6-4-2 — an Angels/Dodgers double play blog

Brendan Donnelly has been hospitalized because of ongoing issues with blood loss due to his broken nose.

"They told me I lost half the blood in my body," Donnelly said Saturday, adding that he'd lost seven pints of blood. "I didn't realize how serious it was."

Said Angels shortstop David Eckstein: "We're concerned with his safety. It's dangerous to lose that much blood."

Donnelly will start the season on the disabled list, the team said Sunday. He will remain in the hospital three or four days.

Well, duh, but Jebus X. Christ, when did they first notice he had lost seven pints? Was it when he fainted in the workout room? And the Mariners bloggers are worried that their team isn't the most medhead in the division. What's worrisome is that just yesterday, the team was making happy noises about Donnelly's imminent return. Lewis Yocum, your life is calling...

Update: now on mlb.com.

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Ex-Angel Update: In Seattle's Saturday spring training game against Milwaukee, Scott Spiezio was pulled from the lineup due to back spasms. He didn't play today and won't play tomorrow, either. Spiezio haters, rejoice: if this is any indicator of his 2004, it looks like we lost him in the nick of time.

Barry Bonds, blogger.

This should be interesting. Welcome to the blogophere, Barry.

Mark Ellis will be out for a month or two -- and possibly more, depending on the final results of the MRI -- thanks to the collision he suffered in spring training. While I can't wish injury on other teams... why couldn't it have been Chavez?

I've already commented on how the Dodgers may be trading the wrong guy in Odalis Perez; after his spring training numbers, it looks like that's still true. Word now is the Yankees are sending scouts after OP, a frightening prospect. What could the Yanks possibly have to offer in return? A (literal) bat?

Meantime, Peter Gammons claims Jackson is being sent to AAA, making room for Alvarez (whew!) in the rotation. Toronto utility guy Jayson Werth is a DePodesta look-see for a bat.

A friend passed along today a link to a woman with a death wish: she rides around Chernobyl on a motorcycle with a dosimeter, taking pictures. (By the way, she is definitely something to look at, reminiscent of the TV cliché that any motorcycle rider only shown in leathers and a helmet will, in the course of an ad, be revealed to be a supermodel with fantastically long hair.)

Which naturally got me thinking about Dodgertown.

You can already hear the voices of the superoptimists on the fan forums, counseling that we should all go back to sleep. (I sometimes wonder whether McCourt doesn't show up amongst them.)

But Daily News columnist Steve Dilbeck is worried:

Gone is ace Kevin Brown. In return comes Jeff Weaver, the Simi Valley High grad who bombed so badly with the Yankees that New York reporters began questioning his mental makeup.

Hideo Nomo, who has been truly remarkable in his second life as a Dodger, now is the de facto ace but is coming off shoulder surgery and will be 36 this season.

Kaz "Full Count" Ishii again was highly effective, despite making almost every start an adventure, but they're trying to change his delivery and the results are scary.

Edwin Jackson remains full of promise, but is only 20 and has yet to pitch in Triple-A.

And all four have spring ERAs over 8.30.

Getting nervous?

Yeah, Steve, we are. And as Dodgertown in a few weeks will become a ghost town, maybe so will Dodger Stadium, populated by the ghosts of actual players.

Olmedo Saenz is apparently the Dodgers 2004 answer to Ron Coomer. He's got decent stats in few at bats, but his first year in 1994 makes me wonder whether a decline is in order.

It starts -- the Times today speaks of that which we knew might be inevitable, Edwin Jackson starting the season in AAA, his 8.59 ERA telling the story of a young pitcher having a series of shaky outings. And then there's that experience thing:

Moreover, including the 22 innings he pitched in the major leagues last season, Jackson has 170 1/3 innings above Class A. Few pitchers reach the majors on a permanent basis without having more innings at the higher levels of the minors.

... "For me, it's still an open question, but there are things to look at," General Manager Paul DePodesta said. "If you look through the records of guys who were under 25 and reached the big leagues in a hurry, most of them have pitched more than he has above [Class A] and more than he has in their minor league careers.

Well, Edwin, that start on your birthday looks more like a present now...

Doctor, It Hurts When I Do This

Will Carroll presents his team health report for the Angels. Surprisingly, it seems that Eckstein, who PECOTA IMO wrongly projects to miss half the season due to injury, only warrants a yellow light, but Glaus, who PECOTA picks as a huge rebounder, Carroll says is a red. Go figure.

The Score Bard's AL West, NL East Previews

The Score Bard publishes his AL West preview. For the Angels:

When Moreno decided to add
Kelvim, Bartolo, and Vlad,
He took on some debt.
But I'm liking his bet:
This could be the best team they've had.

I for one hope he's right; it's a more optimistic view than he took earlier. Also, he published the NL East preview without me noticing. My bad.

Angel Blogging

I walk away to Spring Training for a week and Chronicles of The Lads comes up with some great stuff. First, this snarky Angels preview from Batter's Box (note to Canuck writer thereof: you lose points in this blogger's eyes by making comments like

Meanwhile, the (s)crappy Eckstein keeps his starting job at shortstop, with one final chance to prove he deserves to drop the parentheses around the letter "s."

Then, there's the annual wacky trade rumor -- St. Louis wants Kennedy back? Hoo, boy. And, at last, his reaction to Appier's wounded comments about being released. Go. Read.

No Talents, Those Yankees

Baseball America ranks minor league systems, and the Dodgers and Angels rank second and third respectively. Pretty impressive, really. Meantime, the Yanks and Cards rank near the bottom, 27th and 28th respectively.

