Jay Gibbons « Mike Scioscia's tragic illness

MSTI’s 2011 in Review: Left Field

October 18, 2011 at 7:31 am | Posted in Jamie Hoffmann, Jay Gibbons, Jerry Sands, Marcus Thames, Tony Gwynn, Xavier Paul | 37 Comments

Ah, left field: where hope goes to die. No, really; over the last ten seasons (2002-2011), the Dodgers have had 47 different players make an appearance in left field, and it’s not like they were all token appearances – 34 of the 47 were out there at least ten times. Who can forget the 48 games and .661 OPS from Jason Grabowski in 2004-05? The continuing stream of busted veterans like Luis Gonzalez, Ricky Ledee, and Jose Cruz conspiring to keep superior young players out of the lineup in 2006-07? And dear lord, Garret Anderson and Scott Podsednik on the same roster (though, thankfully, not at the same time) last year? With the obvious exception of Manny Ramirez‘ monster performance in 2008 and parts of 2009, the only Dodger left fielder with any meaningful playing time to put up an OPS of even .800 (which isn’t exactly a top mark from a power position) over the last decade was Andre Ethier, who just barely topped the minimum at .803 while playing there for much of the first three years of his career.

With Manny finally gone after 2010, left field was an obvious problem spot all winter, one that never quite got filled. Jay Gibbons and Tony Gwynn arrived early, later joined by Marcus Thames to form the immortal “JaMarcus Gwybbons, Jr.” trio that was absolutely never going to work – and, you know, didn’t – but much of the winter was marked by the Dodgers trying and failing to bring in others. Bill Hall was considered, but he went to Houston to play second base. (Fortunately for the Dodgers, as it turned out). Matt Diaz was sought, though he went to Pittsburgh. Brothers Scott Hairston and Jerry Hairston both appeared in rumors; neither arrived. With no upgrades available, the club eventually resigned themselves to wishing for the best from the Gwybbons Jr. trio, as we entertained ourselves by wondering if the team would break the record for most left fielders in a season while waiting for the day Trayvon Robinson would come save us. This, of course, would not do, as Dodger left fielders finished 23rd in MLB in OPS at .680, and Robinson, as you might have heard, was dealt to Seattle.

But remember, it could have been worse: in November, Ned Colletti actually picked up the team half of Podsednik’s mutual option, an offer that Podsednik foolishly (and disastrously) turned down in hopes of a bigger payday elsewhere. Podsednik ended up being injured for much of the year in AAA for Toronto and Philadelphia, and didn’t play a single MLB game. He was nearly the starting left fielder for the Dodgers. Good lord. Let’s get on with this hot mess.

(If you’re looking for Juan Rivera, he’ll appear in right field, even though he started more games as a left fielder, just to keep the left field pit of hell a little more manageable.)

Tony Gwynn (C)
.256/.308/.353 .660 2hr 22sb 1.1 WAR

Tony Gwynn might just be the blandest player to think about on the Dodgers. When Junior signed, we expected great fielding, some contribution on the basepaths, and just about nothing at the plate. And… well, that’s exactly what happened. Feel the excitement!

I wasn’t really sold on his signing – I wasn’t sure he was even better than Xavier Paul, though mostly I really had wanted a righty outfield bat – but after a solid spring, we were doing our best to talk ourselves into him:

It says a lot about the construction of this team that I just wrote about 900 words on why Tony Gwynn may be the best choice they’ve got, but it just might be true. The way things are currently configured, nothing could work out better for this team than for Gwynn to keep up his hot spring and grab the job.

He didn’t quite take over in the early going, sharing time with Marcus Thames and others, and hit a Gwynn-esque .264/.291/.377 through April, though he did pitch in with a game-saving catch. Then April turned into May, and… oh, that’s gonna leave a mark.

Split	G	GS	PA	H	RBI	SB	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
May	26	4	32	2	1	1	2	7	.067	.125	.100	.225

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table

Gwynn’s May was so bad that by the end of of the month, when we were wondering who might get DFA’d to make room for a returning Thames, the only reason it seemed worthwhile to keep Gwynn around was the lack of another option to help Matt Kemp out in center field. Gwynn survived the purge, and managed to pick up two hits in his first game of June despite not entering the game until the 8th inning. That was the start of a resurgence, because over June and July Gwynn picked up 40 hits, for a combined line of .305/.377/.389. That still shows absolutely no power whatsoever, but it doesn’t matter, because a player who can get on base at that rate along with good baserunning and excellent defense is quite valuable.

Of course, Gwynn followed up his nice stretch with a .245/.278/.367 run over August and September, which sounds about right from him. Overall, his .308 OBP is basically the same as his .304 mark with the Padres in 2010, but very troubling is the fact that his walk rate dropped from 10.6% and 12.1% the previous two years to just 6.8% with the Dodgers.

So what next? His plate performance is lousy, though his defense is rated excellent by most metrics and that absolutely passes the sniff test. Considering his utility on the bases, he’s a useful enough piece, and he wants to return. If I was running the team, I’d probably look to upgrade, but assuming he doesn’t get much more than ~$1m or so if he makes it to arbitration, that seems fair enough.

Jerry Sands (B-)
.253/.338/.389 .727 4hr 0.0 WAR

When camp started, we were all intrigued by the 2010 performance of Jerry Sands in the minors, and we hoped that if all went well, we might be lucky enough to see him in the bigs by September. By March 7, Sands was so impressive that I was creating polls to see how long people thought the Dodgers could really keep him down, especially considering the lack of production at his two primary positions, first base and left field. Even then, the majority of people figured “July or later”, so it was no surprise when he was sent back to minor league camp on St. Patrick’s Day.

Sands started off his AAA season by homering in each of his first four games, and as the Dodger offense struggled with injury and ineffectiveness, they shocked us all by recalled him on April 17, far sooner than anyone expected. The initial returns were promising, with fans giving standing ovations for his debut, and he repaid them with doubles in each of his first two games and in five of his first nine, as the Dodgers – to their credit – committed to the experiment, playing him nearly every day.

But despite the doubles, the excitement, and the promised plate discipline, something was missing. Sands wasn’t quite the savior we’d been looking for. There were some nice moments, of course, including his first homer on May 21 and a grand slam on May 24 in Rubby De La Rosa‘s debut, but they were few and far between. By the end of May, I was open to the idea that it should be Sands who went back down when Marcus Thames returned. Sands survived, with Jay Gibbons surprisingly getting the axe on the day that Dee Gordon arrived, but just over a week later it was Sands’ turn:

Numbers aren’t everything, of course. When Sands arrived, we heard a great deal about his maturity, ability to make adjustments, and command of the strike zone. From this vantage point, all of what we’ve heard has been true and then some. Before his recent slump, he’d shown an increased ability to pull the ball, rather than always going the other way, and even when the power wasn’t there he was seeing a lot of pitches and getting on base.

By sending him back down now, you hope that he goes down knowing he can play on this level, with a few adjustments. This is where the maturity comes into play; some rookies can’t handle a demotion well, but Sands sounds like the type who can. Ideally, he goes back down to ABQ, mashes Triple-A pitching for a while to get his confidence back up (also important, as you don’t want a string of oh-fers in the bigs to get him down), and then we’ll see back up later in the summer. I’d say “when rosters expand on Sept. 1″, but I think we all know that injuries will necessitate a recall sooner.

Sands is a big part of this team’s future, and it’s in his best interest to go back down and get his confidence back up. He’s not helping the team right now, and he’s not helping himself. He’ll be back, and he’ll be better for the experience.

That’s exactly what happened, because much like Gordon, the Sands we saw the second time around was far different from our initial look. When Sands was sent down, he was hitting .200/.294/.328 in 144 plate appearances; after his return on September 8 (with the arrival of Rivera and the resurgence of James Loney, he stayed down longer than I would have guessed), he hit .342/.415/.493, playing mostly right field with Andre Ethier injured, including a 14-game hitting streak and hits in 16 of 18 games. He ended up finishing fifth on the club in doubles, despite having just 227 plate appearances; the hot streak all but guaranteed himself a spot on next year’s club, though it remains to be seen what position he’ll play.

If there is one big red flag about Sands, it’s that his home/road splits with the Isotopes were beyond atrocious. Courtesy of Andrew Grant’s Minor League Central, we can see that he hit .347/.406/.709 with 18 homers at home, and just .186/.258/.401 with 9 homers on the road. I’m always driving the “ABQ stats mean little without checking the splits” train, so I can’t in good conscience tell you to completely ignore that here. However, when we talk about ABQ-inflated stats, we’re usually talking about a player who is either a semi-prospect with little to point to before reaching ABQ (think Justin Sellers), or an older Quad-A fringe type who could never stick in the bigs but who was lucky enough to land in the perfect place to pad his stats (like Trent Oeltjen recently, or Dee Brown or Hector Luna in previous years.) As a young player who comes with quality scouting reports, a solid track record in the minors before landing in New Mexico, and an excellent finish to his season in the bigs, Sands has a lot more going for him than the other names mentioned, so his splits aren’t cause to write him off – just something to note.

