first three starts, allowing four, six, and seven earned runs, though he still got a W in the first one because he homered, doubled, and walked. He turned it around by allowing just four earned runs over his next four outings – just about the time A.J. Ellis started catching more of his starts, though I’m loathe to put too much credit there – and by the time our midseason reviews rolled around, we were relatively happy with him:

Chad Billingsley (B) (8-7, 3.87 ERA, 3.41 FIP)
Over at Baseball Prospectus this morning, Geoff Young of DuckSnorts offers the opinion that Billingsley “should be a star, but isn’t”. And that’s true. 26-year-old Billingsley is walking more and striking out less than 23-year-old Billingsley did in 2008. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, because he’s still a very valuable asset and the extension he signed over the winter was welcomed, but he’s also not going to be a Kershaw-level star like we’d once hoped he would be. Again, that’s not to get on Billingsley, it’s just seemingly who he’s going to be – a durable #2 or 3 type who will be consistently inconsistent (3 starts this year of at least 8 IP and 1 ER or less, 3 starts allowing 5 ER or more). That’s not a star, but it is a quality pitcher we should be happy to have.

But in his first start after the break, he allowed five runs in San Francisco. He bounced back by striking out 10 Nationals in next start, yet he bottomed out by not striking out a single hitter on August 10 against Philadelphia as the Dodgers blew a huge lead to lose, 9-8:

As for the bad news, let’s start at the top: Chad Billingsley never had it today. You’ll almost certainly read stories about how Billingsley “can’t pitch with a lead”, but that’s BS: he threw 30 pitches while struggling through the first inning, before the Dodgers even came to the plate. This is the fourth time in Billingsley’s career that he’s failed to strike out a single batter, and the first time this year, but it continues a disturbing trend: he’s struck out just six over his last three starts, after whiffing 10 Nationals on July 24.

While seven runs should always, always be enough for a starting pitcher, it’s also not like Billingsley got a whole lot of support from his defense. In the top of the fourth, he had two outs and Michael Martinez up; Martinez grounded to first, where it went off of Loney’s glove and putting Martinez on second. Worley, the next batter, singled home Martinez for the third Philly run. Should Billingsley have been able to retire the opposing pitcher? Absolutely he should have, but he’s also out of the inning if Loney fields the ball.

The same situation happened in the fifth, as with one out and two on, Billingsley got Hunter Pence to hit a soft grounder to Casey Blake at third – the kind of ball that turns into an inning-ending double play 99 times out of 100. The ball kicked off of Blake’s glove into the outfield, and rather than getting out of the inning without any damage, Billingsley saw a run score on the error and then another when Kuo got Ryan Howard to ground out. None of this absolves Billingsley; nor should it be forgotten.

His seasonal inconsistency wasn’t limited to various starts, however; he would show it even within games, such as in his next time out on August 16:

All that being said, let’s not ignore the performance from Chad Billingsley, who got off to a rough start by allowing five baserunners in the first two innings (one, granted, on a Juan Rivera error), generally throwing a lot of pitches, and looking for all the world like he wouldn’t last beyond 3.2 innings. He then turned it around to retire nine in a row in the third, fourth, and fifth innings, ending up allowing just one run over seven innings. Coming off last week’s “99 pitches, no strikeouts, and unable to hold a 6-0 lead in 4.1 innings” disaster against the Phillies, being able to come back from an uneven start to keep the club in the game against a tough opponent was a pretty nice accomplishment.

And then again in his next start, on August 21:

Of course, all this focus on Loney obscures the bizarre day Chad Billingsley put forth in picking up his tenth loss of the season. With the bullpen in shambles, Billingsley absolutely, positively had to put up innings, something which has traditionally been tough for him in Colorado. When he allowed a Mark Ellis single and a Carlos Gonzalez homer within the first three batters of the game, you could almost hear the wheels turning to get Loney out to the bullpen. But Billingsley got Troy Tulowitzki and Jason Giambi to end the first, and then faced just one batter over the minimum through the next five innings. In fact, Billingsley went 7.2 innings, and allowed just one hit after the first frame; unfortunately, it was a Seth Smith homer to right, following a walk to Giambi, in the 7th inning. The non-Loney Dodgers managed just four hits against the corpse of Kevin Millwood, and that’s how Chad Billingsley allowed just three hits while going into the 8th inning in Colorado, yet still came away with the loss.

And that’s how it went. Billingsley managed to end the season by not allowing more than three earned runs in four of his final five starts, which is good, but never managed to look good doing it. With his velocity down and his strikeout rate heading in the wrong direction, many of us wondered if he was injured – he claimed it was “mechanical issues” – and even Don Mattingly called him out to continue to improve following the season.

Yet as unsatisfying as it all seemed, Billingsley’s 3.83 FIP ranked comfortably alongside names like Jon Lester, Derek Holland, Ryan Dempster, Shaun Marcum, and Hiroki Kuroda. I don’t know if Billingsley will ever be more than he is – if he can’t curb the declining whiff rate, he might even be less – yet nor was this season the disaster that many will think.

Billingsley remains a conundrum, consistently inconsistent.

Rubby De La Rosa (A-)
3.71 ERA, 3.87 FIP, 8.9 K/9, 4.6 BB/9

Remember, while Rubby De La Rosa was the 2010 Dodger minor league pitcher of the year, he also had all of 8 AA games under his belt entering the season, so needless to say, we weren’t expecting a whole lot from him. But de la Rosa got off to such a good start in Chattanooga (52/19 K/BB in 40 innings) that he started to seem like a viable option as the injuries mounted in Los Angeles, to the point that we actually wondered why Scott Elbert got the call over him in May.

At the time, Ned Colletti claimed that RDLR would be the next man up if a starter was needed, but that he was not likely to be recalled to work out of the bullpen. Less than two weeks later, RDLR was indeed called up to join the relievers, reminding us once again that the public comments of any GM (not just Colletti) are never to be trusted. RDLR’s debut, May 24 in Houston, was notable because it featured Javy Guerra‘s first save and Jerry Sands‘ first grand slam. But let’s not forget how we felt about RDLR that night, when asking who had the best evening:

Rubby De La Rosa, who not only was recalled to make his major league debut, but held a one run lead in the 8th by blowing away the heart of the Houston order in Hunter Pence, Carlos Lee, and Brett Wallace?