2003 Dollars Per Win

Stephen Smith over at Future Angels has a new column up about 2003 dollars per win. He mentions that the Yanks are, as always it seems of late, outspending everyone else by a lot. Well, it's all about how much you can make on the other side, dontcha know. Sure, the Devil Rays are the most dollar-efficient team in baseball (take that, Michael Lewis!), but the big surprise is that the A's are "only" third. IMO, their game gets a lot tougher after they start losing their current rotation; getting three guys up like that all at once is an impressive achievement, one that's hard to duplicate when you're drafting near the bottom of the pool.

While out in Arizona, we had our floors resurfaced, a messy and smelly procedure. A side effect of this was that we had to remove virtually everything from the closets and walls. Since we were planning on repainting anyway, this amounted to a nice coincidence, and we'll actually be very, very busy in the short term, so probably there won't be any updates until next week.

A dominant Kerry Wood silenced the bats of the A's despite heat and elevation at Phoenix Municipal Stadium Thursday. His six and one third innings reminded me of his regular season starts, with four hits, one walk, a hit batter, and six strikeouts. Wood is the kind of pitcher the Angels should have pursued (i.e., Vazquez instead of Colón), but didn't. Oh, well. Eric Chavez hit a solo shot to provide the only A's run, while the Cubs scored on an unlikely double by Alex Gonzalez, and a defensive miscue on a Sammy Sosa single that cost the A's both a run and, at least temporarily, the services of Mark Ellis.

Official score

You can tell the Dodgers are in desperation mode. Without any major-league-ready hitters in their farm system (sorry, Jon, Loney doesn't count -- yet), the PR machine has started talking up pitching coach Jim Colborn, and trotting out the ol' Dodger Way smoke and mirrors (hey, at least they had great pitching last year). Now it's working on prospect Andrew Brown, a guy nobody's ever heard of before and who hasn't been on any hot lists insofar as I know.

"I think when you talk about [Jackson, Miller, and Hanrahan], you've got to throw (Andrew Brown's) name in the mix also," Tracy said.

Brown, 23, hasn't gained as much notoriety as the other three, in part because he pitched only one inning the entire 2003 season.

... and now, of course, that he's put up three goose eggs in the Grapefruit League and three more in the minors, other teams are just salivating to have him on their rosters, somehow forgetting the last two years he spent on the DL, and the fact that his minor league record pre-injury wasn't all that:

He went 3-4 with a 3.92 ERA in 2001 for the Atlanta Braves' Class A affiliate in Jamestown, N.Y., then was 10-10 with a 4.11 ERA for Vero Beach in 2002 after being included in the Gary Sheffield-Odalis Perez trade.

Man, Tracy, you really need to ditch your jersey and get a loud, ugly plaid jacket if you're gonna start selling used cars...

Tempe Diablo Stadium is an oven on a hot day, the close-fitting rows and narrow aluminum seats an oven rack. No shade cools the actual stadium whatsoever in any section. And warm it was yesterday, starting off at 95 at game time, though it did cool a bit as the game wore on. It's no wonder Arte wants to leave this facility; while it's pleasant enough on a spring day, in years where there is no spring -- like this one -- there's no relief from the sun.

Kelvim Escobar looked, if not strong, then a reasonable candidate to earn his paycheck this year, mostly baffling a B+ list Cubs lineup substituting ex-Dodger Todd Hollandsworth for Sammy Sosa and Sergio Mitre for a credible starter. He allowed 4 hits and one earned run in 4 2/3 innings, with 6 strikeouts and 3 walks. Troy Glaus crushed a solo shot over the 30-40 foot tall centerfield fence, that, just looking at it, cleared the top by a good 20 feet. It was an epic hit, like the one Bonds hit into the Edison Field tunnel two years ago. Eckstein looked back in top form, going 2-3, scoring a run, stealing a base, and driving one in. Even José Molina had a good day, extracting a luck infield single when his hit ball tagged second base and flew up in the air about 30 feet, going 2-3 for the day also. Percy simply imploded though, giving up three earned runs in one inning; Bad Percy seems to be showing up on the mound a lot more often than Good Percy. He's mentioned retiring now for a couple years, and I hope that he does, for my sake and his. K-Rod (okay, I've given up hating the nickname) was K-Rod, striking out two in an inning and two-thirds. The deciding run came in the ninth, well after the scrubs entered the game, driven in by a Howard Kendrick (who?) single with the bases loaded against Jamie Wright (?).

Meantime, Helen got a thrill watching the Cubs do something they've done precious little of in recent years: come from behind. McClain continued to hit, pounding in one against a shaky Kevin Gregg, whose 2003 is starting to look like a fluke. Gregg gave up the other three runs that got the Cubs to tie it up in the eighth. I doubt he will get a chance to be in the Angels rotation this year, but who knows.

Official Score

PECOTA fans at Baseball Prospectus have been pleased to call their projection system "deadly accurate" on the outside blurb on the back cover. But after reading their caveats about the system, I'm increasingly inclined to think that the authors thereof are waffling far more than they let on. Here's a couple key phrases appearing therein:

The Five-Year Performance forecast measures a hitter's EQA at various percentiles over the course of the next five seasons. Unlike the Value forecast, the Performance forecast has no convenient way to adjust for dropped comparables, and so it simply ignores them. For this reason, the Performance forecast may be unreliable for players whose comparables have a high attrition rate. [emphasis mine]

And here's a real damning one, on the subject of how comparables are generated:

In most cases, the database is large enough to provide a meaningfully large set of comparables. When it isn't, the program is designed to 'cheat' by expanding its tolerance for dissimilar players until a reasonable sample size is reached. In the case of very old or very young hitters, there may not be a significant number of hitters who played at that age, and so the results of their forecast may be less reliable.

