Mike Scioscia's tragic illness

Attempting To Look On the Bright Side With James Loney

One of my favorite television moments from when I was a teenager was when Norm MacDonald returned to host Saturday Night Live in late 1999, less than two years after he’d been fired from the show. Norm dedicated his monologue to trying to figure out how he’d managed to go from unemployed to headlining the show in such a short period of time, finally coming to this pointed realization:

So I wondered, how did I go in a year and half from being not funny enough to be even allowed in the building, to being so funny that I’m now hosting the show? How did I suddenly get so goddamn funny? It was inexplicable to me, because, a year and a half, let’s face it, is not enough time for a dude to learn how to be funny! Then it occurred to me… I haven’t gotten funnier. The show… has gotten really bad! So, yeah, I’m funny compared to, you know, well, you’ll see later. Okay, so let’s recap. The bad news is: I’m still not funny. The good news is: the show blows!

I’m an admitted Norm fanboy, so I’ve had that speech bouncing around my head (particularly the “bad news, good news” line) for years. I bring it up today because I started thinking about what to expect from James Loney this year – trust me, there’s a connection that will make sense in a second – and that’s exactly the line I started thinking about.

You see, the National League in 2012 has all of a sudden found itself in a severe drought when it comes to non-Joey Votto options at first base, traditionally one of the most productive offensive players in the lineup if you’re doing it right. (Which means that other than one good year from Nomar Garciaparra in 2006, the Dodgers haven’t been “doing it right” since… what, a few good years from Eric Karros in the 90s? Steve Garvey before that?) Albert Pujols is off from St. Louis to Anaheim, and Prince Fielder joined him in the American League with Detroit. The other notable masher at the position, Ryan Howard, is probably going to miss several months recovering from his Achilles injury – even before that he wasn’t as valuable as most believe anyway – and it’s anyone’s guess as to what his NL East colleagues in Ike Davis and Adam LaRoche can do after missing most of 2011 with serious injuries. A league that once had Pujols, Fielder, Howard, Adrian Gonzalez, and Adam Dunn & Derrek Lee when they were still productive now has only Votto and a whole lot of question marks.

This is a league where if the season began today, the collection of starting first basemen might very well include Bryan LaHair, Mat Gamel, Ty Wigginton (or Jim Thome!), Jesus Guzman, Aubrey Huff, Carlos Lee, and Garrett Jones. (“I’ll take ‘guys who aren’t Lyle Overbay‘ for $200, Alex.”) I know that won’t be precisely the list – hey, maybe Brandon Belt or Yonder Alonso can beat out the incumbents this time around – but it’s not far off, and it’s hardly intimidating. Even the teams with first basemen coming off productive years have to worry about advancing age – I’m on your lawn, Todd Helton & Lance Berkman – or sophomore slumps from solid-but-hardly-elite youngsters like Freddie Freeman & Paul Goldschmidt.

Look at it this way: the average line from all NL first basemen last season was .270/.350/.450 (.801), narrowly beating out right field for the top offensive position in the league. Now take out 692 plate appearances of .981 performance from Fielder and replace them with Gamel, who is just a year younger but has still managed just a .684 OPS in parts of four seasons with the Brewers as he’s been unable to prove he’s more than a Quad-A player. Take out Pujols and replace him with Berkman, who actually outperformed Pujols last season as Albert dealt with a wrist injury but who few expect to repeat his 2011 at age 36. (Bill James predicts him at .894 next year, slightly less than what Pujols was able to do.) Take out some portion of Howard’s .835 as he recovers, and the 606 plate appearances of .819 that Carlos Pena left behind in Chicago. Take out the excellent .336/.401/.601 in 354 plate appearances that Mike Morse had as a first baseman in Washington as he moves to left field, numbers which LaRoche can’t match, and depreciate some of the .850 over 491 plate appearances that absolutely no one expects the soon-to-be 39-year-old Helton to repeat. (I’ll acknowledge that if healthy, Davis should improve the Mets’ 2011 performance at the position.)