Marcus Thames (F)
.197/.243/.333 .576 2hr -0.7 WAR

Despite the fact that it didn’t even come close to working out, giving Marcus Thames a shot as a LF/1B bench bat wasn’t the worst idea in the world at the time:

So if you’ve come here looking to see if I hate the idea of Thames, then no, I don’t. I hate that this is the best the Dodgers are going to be able to do; I hate that with every passing day the idea that much is riding on Tony Gwynn hitting enough to win the CF job. I think there’s good arguments to be made for preferring Hairston or Milledge, yet I can’t complain too much about getting a guy who has an .820 OPS and 94 homers over the last five years (assuming the money is small).

Really, this is going to be determined by Thames’ usage. If he’s a lefty-killing specialist who is 80% off the bench and 20% in left field, that’s useful enough. If he’s penciled in to a strict platoon role where he gets a goodly amount of playing time in the field, that’s an enormous problem. Thames is one of the worst defensive outfielders in baseball, and as tenuous as the idea of a Jay Gibbons / Matt Kemp / Andre Ethier outfield might be, putting Thames in LF alongside Kemp and Ethier would be atrocious, to the point that it might be the worst fielding trio in the game. This is going to be another test for Don Mattingly, and we’ll have to see how he handles that.

We never found out. Thames was as poor as advertised in the field, but he was also surprisingly bad at the plate, albeit in just 70 plate appearances. I think some of that might be chalked up to his usage, because after starting five of his first eight games in left field, he was essentially reduced to pinch-hitting until he was injured in early May. For a player used to getting three and four at-bats per game as a designated hitter in the American League, the transition to pinch-hitting was a difficult one.

Thames landed on the disabled list on May 3 after injuring his left thigh and missed slightly more than a month. When he returned, Mattingly attempted to get him back in the mix by giving him eight starts in left field in June, but it didn’t work; Thames failed to hit and missed several more games with a calf strain. He pinch-hit twice in July and was finally DFA’d in favor of Juan Rivera over the All-Star break, eventually returning to the Yankees on a minor-league deal.

Like so many other Dodgers in 2011, Thames couldn’t stay healthy and didn’t do much to justify his existence when he was. Not exactly a memorable tenure from a short-term Dodger.

Jay Gibbons (D-)
.255/.323/.345 .668 1hr -0.5 WAR

Gibbons, as you probably remember, was a nice story at the end of 2010. As much as that made for some fun puff piece stories in the press, I was a bit concerned about what to really expect from him going into 2011:

You all know his story by now, as he went from “reasonably successful Oriole” in the early and middle part of the decade, to “blackballed Mitchell Report name who was largely out of baseball” in 2008-09, to “heartwarming success story for his hometown team” in 2010. Though he was certainly a nice boost for the team last year, I’ve always felt that his performance got a little more hype than it probably deserved. Coming on the heels of the Garret Anderson debacle, the bar was set pretty low, and Gibbons made a great first impression – he homered in his first start and put up a 1.102 OPS over his first 47 PA back in the bigs. That’s all well and good, except beyond his own defensive issues, 47 PA is hardly a large sample size, he ended the season in a 6-32 slide, and we’ve learned several times that people put far too much stock into first impressions. If this sounds familiar, it’s because I’ve been saying the exact same thing about Rod Barajas for months.

This isn’t to bash Gibbons, who made for a nice story in the dog days of a lost season. It’s just to point out that despite all the accolades, he’s still a 34-year-old who put up a .313 OBP in 80 PA, and can’t possibly be expected to sustain a .507 SLG. While all the stories read that he hadn’t played in MLB since 2007, it actually goes beyond that; due to injuries, he didn’t even get into 100 games in either 2006 or 2007.

I think I nailed the trepidation there pretty well, and Gibbons did little to change that in 62 plate appearances in May and early June. That said, while i don’t think he was ever likely to produce, you do have to feel bad for him in how it went down. Gibbons returned early from winter ball complaining of vision problems, and started the season on the disabled list with the same issue. When he returned in May, he made it to early June before getting a somewhat surprising DFA which landed him back in Albuquerque, where he underwent another eye surgery in hopes of restoring his vision.

On the season for the Isotopes, he hit an Albuquerque-fueled .305/.407/.463, which is nice, and if we’ve learned anything about Gibbons it’s that you can’t count him out. But he’ll be 35 next spring, didn’t get a September call-up, is a poor defender, and in 2012 it’ll have been nearly six years since he was last an effective big leaguer for more than a few weeks. If he wants a job in AAA I’m sure he can have one somewhere, but I wouldn’t expect to see him back with the Dodgers again, especially since he elected to become a free agent in early October.

Xaver Paul (inc.)
.273/.273/.273 .545 0hr -0.1 WAR

I don’t use this photo in Paul’s card to make fun of him, but mostly because it was one of the few photos of him playing for the Dodgers this year I could actually find.

That’ll happen when you get just 11 plate appearances before being shipped off to the place where all mediocre Dodgers go to die: Pittsburgh. (Here’s looking at you, Delwyn Young & Andy LaRoche.)

Paul had long been one of my favorites, but he never really seemed to get the chance he deserved based on his minor-league track record and strong throwing arm. It’s not that he ever looked like a future star or even more than a fourth outfielder – I can’t even say he did much in Pittsburgh in his first crack at semi-regular playing time – but the simple fact that he kept getting swept aside for over-the-hill veterans like Garret Anderson really burned me.

So long, Xavier. We’ll always have you as the answer to the trivia question, “who was DFA’d to get Jerry Sands on the roster?”

Jamie Hoffmann (inc.)
.000/.000/.000 .000 0hr -0.2 WAR

Hoffmann had four plate appearances over two April games, so obviously there’s not a lot of his MLB season to analyze. The greater question here is, who did he piss off? Hoffmann hit .297/.356/.497 in AAA this year, while backing up his reputation as an excellent defensive outfielder by breaking a 53-year-old PCL record for consecutive errorless games. While the standard ABQ disclaimers apply (dig that 200+ split in home/road OPS), you don’t hit 22 homers completely by accident, yet on a team that carried both Eugenio Velez and Trent Oeltjen for months, Hoffman didn’t warrant even a token September recall. That can’t bode well for his future with the team, though I still don’t see why he couldn’t be a useful backup.

******

Next! It’s center field! You may know the guy who plays there! I hear he’s sorta good!

2011 Midseason Grades: Offense

July 11, 2011 at 6:13 am | Posted in A.J. Ellis, Aaron Miles, Andre Ethier, Casey Blake, Dioner Navarro, Eugenio Velez, Hector Gimenez, James Loney, Jamey Carroll, Jamie Hoffmann, Jay Gibbons, Jerry Sands, Juan Castro, Matt Kemp, Rafael Furcal, Rod Barajas, Russ Mitchell, Tony Gwynn, Trent Oeltjen | 54 Comments

The All-Star break is here, and that means it’s everyone’s favorite time of the year: midseason grades. It’s been a tough year for the Dodgers on and off the field, though we do of course have the pleasure of a few exceptionally bright spots. As always, the grades are in relation to what was reasonably expected of the player at the beginning of the season, not in comparison to other players in the bigs. Otherwise, Jose Bautista would get an A, and no one else would get above a Q. Fewer than 50 plate appearances or 10 innings pitched gets you an incomplete.

All stats are via baseball-reference. Today we’ll do hitters, and before the break is over we’ll get to pitchers, management, and one new kind of review. As always, these letter grades are subjective opinions and meant more for fun than anything. Except for Juan Uribe’s. There’s nothing fun about Juan Uribe.

Catchers

Rod Barajas D+ (.220/.262/.385 8hr 0.2 WAR)
And right off the bat, our rating system is being tested. Do I give Barajas an F, because he’s not any good, or a C, because we never expected him to be any good? I’ll go with a D+, because even though he’s underperforming his own mediocre career stats, he was still second on the team in homers until the final game before the break. I suppose that says a lot more about the Dodgers than it does about him, though. Due to the low bar for offense from catching in the bigs, he’s actually slightly above replacement, though it’s hard to look at the 46/8 K/BB without getting a little ill. He’s due to be activated from the disabled list on Friday, allowing us to start up the always fun “Navarro or Ellis?” game again. (It’ll be Navarro sticking, of course.)