RDLR made his first three appearances out of the bullpen, allowing just four of the 18 batters he faced to reach base, before being asked to join the rotation with a start in Philadelphia on June 7, which just so happened to also be the debut of Dee Gordon. As you might remember, we were excited:

Tonight in Philadelphia, Rubby De La Rosa will make his first MLB start. (As Joe Block notes, it’ll be just his 24th professional start since arriving in America.) Dee Gordon will likely make his first start at shortstop, though that’s not confirmed yet. (Update: now confirmed. He’s leading off, and Jerry Sands is in there too.)It’s a momentous day for both, and I’m trying to remember the last time we’ve looked forward to a Dodger game with such high anticipation. Ignoring Opening Day or other special events, when was the last otherwise nondescript regular season Dodger game that drew such interest? I suppose we have to mention Clayton Kershaw‘s debut in 2008 – “Like Christmas in May“, as I referred to it at the time. There’s also Manny Ramirez‘ Dodger debut later that year, or his return from suspension in May 2009. Other than that, though? Seeing Gordon and de la Rosa appear at the same time has to rank pretty high. This is all totally unscientific, of course, so tell me where this ranks for you.

His starting debut wasn’t the smoothest thing in the world, since he walked five of the first eleven Phillies and missed the plate with 11 of his first 19 pitches, but with some good luck and good defense he managed to make it through five innings allowing just one earned run. He continued that pattern of wildness over his first four starts, striking out 22 in 20.2 innings, yet also walking 15 and allowing 14 earned runs.

On June 29, something seemed to click, and sure, that “something” may very well have been the atrocious Minnesota offense:

The first batter Rubby De La Rosa faced in the bottom of the first inning of today’s matinee in Minnesota, Ben Revere, hit a triple to the right-center gap. The next batter, Tsuyoshi Nishioka, grounded out to score Revere and put the Twins up 1-0… and that was it. In what was unquestionably the most effective outing of his young career, de la Rosa pitched 6 2/3 shutout innings following Nishioka’s out (7 innings total), scattering just six hits over the day. Most impressively, de la Rosa issued just two free passes. It was both the first time in his career that he went more than six innings or walked less than three, and he did it against an American League lineup. (Yes, I know, the Twins are one of the worst offensive teams in the AL, but still.) Even better, he improved as the game went on. After escaping from danger in the second after allowing three men to reach, he set down 16 of the 20 remaining Twins he saw – one of which was an intentional walk to Revere.

Of course, he still collected a loss, as the Dodger offense was shut out. RDLR then walked just one Met on July 4, followed that up with six one-hit scoreless innings against San Diego on July 9, and then didn’t walk a single Giant on July 19. In the midst of that stretch, we started wondering about how many innings the Dodgers should let the young starter collect; two weeks later, we’d learn it didn’t matter.

On July 31, the Dodgers played a day game against Arizona, a game that few paid attention to as it came in the midst of the trading deadline craziness and the fallout of the Trayvon Robinson / Tim Federowicz deal. De la Rosa left after four innings, complaining of elbow tightness. We immediately thought the worst, and a few days later it was confirmed that he’d need Tommy John surgery and would likely miss most or all of 2012. At the time, we looked into whether this could have been avoided, and concluded that it probably couldn’t have been.

A few weeks ago, I looked at how far the club would let de la Rosa go, considering he was nearing his career high for innings pitched. At 100.2 combined this year, he didn’t even match 2010′s 110.1, though there’s evidence that MLB innings are more stressful than MiLB frames. Either way, I find it hard to blame the Dodgers for their handling of the young pitcher. He threw 100 pitches or more just three times, and only once did he go above 113; even on Sunday, he was still hitting the upper 90s and got six of the twelve outs he managed via strikeouts. Though we probably will never know for sure, the injury likely happened during de la Rosa’s tough outing on Sunday, and there wasn’t really anything that anyone could have done about it. Young pitchers get hurt, unfortunately. It happens.

The silver lining, if there is one, is that Tommy John surgery is nearly routine at this point, with an overwhelming success rate. Just to cherry-pick two recent examples from Washington, Jordan Zimmermann had his procedure in early August of 2009, returned to the bigs in late August of 2010, and has been one of the club’s best starters this year; Stephen Strasburg went under the knife in late August of 2010, and has reportedly been hitting 95 in bullpen sessions with a small chance that he sees MLB time in September. Nothing is guaranteed, but it’s in no way the death of a career like it was for decades, or even the risky procedure it was up until the last 10 years or so.

Remember, the Dodgers hadn’t yet started their second-half rebound yet and had just lost Kenley Jansen to his cardiac concerns, so this seemed like an unnecessary kick in the pants from the baseball gods. While it’s likely that RDLR returns intact, his loss opens up another hole in the 2012 rotation.

Dana Eveland (B)
3.03 ERA, 3.19 FIP, 4.85 K/9, 1.89 BB/9

As I probably said one too many times in September, “Dana Eveland… doing Dana Eveland things.” You remember how we felt when he was signed to a minor-league deal last November, right?

Eveland’s not, you know, good. His fastball doesn’t top 90 often, and if he was that valuable he wouldn’t have ended up on 19 different teams before his age-27 year. Still, it’s a no-risk deal, and the Dodgers have had good success with guys like Chan Ho Park, Jeff Weaver, and Aaron Sele in the past on signings like that. For the low, low price of almost nothing, they’ve managed to bring in a guy who’s entering his prime, has seen action in 95 major league games, and does a good job of keeping the ball in the park (0.65 HR/9) and on the ground (50%). More than likely, he’s ticketed for depth in AAA rather than the rotation, but it’s depth worth having, and a deal worth making.