Taking all that into consideration, it’s not all that hard to think that the OPS production by NL first basemen in 2011 (and I shouldn’t have to note that I know OPS isn’t the best metric, but for a high-level look like this, it’s fine) is going to sink south of .800, a number that it barely topped last year with Pujols and Fielder. If everything really goes wrong – if Helton and Berkman really fall apart, or if Davis can’t make it back from injury, or if the Giants refuse to get over Huff, or if the new Marlins park is as pitcher-friendly as we’ve heard and that impacts Gaby Sanchez, etc. – it could be considerably lower than that.

And then there’s Loney, looking up at the group with his .288/.339/.416 (.755) line from 2011. He’s been the definition of mediocrity in his four years as a starter, with the only change being that in 2011 he decided being decent-but-no-better for the entire season was boring, and that it’d be far more fun to be gawd-awful for two months and then be red-hot for two months, with his final line coming in at basically the exact same place it always had. The problem was never that Loney was a terrible player (other than the first six weeks of 2011, of course), because there’s value in a slick defensive player who can hit 10-12 homers and bat in the .280s, but that the bar at first base was set so high that by comparison he looked terrible.

Now, it seems, the bar might not be quite so high to be a decent first baseman in the National League, without even considering that Loney owns one of the better gloves in the circuit. If he repeats his 2011 exactly, his total package could make him average or just-below as far as NL first basemen go. If he’s anything like he was over the last two months of 2011, he’s one of the three best in the league. (And of course, if he’s anything like he was in April and May, he’s on the street by June.)

Is James Loney really any better than he’s been before? Unless you really, really believe in the way he ended 2011, probably not, and believe me, I’m not thrilled about the fact he’s making $6.375m this year. But when you compare him to, well, you’ll see, maybe it’s not so bad. So, to recap… the bad news is, Loney likely isn’t suddenly a top first baseman. The good news is, well, just about no one else has one either.

James Loney Avoids the Most Depressing Arbitration Case in History

Earlier today on Twitter, I joked that if the Dodgers and Clayton Kershaw couldn’t come to some sort of an agreement before reaching the arbitration table, I’d love to have the chance to sit in on that hearing. What could the Dodgers possibly say to argue Kershaw’s case? “Uh, if he was so good, how come Juan Uribe was so bad?” What I didn’t say at the time was that the inverse of that situation – James Loney‘s arbitration hearing – would have been equally as hilarious, just in a completely different way. Can you imagine Loney’s representatives trying to come up with ways to bolster his case, particularly since his usual crutch of “RBI guy” didn’t even really happen in 2011?

Unfortunately for purveyors of high comedy, we won’t get a chance to envision that, since Loney has avoided arbitration by agreeing to a one-year deal worth $6.375m. If that sounds like a lot for a player of Loney’s talents, well, just remember that the arbitration process isn’t exactly the free market. And if he’s anything like the Loney we saw over the last two months of 2011, he’ll actually be underpaid. (When he’s not that Loney, of course, feel free to commence moaning.)

Updating the numbers from earlier today, the Dodgers now have about $79m committed to 16 players under contract for 2012, plus the approximately $5m or so that will be spent on minimum salary pre-arbitration types like Dee Gordon, Kenley Jansen, and A.J. Ellis. The only outstanding arbitration case, Kershaw, still looms…

We Always Knew James Loney Would Be Back in 2012

This is a few days old, but I wasn’t able to get to it until now due to the holiday weekend. GM Ned Colletti spoke to MLB Network Radio’s Mel Antonen on Friday, and Antonen dropped this juicy tidbit via Twitter:

#Dodgers GM Ned Colletti says on MLB Network Radio that James Loney will be at 1B for LA next season. Says 20-25 HRs possible.

Short of actually saying a contract has been offered and signed, this is the clearest confirmation we’ve heard yet that Loney will in fact be tendered a contract for 2012, his final year of team control. That should come as absolutely no surprise to anybody, of course; we’ve known for weeks that the 2012 budget is largely tapped out – Hiroki Kuroda‘s return may depend more on finances than whether he wants to come back or not – and there’s absolutely not room to bring in a Prince Fielder to play first base. (Here’s where we grumble that the combined 2012 outlay to mediocre vets Juan Rivera, Mark Ellis, and Juan Uribe would come close to covering the first year of Fielder, but that’s neither here nor there at this point.)