Dioner Navarro F (.183/.234/.287 2hr -0.1 WAR)
You don’t need me to go back and really find all of the articles I wrote over the winter asking why he was worth a $1m major-league contract and why he was guaranteed a spot over the likely superior A.J. Ellis, right? Navarro came in with the lowest of expectations, yet after missing the first month with an oblique injury, has somehow still managed to underperform. Despite that, he still manages to come up with the game on the line in the ninth inning nearly every single night. The world is a twisted place.

Fun fact: Navarro is the only player in history with the name “Dioner”. Fun fact #2: he’s still looking for his first hit against a lefty in fourteen tries this season.

A. J. Ellis (C) (.222/.364/.222 0hr -0.1 WAR)
I realize I’ve heaped far more praise on a 30-year-old minor league lifer with absolutely no power than he really deserves, but the Dodger catching situation is dire, and his long minor-league record and short major league stints show an above-average ability to get on base, which is exactly what this lineup is missing. Defensively, I won’t insult your intelligence by citing CERA, but it’s hard to think it’s a coincidence that Chad Billingsley’s mid-season slump turned around precisely when Ellis started being his regular catcher. Too bad he’s almost certainly headed back for Barajas on Friday.

Hector Gimenez (inc.) (.143/.143/.143 0hr -0.1 WAR)
I would like to say something witty or insightful about Hector Gimenez, but that infers that I have absolutely any recollection of him as a Dodger whatsoever. Pass.

Infielders

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.

Jamey Carroll (A+) (.297/.368/.366 0hr 1.6 WAR)
Last season, Carroll had a .718 OPS and was largely hailed as the team MVP for stepping in to cover for Rafael Furcal at shortstop for nearly the entire season. For a 36-year-old career backup who had played in more than 113 just once, it was quite the impressive feat. More impressive? The fact that he’s exceeding that this year, currently with a .734 OPS. In a lower run scoring environment, that’s good for a 111 OPS+. Once again, the team has been crushed by injuries. Once again, Jamey Carroll has risen to the occasion and more. I’m not sure what the future holds for Carroll in Los Angeles – this is the last year of his contract, and unsurprisingly teams are showing trade interest – but he has consistently outperformed expectations. I’ll miss him when he’s gone.

Fun Carroll fact: since you know I have no use for RBI, regard this as more of a fun statistical quirk than any sort of value judgement, but he has somehow managed to step to the plate 311 times and drive in just 8 runners. I suppose that’s what happens when you don’t hit homers and you’re either batting leadoff (behind the pitcher and the horrible bottom of the lineup) or 8th (behind low-OBP guys like Uribe, Barajas, and Loney).

Aaron Miles (A) (.318/.337/.381 1hr 1.1 WAR)
Credit where credit is due: Aaron Miles has been a really, really nice part of this team. I hardly need to remind you about all the jokes we made at his expense when he was signed and in the spring, but after being forced into far more playing time than anyone expected, he’s responded by becoming arguably the 4th-best hitter on the team. (Like Barajas and his homers, that says a lot more about the other hitters on the club, but still). We expected absolutely nothing from him – less than nothing, perhaps – and not only has he stepped up where needed, he led the NL in batting average in June.

It’s not all that simple, of course. .300 average or not, he’s not walking and he provides zero power, so his OPS is just barely over .700, and his .344 BABIP, 35 points over his career average, seems unlikely to hold. So let’s not get too caught up in praise for Miles to pretend he’s actually, you know, good. But for a non-roster guy who was something like the 8th infielder entering the season? Well done, Aaron. Well done.

Hey, you think we can sucker some team into trading for him at the deadline?

Ivan DeJesus, Jr. (inc.) (.188/.235/.188 0hr -0.5 WAR)
So far, DeJesus looks to be this year’s winner of the “Blake DeWitt Memorial LA-to-ABQ Frequent Flyer” award, because he saw three different stints with the big club, including the pleasure of flying all the way to Cincinnati for the pleasure of one pinch-hitting appearance in June. That being the case, you can’t really judge his big-league performance too much, though he also didn’t do a lot to change my perception of him as a bench player at best. Back in ABQ, he’s hitting .304, which is nice, though a .758 OPS in that environment isn’t encouraging.

Fun fact: for a guy whose name isn’t exactly “John Smith“, Ivan DeJesus is neither the best Ivan or the best DeJesus to play in the bigs this year.

Juan Uribe (oh holy good lord, F, and I don’t just mean the letter grade) (.207/.273/.306 4hr 0.4 WAR)
Uribe has been so bad that there’s an entire Tumblr dedicated to how sad he looks and makes us feel. He’s so bad that when an obviously fantastical rumor popped up for about five seconds about how the Dodgers might be looking to send him back to San Francisco, we jumped on it even though we knew it was BS, just for the small amount of hope it brought. He’s been so bad that he had a lousy April (.247/.303/.420) and hasn’t come close to even matching that since. He’s been so bad that of all the players in the bigs with at least 200 plate appearances, only three have a lower TAv than him. He’s been so bad that he has just one homer since April turned into May, and even that came off Brad Penny, so I feel like he was just trolling us. But hey, not like we have to stare at him for 2.5 more years or anything.

The funny part is, he’s actually been so good in the field that it pushes him above replacement level. That 0.4 breaks down into -0.4 oWAR and 0.8 dWAR. It doesn’t make him a good player, and it doesn’t justify the contract, but it’s something. I suppose that something should probably be enough to get him more than an F, but… no.

Rafael Furcal F (.185/.227/.228 1hr -0.5 WAR)
How do you even judge Furcal at this point? It can’t be on health, because he’s managed to end up on the disabled list twice more this year (though at least it wasn’t his back this time). It’s hard to do so on production, since he’s constantly either just about to go on the disabled list or just coming back from it. I suppose the fact that he’s not in a full body cast is something, but that line above… yeesh. Anyone who’s still dreaming of trading him to someone at the deadline probably needs to wake up because unfortunately, Furcal’s best days are behind him. As, probably, are his days of being able to obtain health insurance when he’s no longer a ballplayer.

Dee Gordon C+ (.232/.250/.280 0hr 0.0 WAR)
We all knew Gordon was recalled far too soon, and it showed: he was overmatched at the plate and made some critical errors in the field. He also brought the kind of excitement that we haven’t seen in years, if ever. If you have any doubt about that, just head on over to this GIF-heavy recap of the amazing feats he pulled off in just a single game. A lot of players end up with 0.0 WAR because they’ve been boring or barely playable, and haven’t contributed anything either positive or negative. That’s not the case with Gordon; he did plenty of things that hurt the team, but he made up for them with a ton of positives. That’s how it all evens out, and for a raw 23-year-old, yeah, I’ll take that.

Juan Castro A (.286/.333/.286 0hr 0.0 WAR)
Castro gave us the greatest gift of all, retiring this week before subjecting us to a fifth stint as a Dodger. That alone gets the man an A.

Casey Blake D- (.243/.346/.386 4hr 0.3 WAR)
Things the 37-year-old Blake has been on the disabled list for this season: sore oblique, infected elbow, pinched nerve in neck, Legionnaire’s disease, athlete’s thumb, bone-itis, ringworm infestation, osteoporosis. Also, he narrowly avoided a brush with the law for continually yelling at those damned kids to get off his lawn.

Casey Blake is old.

Russ Mitchell (inc.) (.115/.258/.269 1hr 0.1 WAR)
Mitchell has 74 MLB plate appearances in his short career. He has nine hits, and though one was a game-tying homer in the 9th inning against the White Sox earlier this year, that’s good for an OPS+ of 29. That’s an unfairly small sample size, of course, but he’s also hitting .244 in ABQ right now. Russ Mitchell: nope.

Outfielders

Jerry Sands (C-) (.200/.294/.328 2hr -0.4 WAR)
Like Gordon, Sands was probably promoted too soon, and like Gordon, he didn’t really provide results, but did provide hope for the future. All of the stories we heard about his maturity and plate approach seemed to be true, yet so far it hasn’t translated into production. Sands is crushing the ball once again in ABQ, and with the Dodger offense still stagnant, we’ll see him back up in blue before very long.