In other words, if our system isn't working, we expand the error bands and claim that it does, in fact, work. What bugs me about this is that it introduces a problem into the comparables statistics because the data is (or at least, is very likely to be) heteroskedastic. That is, the errors tend to change depending on who you use as your "comparables"; and admitting others into the mix who aren't really close matches just amplifies that problem. This gets really bad for guys like Albert Pujols, of whom there have been only a handful of similar players (18 selected by PECOTA), all of whom are at least All-Stars or Hall of Famers, and Adrian Beltre, with 36 comparables. (Subscriptions required for all these PECOTA card links.). Beltre's early years predicted legitimate stardom, but seems to have been ruined by his appendectomy. Unfortunately, the bad news for Eckstein is that he has 47 comparables, which doesn't leave me feeling too good about his ability to stay healthy.

The Bench Coach passes along a Seattle Times story reporting that former Dodger GM Dan Evans has been hired by Seattle in a job-to-be-named later. While I agree with Terry that it's a classy move on the part of former underling Bavasi, given the venom out there already reserved for the ex-Angel/ex-Dodger front office staffer (witness the presence of a Fire Bavasi blog already), I have to believe that the Mariners blogosphere is about to explode. Yet another non-sabermetric, old-school guy with a reputation for failing to make trades in midseason? What other curses could the gods call down upon the Emerald City's finest baseball club?

Today's game was played under high cloud cover, thickening as the day went by, so the 85 degrees at game time felt quite comfortable, but made fielding hell all game. This was especially true for the Giants, whose fans barely showed up, and once the score made it to double digits in the seventh, an orange exodus started towards the gates. But I get ahead of myself.

The spring training version of Kirk "Woody" Reuter showed up on the mound today, as unstable as I've ever seen him. He showed weak control throughout his three innings, getting shelled for six earned runs, giving up a walk and managing only a single strikeout. Cubs non-roster invitee Scott McClain (sp?) continued his hot streak, pulping an increasingly shaky Felix Rodriguez for two bags that somehow got lost in the official score. (Baseball Prospectus claims we're not likely to see the 2000-2001 version of Rodriguez ever again, and today's game didn't make me think any differently.) His one earned run in one inning (ERA 9.00) tells you everything you need to know. In fact, aside from early fireworks by Barry Bonds during an uneven first inning by groundballer Carlos Zambrano where he hit Ray Durham and gave up a single to J. T. Snow, the Giants looked sloppy both offensively and defensively. At one point, the Giants outfield and infield missed a routine pop fly in shallow right in a Bermuda Triangle play. On the other side of the plate, all the Cubs -- except Grudz -- got a hit. Grudzielanek's 0-3 outing isn't helping the case for him to be in the starting lineup as a leadoff man. Losing Kenny Lofton may well hurt, but perhaps not as much as I originally thought; BP seems to think he's due for a big dropoff in offensive value this year, so maybe picking Grudz over Lofton was a Hendry crapshoot. Finally, NRI Gary Glover showed us why the Angels released him at the end of the year, giving up a run and two walks in only a single inning.

Helen thinks the 25th man on the Cubs 2004 roster will come down to Macias or McClain, and given Dusty's druthers, Macias will get the nod. If McClain doesn't get on the team or agree to go down to the minors, he'll make a nice waiver wire pickup for somebody. DePodesta, are you listening?

Jim Alexander in the Riverside Press-Enterprise wonders why, if Arte's plastering Los Angeles County with Angelsanalia, he can't do the same thing in Riverside county. (Disable Javascript to read the article without registration.) It's a fair question, except that traffic on the 91 is already bad enough. There's already a Dodger blog carrying the moniker Arrive In The Third, Leave After Seven because, well, that's how the traffic crumbles. If there were any Riversiders attending Angels games, mightn't we see one called Arrive In The Fifth, Leave After Six?

Yesterday was the only night game we'll see here. It's too bad, because the weather doesn't look all that cooperative for the rest of the week. While we're getting a bit more of a respite at this very moment than the weatherman predicted earlier -- 77 degree temps versus mid-to-high-80's -- I'm not optimistic it will last. That and the fact that the returning high thin clouds mark an increase in humidity that seems to be taking away whatever advantages we had from the decline in temperature. (Hah. Yahoo Weather seems to think it's only 27% humidity outside, but it feels wetter than that, for what it's worth.)

Well, if Sunday's game was slow and seemingly required 1,934 pitches to complete, last night's game was a record-setter for speed. Greg Maddux took the mound for the Cubs, and Mark Mulder for the A's, making for five innings of 1-2-3 ball on both sides, or nearly so. Mark Grudzielanek contributed an error for the Cubs, but the threat passed harmlessly, as both pitchers had solid outings. 25-man-roster-wannabe Scott McLain jacked in the only run off A's reliever Justin Duscherer. McLain's having a fantastic spring, and now leads the Cubs in homers. Angels fans will no doubt be disappointed to learn that Mulder's hip problems from late last year seem to be a thing of the past, and he's ready to terrorize our lineup once again. Also, A's Moneyball prospect Nick Swisher had a couple good at bats against the Cubs, most notably his last versus closer Michael Wuertz, fouling off a number of pitches.