Technically, it’s not a strict choice of “Fielder or Loney”, because you could argue for bringing in a Carlos Pena or Michael Cuddyer type free agent, or trying to cobble something together between Rivera, Jerry Sands, and/or Scott Van Slyke, but let’s not pretend the Dodgers were ever going to do that – nor, I could argue, should they have. Pena and Cuddyer each come with their own flaws and are each likely to get multiple years at relatively large salaries (guessing 2/$16m for Pena and 3/$33m for Cuddyer); south of that you’re left with unappealing options like Derrek Lee and Lyle Overbay. The internal options haven’t proven they can hit enough to handle an outfield spot, much less the traditionally powerful first base spot.

Of course, Loney hasn’t proven that either, his last two months aside, and that’s why pal Marc Normandin is a bit incredulous about this over at SBN’s Baseball Nation:

Whether Colletti is on target or not with his positive outlook is another matter. We are talking about fewer than 200 plate appearances, after all, and a whole lot can happen in a stretch like that. Plenty of players succeed like mad for short stretches of a month or two, only to never be that productive again. Then again, there are others. Take this .257/.339/.606 September 2009 from a certain Toronto Blue Jay, for one. (Hint: It’s Jose Bautista.) Cases like Bautista, who was a career .386 slugger prior to that month, are a rarity, but with the right changes made to a hitter’s approach, wholesale changes are possible. They are just unlikely, is all.

Loney isn’t about to be confused for Joey Bats anytime soon, but if there is some major change in his swing mechanics that helped him succeed where he previously failed, (and hey, there might be!) then maybe Colletti is on to something. Of course, that “if” is as huge as the difference between Loney and a productive first baseman has been in the past.

I can’t disagree with any of that, and if Loney is as bad as he was to start 2011 – remember, at the time we weren’t looking at him as a guaranteed non-tender as much as we were “is this guy even going to make it through the season?” – or even if he’s generally as mediocre as he’s been over the last three seasons, this is going to be $6m or so that does not help the Dodgers win. But if he’s anything like he was to finish out 2011, then getting production like that on a one-year deal at ~$6m is a steal, a far better value than anything you could pick up on the free agent market.

That “if” is about ten times bigger than Uribe, of course, because I don’t believe that after all this time and all this sustained mediocrity things would have just “clicked”. In Bautista’s case, his success can easily be attributed to a change in his swing mechanics, and while Normandin links to a Chad Moriyama post that says Loney made some changes as well, this is far from the first time we’ve heard that Loney has been tinkering with his swing.

Oh, and ignore Colletti’s comments about “20-25 homers”. They’re completely irrelevant, because of course he’s going to say positive things about the guy he’s about to take a big risk on. If Loney can retain at least some of the progress he showed in August and September of last year and provide a reliable glove at first to track down some of Dee Gordon‘s missles, he might just earn that $6m. If not? Well, other than swapping out Jamey Carroll & friends for the uncertainty of Mark Ellis, we’ve largely seen what this infield can do. Without improvement from Loney, it won’t be pretty.

MSTI’s 2011 in Review: First Base

Man, I barely know where to start with this one…

James Loney (Grade: ¿ or ¡ maybe? Or æ. Ooh, let’s go with þ.)
.288/.339/.416 .755 12hr 1.1 WAR

When I first started putting these 1991 Topps cards together, it was early August, and Loney’s was one of the first ones I did. The original photo was of him with his head down, walking slowly back to the dugout after yet another failed at-bat. He looked sad, which is exactly how he made us feel.

You’ll notice that this image of sadness is no longer included in his card. Now, the picture is of him focusing on another hapless pitcher, helplessly attempting to figure out what he can do to fool the Unstoppable Force That Is James Loney. If you think that sounds weird now, just imagine what the July version of you would have said.

Other than Matt Kemp and Clayton Kershaw, I’m pretty sure that there was no player discussed on this site in 2011 more than Loney, simply because he was so damn confounding. Since he’s the only first baseman we’re talking about today, we’re going to take a nice leisurely ride through the good, bad, and downright bizarre of Loney’s season. No, really, be warned: I wrote a lot about Loney this season.