Tony Gwynn (B-) (.256/.316/.326 0hr 0.6 WAR)
It’s been something of an interesting season for Gwynn. He was his normal Gwynn-like self in April (i.e. bad), hitting .264/.291/.377 before going completely off the rails in May: he managed just two hits all month and received only four starts, as Sands took over the bulk of the left field work. At that point, with his batting average below .200 and with nothing to his name other than two game-saving catches, we started wondering how long he’d stick on the roster, especially when he didn’t get into any of the first three games in June. On June 4, he entered in the 8th inning and got two hits in a game that went 11 innings. He got a hit the next game, and the next, and before you knew it he’d hit in 7 of the first 8 games of the month. It would get better – since June 26, which was two weeks ago yesterday, he’s had five multihit games, including three with three and one with four. Now that Sands and Gordon are both in the minors, he’s effectively taken over as both the starting left fielder and leadoff hitter. Because he owns the only plus glove in what is a subpar defensive outfield, this was the outcome we’d always wanted. Now let’s see if he can really keep it up.

Marcus Thames F (.197/.243/.333 2hr -0.6 WAR)
Injured? Yep, twice, even if only one led to a DL stint. Poor on defense? You better believe it. Unproductive on offense? Well, the line above doesn’t lie, right? I sure hope he’s renting, not buying.

Jay Gibbons F (.255/.323/.345 1hr -0.5 WAR)
Well, he got DFA’d and claimed by no one, placing him back in AAA, so it couldn’t have been that good of a first half, right? You want to feel bad because his vision problems really derailed last season’s feel-good story right from the start… but then you remember he wasn’t really ever that good in the first place. The best part of that -0.5 WAR is that his oWAR is actually 0.1… meaning he’s really, really bad in the field.

JaMarcus Gwybbons, Jr. D-
Remember when the left field situation was going to be a nice trio between Gwynn, Thames, and Gibbons? Sheesh. Until Gwynn’s hot spurt over the last few weeks, they combined to offer absolutely nothing. Less than nothing, if you just went by WAR. At various points this season, we’ve made arguments for DFA’ing all three of them. Count this under “plans that were unlikely to work and then did, in fact, not work.”

Trent Oeltjen (inc.) (.265/.386/.441 1hr 0.6 WAR)
Hey, remember when Oeltjen went 4-4 with a homer in that 15-0 drubbing of Minnesota? That was rad, right? Unfortunately for him, he had 3 hits in 20 PA before that game, and just 2 hits in 20 PA since.

Xavier Paul (inc.) (.273/.273/.273 0hr -0.1 WAR)
Paul’s ultimate contribution to the 2011 Dodgers is managing to grab a left field start before his departure, thus helping us push towards our ultimate goal of setting a record for most left fielders in a season. He’s got an 84 OPS+ for Pittsburgh since being picked up, though he’s improved his OPS in each full month there.

Jamie Hoffmann (inc.) (.000/.000/.000 0hr -0.2 WAR)
The man got four plate appearances. Let’s not infer too much from that. I still think he could be a pretty useful fourth outfielder in the bigs, as he’s a well-regarded defender having another high-OBP season in the minors, this time with a little pop.

Eugenio Velez (inc.) (.000/.000/.000 0hr -0.2 WAR)

Baron Ironglove von Pickoff. Still can’t believe he’s a Dodger. Or a major leaguer. Or a human being.

Matt Kemp (A+++) (.313/.398/.584 22hr 27sb 5.7 WAR)
I know you come here for informed baseball analysis and all (uh, I hope), and I could write 10,000 words on why Kemp is awesome. I will at some point, and 9,990 of those words will probably be about how I always said that he’d have a monstrous season this year, even as half the city was tearing him apart last year. There will be a time for that sort of insight, but for now, let’s leave it at this: 91 games into the season, Kemp has 5.7 WAR. That puts him on pace for about 9.9 WAR over the full season… a mark bettered by just two Dodgers in history. Yeah. His season is that good. Remember when everyone wanted to trade him, secure in the knowledge that he had neither the baseball IQ or work ethic to become a star? Yeah, me neither.

Matt Kemp is a shiny golden god.

Andre Ethier (B+) (.311/.383/.463 9hr 1.9 WAR)
Ethier, without question, represented one of the more difficult grades to give out. 30 game hitting streak? Yes, please. .383 OBP? Delicious. While his OPS is nearly 40 points off his 2008 career high, the lower offensive environment this year means that it’s good for a career-best 141 OPS+, so hooray for that. No, he’s not hitting lefties (.242/.282/.368), but he never hits lefties, so that’s not much of a surprise. All in all, it’s been a very solid year from one of the two main offensive threats this club has.

Yet… it feels like something is missing. Prior to his two-homer day yesterday, he’d hit just seven dingers, and his SLG is down for the third year in a row. It’s certainly not enough of a problem to criticize him, hence the good grade, and perhaps yesterday’s outburst was the start of something new. I just can’t help shaking the feeling that is very unpopular among the casual fans who love him so much: Ethier is a very good player, but not a superstar. We’ll need to keep that in mind when his contract is up. I don’t want to get too down on him, though: right now, he’s the second best player on this team, and that in itself is quite valuable.

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Don’t forget: Matt Kemp is in the Home Run Derby tonight and will be live tweeting @TheRealMattKemp throughout.

Jamie Hoffmann or Jay Gibbons?

June 26, 2011 at 9:01 am | Posted in Jamie Hoffmann, Jay Gibbons | 12 Comments

Yesterday, I asked if you’d prefer to see Trayvon Robinson or Jerry Sands if Marcus Thames had to go on the DL. I asked that more as a way to see which of the two fans wanted to see more rather than as an explicit “it’s definitely going to be one of these two guys” statement. Good thing, because as it turns out, it’s, it’s likely to be neither:

The Dodgers have three outfielders on their 40-man roster at Triple-A Albuquerque from which they can promote a replacement: Jerry Sands, Trayvon Robinson and Jamie Hoffmann. Of the three, only Hoffmann didn’t play Saturday, a possible indication that he would be Thames’ replacement. Hoffmann is the oldest and most experienced of the trio.

Sands apparently was still struggling with some of the mechanical bad habits that led to his demotion two weeks ago. The latest word on Robinson was that he was making continued progress, but management would prefer to keep him in the Minors through August, if possible.

“Jerry’s OK, and Trayvon’s been hot lately,” said Mattingly. “We feel [Trayvon's] starting to make strides and adjustments. We have to make sure we don’t bring guys too fast. We’ve had to bring guys faster than we’ve wanted to this year. We’ve talked about a number of guys [to promote]. I hate to say at this point.”

The roster issue would seem to indicate Hoffmann, who had four hitless plate appearances with the club earlier in the season. Hoffmann is known as a plus defender at all three positions, and he’s having a decent enough season in ABQ, though he’s trending in the wrong direction: his monthly OPS over the first three months has gone from 1.003 to .854 to .746.

However, Joe Block of KABC’s DodgerTalk reminds us that there’s another familiar name in the mix…

LF Jay Gibbons is batting .300 (12-for-40) with 2 HR since rejoining Albuquerque #Dodgers

#Dodgers have 39 men counting toward 40-man roster. Could add a player to call up if Thames is DL’d.

That last part is important, because it wouldn’t require another player to be DFA’d. Hoffmann probably fits the roster better, since he’s a righty hitter (don’t forget, without Thames, the other two left field options are each lefty in Tony Gwynn and Trent Oeltjen) and a much better fielder, but he’s also been less than impressive at the plate in ABQ, while Gibbons does have that creamy veteran goodness. I imagine Ned Colletti would also like to finally get some value out of re-signing Gibbons in the winter, but having four lefty outfielders around Matt Kemp does seem like a pretty terrible idea. Thoughts?

Dee Gordon Arrives, But Is the Timing Right?

June 6, 2011 at 1:52 pm | Posted in Dee Gordon, Jay Gibbons | 40 Comments

I dipped out of a slow day at work early today to enjoy the weather and run some errands, keeping one eye on Twitter for the inevitable roster move news. We’d all expected that when Blake Hawksworth, Marcus Thames, & Juan Uribe were activated, John Ely, Ivan DeJesus, and probably Jerry Sands would be shipped off to take their places. Yesterday, I had prepared a post about how Sands heading down wouldn’t be a bad thing, despite the negative response I expected from fans, planning to hit publish while out and about today. In it, I noted that Matt Kemp & Clayton Kershaw had each returned to the minors after making their debuts, and how doing the same for the slumping Sands might not be the worst thing in the world – and I got to compare Juan Castro to a potted plant. It would have been great.

Well, that’s a post that will never see the light of day, because the Dodgers threw us a series of curveballs by making four roster moves today. Yes, Hawksworth, Thames, and Uribe are all back. Yes, Ely and DeJesus got shipped out. But so did veterans Juan Castro and Jay Gibbons. And joining the club, most surprisingly of all, is young shortstop Dee Gordon. As I write this draft on a crowded subway train home, I am, quite frankly, stunned.