And that’s exactly what happened. After hurting himself on the first day of big league camp, Eveland had a decent enough year in AAA, getting named to the PCL All-Star team and eventually getting called up when rosters expanded to start the September 1 rainout makeup in Pittsburgh. With de la Rosa injured, John Ely ineffective in ABQ, and Nathan Eovaldi at his innings limit, Eveland stuck around to make five starts of varying quality in September, the first four coming against the offensive powerhouses of San Francisco and Pittsburgh. When I say “varying quality”, I mean it, since the first two were excellent (1 ER over 15 IP), the next two were brutal (9 ER in 9 IP), and his final was solid (5.2 shutout innings in Arizona).

Eveland’s not unfamiliar with getting off to good starts, of course, because his first three starts for the 2010 Blue Jays comprised 4 ER over 18.2 IP. He then followed that up with 28 ER over 26 IP in his next six starts, leading to him losing his job. But that’s really what you expect from a guy like Eveland, isn’t it? There’s a reason he’s bounced around on four teams in the last three seasons, unable to even stick with the Pirates, and that’s because he’s got flashes of talent sandwiched around a whole lot of just not being good enough, as reflected in his career marks of striking out too few (5.94 K/9) and walking too many (4.50 BB/9). You always need guys like that to come up and eat up a few starts every season, and that’s fine. But it’s not fine to start your season off with Eveland or someone like him in the rotation, because if he’s one of your five best options, you’re in big trouble when you inevitably need to use your 6th, 7th, and 8th best options.

******

Next! Ted Lilly gave up a stolen base while you were reading this! Hiroki Kuroda loves the Dodgers to a disturbingly large extent! And John Ely looks for Ely-mania at the salad bar of the local Albuquerque Sizzler! It’s starting pitchers, part 3!

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.

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.

I’m Pretty Sure James Loney Is Trolling Us At This Point

August 21, 2011 at 3:31 pm | Posted in Chad Billingsley, James Loney | 52 Comments

The biggest news of the day for the Dodgers came shortly before the game, when it was revealed that first baseman James Loney had thrown a bullpen session, since Saturday night’s extra inning affair had exhausted much of the Dodger relief corps. (Why exactly this was a preferable solution to simply shooting the useless Eugenio Velez into the sun and getting an arm from Albuquerque to Denver overnight is unknown, but I’ll try to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that travel concerns for today’s day game made that implausible, and not that Velez is just too valuable to replace.)

This of course led to the usual spate of jokes that if the need arose, Loney would be a more valuable pitcher to the Dodgers than he’s been a hitter this year. Don’t forget, he’d entered the day with the 17th-worst seasonal OPS+ by a first baseman since Jackie Robinson integrated the game in 1947, and he’s lost a portion of his starting job to Juan Rivera, having entered five of his last ten games as a defensive replacement or pinch-hitter.

And then Loney went out and got four hits, including a double and a homer, good for his second four-hit game of the season. Because of course he did.

What we’d forgotten, of course, was that this game was played in Coors Field, and James Loney loves hitting in Coors Field. This is more than just your usual “inflated Denver offense” situation; the homer was his 9th in Colorado in 187 career plate appearances. That’s nearly halfway to his Dodger Stadium career total of 20, which he’s needed 1429 plate appearances to accumulate. Of Loney’s six homers in 2011, four have either come in Colorado (three) or against them (one).

Of course, all this focus on Loney obscures the bizarre day Chad Billingsley put forth in picking up his tenth loss of the season. With the bullpen in shambles, Billingsley absolutely, positively had to put up innings, something which has traditionally been tough for him in Colorado. When he allowed a Mark Ellis single and a Carlos Gonzalez homer within the first three batters of the game, you could almost hear the wheels turning to get Loney out to the bullpen. But Billingsley got Troy Tulowitzki and Jason Giambi to end the first, and then faced just one batter over the minimum through the next five innings. In fact, Billingsley went 7.2 innings, and allowed just one hit after the first frame; unfortunately, it was a Seth Smith homer to right, following a walk to Giambi, in the 7th inning. The non-Loney Dodgers managed just four hits against the corpse of Kevin Millwood, and that’s how Chad Billingsley allowed just three hits while going into the 8th inning in Colorado, yet still came away with the loss. As Jon Weisman notes at Dodger Thoughts, this is only the third time in Rockies history they’ve won a home game with three or fewer hits.

Baseball’s a funny game sometimes. But not as funny as it would have been to see James Loney pitching.

******

I’ve tried to stay away from the “why is guy X playing over guy Y”, since the day-to-day machinations in a lost season don’t really matter too much, particularly when there’s not a ton of great alternatives. But seriously, Dioner Navarro, after another 0-4 today (along with a throwing error), is now at .193/.276/.324. He’s had his chance to prove that his terrible last few years were the fluke, as opposed to his solid 2008. It hasn’t happened. Why exactly are we not seeing A.J. Ellis play every day for the last six weeks?

******

In the LA Times this morning, Ben Bolch delves into new-fangled stats like WAR, VORP, BBQ, and LOL, little of which will be news to most of you. Unfortunately for Don Mattingly, because I’ve generally been a supporter of his this season, I’m obligated to share with you that he’s making me sad:

Don Mattingly, the Dodgers’ manager and a former American League batting champion, said he preferred runs scored.

“Think about it,” Mattingly said. “You have to be on base to do it; you have to be getting yourself in position [to score]. If you’re scoring 100 runs, you’re out there a lot, so it means your on-base [percentage] is up there, it probably means you have some extra-base hits or been a guy that can steal a bag.”

Though the flaws in Mattingly’s argument are obvious, I don’t need to explain why, because Ned Colletti, of all people, is on the case:

Colletti’s rebuttal: Runs scored are influenced by other hitters in the lineup, so they’re not the most valuable measurement.

Well, there’s something you don’t see every day: right on, Ned.