Arte's made some noise about prematurely vacating their lease on their spring training facility at Tempe Diablo Stadium. Take this for what it is, an unverified report, but I happened upon a fellow today who claims he formerly managed the Diablo Stadium, and the nonprofit that runs it actually was hoping the Angels would leave. The principle reason for this was the Angels are a warm-weather team, and snowbirds are a better revenue source... they had started negotiations with the Chisox, which came to a halt once Arte realized the difficulty of moving everything all at once. While it looks like now Arte's pulled a fast one on the Arizona state legislature, getting them to pay for a new training facility on his property without having to find somebody to replace the Tempe facility the Chisox were using, I can't commend this kind of "public-private partnership", as the rifling of the public till is so frequently called.

Labels: angels, spring training

Baseball Prospectus has some fine writing, but, as seems the case with so many, their 2004 issue takes cheap shots at Dan Evans without bothering to actually perform even the most rudimentary analysis of the payroll situation he was faced with, slamming him for failing to get

league average production up-the-middle and a .300 EqA at one of the corners. ... What he has done is replace mediocrities like Eric Karros, Mark Grudzielanek, and Marquis Grissom, but rarely has he improved upon them.

Okay, smarty pants, show me the guys you would have acquired with only $5-6 million free payroll space, a corporate overlord committed only to selling the team, and a farm system in resurgence but not quite productive enough to bring up any quality bats? In case anybody was wondering why I take the advice of so many "sabermetricians" with whole licks of salt, it's because of half-cocked analyses like this one. And to think, I'm paying these guys for this ... the mind boggles.

Mesa, AZ -- It went straight from winter into summer here, daytime highs rocketing skyward nearly 30 degrees in less than a month. Yesterday, before the Cubs/Padres game started, the field temperature was 95 in the shade.

When we left, it was 106.

Now, of course there are a couple caveats. First, the thermometer is the car's on-board unit, which is notoriously inaccurate -- or at least, takes flights of fancy on occaision. But the Padres in their navy blue tops must have been sweating something fierce. Second, there is indeed something to the "but it's a dry heat" mantra you sometimes hear from folks in these parts. We thought it was in the mid-90's leaving the game, but the car thermometer thought otherwise. Dryness combined with slight elevation counts for something. The skies, muddied by stratocumulus clouds, managed to sunburn Helen even though we sat in coveted shade. (I put on sunblock beforehand as a precaution, and was glad I did -- she's lobsterville now.) Andre Codrescu, the Romanian writer and sometime NPR commentator, calls his adopted New Orleans "the Republic of Summer", but he may as well have been talking about Phoenix.

Last year gave so much hope to the beleaguered Cubs fans that they flooded the Arizona cities surrounding Hohokam Park, their spring training home. Every hotel in Mesa is sold out through Tuesday, an event unprecedented in Mesa history. Yesterday's game set a spring training attendance record for them; I wasn't paying attention, but it looked like a capacity crowd pushing 13,000. Scalpers report cheap seats in the grass hill "bleachers" back of left and right field going in excess of $50, when they can be had at all. The feeling is this year will be like last year, only this time there'll be no five-outs-away, no heartbreak. The pitching staff is young, and better, among the elite of the National League, and if the hitters aren't, at least they can be counted on for one more good year. (Baseball Prospectus disagrees a bit, but more on that later in the week, perhaps.) The mood is one of general optimism and conviviality, as if we're about to see something really great happen, like watching an imploded building construct itself in reverse-motion magic. We sat in front of a half-dozen or so I-Cub fans (Iowa Cubs, their AAA affiliate), all middle-aged women, cheerfully gabbing about the minor leaguers the Cubs were trying out in the game. This was their eighteenth year going to spring training, and were having a ball.

It was a lazy game: Derrick Lee attended first base but did not play the position, looking more like Fred McGriff with several "olé" plays, and costing the Cubs a couple men on base. His gold gloves, safely crated elsewhere, need unpacking. But his bat needed no special torque as he knocked out three hits to atone for his miserable glovework. On the mound, perennial prospect-turned-suspect Juan Cruz gave up three runs and six hits; it's obvious, after the number of chances Cruz has had, that he's no longer even a questionable entry for the starting rotation and is now likely to become a PTBNL mentioned in a trade with some AL team. BP likes him as a long reliever, but I have my doubts; his control is suspect and that doesn't describe the sort of fellow you want pitching in tight games. LaTroy Hawkins visited the mound in the 9th, score 7-3, and left with the score 7-6. It's probably a good thing Hawkins is going to another central division team, albeit in a different league; facing higher quality hitting in the AL West or East divisions he'd get raked, and I suspect hard. Meantime, Brian Giles performed acceptably, going 1-3, but it seemed in general the Padres had a tough time of it, even against the relatively inconsistent pitching of Cruz, up until Hawkins offered up his gifts.

We won't see an Angels game until Friday. Today we'll see the A's, who have done very well in ST thus far.

Postscriptum: I will be away from my mail for the balance of the week, but thanks to a convenient Schlotsky's Deli across the street from my hotel with Internet access, I can post.

... and, we think, in a good home, the little black dachshund or whatever he was. The lady who took him said "Oooh, he's an angel!" and he really is. Thanks to everyone who wrote in about him.

Those claiming to be sabermetricians sans understanding of actual statistical principles amuse me. It reminds me of this Emo Phillips bit:

I was walking across a bridge one day, and I saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump off. So I ran over and said "Stop! don't do it!"

"Why shouldn't I?" he said.

I said, "Well, there's so much to live for!"

He said, "Like what?"

I said, "Well...are you religious or atheist?"

He said, "Religious."

I said, "Me too! Are you Christian or Buddhist?"

He said, "Christian."

I said, "Me too! Are you Catholic or Protestant?"

He said, "Protestant."

I said, "Me too! Are you Episcopalian or Baptist?"

He said, "Baptist!"