Let’s start with the small fish first. Hawksworth for Ely was expected, particularly after Ely threw over 50 pitches yesterday, and so was Uribe for DeJesus. Each move represents an upgrade. Gibbons getting a DFA for Thames is far more surprising, though not entirely unwelcome. I’ve been pretty clear for a while in saying that Gibbons provides little value on either offense or defense, though I didn’t think they’d send out the lefty bat, and I wasn’t against Sands getting a minor league breather. Gibbons is almost certain to pass through waivers and report to ABQ anyway, so we might not have seen the last of him. This decision to stick with the young Sands over the veteran Gibbons is really one that deserves more attention, but it’ll be brushed under the rug because of the Gordon move.

I really can’t say enough how surprised I am that Gordon is coming to replace Castro. First and foremost, credit is due the Dodgers for finally deciding to stop wasting a roster spot on the completely useless Castro, though I suppose it’s not like he is any more useless now than when they chose to sign him in the first place. (Or the time before that, or the time before that…) Like Gibbons, he won’t be claimed so we may yet see stint #5 from the ageless, hitless, gloveless wonder.

All of this takes us to Gordon, and I must admit that I am torn. He’s the most exciting player the Dodgers have in their system, and a roster spot used on him rather than Castro pushes the team light-years ahead as far as watchability and interest. Yet, the speed of his promotion is difficult to wrap my head around. Many observers, myself included, expected him to start 2011 in AA, and were somewhat surprised that he was pushed to ABQ to start the year. In an offense-heavy environment, he has a good-but-not-stellar line of .315/.361/.370. (Lest you think I’m being too harsh, remember that this is the team on which career nothing JD Closser is hitting .298/.389/.529.) Not a single reputable analyst expected him here this quickly, and when I interviewed Christopher Jackson, who covers the ‘topes daily, he joked that if Gordon were put in the majors right now, he’d break Jose Offerman‘s errors record. As we’ve all heard so many times, Gordon, who didn’t play baseball seriously until high school, is an extremely raw prospect, and not the type likely to be rushed.

I bring this up not to be the wet blanket. I’m excited to see Dee Gordon play. I’m really excited to not see Juan Castro play. I’m just curious about the timing of all this, and how the Dodgers see themselves in the 2011 season. If you bring him up, you have to play him every day. It does no good for his development to be sitting on the bench. But if he plays every day, he’s likely to commit a ton of errors and may or may not be able to hit major league pitching. As I said in the tabled Sands piece, Kemp and Kershaw each had early struggles and were sent back down, and both were more highly touted than Gordon. If the Dodgers see themselves as a team that can win in 2011, will they suffer through the inevitable growing pains? Will they be okay with the fact that he’s almost certain to cost them a game or more with a defensive miscue? Will they really bench Juan Uribe and/or Jamey Carroll on a regular basis to let Gordon play?

We’ll have to see how this plays out to get the answers to those questions. I’ll say this about the Dodgers, however; though much of this is because of all of the injuries they’re fighting through, the 2011 edition has committed to youngsters like we haven’t seen in years. We’ll see that in full display this week against one of the NL’s top teams in Philadelphia, where Sands is starting tonight, Rubby De La Rosa goes tomorrow, and Gordon is likely to make his debut.

Welcome aboard, Dee. Can’t wait to see what you can do.

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Not to be lost in all the furor today – as I joked on Twitter, “based on my Twitter feed of the last 2 hours, Anthony Weiner tweeted a Dee Gordon dong shot to Paul Revere” – is the creative lineup that Don Mattingly has put together tonight:

Tonight’s #Dodgers lineup: Carroll SS, Miles 2B, Thames LF, Kemp CF, Uribe 3B, Blake 1B, Sands RF, Barajas C, Lilly P

Okay, I suppose I’m not a huge fan of Thames hitting third, but look at what he’s done against one of the toughest lefties in the game, Cliff Lee. Andre Ethier, benched. James Loney, benched. Three righties in the outfield! Casey Blake at first! Whether this works or not – and don’t bet on it, since Lee has held current Dodgers to a .088/.099/.113 line in 81 PA – it’s what we’ve been calling for forever, and I love Mattingly for it. Actually, maybe that’s the answer to the “will the Dodgers play Gordon over Uribe or Carroll” question above. Put one of them at 3B, play Blake at 1B, and now you’ve got Gordon over Loney. Now we’re getting somewhere.

Who’s Going to Lose Their Job When Marcus Thames Returns?

May 31, 2011 at 11:19 am | Posted in Jay Gibbons, Jerry Sands, Marcus Thames, Tony Gwynn | 52 Comments

Over the weekend, the Dodgers got some good news as far as the continued recovery of their legions of injured, as both Vicente Padilla and Marcus Thames began their rehab stints in the minors. Padilla threw two scoreless innings for Rancho Cucamonga, striking out one and allowing a hit, and he was reportedly back at Dodger Stadium for Monday’s game. He’ll likely need another outing or two in the minors, but may not be far from returning. When he does, there’s no shortage of young relievers in the current bullpen who could be sent back down to the minors to clear up a spot. (My money’s on Ramon Troncoso.)

Thames homered in his Albuquerque debut on Sunday, then went 0-4 on Monday. He played left field both days, and considering he was able to play in the field on consecutive days to start his rehab, we can do a bit of speculation and infer that he’ll be ready to return soon. But unlike with Padilla, there’s no obvious answer to the question of how he gets put back on the roster. So the question must be asked: who is about to lose their job for Marcus Thames?

Let’s get the obvious right out of the way and say that as much as we might pray for it, I don’t think there’s any chance that Juan Castro goes. If he’s cut, the club will have only four active infielders for the three non-1B spots in Casey Blake, Jamey Carroll, Rafael Furcal, & Aaron Miles. All four are at least 33, and I don’t need to remind you of the various injury concerns there. It’s not a risk the club would – or should – take at this point, though we may finally get rid of Castro when Juan Uribe returns later in June.

That means – assuming that they won’t drop from 12 pitchers to 11, which is extremely unlikely – that when Thames returns, we’re saying goodbye to Tony Gwynn, Jay Gibbons… or Jerry Sands. Let’s look at how they’ve been used since May 3, the day that Gibbons returned from the DL to take Thames’ spot.

There’s no typo there – Gwynn has just two hits in May as we enter the last day of play, and has only 16 on the season. Though he’s gotten into more games than anyone, he’s started just three; he’s been all-but-exclusively a defensive replacement, and if not for the fact that he had to replace Matt Kemp against Florida last week after Kemp was ejected, he might not have even had the chance to get that second hit.

Gwynn’s lack of production and low-impact role would seem to make this a simple choice… except for one issue: he’s the only one capable of playing center field other than Kemp, and he’s the only plus glove in what is generally a below-average defensive group. Sands and Ethier are average fielders on their best days, and Gibbons and Thames are really designated hitters who have been handed gloves. If Gwynn is gone, what happens if Kemp needs a day off or suffers a minor injury? Do we really want Thames or Gibbons out there in the 9th inning of a tight game when defense is crucial? Were you that entertained by Sands’ emergency appearance in center recently that we should make it a more regular thing?

So that leaves us with Gibbons or Sands… and here’s the part I don’t think you’re going to like. I think it’s going to be Sands heading back to the minors.* I don’t like it any more than you do, but just look at how the pieces are falling into place. (My arguments here are just how I imagine the team might think, not necessarily how I’d look at it, of course.)

*unless, of course, another injury – real or imagined – pops up in the next few days.

Thames is a righty power bat who can kind of sort of play left field & first base, as is Sands. If Gwynn is really just the defense guy, I can easily see Don Mattingly preferring a lefty/righty duo for this role in Gibbons and Thames, rather than two righties in Sands and Thames.
Sands has been good – dig that .371 May OBP – but you can’t argue he’s been great. This isn’t Russell Martin coming up and wowing in 2006; this is a guy who is hitting .221 with two homers. (This is where you chime in and note that Sands has shown much improvement since arriving and is tied with Kemp for the highest May OPS, at .784. I get it, and I agree. Just playing devil’s advocate here.)
Mattingly seems to like Gibbons, who has started nine of the last ten games (partially, I will admit, because Ethier’s injury opened up more playing time last weekend.) Gibbons hasn’t done much to repay that faith with indifferent offense and questionable defense.
The Dodgers have a long-established history of wanting to keep as many players under control as possible. Unless a veteran has been so bad that he’s just impossible to hang on to (I’m looking at you, Lance Cormier), they’ll usually wait as long as possible before dropping the DFA hammer. Sands has options. Gibbons does not.
With James Loney showing signs of life in recent days – the Dodgers having shown no inclination to dump him anyway – and Casey Blake now available to be a RH 1B on some days (along with Thames), there’s less of a need for Sands to be available to play first base.