Dodgers Fail to Perfect “Win Without Offense” Strategy

August 16, 2011 at 8:14 pm | Posted in Chad Billingsley, Mike MacDougal | 51 Comments

With the game tied at one in the bottom of the ninth, Hong-Chih Kuo started the frame off by walking Prince Fielder on six pitches. Kuo didn’t look good doing it, and with righties Casey McGehee and Yuniesky Betancourt following, Don Mattingly strode to the mound and called to the bullpen for his righty, which was absolutely the correct move.

Unfortunately, coming in wasn’t Javy Guerra, who hadn’t pitched since Friday and has allowed just one earned run in the last two months. It was Mike MacDougal, who threw 2/3 of an inning last night and is, you know, Mike MacDougal. I’ve defended Mattingly a lot this season, but much of this loss lies on him, as he fell victim to the same mistake that managers have been making for decades, which is saving their closer for a lead in a tie game on the road.

Or as I put it on Twitter at the time,

Whenever you can bring Mike MacDougal in to a tied game with a man on in the bottom of the 9th, you have to do it.

Let’s be fair for a second, because Guerra is hardly a top-tier closer, and this isn’t as egregious as Clint Hurdle refusing to use Joel Hanrahan through 19 innings simply because he didn’t get the lead. But it’s still pretty bad. If you have a guy you’ve identified as “the closer”, and you use him to “save games”, well, sometimes there are other ways to save the game than to get the final outs with a lead. I’d think that making sure the home team doesn’t walk off with a win before you get a chance to hit again would count as saving the game, but there’s always the alternative of “letting one of your worst relievers lose the game while your better ones watch” is always an option too.

MacDougal immediately allowed a hard-hit single to McGehee, moving Fielder to second. Here’s the best part, though. The Brewers tried to help the Dodgers by giving them an out, as Betancourt attempted to sacrifice bunt. MacDougal refused the gift, walking him on four pitches. Now with the bases loaded, one of the few hitters in baseball more impotent than Betancourt came up, Mark Kotsay. One pitch later, Kotsay had lined the game-winning hit to center field, and the Brewers celebrated around Fielder at the plate. Few things in baseball are more reliable than Mike MacDougal blowing a game in the late innings, except perhaps the continued refusal of managers to deploy their bullpen assets at the right time. (Kuo came down with the loss, though, because this sport still keeps records the same way they did in 1891.)

Of course, this isn’t all on Mattingly and MacDougal, since the offense managed just one run on four singles against Milwaukee starter Yovani Gallardo and old friend Takashi Saito. That’s one run over the two games of this series, in case you haven’t been keeping track, and when that’s the kind of offense you’re putting up, it probably doesn’t matter if you’re throwing out Mike MacDougal or 1990-era Dennis Eckersley in the late innings.

But it’s cool, because the Brewers are only tossing out Zack Greinke tomorrow, so, good luck with that, Nathan Eovaldi.

All that being said, let’s not ignore the performance from Chad Billingsley, who got off to a rough start by allowing five baserunners in the first two innings (one, granted, on a Juan Rivera error), generally throwing a lot of pitches, and looking for all the world like he wouldn’t last beyond 3.2 innings. He then turned it around to retire nine in a row in the third, fourth, and fifth innings, ending up allowing just one run over seven innings. Coming off last week’s “99 pitches, no strikeouts, and unable to hold a 6-0 lead in 4.1 innings” disaster against the Phillies, being able to come back from an uneven start to keep the club in the game against a tough opponent was a pretty nice accomplishment.

On a side note, Trent Oeltjen pinch-hit for Billingsley in the top of the 8th, and not only did he draw a walk, he made me think, “hey! Trent Oeltjen is still on this team. Who knew?” Apparently, no one: Oeltjen hasn’t started since July 5, 35 Dodger games ago. Only twice in that time has he even managed to get in the field, and while I’m certainly not about to start any sort of “free Trent Oeltjen” campaign, you can imagine that a guy might get a little rusty sitting around like that.

******

So here’s something I’ve been looking forward to for a while: Christopher Jackson of the Albuquerque Baseball Examiner, who’s really becoming our go-to guy on the high minors, has a look at the Rule 5 eligible players the Dodgers will need to make decisions on this offseason. Most interesting there is the news that Tim Federowicz and Stephen Fife, both acquired in the Trayvon Robinson deal, will not need to be placed on the 40-man roster. That’s contrary to what we heard at the time, but since Jackson spoke with both DeJon Watson and MLB itself, I think we can trust his reporting.

According to Jackson, the Dodgers have eight players who will need to either be added to the 40-man roster or exposed to the draft:

Most of the notable Rule 5-eligibles are at Double-A Chattanooga. They include left-hander Michael Antonini, third baseman Pedro Baez, catcher Gorman “Griff” Erickson, infielder Elian Herrera, right-hander Will Savage, outfielder Alfredo Silverio, first baseman-outfielder Scott Van Slyke and catcher Matt Wallach.

Much can change between now and the December draft, though I think it’s safe to say that Erickson, Silverio, Van Slyke, and Wallach are likely to be added. Antonini, Herrera, and Savage are roster filler, and can we please finally turn Baez into a pitcher already? This is a topic we’ll delve into with more detail after the season ends, but there’s clearly no shortage of 40-man roster spots to add any youngsters they need: with Dee Gordon and Juan Uribe each on the DL, 11 of the 13 offensive players currently on the active roster are something less than locks to be on next year’s roster.

Dodgers Swept as Rare Display of Offense Fails to Overcome Shoddy Pitching and Worse Defense

August 10, 2011 at 4:10 pm | Posted in Chad Billingsley, Dee Gordon, Eugenio Velez, Juan Rivera | 74 Comments

On a day where the Dodgers put up five runs off Philadelphia rookie sensation Vance Worley before fans even got to their seats – uh no, really – the wheels fell off in a hurry, as a lead that was once 6-0 quickly became a 9-8 loss, completing a sweep at the hands of the Phillies. Once again, the Phils proved why they’re the best team in baseball, while the Dodgers proved that they are a mid-range team in the Pacific Coast League.