I said,"Wow! Me too! Are you Baptist Church of God or Baptist Church of the Lord?"

He said, "Baptist Church of God!"

I said, "Me too! Are you Original Baptist Church of God, or are you Reformed Baptist Church of God?"

He said,"Reformed Baptist Church of God!"

I said, "Me too! Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1879, or Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915?"

He said, "Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915!"

I said, "Die, heretic scum", and pushed him off.

The point being that owning exactly one book leads to interpretive zealotry, and this is what we've seen with Moneyball. What makes me laugh -- or gets under my skin, depending on who's doing it and whether or not they're wishing I would just die or just accusing me of simple illiteracy because I did, in fact read the book without coming to the same conclusions they did -- is that book is nowhere near a complete guide to running a baseball team. In fact, even Beane himself says in this Baseball America roundtable that he would probably operate differently if he were running the Braves, say:

TOWERS: I always used John and the Braves as the model organization. They could develop a Rafael Furcal or a Javy Lopez or a Chipper Jones every year. They got to the point where they could draft high school players and wait. We’ve been in the mode now we needed to build our system up and have more of an instant return. If we get good, by God, if people are taking college players, I’m going to go pop some high school guys.

BEANE: Don’t kid yourself—we were waiting for some of those high school guys this year to fall down to us. There’s a few we were going to take.

BA: Not pitchers, though.

BEANE: Well, yeah—but that’s because of the business we’re in.

TOWERS: The risk.

BEANE: If I’m in Atlanta, I might operate differently. I’m looking at Baseball America today, seeing all the prospects the Braves have, a lot of them high school pitchers. The fact of the matter is, it’s the risk that you’re allowed to absorb. They’ve been very good for a long time. They can wait four-to-five years. I know I’m going to lose a player once a year, a premium player. My feeder system has to be a little quicker.

But don't let that mislead you, DK. Beane's fired all his scouts. It's just him and a laptop. Yeah, that's it. Dang, they're efficient!

One of the minor tragedies of recent years has been the silencing of Bill James' most excellent pen by the Boston Red Sox. Now that they have him all to themselves, his publishing has, to my knowledge, all but ceased. But that doesn't prevent him from giving an interview to Ian Browne. Even off-the-cuff, James has a way of tweaking your expectations:

What stats does James first look at when he evaluates players?

"Well, I think the more critical question is what do you look at second. I think the things I look at first are the same things everybody else does. Won-loss record and ERA for a pitcher and home runs, RBIs and batting average for a batter," said James. "Those are the first things you see and the first things you look at. The real question is what do you look at second."

Well, of course. And it's no surprise that he looks at the difference between OBP and average for hitters, and K/BB for pitchers. But those are things I now look at first, thanks to the work of Voros McCracken. A lot of ERA is really luck.

It's ironic to me that James is principally known as some kind of propellerhead über-accountant, when he's -- not incidentally -- one of the best writers about baseball since John Updike. DePodesta, in his infamous white paper, says he's interested in always asking "the naïve question". But Harvard damaged him materially. Listen to the unsonorous way he closes:

Thomas Kuhn wrote, "the proliferation of competing articulations, the willingness to try anything, the expression of explicit discontent, the recourse to philosophy and to debate over fundamentals, all these are symptoms of a transition from normal to extraordinary research."

That clumsy, larded bit was worthy of quoting? Uh, Paul... about that book deal... Anyway, James, ever the prose stylist, summarizes his interview this way:

"There's a universe of unknowns and a little cigar box of information," James said. "We're so far away from reaching the end of the task that it's laughable. We don't know anything, really."

Night and day, really, isn't it? No management duckspeak for the MBAs in the audience -- concrete and comprehensible, with awe for the immense task before him thrown in for free. We miss you, Bill.

Jon links to a David Cameron article on Baseball Prospectus about Dodger prospect James Loney. Cameron makes a good point, one I was pleased to make yesterday about Eckstein, namely PECOTA goes down hard on any player who's been injured. Trouble is, it doesn't do so selectively and seems to assume the worst...

At the end of his professional debut in 2002, Loney's left wrist was broken when he was hit by a pitch, ending his season. Wrist injuries are notorious for lingering, and Loney was clearly bothered by the recovery during the early part of 2003. After his first 45 games in the Florida State League, his line was .233/.283/.337. From game 46 through the end of the season, he hit .301/.369/.436, a much more impressive performance than his final totals would indicate. As Clay Davenport noted, that is the difference between a projected peak EqA of .289 versus .316, or roughly the difference between the 2003 versions of J.T. Snow and Nick Johnson. Usually, selective sampling is frowned upon, but the injury provides a legitimate reason for the dramatic improvement as the season goes along. At full health, he returned to his prior levels of ball-whacking, finishing the year as one of the best hitters in the lower minors at the tender age of 19.

Youth is certainly one of the main factors on Loney's side. He will spend 2004 in Double-A at the age of 20, putting him squarely on the fast track to the major leagues. Looking through his list of comparable players provided by PECOTA yields names like Hank Blalock, Miguel Cabrera, Sean Burroughs, and Adrian Beltre, who all arrived in the majors before their 22nd birthdays. It also includes players who have stalled in Double-A-- Adrian Gonzalez being the most notable--or have yet to establish themselves, and PECOTA is clearly picking up on the risk of getting too excited about players on the wrong side of the defensive spectrum who haven't tasted Double-A pitching yet. However, Loney gives a plethora of reasons for excitement beyond his age.

Given Eckstein's relative youth (well, maybe 29 is pushing the extent of that word), the same issues PECOTA has with Loney -- and IMO are being overstated -- are going to be present with young master David as well.

Tommy On The Bench?