I don’t like to think it either, but there’s plenty of reason to be worried that Gibbons sticks and Sands doesn’t when Thames returns, as crazy as it may sound to send down one of the team’s top offensive performers. To be honest, I don’t think the Dodgers really want to send out either, but they’re also not going to not activate Thames. So unless you think that they’ll really go down to 11 pitchers, risk cutting Castro and have just one backup infielder, or cut Gwynn and risk not having a backup center fielder, this is the choice you’re left with – unless you’re a true believer in the ‘phantom injury.’ (Hey, maybe Gibbons is still having eye issues?)

Let’s hear your opinion in the comments and the poll below.

Dodgers Appoint Aaron Miles Team Trustee

April 25, 2011 at 1:08 pm | Posted in A.J. Ellis, Dioner Navarro, Jay Gibbons, Tom Schieffer | 26 Comments

…or something like that. Bill Shaikin, once again coming up with the scoop, breaks the news today that Bud Selig has appointed J. Thomas Schieffer to be the trustee of the Dodgers while the McCourt mess shakes out.

I don’t know who Tom Schieffer is, and neither, most likely, do you. But according to his Wikipedia entry, he’s done a lot of living in his 63 years. After getting his masters degree in International Relations in 1972, he was elected a state senator at just 24 years of age. He then left public office, got his law degree, and become a corporate oil lawyer, then partnered with George W. Bush and others to purchase the Texas Rangers in 1989. Schieffer was apparently the driving force behind the push to build the new ballpark there, which he did on time and within budget, and served as President of the team from 1991-99. After that, he served as ambassador to Australia and then Japan until 2009, before briefly running for Governor of Texas (as a Democrat, surprisingly) in 2010. Oh, and he wrestled a bear.

I’ve seen people complaining that it’s not Joe Torre or Kim Ng, but neither of them were appropriate for the job. Torre’s a baseball man, while this is a role that requires business acumen, and as great as Ng is, she’s probably too junior for this. (Not to mention how awkward it’d be to make Ned Colletti report to her). Schieffer seems like a decent enough choice, as a man with a wealth of experience both within and outside baseball. Remember, Schieffer is not the decision-maker; he’s there for oversight, making sure that the club doesn’t do anything financially that MLB would deem out of line. He has veto power over any expenses over $5,000.

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Well, Ivan DeJesus is in the lineup tonight, alright, but not how we’d hoped. He’s not in there in place of Aaron Miles, but in place of Casey Blake, as Juan Uribe is still unable to play. Still, it’s a chance, and he’d to well to take advantage of it if we want to see him get at least a share of the time with Miles at some point.

The lineup is: Miles 3B, Carroll SS, Ethier RF, Kemp CF, Sands LF, Loney 1B, Barajas C, DeJesus 2B, Garland P. Yes, that makes an infield of Loney / DeJesus / Carroll / Miles, potentially the least dangerous in the history of baseball.

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Ken Gurnick reports that Dioner Navarro has rejoined the club. There’s been no corresponding roster move, but we all know it’s A.J. Ellis headed back to AAA. (Update: Ellis has been sent down.) Speaking of injured Dodgers, I believe that Jay Gibbons‘ rehab stint ends tomorrow. At that point, he’d either need to be activated or DFA’d. Though I find it hard to believe anyone would claim him if he were DFA’d, my guess is they’ll be able to restart his rehab clock because of his continuing vision problems.

On Chad Billingsley’s New Contract (And Notes)

March 29, 2011 at 8:42 am | Posted in Chad Billingsley, Jay Gibbons, Jonathan Broxton, Tony Gwynn | 21 Comments

Fun fact: over two years ago, on January 26, 2009, I wrote about Zack Greinke‘s extension with the Royals and wondered how this might impact Chad Billingsley. (This was before Greinke’s ridiculous Cy Young 2009 and Billingsley’s second half collapse that year, remember.) At the time, this is what I proposed Billingsley could end up with:

I mean, there’s no longer any remaining question about whether we want him around, right? So why not buy out his three arbitration years and the first year of free agency with a 4 year, $36 million deal?

And what did Billingsley end up with yesterday?

Source: Billingsley’s three-year deal with the #Dodgers worth $35-36 million, including buyout of option for fourth year.

Okay, that was pretty close; if you include the $6.275m he’s making this year, it’s essentially a four year deal worth approximately $42m. I say “pretty close”, because at the time, it would be buying out all arb years with just one free agent year, while this deal is of course buying out more higher-priced free agent years. (I’ll ask you to kindly ignore that I also said at the time that Billingsley was definitely superior to Greinke, and allow me to pretend that I’m some sort of soothsayer over here.)

In all seriousness, however, I’m very satisfied with this deal, and I think it’s fair for both sides. Billingley’s always been somewhat underrated in my book; of the 87 pitchers who have thrown at least 400 innings since 2008, his FIP of 3.42 is tied for 14th with Ubaldo Jimenez. That’s better than names like Johan Santana, Jered Weaver, Roy Oswalt, Francisco Liriano, and Matt Cain. Is that an ace? I’ll save that discussion for another day, but if you wanted to say that more than half the teams in baseball don’t have a pitcher as good as he is, you could certainly make the argument. (Kershaw, of course, is 12th on that list, with the best still expected from him.) This also provides the team with some cost certainty, thus avoiding not only the question of what kind of arbitration deal he might be in line for next year, but what might happen when he hit the open market the year after.

Eric Stephen at TrueBlueLA and Jon Weisman at Dodger Thoughts are both also happy with the deal, comparing it to deals for Ricky Nolasco and Justin Verlander, respectively, and even better, Dave Cameron at FanGraphs thinks the Dodgers made out very well. It’s a long read, so I won’t paste it all, but here’s the fun takeaway:

Perhaps most interesting, however, is the extension that Wandy Rodriguez signed with the Astros just a few months ago. Rodriguez was in his final year of arbitration, so he was at the point where Billingsley would have been at the end of the 2011 season – when his new deal actually kicks in. Rodriguez signed a 3 year, $34 million extension with the Astros covering the same years that Billingsley just gave up to get some security. His career numbers – 985 innings, 62 wins, and a 4.18 ERA.

If, this year, Billingsley threw 160 innings, posted a 7.43 ERA, and won just three games, he would end the year with those same career numbers. If Wandy Rodriguez’s deal set the market for what the final year of arbitration and first two years of free agency are worth, Billingsley essentially locked in a price that would be fair (based on career numbers) if he was the worst pitcher in baseball this year.

Perhaps he really wanted to stay in Los Angeles, and he had motivations beyond simply squeezing the Dodgers for every last penny he could get. Whatever the reasoning, though, it seems pretty clear that Billingsley left a lot of money on the table with this deal.

Barring trades, you can now expect to see Billingsley alongside Clayton Kershaw for at least the next four seasons. That’s a beautiful thing, and for the more optimistic among us, it means it’s no longer totally unreasonable to think that we can dream about a front three of Kershaw, Billingsley, and Zach Lee one day. I’m very pleased with this deal from the team’s perspective, and even if Billingsley did leave some money on the table, well, he also just made about $35 million, so fair deal for both sides. Good job, Ned.

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One update to my prospective 25-man roster: Jay Gibbons is likely to start the season on the disabled list due to his continuing vision problems. From a pure baseball perspective, this doesn’t bother me all that much; after all, I did argue just last week that he wasn’t worth a roster spot, and this does almost guarantee that Xavier Paul makes the club. Still, after all Gibbons has been through (some of it self-inflicted, to be sure), it’s tough to see his triumphant comeback story derailed by something as unexpected as this. This is actually a better scenario than an outright DFA, though, because not only does his $650k salary become guaranteed, he’ll be eligible for a rehab stint in the minors when he’s able, and assuming that takes a few weeks, we should have a lot more clarity on the roster situation at that point.

We don’t yet know who will get the extra spot, and you could argue that any of 4-5 names are in the mix. My strong preference has to be towards A.J. Ellis, however, because all indications are that Hector Gimenez is an emergency catcher at best.

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Over at Baseball Prospectus, Ben Lindbergh has put together a list of positions where contending teams have decided to go with decidedly unpalatable options – guys like Jeff Mathis and Yuniesky Betancourt. It shouldn’t come as any surprise that the Dodger left field mess made the list.