First, the brief good news: Matt Kemp and Juan Rivera combined for seven hits, including a three-run homer for Rivera in the first, as the Dodgers tied their season high for extra base hits with six. Hong-Chih Kuo retired three of the four batters he faced, entering in a tough situation with two men on in the fifth, and Matt Guerrier, Mike MacDougal, and Javy Guerra combined for 3.1 innings of scoreless relief to finish it off.

On Rivera, and he’ll need his own post shortly, there’s going to be plenty of time for jokes about how he’s playing himself into a starting job for the 2012 Dodgers, and how he’s carving a place alongside recent Dodgers of questionable skill who turned hot debuts into misplaced commitments like Rod Barajas, Jay Gibbons, Marlon Anderson, and Ronnie Belliard. Those are valid concerns which we’ll have to deal with this winter. For now, we need to praise Rivera for his performance since arriving in Los Angeles; I was cautiously optimistic when he was picked up after being DFA’d by Toronto, saying that “this deal probably makes the team better than they were this morning,” if not by much, and all Rivera has done is hit .338/.380/.507 while taking playing time away from the cratering Tony Gwynn and the disappointing James Loney. He’s not this good – he can’t possibly be – and we should know that his BABIP (.357 even before this game) is completely unsustainable. None of that should diminish what he’s done on the field, however, because he’s been excellent. For however long it lasts, upgrading from Marcus Thames to Rivera has been a nice under-the-radar move by Ned Colletti.

As for the bad news, let’s start at the top: Chad Billingsley never had it today. You’ll almost certainly read stories about how Billingsley “can’t pitch with a lead”, but that’s BS: he threw 30 pitches while struggling through the first inning, before the Dodgers even came to the plate. This is the fourth time in Billingsley’s career that he’s failed to strike out a single batter, and the first time this year, but it continues a disturbing trend: he’s struck out just six over his last three starts, after whiffing 10 Nationals on July 24.

While seven runs should always, always be enough for a starting pitcher, it’s also not like Billingsley got a whole lot of support from his defense. In the top of the fourth, he had two outs and Michael Martinez up; Martinez grounded to first, where it went off of Loney’s glove and putting Martinez on second. Worley, the next batter, singled home Martinez for the third Philly run. Should Billingsley have been able to retire the opposing pitcher? Absolutely he should have, but he’s also out of the inning if Loney fields the ball.

The same situation happened in the fifth, as with one out and two on, Billingsley got Hunter Pence to hit a soft grounder to Casey Blake at third – the kind of ball that turns into an inning-ending double play 99 times out of 100. The ball kicked off of Blake’s glove into the outfield, and rather than getting out of the inning without any damage, Billingsley saw a run score on the error and then another when Kuo got Ryan Howard to ground out. None of this absolves Billingsley; nor should it be forgotten.

Still, at the end of the fifth, the Dodgers were ahead 7-5, and that lasted until Blake Hawksworth relieved Kuo with one on in the sixth. Two singles and a Howard moonshot later, the Dodgers were down 9-6, and that was pretty much that, though they briefly threatened in the 9th with a Barajas warning track shot about 10 feet away from a walkoff win. Thanks, Blake!

******

Update: okay, the part below may not be, what’s the word, “true”. The b-ref query I’m using searches by entire seasons, and there’s at least one example where that isn’t true, as helpfully pointed out in the comments – Jose Gonzalez in 1990, who went hitless in 30 Dodger PA before being traded to Pittsburgh where he collected a few. So while he didn’t get any hits as a Dodger, he didn’t go hitless for the entire season. I’ll leave the section below intact, because it doesn’t make Eugenio Velez not suck.

In the continuing exploits of “Eugenio Velez, awful baseball player”… after another 0-2 (on three pitches, no less), Velez is still searching for his first hit in 23 plate appearances as a Dodger. That’s the most hitless PA by a non-pitcher in the entire history of the club. How about when you expand that across all teams?

Rk	Player	PA	Year	Age	Tm	G	AB	R	BB	SO
1	Hal Finney	35	1936	30	PIT	21	35	3	0	8
2	Larry Littleton	27	1981	27	CLE	26	23	2	3	6
3	David Ortiz	25	1999	23	MIN	10	20	1	5	12
4	Kevin Elster	22	1994	29	NYY	7	20	0	1	6
5	Ron Hansen	22	1958	20	BAL	12	19	1	0	7

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 8/10/2011.

Well, hmm. I have to say I did not expect to see David Ortiz on that list. Anyway, since our dream of “most left fielders in a season” appears to have died, we still have a statistical oddity to root for: 12 more hitless plate appearances until we can say, that by one measure at least, Eugenio Velez has had the worst season in big league history.

******

No surprise here, but after the game it was announced that Dee Gordon was placed on the 15-day disabled list due to his right shoulder injury. There’s no word yet on a replacement, though the only two infielders on the 40-man roster are Russ Mitchell and Ivan DeJesus. That said, there’s an empty spot on the 40-man and several injured pitchers who could be moved to the 60-day DL (Jon Garland, Jonathan Broxton, Rubby De La Rosa, Vicente Padilla), so if they want to promote someone not on the roster, it won’t be an issue.

It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over… and It’s Over

July 18, 2011 at 9:47 pm | Posted in Chad Billingsley, Matt Kemp | 25 Comments

“A game recap? Already? But MSTI, the game is only through six and a half innings.” That it is. And through five innings, things were fine, as Chad Billingsley was generally cruising along, having only been hurt on a solo homer by Pablo Sandoval. Not that it mattered, of course, since the Dodgers were completely unable to touch the reanimated corpse of Ryan Vogelsong, who had allowed just five harmless singles through five, punctuated by James Loney wasting a two-on, one-out situation by ending the 4th with a 1-6-3 DP.

I’m tempted to make more fun of the Dodgers not being able to get to Vogelsong, but we all know the team can’t hit, and he is one of the year’s better success stories. So, fine. Fun fact, though: the lineup from the first time Vogelsong faced the Dodgers, way back in 2001, the Los Angeles lineup included such luminaries as Hiram Bocachica, Jeff Reboulet, Chad Kreuter, and Dave Hansen. Ah, the good old days.