Hell, the season hadn’t even started when I first really bagged on him back on March 24:

(*Regarding Loney, I’d like to note here that I’m in an NL-only draft with several of my Baseball Prospectus cohorts, in a league which requires full 40-man rosters. As you can imagine, the pickings in the lower rounds of this draft are beyond slim. We’re in the 35th round, so over 400 players are off the board. Loney remains available.)

At the time, that seemed in no way unreasonable, and things didn’t look any better on April 14, when I noted that he was “sucking in a fashion not generally seen outside of the darkest corners of the internet,” and by April 20 he was getting entire posts dedicated to how awful he was, not only here, but at Baseball Prospectus, where I pointed out that his home/road and lefty/right splits were so severe, his only hope of success might be as a platoon player outside of Dodger Stadium.

That was followed up by “James Loney’s Total Eclipse of the Bat” on May 7:

The list you’re seeing there is of all non-pitchers since the 1947 integration who have had as many plate appearances as Loney did entering tonight, sorted by fewest extra-base hits. Loney had two hits in five plate appearances tonight that aren’t reflected here, but they were each singles, so it doesn’t really change the results.

What’s really enlightening here is to look at the position column, all the way to the right. Almost all of these hitless wonders were middle infielders from decades ago, at a position and time where a lack of power was accepted, with a few catchers thrown in for good measure. Worse, this is a list comprised almost entirely of players who never really had careers to speak of. You haven’t heard of Dwain Anderson, Elio Chacon, or Larry Lintz, right? The only one here who is notable in any way is Al Lopez, a fine catcher who made the Hall of Fame via the Veterans Committee, but whose entry on this list was the final season of his 19-year career, at age 38.

It gets worse. I didn’t include the full list above, but it actually goes out to 55 names, as there are dozens of others tied with Loney at two extra-base hits. You might think that by stretching it out that far, you’d end up with at least a few other first basemen. You’d be wrong. It’s almost entirely comprised of catchers, second basemen and shortstops, with the odd center fielder (like 39-year-old Brett Butler’s 1993, or 22-year-old Juan Pierre‘s 2000). In fact, the only other player on the list who even played a single inning at first base was Mike Fiore in 1970, split between the Red Sox and Royals. Fiore played his final MLB game at 27 two years later, which is exactly the age Loney turned today.

Let’s not stop there, though. We all know that this isn’t just six weeks of underwhelming production, but that he’s coming off a tough second half of 2010, too. From the start of last year’s second half on July 15 through the start of play today, Loney had 405 plate appearances and a line of .213/.274/.305, an OPS of .579. Using the same timeframe of 1947-present, here’s the list of seasons of at least 405 plate appearances by players who saw at least half of their time at first base, sorted by lowest OPS.

James Loney, at that point, was historically awful, and as the season slipped away, most of us wondered how long it was worthwhile to stick with him, particularly as he went nearly six weeks without an extra-base hit. Here’s the thing, though: I feel like a lot of people are under the misconception that Loney was garbage for over four months and then suddenly turned it on in August. That’s not exactly true; while he didn’t become James Loney, Superhero, until late summer, there were already signs in May that he was starting to pick it up:

As I joked on Twitter, James Loney is slowly moving into “not our biggest problem” territory, after reaching base three times today. That doesn’t mean that he’s suddenly become all that good or that I’ve changed my overall opinion on him, but he has doubled in three straight games and hit in 8 of 9 & 15 of 18, raising his line from an unbelievably bad .167/.191/.211 on April 23 to a more realistically poor line of .240/.283/.292 after today. With the rest of the injury and production issues mounting, and Loney still contributing his usual solid defense, he’s no longer the biggest concern.

And again, on May 30:

James Loney hadn’t thrilled the home crowd with a homer since August 31, 2010, when he took Philadelphia’s Kyle Kendrick deep. He’s now done it twice in four days, tonight leading the Dodgers with three hits as they battered Colorado’s Jason Hammel and the reeling Rockies on their way to a 7-1 win. Loney’s certainly playing like a man who wants to keep his job, and a .295/.354/.420 in May is certainly a good start. It’ll take more than that to overcome everything else, but it’s a step in the right direction, and for all the heat he’s taken here and elsewhere over the last year, it’s fantastic to see any bit of a spark from him.