LF: Tony Gwynn Jr., Dodgers (.233 TAv, -0.6 WARP)

The Dodgers’ stillborn left-field timeshare really deserves a group mention here, but while Los Angeles may have chosen to stick a fork in the position, at least its other two tines—Jay Gibbons and Marcus Thames—project to earn positive value. Gwynn can’t hit, so he has to be truly extraordinary in the field to merit a roster spot, which FRAA doesn’t think he succeeded in doing last season. With Matt Kemp and Andre Ethier holding down center and right, respectively, Gwynn doesn’t figure to play much at the outfield’s more demanding positions, but he’ll likely be the starting left fielder for as long as Jay Gibbons can’t see. Since even a sighted Jay Gibbons doesn’t present much of an obstacle, Gwynn stands to see significant time. Unless he rediscovers the competent stroke he exhibited in 2009 or turns in another defensive performance FRAA can be proud of, that’s not good news for the Dodgers, who might soon find themselves missing the “Mannywood” sign.

While I attempted to look at the positives for Gwynn recently, I did so with a fair bit of wishcasting and plenty of “if’s”. If he can overcome a horrendous 2010. If he can hit at even a mildly acceptable a level. With Gibbons out, Gwynn will get the bulk of LF duties to prove himself, and I hope for everyone’s sake that he can do it, but it’s not hard to see where the doubt comes from.

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Yes, Jonathan Broxton “blew a save” last night, and while I can’t believe we’re even discussing a blown save in an exhibition game, I’ll point out that Ivan DeJesus botched what would have been a game-ending double play, remind you that the winning run scored on a sacrifice fly, and let Jon Weisman’s words describe exactly how I feel:

I’m seriously considering complete abstention from debating the merits of Jonathan Broxton for the time being. The season hasn’t even started, and already the fur is flying about his value. No, he didn’t do his job. Neither did De Jesus, Jansen or Lilly, but no one will question their manhood. I’m willing to admit I’m concerned about whether Broxton’s all the way back from his late 2010 troubles, but I just don’t know if I can spend yet another year arguing about the man’s courage, spine or gumption. It’s completely subjective, and people are just going to believe what they want to believe.

I agree 100% with Jon on this; for whatever reason, the opinion of many towards Broxton is so skewed that if he struck out 99 of 100, they’d be asking what happened with the last guy. Still, I’m not sure I have the strength to do what Jon’s contemplating, and that’s avoiding the topic entirely once the season starts. I’ve been one of Broxton’s staunchest defenders, and even I’ve admitted that his rope is short if he doesn’t get off to a good start. All I ask is that we be fair about it, and realize that minor league second basemen booting ground balls have a pretty big impact on getting outs as well.

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Selected thoughts from scouts on the Dodgers, courtesy of Tom Krasovic of the San Diego Union-Tribune:

“I think they’re going to be offensively challenged, and defensively challenged. The other day, (shortstop Rafael) Furcal was 4.9 running down the line, third baseman bobbles the ball and he’s still out in plenty of time. Saw (Matt) Kemp misplay two balls in the same game recently. He looks terrible in center field. Kenley Jansen is pretty damn impressive.”

“I like Xavier Paul more than the Dodgers do and would keep him over (Jay) Gibbons or (Tony) Gwynn Jr. Paul needs a change of scenery. His bat is OK. He has a good swing and can run the ball down. Hector Gimenez is a just a good-looking hitter. I’d take him as a backup. Ivan DeJesus, he’s stayed inside the ball well. Sands, I like his bat. He has a really nice swing. He looks OK in left field.”

“I think Rubby De La Rosa can pitch there right now and he’d be fine. He was up to 97 and good angle to plate, good feel for changeup, and I think the breaking ball will come. I think this guy’s a starter, and I don’t think he’s far away.”

“I think they’re going to be battling it out for third place with the Padres, and the Padres know how to play better.”

“They could be a disaster with all of the ifs.”

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New ESPN SweetSpot blogger David Schoenfield has been putting together preseason All-Star teams for each division, and today he touches on the NL West. Of the eleven spots, four are Giants, and three each are from the Rockies and Diamondbacks. The Padres don’t merit a mention, and only Kershaw (as lefty starter) makes the list from the Dodgers.

Is Jay Gibbons The Best Use of a Roster Spot?

March 22, 2011 at 7:39 pm | Posted in Jay Gibbons | 51 Comments

Me, yesterday:

Of the nine left fielders from last year, only Jay Gibbons seems certain to see time there again this year, and even still I’ve been spending half the spring wondering if he’s going to lose his roster spot.

Let’s make it more than half the spring now, because the more his spring struggles continue while others make their case, the more I wonder how much we should be looking to use that roster spot somewhere else. Gibbons entered today hitting .114/.162/.114, and an after an 0-3 with 2 K, that’s down to .105/.150/.105, by my rough calculations (MLB.com spring stats haven’t included today’s games yet, hence the estimating). The usual caveats about the importance of spring stats apply, of course, but someone with Gibbons’ history of missed time and winter ball struggles can’t really afford to have such a poor camp. (And by “poor camp”, I mean that over 200 MLB players have as many PA as he does, and every last one has more than the four total bases he’s picked up. Four!)

That’s on top of the fact that Gibbons hasn’t really been a quality big league player in about five years and had just a .313 OBP in what was seen as a “big splash” late last season, and you start to wonder how much of his seemingly guaranteed roster spot is due to his status as a hometown feel-good story.

Worse for Gibbons, the players behind him are making their case. I mentioned how well Tony Gwynn has played this spring a few days ago, and Xavier Paul has shaken off a slow start to become one of the hotter hitters in camp of late, including making a nice diving catch in today’s game. Then there’s camp sensation Hector Gimenez, who despite an oh-fer today, threw out a runner at the plate in his first left field appearance. Paul and Gimenez, as you surely remember, are each out of options.

Gwynn, Paul, and Gimenez all hit from the left side (Gimenez being a switch-hitter). Gwynn & Paul are both far superior defensive outfielders and baserunners to Gibbons, and while Gimenez probably isn’t, he offers the flexibility of being able to catch and play 1B. Besides, James Loney hits lefty as well, making Gibbons less necessary at first base and somewhat of an awkward fit for this roster as constructed.

So I have to ask: isn’t it time we seriously consider an Opening Day roster that doesn’t include Jay Gibbons? Gibbons hasn’t done much to earn it, and while I’m not going to pretend that I really care about Gimenez enough to say that you can’t chance losing him to keep Gibbons, I do feel that way about Paul.

Besides, that wouldn’t have to be the end of Gibbons; I hope it’s not, really, because I do like him. But hitting the way he is, I’d be surprised if anyone else wanted to give him a major league job, and he’d almost certainly end up back in Albuquerque. So let him try to rake down there for a few weeks, change “JaMarcus Gwybbons, Jr.” to, I don’t know, “Marcony X. Paul, Jr.”, and if Gibbons is hitting well in AAA in May, see how the rest of the roster has shaken out by that point.

Better that, than losing Paul for a player who’s not demonstrably better, right?

How Many Dodger Left Fielders Will We See This Year?

March 21, 2011 at 1:10 pm | Posted in Hector Gimenez, Jay Gibbons, Marcus Thames, Tony Gwynn | 20 Comments

In 2010, the Dodgers ran out nine different left fielders, humorously picking up more errors than assists, on top of some generally lousy offiense:

	Age	G	GS	Inn	Ch	PO	A	E	Fld%
Manny Ramirez	38	46	46	359.2	73	68	2	3	.959
Scott Podsednik	34	37	30	272.1	62	61	0	1	.984
Reed Johnson	33	62	24	264.2	65	65	0	0	1.000
Garret Anderson	38	27	20	189.0	30	27	1	2	.933
Xavier Paul	25	23	19	169.2	33	29	3	1	.970
Jay Gibbons	33	15	13	106.0	25	23	1	1	.960
Jamey Carroll	36	5	5	38.0	13	13	0	0	1.000
Trent Oeltjen	27	4	2	21.2	1	1	0	0	1.000
Russ Mitchell	25	3	3	20.2	2	2	0	0	1.000
League Average									.985
Team Total		162	162	1441.2	304	289	7	8	.974

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 3/21/2011.

The top four on that list – Manny, Podsednik, Johnson & Anderson – have all moved on. Beyond that, Xavier Paul may be lost on waivers should he not make the Opening Day roster, Jamey Carroll ideally shouldn’t be seeing any time in left field, Trent Oeltjen is a minor-league lifer with no guarantees, and Russ Mitchell looks less like a major leaguer the more we see of him (not to mention he’s more of an infielder, anyway). Of the nine left fielders from last year, only Jay Gibbons seems certain to see time there again this year, and even still I’ve been spending half the spring wondering if he’s going to lose his roster spot.