Anyway, that was the situation through five. Then the sixth inning came around, and that’s where the roof caved in. Mike Fontenot led off with an infield single that arguably could have been had by a second baseman with more range than Aaron Miles. Sandoval and Nate Schierholtz each singled, and after an Aubrey Huff strikeout, Cody Ross and Brandon Crawford each contributed run-scoring hits.

With five runs on the board, that was it for Billingsley and the Dodgers. Getting back to the opening line of this post, yes, I know there’s still six outs left for the Dodgers. I know this could be my “Dewey Defeats Truman” moment. I also know that 1-0, or even 0-0 is a nearly insurmountable deficit for this team. I know that KABC’s Joe Block pointed out that of the last 18 games in which the Dodgers have allowed even two runs, they’re just 2-16. Coming back from a five-run deficit? I don’t mean to sound fatalistic, but, please. After a long day of work, staying up even later just to watch the end of this isn’t as appealing as it once was, certainly not as appealing as bed and less time straining my eyes on a computer monitor. And if I’m wrong? If they show up with a miracle comeback? Well, I’ll gladly take the heat on that for some positivity out of this club.

Speaking of which, I’ll leave you with the only thing worth remembering from tonight: Matt Kemp‘s highlight reel catch in center, courtesy Jeff Sullivan of Lookout Landing.

2011 Midseason Grades: Pitching and Management

July 12, 2011 at 9:29 am | Posted in Blake Hawksworth, Chad Billingsley, Clayton Kershaw, Davey Lopes, Don Mattingly, Hiroki Kuroda, Hong-Chih Kuo, Javy Guerra, John Ely, Jon Garland, Jonathan Broxton, Josh Lindblom, Kenley Jansen, Matt Guerrier, Mike MacDougal, Ned Colletti, Ramon Troncoso, Rubby de la Rosa, Scott Elbert, Ted Lilly, Vicente Padilla | 37 Comments

Thanks for all the feedback on yesterday’s hitting grades, and today we move on to pitching and management. Remember, the letter grades are just for fun, without a whole lot of thought or science behind them.

Starting Pitchers

Clayton Kershaw (A+) (9-4, 3.03 ERA, 2.45 FIP)
Is A+ even high enough? I’m not sure it is, though we certainly expected great things from him. Think about this: his HR/9 rate and H/9 rate are unchanged from last year, but he’s managed to do that while lowering his walk rate (again!) and increasing his strikeout rate. He’s leading the league in whiffs, and he has two shutouts among his three complete games. He’s 23. He’s lefty. He’s an All-Star.

Don’t let anyone tell you that he’s progressing towards being an ace, or one day he could be one of the best. Clayton Kershaw is, right now, one of the 10 best pitchers in baseball. The scary part? He could still get better.

Chad Billingsley (B) (8-7, 3.87 ERA, 3.41 FIP)
Over at Baseball Prospectus this morning, Geoff Young of DuckSnorts offers the opinion that Billingsley “should be a star, but isn’t”. And that’s true. 26-year-old Billingsley is walking more and striking out less than 23-year-old Billingsley did in 2008. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, because he’s still a very valuable asset and the extension he signed over the winter was welcomed, but he’s also not going to be a Kershaw-level star like we’d once hoped he would be. Again, that’s not to get on Billingsley, it’s just seemingly who he’s going to be – a durable #2 or 3 type who will be consistently inconsistent (3 starts this year of at least 8 IP and 1 ER or less, 3 starts allowing 5 ER or more). That’s not a star, but it is a quality pitcher we should be happy to have.

Hiroki Kuroda (B) (6-10, 3.06 ERA, 3.73 FIP)
Only five pitchers have received less run support than Kuroda (shockingly, no other Dodger appears on the top 40 of that list), so let’s not pretend the poor win/loss record means absolutely anything at all. Conversely, the ERA is a little misleading as well, since he’s striking out fewer and walking more than he did in either 2009 or 2010, facts which are reflected in the higher FIP. Still, he’s been a solid member of this rotation… and probably the only Dodger with any real trade value at the deadline. I’ll be sorry to see him go, if he does.

Ted Lilly (D) (6-9, 4.79 ERA, 4.59 FIP)
Lilly hasn’t been awful (back, back, it’s gone!), but nor has he been (throw to second, and the runner is in!) in any way worthy of the $33m deal he received in the offseason. He’s (that ball is far, it is out of here!) striking out fewer than ever, and more (he’s going, and he swipes second without a throw) batted balls in front of a defense that isn’t great at converting them into outs isn’t (that ball is crushed into the second tier!) a good mix. Oh, and he’s 35 and has complained (Navarro’s throw to second, not in time, another steal!) of arm soreness already. Loving that three-year deal more than ever.

Rubby De La Rosa (A) (3-4, 3.74 ERA, 3.40 FIP)
Probably the most impressive of any of the rookies pushed ahead of their schedule this year, de la Rosa has shown immense talent while being forced to learn on-the-job. While his first few starts were dicey – good lord, the walks, and that one game that he nearly got bounced in the first inning was a heart-stopper – RDLR has shown marked improvement, even flirting with no-hitters in each of his last two outings. The talent is unquestioned, but the real concern now is limited his innings, since he’s quickly coming up on matching his previous high with more than two months remaining in the season. But if he’s limited and if someone like Kuroda is dealt… how do you finish out the season? John Ely? Dana Eveland? Yikes.

Jon Garland (D-) (1-5, 4.33 ERA, 4.59 FIP)
Hey, remember when Garland was signed largely because he’d never been on the disabled list before? If you do, then you probably also remember him saying he couldn’t get multi-year deals because other teams didn’t like the looks of his medical reports. Garland gets a lousy grade not because of his performance (ignore the 1-5, a 4.59 FIP is in line with his usual season), but because he sells his durability as a skill. Clearly, that’s one item he forgot to pack for his second (and likely final) tour with the Dodgers. At least that large 2012 option won’t kick in.

John Ely (inc.) (0-1, 6.23 ERA, 5.61 FIP)
Remember Ely-mania last year? Seems so far away, doesn’t it?