…and again, on June 23:

Since that four-hit game on April 26, Loney has turned his season around, hitting  .331/.388/.432 in 188 plate appearances, good for an .820 OPS with a nice 14/16 K/BB ratio. That OPS still isn’t great – it’d put him at 13th among qualified 1B if he’d had it for the full season - but it’s immensely better than his “among the worst in history” start to the season.

To even be able to say that Loney has value with a straight face, after months of wondering when he’d be benched, is a testament to just how good he’s been lately.

All of which was reflected in his midseason grade in early July:

James Loney (C-) (.268/.311/.342 4hr -0.5 WAR)

I feel weird giving Loney a C-, because his line and a grade in that range suggest that he was his normal mediocre self all season. Far from it; by early May, he was the most hated man in LA since OJ and we were all writing articles about how bad his season was going to be on a historical level. Since then, he’s basically been the best non-Kemp hitter on the team. That doesn’t mean he’s good – hooray, a .751 OPS from a 1B since April 26! – and again, that says a lot about the rest of the players on this team, but nothing tells you more about the plight of the 2011 Dodgers than the fact that their punchless overpaid first baseman is no longer even close to being the biggest issue here.

So to say that Loney finally started showing some life in August isn’t exactly true, as he’d been on a slow incline all season. This would all make for a nice and tight narrative… if not for July. Holy good lord, July:

July was so bad that it was even worse than his April, and April was putrid. It was so bad that on August 3, all three Dodger beat writers wrote about how bad things were, as he’d been dropped into something of a platoon with Juan Rivera at first base. For my part, my patience had run out:

The total there is good enough for the 10th-worst OPS in MLB, and other than the inexplicable collapse of Adam Dunn, every single one of the guys performing worse than Loney are up the middle players, either 2B, SS, or CF. We could cite any number of stats pointing out his ineptitude – among players with as many PA as Loney has, he’s the 6th worst player by TAv – but in this case it’s not really necessary, because the eye test is clearly good enough.

Getting pinch-hit for in the late innings of a close game or not, it’s clear that Loney’s tenure as a Dodger is coming to an end. To his credit, his quotes in the above stories reflect a player who understands that he hasn’t been performing, and I’d also praise Mattingly for not slavishly continuing to play him every day when the production isn’t there. Loney’s an all-but-guaranteed non-tender following the season, though it should be noted there’s no obvious replacement for him in 2012, either.

And that was the end, it seemed, of James Loney, member of the Los Angeles Dodgers. But beginning with the ridiculous 24-hour span in which he threw a bullpen session in case he was needed to help support an overworked bullpen and then went 4-4 with a homer and a double the next day, Loney became a new man. That was August 21, and it all started happening from there.

August 27:

But back to Loney. I’ve been making jokes about his performance against the Rockies for some time now, chalking most of it up to the Coors Field effect. Clearly, that doesn’t hold water anymore; the last two have come at home. He’s now hit just two homers in the last 362 days that didn’t come against Colorado. The Dodgers finish off the series against the Rockies with Nathan Eovaldi against Jhoulys Chacin tomorrow, before welcoming San Diego into town. Has Loney really turned some kind of corner? Or will he turn back into a pumpkin as soon as Jim Tracy and crew leave town? More importantly, is this going to convince Ned Colletti to tender him a contract after the season? I still think it’s unlikely at the price he’d get in arbitration, but the last week or two has thrown some doubt into the conversation…

August 30:

As hot as Loney as been lately – and make no mistake, he’s been excellent – it’s also been eight games and 35 at-bats. In his previous 37 at-bats, leading back to the beginning of the month, he’d hit .243/.341/.351 with two extra-base hits. In all of July, he hit .176/.225/.230 with four extra-base hits, all doubles. So as much as I’m enjoying the new and improved James Loney, this level of production is going to need to last for at least another week or two (if not the rest of the season) before I’m able to chalk it up to anything more than a very welcome hot streak.

That’s what brings me back to perception. Streaks happen in baseball. Anyone can have one, in either direction. Just as Loney is absolutely not as good as he’s been over the last week, he’s also not really as bad as he showed in April when we were all calling for his head. It won’t take too much more for this hot streak to basically counteract his frigid start; as Jon Weisman rightly mentioned at Dodger Thoughts, since Loney’s low point on April 24, he’s essentially been standard-issue Loney, with an OPS similar to his career marks.