But that hasn’t stopped me from wondering – might the Dodgers actually top last year’s left fielder count?

Let’s assume for the moment that Gibbons, Tony Gwynn, and Marcus Thames are all but certain to see some time in left. With the extra spots opened up by the injuries to Jon Garland and Vicente Padilla, I think Paul probably does spend the first week or two with the big club, though I’d be shocked if he survives through April. Also on the out-of-options train is Hector Gimenez, who’s doing everything possible to make the club, and who we learned today is supposedly going to see some left field time of his own this week.

Let’s say that both Paul & Gimenez make the roster and make token appearances in LF, even if both are gone by May. That’ll be five possibles, but it won’t stop there. We all think Jerry Sands makes his debut this season, and that might extend to Trayvon Robinson as well. For veteran stopgaps in Albuquerque, there’s Oeltjen and Jamie Hoffmann, and possibly utility guy Eugenio Velez. Then there’s the non-zero possibility that infielders Carroll and Blake make cameos, and you could possibly see Andre Ethier shifted over should Gwynn actually grab the CF job and slide Matt Kemp to RF. That’s without even considering what happens if JaMarcus Gwybbons, Jr. fails completely before Sands is ready and the club is forced to go out and acquire someone new.

Despite losing the top four left fielders (in terms of playing time) from 2010, it’s not hard to see them trotting out double digits at the position this year. If so, then the real question is, can they break the all-time team record? That’s 15, set in 1985 and tied in 1987 (according to the wonderful Sam Miller of the Orange County Register). If there’s a bright side, the 1985 team won 95 games and went to the NLCS. (Of course, they also had Pedro Guerrero, a .320/.422/.577 beast at age 29, playing more LF than anyone else. Somehow I doubt that kind of production is getting replicated this year.)

How Many Problems Can Tony Gwynn Solve?

March 17, 2011 at 4:40 pm | Posted in Jay Gibbons, Jon Link, Tony Gwynn | 25 Comments

All winter, we’ve been wondering exactly how the outfield quagmire would play out, beyond just in terms of playing time. We’ve wondered if Marcus Thames‘ defense would make us fondly remember the days of Manny Ramirez, and we’ve wondered if Tony Gwynn would hit enough to carry his glove. We’ve wondered if Jay Gibbons could do anything at all, and we’ve wondered if Xavier Paul really had any prayer of making the team, though accepted that he probably didn’t. We’ve wondered how atrocious Andre Ethier would be against lefty pitching, and we’ve wondered if putting Gibbons or Thames in left alongside Matt Kemp and Ethier might make the pitching staff revolt as ball after ball fell in for hits. Stepping beyond the outfield for a second, we’ve wondered not only who would hit second in the order – Casey Blake‘s Bunting Extravaganza hardly thrills – but who might lead off if and when Rafael Furcal is unavailable.

As spring training goes on and the season looms, it’s becoming more and more clear that the best possible scenario to fill all of those answers – and more – is Tony Gwynn claiming a starting job, and that might be exactly what’s happening.

When Gwynn was signed back in December, I’ll admit that I wasn’t fully on board, openly questioning if he was really better than Paul. It’s not hard to see why – Gwynn hit just .204/.304/.287 for the Padres in 2010. As I said when I wrote about him on Baseball Prospectus earlier this week, usually “a .591 OPS in your age-27 season would earn you a one-way ticket to the finest buses in the Pacific Coast League.” But there’s some reason for hope, because Gwynn did put up a .350 OBP in 2009, and his 2010 was marred by a wrist injury and the news that his father was battling cancer. Despite the poor stat line, he did both increase his ISO and decrease his K/BB from 2009 (which he’d in turn increased from 2008). So while expectations must be kept low, you could at least see how he could bounce back from “unbelievably horrendous” to “merely mediocre” at the plate. Remember, you’re never expecting power from him, just hoping for on-base percentage.

So far, we’ve seen Gwynn taking advantage of his opportunity, hitting .344 with an OBP of nearly .400 in spring, and a perfect 6-6 in steals. Meanwhile, Paul hasn’t distinguished himself by leading the club in strikeouts, and Gibbons has had a totally nightmarish camp. He’s missed time due to the flu and with vision issues, and collected just his third hit (all singles) today, though he hopes his new contact lenses put the eye problems behind him. Gibbons’ spring has been so lousy that it’s not even a given that he’ll make the team at this point, if you read Don Mattingly’s quote at the end of the Ken Gurnick article:

“I’d like to see him healthy,” manager Don Mattingly said when asked if Gibbons was a “lock” to make the club as a platoon left fielder. “If the vision thing isn’t right and you can’t swing a bat, you know the plan going in, but you want to see him with clear vision. If you can’t see, you can’t hit. I’m telling you that right now.”

We’ll get back to Gibbons and his place in a second, but let’s say for the moment that Gwynn’s winning the job and ends up with the majority of the playing time as the third outfielder, providing decent OBP and excellent fielding. Think about how many of the previously-mentioned issues that solves:

1) He massively improves the outfield defense. Gwynn’s one of the best outfielders in the game, while we all know about the issues of Kemp and Ethier. Regardless of whether that would push them to the corners while Gwynn plays in center – which would probably be for the best, though Mattingly seems to be against it – having a plus defender like Gwynn rather than the subpar (at best!) Gibbons and Thames is a huge improvement.

2) He fits the batting order. This only works if he’s actually getting on base at a good clip, of course, but rather than Blake, I’d much rather have a guy with good speed and better contact skills – a full 10% fewer whiffs than Blake last year. That’d probably push Blake down to 6 or 7, which is where he really belongs anyway. If Gibbons gets the majority of the time, then Blake stays at #2, which is less than ideal.

3) He improves the bench. As pessimistic as I’ve been about Gibbons and Thames, they could potentially make a pretty decent lefty/righty duo off the bench with some power. They’re better bench options than Gwynn because you generally prefer power off the bench later in the game, and that again allows you more time in the field with Gwynn than with those two.

4) He gets Ethier out against lefties. You’re going to have to bear with me on this one for a second. For much of the offseason, I’d been saying that the Dodgers needed to sign not one but two righty outfielders, since neither Gibbons or Ethier are productive against them. (Ethier, in particular, has been declining terribly every year against LHP.) The obvious problem here is that Gwynn isn’t great against lefties either, but that’s a flaw in the construction of the roster. Barring the increasingly unlikely option of Casey Blake playing LF, you’re going to have to start at least one lefty outfielder all the time anyway. So if none of your options can hit them, and you’re playing Thames at the further expense of the defense, you’d rather Gwynn’s plus defense rather than Ethier’s mediocre defense. I know it seems odd to say you’d ever want to play Gwynn rather than Ethier, but you need to avoid the scenario of a Thames / Kemp / Ethier outfield whenever possible.

It says a lot about the construction of this team that I just wrote about 900 words on why Tony Gwynn may be the best choice they’ve got, but it just might be true. The way things are currently configured, nothing could work out better for this team than for Gwynn to keep up his hot spring and grab the job. Besides, it’s only until Jerry Sands is ready in the second half, anyway, right? (By the way, he, along with Justin Sellers, were sent to minor league camp today. No surprise there.)

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When Jon Link got shipped back to minor league camp the other day, I was surprised to see that the team had apparently fully committed to using him as a starter. As Christopher Jackson of the Albuquerque Examiner reports, Link doesn’t seem to be fully on board with the idea either:

“The only thing I enjoy about starting is getting to hit,” said Link, who only started once in 45 appearances with the Isotopes last season (3-2, 3.71 ERA, four saves). “That’s the one thing I enjoy. I don’t have the patience to start. (But) I’ll do whatever the club needs me to do, I’ll make the best of it, make the best I can.”

Link said starting takes an entirely different kind of mentality than the one he has had throughout his career.

“I don’t like waiting five days to pitch again, especially if you have a bad start and you have to sit on it,” Link said. “If you have a good start you obviously want to keep things rolling, so you’re really anxious to get into a game.

I’m open to the idea, but Link seems like an odd choice for the conversion. He’s never started before, and the team is pretty deep in starting candidates. What’s more likely, that you’ll need to get to your 11th starting option (which Link would be), or that you’ll need him to pick up a few bullpen innings this year? Especially if he’s not into it.

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Hey, Hector Gimenez hit another homer today! That can’t hurt his chances. Jonathan Broxton struck out two in a scoreless inning. But why didn’t he strike out five??!

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One year ago yesterday, we were discussing who would be the 5th starter. Names in the mix? Eric Stults, James McDonald, Carlos Monasterios, Charlie Haeger, and the Two Ortizii of the Apocalypse. My, how far we’ve come.