An interesting observation from the Dodgers fan forum: Tommy's on the bench and managing. As usual when I pass this sort of stuff along, it's with the largest possible grain of salt, but I could completely believe McCourt going over the head of DePodesta and pulling a stunt like this.

$10 Parking

Concession and parking price hikes will go into effect this year, starting with a $2 parking fee increase. In what other business do you get away with charging more for the same lousy product?

Goin' Down, Down, Down, Down

I'm heading to Arizona for spring training, mostly for the Cubs (as a Christmas present to my wife) and also the Angels. Don't look for too many updates after tomorrow. Yahoo Weather says it's gonna be roasty toasty in Mesa, in the low to mid-90's, so I'm bringing plenty of sunblock. I'll be back on the 27th, so play ball!

Chronicles of the Lads points to Baseball Prospectus' AL West projections, and they aren't pretty, with essentially the same finish this year as last year, though the Angels will end up with a winning record of 83-79. It boils down to declines from nearly every player on the 2002 squad, with Anderson, Eckstein, Erstad, Glaus, Kennedy, Molina, and Salmon collectively erasing gains made by signing Vlad. (Guillen is so speculative I can't believe he'll pan out.) This just drives me nuts. Let's take a peek at the projected 2004 VORPs for all the published values prior to that year.

Year	Anderson	Eckstein	Erstad	Glaus	Kennedy	Molina	Salmon
2001	20.8	28.5	8.7	52.7	6	6.6	3
2002	37.5	29.2	11.2	30.7	31.5	-9.8	31.7
2003	40.6	1.5	-3.7	17.6	31.5	12.4	27.6
2004	26.2	20.7	1.5	39.1	23.4	4.9	21.9

And now for a brief explanation of why PECOTA is wrong and I'm right:

• Anderson I'm legitimately worried about at this point. His bicep tendonitis has kept him out of the lineup so far and is making me worried he'll mangle his swing in an unsuccessful attempt to "adjust". Of all of these players, Anderson's the one who'll live down to his numbers.
• Eckstein is the most immediately and obviously wrong of these players, and I suspect shows PECOTAs weaknesses at the edges: first, for players with little major league history (check, for Eck), and for those who have been recently injured (check, again). So -- the hell? Eckstein is supposedly overproducing in 2002, when in fact it represents only a 2.5% increase over the previous year? And then, injuries cause him to take a nearly 100% dive the next year, and is only expected to show up as two-thirds of a healthy Eck? Er, right. This is why I have a hard time putting much trust in PECOTA. It's a nice toy, but...
• Erstad is a lost cause, mostly. Most of the arguments for Erstad's move to first spin on the axis of him hitting better when he's healthy, therefore keeping him out of center will help somehow. First of all, his only season playing first, 1999, was a .253/.304/.374 extravaganza. His next year, 2000, was his .355/.409/.541 career year, one which didn't help the team much. Second, most of his value comes from his stunning defense in center, blah blah. But, just for a second, let's humor Rob and look at his pre- and post-All Star splits:

  	Pre All Star				Post All Star
  Year	AB	OBP	SLG	AVG	AB	OBP	SLG	AVG
  1999	349	.326	.393	.266	236	.282	.347	.233
  2000	375	.441	.592	.384	301	.370	.478	.319
  2001	344	.351	.401	.279	287	.307	.310	.233
  2002	332	.342	.419	.310	293	.280	.355	.253
  2003	184	.327	.353	.272	74	.263	.284	.203

  Ooh, surprise, surprise, he's a much better player in the first half than he is in the second, even in his career year, and even in 1999 when he was principally the team's first baseman. While there might be something to the "keep Ersty safe at first" theory, there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of evidence for it. I'd have to agree with PECOTA on him, too.

• Similar thoughts for Eckstein also apply to Kennedy and Molina as well. Are they really that abysmal? I'd take a roll that either of them has a bad year, but not both, and frankly, the catcher's my candidate. Abuse takes its toll.
• Glaus, rebound, yeah, and better than 2002, too. Sure, I'll buy that.
• Finally, I buy into Salmon falling apart, albeit in slow motion.

Overall, I just wonder about these guys. From what I can tell VORP is something of a black box, as is PECOTA. They sure as heck didn't predict the Angels to win it all in 2002.

At some point in the last 24 hours the site ticked over the 1,000 visits mark, not bad considering I put up a counter about a week ago. Most of those have come from Jon's Dodger Thoughts blog. Thanks to everyone who's come to read my hopefully reasonably well-informed rants, and the other ones, too. I would probably do this even if I didn't have a readership, but it's encouraging to think others believe I've got something worthwhile to say.

My bills are all due and the baby needs shoes and I'm busted
Cotton is down to a quarter a pound, but I'm busted
I got a cow that went dry and a hen that won't lay
A big stack of bills that gets bigger each day
The county's gonna haul my belongings away cause I'm busted.

Ray Charles

Aside from intellectual and possible moral bankruptcy, the Boston Herald reports that the McCourts might face the actual kind presently, as the terms of the sale allow Fox to swipe their Southie property if he can't sell it at a sufficiently high price within two years:

Under the terms of the Dodgers sale, McCourt now has two years to repay [Fox's $145 million loan], plus interest, or risk losing his land to News Corp., a spokesman for the new Dodgers owner confirmed. [Excuse me, but who can the writer be talking about here?]

... [S]ome real estate executives say [$205 million] is a rich number for raw land in a still hard hit real estate market. Longtime local developer Thomas Flatley told the Herald that he offered McCourt $150 million in cash for his land, a deal that was rejected.``I think it's going to be challenging,'' said Gary Lemire, an executive with commercial real estate firm CB Richard Ellis/Whittier Partners. ``He has some nice stuff (land) there, but the timing is not that great.''