—-

The point is, absent further information or the unlikely probability that Loney hits like this through the end of the season, he’s probably going to be the same James Loney that he’s always been. He’ll end up with 10-12 homers and a line somewhere in the neighborhood of .280/.335/.395, just like every year.  He was never as bad as we poked fun at him for being early in the season when he struggled to get the average above .200, nor is he as good as he’s seemed in the last week. He’s still going to be a likely non-tender following the season, simply because the Dodgers can’t afford to pay ~$6m to a non-star first baseman (though it’s possible they still attempt to bring him back after that for a lesser price.)

The thing is… he kept it up. If his September wasn’t quite as good as his August, it was still excellent with a .987 OPS. The longer his tear went on, the clearer it became that he was going to be sticking around.

September 18:

Back to Loney, with only nine games left, I’ve begun to change my tune. No, I don’t necessarily think he’s “for real”, and there’s still a very good argument to be made that he should be non-tendered, but I think we’ve reached the point where the conversation is mostly going to be for the sake of argument: whether any of us like it or not, he’s going to get tendered a contract for 2012.

That holds true today – I strongly believe Loney gets tendered. And maybe, just maybe, that’s not as bad of an idea as we think it is. If you’re not getting Albert Pujols or Prince Fielder – which, spoiler alert, you’re not – the remaining first base alternatives aren’t all that enticing, particularly if Jerry Sands is filling an outfield spot. If, somehow, he’s figured it out, then one year at ~$6m isn’t that terrible. If he hasn’t? Well, with Dee Gordon and his erratic arm at shortstop, you’re going to need a first baseman who can pick it. Still not necessarily saying I’d do it, but I can understand the reasons why the Dodgers might. Without question, the Loney choice is going to be the highest risk / highest reward issue of the winter.

******

Next! Aaron Miles grits his way to glory! Ivan DeJesus disappoints! Juan Castro can’t be killed! And oh holy good lord, Eugenio Velez! It’s second base!

James and the Giant Streak

Not to totally shortchange Clayton Kershaw‘s fifth complete game of the season or Andre Ethier‘s 3-4 performance despite the whirlwind of controversy around him, but there’s no way either of those things interest me more than the fact that James Loney had two more extra base hits on Monday, including his ninth home run of the season. Over his last eight games, Loney has an absurd .541/1.000 OBP/SLG with four dingers and five doubles, and now that it seems this streak didn’t leave town with the Rockies, it’s time to take a look at what’s really going on here.

My first thought was that perhaps Loney had changed his mechanics, which is something we’ve heard endless times throughout the season from both Loney and Don Mattingly. I went through several of his games from his awful April and his amazing August, hoping to find some small change in his swing… and to be honest, I couldn’t, at least nothing worth pointing to and declaring that it was the cause of his recent success. Still, since I made several animated gifs, here’s two of them for you to look at and compare for yourselves.

This is Loney on April 8 in San Diego, where he went 0-5 with two strikeouts in one of his worst games of the season…

…and here he is crushing a homer off Colorado lefty Matt Reynolds last weekend against Colorado:

Other than the fact that he’s swinging at some bad balls from San Diego’s Cory Luebke and the Reynolds pitch is something of a meatball over the inner half of the plate, I don’t really see much there. He’s stepping in the bucket slightly in April, though he’s still doing that in August. That being said, I in no way consider myself a swing expert, so feel free to point out something I’m missing.

Still, even if it’s not mechanical, there’s clearly something going on, so what is it? Some suggest that the talk of his being non-tendered has somehow motivated him, but I have trouble buying into that, since there’s never been any negative whispers about Loney’s work ethic or personality and he’s been struggling for nearly two years now. There’s also the idea that replacing Jeff Pentland as hitting coach with Dave Hansen kick-started things; this is possible, though Hansen had been with the team all along and when people talk about how many more runs have scored since the move, they like to conveniently forget that Juan Rivera arrived at basically the same time. Maybe his struggles this year were so bad that opponents finally moved past the “but he’s a good RBI guy” myth and realized there was no reason to do anything but challenge him, allowing him fewer opportunities to chase bad balls and receive better pitches to hit. (The numbers don’t bare that out, though they’re for the full season; I don’t have any way of breaking them down within segments of a season.) All of these suggestions are possibilities, yet none stand out. (Edit: I also meant to mention, but forgot to do so, that his streak roughly corresponds with being moved up to the #2 spot in the lineup, which could also help him see better pitches in front of Kemp. Kudos to Wil in the comments for pointing it out. That said, it also has to be more than that, since he has batted sixth twice and fourth once in his streak.)