Relief pitchers

Jonathan Broxton (MRI) (1-2, 7 saves, 5.68 ERA, 5.56 FIP)
I have absolutely no idea how to grade Jonathan Broxton. Was he good this year? No, of course he wasn’t, and for many people that justifies their opinion that at around midseason 2010, he somehow lost his heart / mind / balls / toes / earlobes / whatever. The fact that he somehow managed to even close out seven games earlier this year is somewhat misleading, because he rarely did so smoothly; conversely, it’s difficult to blame him entirely for the big blown save in Florida because the Dodgers would have won if Jamey Carroll had merely fielded a simple ground ball.

I’d say the answer lies in the fact that he’s been on the disabled list for over two months due to a right elbow injury, with no estimated return date. We never saw the healthy Broxton this year, just as I felt we never saw a healthy Broxton in the second half of last year. The lesson, as always? Joe Torre cannot be trusted with relievers. You hate to say it about a guy who is only 27, but Torre may just have ruined Broxton’s career. Thanks for stopping by, Joe!

Hong-Chih Kuo (-) (0-0, 8.71 ERA, 4.12 FIP)
Take everything I said about Broxton above and multiply it by 100 for Kuo, because the anxiety issue he’s been fighting for years makes it impossible to really judge his on-field performance. Since returning, he’s at least managed to limit the walks (6/2 K/BB in 5.2 IP), though the results (five runs, four earned) haven’t all been there yet. The fact that he even returned as quickly as he did should count as a win.

Kenley Jansen (B+) (1-1, 4.40 ERA, 3.15 FIP)
I bet a lot of people will be surprised by this grade for Jansen. “But his ERA is 4.40, rabble rabble rabble!”, they’ll yell. That’s true, it is. That number is also heavily inflated by two poor outings – allowing 5 earned runs to Atlanta on April 19 in a game that the Dodgers were already losing in, and allowing 3 earned runs on May 23 in Houston, a game which preceded his stint on the DL with right shoulder inflammation by less than a week. Since returning from injury on June 18, he’s been nearly untouchable, striking out 13 while allowing just two singles in 9.2 innings. While the walks remain a problem, he’s actually striking out more per nine than he did in 2010, and you might remember that even last year’s rate was on the verge of being historic. The question for me is, why is he stuck in middle relief and garbage time rather than in higher leverage situations?

Matt Guerrier (C-) (3-3, 3.10 ERA, 4.44 FIP)
Boy, who would have thought that handing out an expensive multi-year deal to a non-elite middle reliever wouldn’t have worked out well? Besides everyone, that is. Guerrier actually hasn’t been that bad, but that’s sort of the point: players who get $12m over three years should be able to do better than “hasn’t been that bad”. Though he’s striking out slightly more than he did as a Twin, he’s allowing both more walks and hits than he did in either of the last two years, despite moving to the easier league. He’ll be 33 in less than a month. It’s not a good trend.

Mike MacDougal (C+) (0-1, 1.67 ERA, 3.74 FIP)
2003 All-Star MacDougal has done an excellent job of reviving his career after several years bouncing between the bigs and AAA. MacDougal, who made the 2003 All-Star team as a member of the Royals, has just a 1.74 ERA, emerging as a leader of the injury-plagued Dodger bullpen. The former All-Star has allowed only six earned runs to score, putting him in contention for 9th inning responsibilities. All-Star.

(I can’t do it. MacDougal has allowed approximately 982 of the 48 inherited runners he’s received* to score. For nearly the entire season, he’d walked as many as he’d struck out, before finally giving himself some distance in recent days. He’s not a good pitcher, but like Aaron Miles, we expected nothing, so the small contributions he’s made get him some minor credit. *note: numbers may be fabricated.)

Number of Ortizii: 0 (A++++)
Say what you will about this club, at least they’re not employing anyone named Ortiz who was last useful 6-8 years ago, much less multiple players like that.

Javy Guerra (B+) (1-0, 4 saves, 2.33 ERA, 4.01 FIP)
Guerra, like MacDougal all those years ago, is a perfect example of why we shouldn’t overrate saves. For a guy who walked 6.8/9 in the minors last year and was forced to the bigs simply because of injuries, he’s been fine. He’s keeping the ball in the yard, he’s cut down on the control issues, and he’s even managed to steal a few saves while serving as the last-ditch closer. As far as debuts go, his has been a successful one. Let’s just not go overboard in anointing him as the man in the 9th inning, because he hasn’t been that good – 13 K in 19.1 IP doesn’t thrill me – and in each of his last two saves, he loaded the bases before getting out of the jam. That’s not the kind of tightrope you can walk for very long.

Blake Hawksworth (B) (2-2, 3.00 WHIP, 4.12 FIP)
“Isn’t Ryan Theriot“, and that alone gets him a boost. Actually, I joke, but it’s sort of true: when healthy, Hawksworth has been a perfectly acceptable and average reliever, doing a decent job of keeping runners off the bases (WHIP of 1.000), and striking out more than double as he’s walked. Considering that Theriot is doing his usual “I’m not a very good baseball player, but I am short and white, and that counts for something, right?” routine in St. Louis, even just getting that moderate level of contribution in exchange is a big win.

Scott Elbert (B-) (0-1, 5.25 ERA, 2.54 FIP)
I know there’s been a lot of turnover in the bullpen this year, but Elbert is one of those guys where I constantly have to check if he’s still on the team or down in ABQ. I suppose that’s partically because he’s pitched just twice in the last two weeks, and partially because he’s rarely in for more than 2-3 batters at a time. As for his performance, he’s a bit of an oddity in that you’d expect a power lefty to be hell on lefty hitters, but he’s actually rocking a reverse split: lefties (.701 OPS) are actually doing more damage than righties (.561 OPS) against him. Overall, I guess you can say he’s been “acceptable”, in that he’s finally gained a foothold in the majors, but hasn’t exactly made us think he’s going to be a difference maker.