The article goes on to mention that all's not gloom and doom for my favorite Southie couple: the market, in small doses, seems to be picking up, as a one-acre parcel has entertained bids for $30M, and that in any case, the sell-it-or-we'll-sell-it-for-you clause doesn't kick in for a couple years yet. But one can hope.

What A Difference A Spring Makes

... as Mike Scioscia forgets his earlier comments about Bobby Jenks being not quite ready-for-prime-time.

Bobby Jenks' nine scoreless innings this spring might have earned him a trip to Triple-A Salt Lake next month, but the Angels acknowledge he could push for major-league time this season. "When you're a young guy like him, you hope to pitch well enough to put yourself on the depth chart and he's definitely done that," Scioscia said.

Booya, Bobby!

Please Don't Talk About Respect, Bartolo

Thank God Bartolo Colón isn't a Scott Boras client -- at least, I hope he isn't. The Orange County Register (in the same story linked above) sure makes it sound like his move to the Angels was all about the tall dollars:

White Sox general manager Kenny Williams thought he might be able to re-sign ace Bartolo Colon, offering him a three-year deal worth $36 million. Colon gave Chicago hope by telling his friends on the team he would like to come back.

Instead, Colon got a far richer deal - four years, $51 million - in Anaheim.

"I told a lot of the pitchers I would like to come back, but it didn't work out," Colon said. "I don't want to talk about it."

At least we don't have to listen to him parrot some balderdash about respect. Arte'd have to start selling Rolaids at the stadium by the pallet.

... in a handbasket or other convenient vessel, so as to reacquire his services and ensure Jamie McCourt never, ever speaks to the press again. Timeline on this one, folks:

• Saturday 3/13: Hall resigns.
• Monday 3/15: Jamie interviewed. Doesn't go so well.
• Tuesday 3/16: Frank asks Hall to reconsider.

As Dorothy observed, people come and go so quickly around here! Meantime, David Walkley, vice president of human resources has tendered his resignation, because "because his job duties had changed." I've gotta give Walkley credit for the creativity involved in the reason for his walk letter -- at least he didn't cite "philosophical differences". At this rate, it'll be Frank on the mound, taking the tickets, and selling the popcorn. I tell you, folks, I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried!

Finally, by way of answering Richard's question as to whether I should give McCourt a chance -- why, yes, I have, and he has blown it, repeatedly. The prosecution offers exhibit A.

Update: Terry's got a far more readable commentary about this on his website.

things-to-fix-dep't

Casey Kotchman and the Devo guy: mirror twins?

Are you winking, Casey, or are your eyes hella asymmetric? Or maybe...

... it's just a lousy picture. Somebody, please, update this guy's portrait. It's Just Wrong.

This year for the Cubs
Dusty Baker will sub-
stitute someone for Kenny Lofton.
Though Patterson's fast
The others just blast
Or don't get on base quite as often.

The Bench Coach has a great piece on the Times articles published earlier today. Terry asks

Think DePodesta wonders what he got himself into? With the long-term security that comes with a five-year contract, DePodesta may have signed up for a half-decade of boiling-point stress, toiling for incompetent bosses with impossible expectations. He may be 31 coming in, but DePodesta figures to age in dog years while with the Dodgers.

Color me a trifle naive, but I don't think so. For me, this is a win-win situation if I'm DePodesta. First, I come in already the behind-the-scenes hero thanks to Moneyball. Second, if things go sour, everyone in baseball knows how harebrained the McCourts are -- the ownership read, or should have read, the sale package they voted on. They've got as much credibility as Clinton did, post stained dress. If I win, so much the better. And, thanks to the efforts of the previous GM and Logan White, I've got a farm stocked with goodies -- a good thing because the $100 million payroll McCourt promised the fans is a crock. And -- here's the beauty part -- with a five-year contract, if I even catch the smell of a playoff run in the next two years, I'm golden for the long term. With a weak NL West, 90 to 92 wins ought to do it. Simply put, I'll outlast my boss. McCourt simply can't run this team without an infusion of cash, and his does-not-play-well-with-others personality sort of limits access to that. I had my doubts at first, too, but on some reflection, the positives for DePodesta outweigh the negatives.

As usual when I don't have anything important to say, a bunch of small stuff --

Junior Rumors Gain Steam

Thanks to U.S.S. Mariner for this story indicating there may be some fire under the Griffey-from-Cincy-to-Safe smoke.

No BaLoney

And again from U.S.S. Mariner, freshly returned from spring training, David Cameron writes about Dodger prospect James Loney:

James Loney is awesome and-short of a catastrophic event similar to the flood-is going to be a tremendous major league hitter. Watching him and Robin Ventura play next to each other made one thing obviously clear; as of today, Robin Ventura is half the player Loney is, and Loney's getting better. This kid is scary good. I was really high on him before. After watching him this weekend, I'm running low on superlatives.

If only we could work on that time machine... we need you now, dude...

Angels 2004 Bullpen Preview

Fire Bavasi has their 2004 Angels bullpen preview up. He was much more thorough about the matter than I was, so it's worth a read. In particular, his comments about Ben Weber's lack of strikeouts are interesting; is he lucky with that career 5.16 K/9, or is it that he induces ground ball after ground ball? And as for Percy, what he forgot to mention was his blown out hip that cost him a mess of runs. While I don't think he'll be the closer he was before 2003, he'll still be effective and possibly better than last year, but not by much. That is to say, I don't disagree with his assessments much (as usual). And, just to round things out and prove to my wife that I can, in fleeting moments, cling to a naive kind of optimism, Frankie will actually do better than last year, simply because he's young and his second half last year was that much better (his K/9 ramped up to 11.61 from 8.63, and his K/BB rate improved from 1.90 to 3.90).