For the moment, I’m leaning towards our subconscious perception of Loney as being the main culprit. As hot as Loney as been lately – and make no mistake, he’s been excellent – it’s also been eight games and 35 at-bats. In his previous 37 at-bats, leading back to the beginning of the month, he’d hit .243/.341/.351 with two extra-base hits. In all of July, he hit .176/.225/.230 with four extra-base hits, all doubles. So as much as I’m enjoying the new and improved James Loney, this level of production is going to need to last for at least another week or two (if not the rest of the season) before I’m able to chalk it up to anything more than a very welcome hot streak.

That’s what brings me back to perception. Streaks happen in baseball. Anyone can have one, in either direction. Just as Loney is absolutely not as good as he’s been over the last week, he’s also not really as bad as he showed in April when we were all calling for his head. It won’t take too much more for this hot streak to basically counteract his frigid start; as Jon Weisman rightly mentioned at Dodger Thoughts, since Loney’s low point on April 24, he’s essentially been standard-issue Loney, with an OPS similar to his career marks.

The problem for Loney was the timing, since due to the daily nature of baseball, first impressions sometimes count for too much. Other than fewer RBI, in large part due to the low-OBP crew the Dodgers have assembled this year, Loney is probably going to end up with a season line very similar to what he’s put up in each of the last three seasons. Taken as a whole, whether he was cold in April and hot in August or vice-versa doesn’t really matter, since it all counts for the same over the course of a season. Yet since Loney got off to such a bad start, his batting average didn’t climb above .250 until the middle of June. That’s a whole lot of time for people to be looking at box scores and television graphics and seeing their first baseman hitting .190, .220, .240, etc. If he’d had the hot streak first, it might have taken him that long to get his average below .300, and you can bet that people would be thinking of him differently, even though overall his season might be completely identical.

We’ve seen this phenomenon happen before. Rod Barajas had essentially one good week in all of 2010, yet since it was in his first week as a Dodger, he didn’t receive a whole lot of criticism for the fact he did little in September – and it helped him get a hefty contract for 2011. In 2009, Orlando Hudson got off to a fantastic start, hitting .348/.429/.539 through the first 35 games of the season. Despite the fact that he played so poorly the rest of the year that he eventually lost his job to Ronnie Belliard in the playoffs, that first impression (and the fact his batting average looked pretty on the scoreboard every night), meant most Dodger fans remembered their first impression of Hudson as a second base superstar.

The point is, absent further information or the unlikely probability that Loney hits like this through the end of the season, he’s probably going to be the same James Loney that he’s always been. He’ll end up with 10-12 homers and a line somewhere in the neighborhood of .280/.335/.395, just like every year.  He was never as bad as we poked fun at him for being early in the season when he struggled to get the average above .200, nor is he as good as he’s seemed in the last week. He’s still going to be a likely non-tender following the season, simply because the Dodgers can’t afford to pay ~$6m to a non-star first baseman (though it’s possible they still attempt to bring him back after that for a lesser price.)

Streaks happen. Let’s enjoy this one.

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Some minor pitching news: the Dodgers are about to need two additional starting pitchers. Nathan Eovaldi‘s start on Saturday will be his last one of the season, says Don Mattingly, but in addition he’s shuffled the rotation so that Chad Billingsley will start on Friday and a minor league callup will start the Thursday makeup game in Pittsburgh. Thursday is September 1, so there’s no roster implications there, but presumptive choice John Ely started for Albuquerque on Sunday and I doubt they’d throw him on short rest. Ken Gurnick suggests Dana Eveland or Allen Webster; Webster is infinitely more fun yet has also been hit hard in his last few games, so it’s almost certainly Eveland, with he and Ely probably each getting starts in September.