Then again, considering his mysterious disappearance at this time last year, even that is a massive step forward.

Ramon Troncoso (D) (0-0, 6.23 ERA, 4.92 FIP)
I know it’s popular to blame Torre for Troncoso’s downturn as well, and maybe that’s part of it, but I do remember writing a post last year that outlined how he had larger issues than overuse. Whatever it is, he’s barely a major league quality pitcher right now… which probably explains why he’s not in the major leagues. That’s what’ll happen when you aren’t striking anyone out and giving up an absurd amount of hits, though I’ll allow that since he was never a strikeout guy, pitching in front of a defense that does no favors probably doesn’t help.

Ronald Belisario (MIA)
Ha, no. There’s about as good of a chance that he pitches for the Dodgers again as there is that you’ll see Orel Hershiser or Don Drysdale out there.

Josh Lindblom (B+) (0-0, 1.69 ERA, 3.43 FIP)
Nearly two years after we first thought we might see him, Lindblom finally got the call this year, and so far, so good. It’s hard to make judgements based on just eight games, but he’s yet to allow more than one earned run in an appearance, and for now, that’s good enough.

Lance Cormier (dFa) (0-1, 9.88 ERA, 6.84 FIP)
I’m still convinced the only reason Cormier wasn’t DFA’d a week or two earlier than he eventually was (on May 24, when Rubby De La Rosa came up) is because he had a charity event for tornado victims set up at the stadium on May 15, and it would have been poor form to cut a guy just before or after that. I also like that we can say “nah, he wasn’t as bad as his ERA, look at his FIP” and while that’s true, even his FIP says he was awful.

Vicente Padilla (inc.) (0-0, 4.15 ERA, 2.61 FIP)
I sure do feel like we’ve talked about Padilla a lot this year for a guy who piched just 8.2 innings. First he was signed to a somewhat confusing 6th starter/longman/Broxton insurance role, in a move for depth I actually really liked. Then he required surgery for a forearm injury in the spring, preventing him from taking Garland’s rotation spot to start the year. He returned exceptionally quickly from that, taking over for the injured Broxton to nab three saves of varying quality in late April and early May, leading many to proclaim him the next big thing… until he returned to the DL with a recurrence of the arm injury. But the fun doesn’t stop there, because he was supposedly hours away from being activated in June before a neck injury flared up, leading to more surgery and probably the end of his season. Got all that? Phew.

Management

Don Mattingly (B+)
It may sound odd to praise a rookie manager when we weren’t fans of his hiring in the first place and when the club he’s leading is on pace for its worst finish in decades, but I don’t see how you pin much of this mess on Mattingly. He’s proven himself to be far more than a Joe Torre clone, in particular showing a nice willingness to be creative with his bullpen. It hasn’t been perfect, as some of his Navarro-related pinch-hitting escapades still burn, and he likes bunting more than I’d prefer, but he was handed a subpar roster that had its infield and bullpen totally destroyed by injuries, all as fans stayed away thanks to the off-field mess. It would be an impossible situation for any manager, and though the final record won’t be good, Mattingly has been a pleasant surprise, managing to keep the team playing hard through it all. Let’s just hope he doesn’t end up shouldering more of the blame than is needed when all is said and done.

Davey Mutha-F’ing-Lopes (A+^100)
I don’t usually grade the base coaches. Matt Kemp doesn’t usually lead the league in WAR. There you go.

Ned Colletti (F+)
Let’s quickly review all of the contracts handed out last winter by Colletti that were for at least $1m, shall we? Uribe, massive bust. Lilly, missing fewer bats than ever. Guerrier, adequate but overpaid and having one of the lesser years of his career. Garland and Padilla, both injured multiple times and likely out for the year. Barajas, crappier than usual and hurt. Thames, ineffective and injured. Navarro, hitting .183. To be fair, Kuroda has been very good, but it’s hard to say that without caveating that he clearly took a huge paycut to stay in LA.

There’s been a few positives – signing Billingsley was great, the no-risk NRI of Miles worked out, and trading Ryan Theriot for Hawksworth was a good move if you try to forget that it was necessitated by acquiring Theriot in the first place – and you want to be sensitive to the fact that the ownership mess has really put him in a bad position. But overall? Not good, Ned. Not good.

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Tomorrow, the final review of the series: me.

Listless Dodgers Fall Further Behind

June 15, 2011 at 3:25 pm | Posted in Chad Billingsley | 22 Comments

This should be a picture of sad Billingsley, but I'd prefer to look at acrobatic Dee right now.

For the fourth time in five starts, Chad Billingsley allowed more than four earned runs, and the Dodgers were unable to avoid a sweep at the hands of Cincinnati. Jon Weisman over at DodgerThoughts (before the game was even over, no less!) summed up Billingsley’s troubles succinctly:

Chad Billingsley through the end of May: 75 1/3 innings, 71 strikeouts, 100 baserunners, 3.46 ERA.

Chad Billingsley in June, including today’s game: 13 2/3 innings, nine strikeouts, 43 baserunners, 11.19 ERA.

This is an issue that requires an in-depth look. Unfortunately, you’re not getting that today, because who really wants to think more about this team right now? I can’t be the only one looking forward to a 48-hour break from Dodger baseball, right?

As usual, any semblance of offense came from the top half, as Dee Gordon, Jamey Carroll, Andre Ethier, and Matt Kemp combined for six of the eight Dodger hits, with another – also, seemingly, as usual – coming from the pitcher, Billingsley. (Aaron Miles collected the final hit as a pinch-hitter in the 8th.)

At 31-39 after the sweep, the Dodgers are eight games under .500 and 8.5 games out of first, pending San Francisco’s date with Arizona tonight. As I noted last night, by losing today they’re further under .500 than they’ve been since July 26, 2006. How long ago was that? The infield that day was Olmedo Saenz (1B), Willy Aybar (2B), Rafael Furcal (SS), and Cesar Izturis (3B). That’s right – it was so long ago that Rafael Furcal was actually playing in games. It should, of course, be noted that the 2006 club did rebound to make the playoffs.