The Score Bard's NL Central Preview

The Score Bard's Humbug previews the NL Central. For my wife's beloved Cubbies:

Cubs
If you trust that my dreams can foresee,
A wild card contender they'll be.
Why not in first?
Perhaps they are cursed,
Despite adding Hawkins and Lee.

1. Newhan is to Evans as Plaschke is to...

No, not really. Evans at least had a plan.

Go read today's shotgun blast about McCourt's pratfalls. And, thank you sir, may I have another? I can't add much to it, except to say -- Dodgerkid, you may get your wish.

YAAB -- "Chronicles of the Lads"

Today, I introduce Yet Another Angels Blog. Revisiting the comments from the Baseball Primer Angels preview I found a link to Chronicles of the Lads. The name comes from an expression the late Angels announcer Bob Starr used when the Angels were behind in late innings. He opens, as seems to be the custom for a lot of new bloggers, with a preview of the 2004 lineup. Welcome aboard!

Good Stuff At The Pearly Gates

Richard over at The Pearly Gates has introduced some nifty new features to his blog: a stock-market style ticker for a featured Angel prospect-du-jour and Angels spring training standings. Also, he points at Aaron Gleeman's latest project, The Hardball Times. Gleeman is working with Alex Belth of Bronx Banter, and Matthew Namee, research assistant to Bill James (all hail). It looks like a promising venture, and I'll second that link.

... And At Purgatory Online

Sean has been paying much more attention to spring training and its effects upon the Halos than I have; but then, I'm not all that interested in ST to begin with. It's kinda dull watching guys you know won't be on the 25-man roster come April. But Sean's attention to these kinds of details proves once more that he's still the premiere Angels blogger out there.

Aaron's Prospecting

Update: Also on The Hardball Times, Aaron ranks the top 25 prospects in baseball. (You can read his list of 26-50 here.) If you've read other prospect lists, you won't be surprised to see Angels prospects like Jeff Mathis, Casey Kotchman, Ervin Santana, and Dallas McPherson; but you will be surprised -- maybe -- to see he's left off Dodgers prospect Greg Miller, principally because of the shoulder problems he's had at the end of last season and again in spring training.

David Peng at Baseball Primer looks at the 2004 Angels. Best lines:

• About "Wheels" Molina's running skills: he "runs like a man being chased by horny supermodels".
• Regarding Orange County's favorite ethnicity: "the Shane Halter signing didn’t energize the Caucasian fan base."
• On Sele's value to the club: "Sele’s biggest contribution will come when he walks out the door."
• Percival's contract status in the 2004/2005 offseason "will be one of several tests for how willing Moreno and Stoneman are to let go of the organization’s long-time standard bearers", and his recommendation is that Percy should be let go if he thinks he's getting more than $4M/year for three years.

Good stuff, all. He predicts a 96-66 season if things go right, and if they go really right, 100-62.

Oh, my God in Heaven, I shouldn't be having this kind of fun. Today in Baseball Primer's "Clutch Hits" section, Backstop Bob, author of the wonderful piece about his direct experience with Team McCourt, comes back for a second helping:

Jamie came up with most of the really air-headed ideas in brainstorming meetings concerning the Baltimore project. Our GM once came around to all the director's offices before a meeting to remind us "not to make any visible signs of distress or incredulity at any of Jamie's suggestions", which included (my personal favorite) having the ticket takers in "famous Baltimoreans" costume and working in character (Babe Ruth, Edgar Allen Poe, Barry Levinson, H. L. Mentken insulting all the Jewish guests, etc) as people were coming into the facility, when our primary concern was just getting 5000 people inside, and getting their coats taken, in a typical two-hour period.

I had to explain in detail how we didn't want any more interaction with ticket taking other than a smile and "have a great time", so as not to jam up the lines. And, as I expected, lines were a problem all the time on weekends, as we couldn't get people in fast enough. I imagine if we had hired actors to do the ticket-taking, it would have lasted, about a day. (Maybe she could try it again at Dodger Stadium...they do have more turnstyles. It'd be interesting to go through "Steve Garvey"'s line with your wife or girlfriend, perhaps.)

I shake my head reading the story. It sounds like Jamie and Frank are going to "clean up that one horse town", when nothing more really needs to be done than to improve the product on the field.

Jamie's dad is an early mass-merchandising appliance-electronics guy in Baltimore naked Frank Luskin, who was a contemporary of "Crazy Eddie" and "The Wizard", except he went out of business some ten years ago, run out of town by Curcuit City. As far as I can tell, none of his business acumen has rubbed off on her.

He goes on to say in a later post that "if the O's can pry Edwin Jackson away from them so they can have the "big bat" of Jay Gibbons, then I am all for the McCourts", as should all right-thinking Orioles fans. Heck, at this point, I'd be happy to let the Angels lose Erstad's bat in trade for same. To think, I'd only have to change the color and logo on my home computer's desktop picture...

Athletics Nation and the A's homepage both report that Eric Chavez will remain an A for the forseeable future, thus putting to rest the Score Bard's speculation.

The Score Bard previews the NL West. For the Dodgers:

Dodgers
This team is on loan, not invested,
But at least it has been dePodested.
From L.A. to the farms
They've been crawling with arms
But with bats they have been uninfested.

Hopefully this will be sufficient to counter the stink I made with my most recent attempt at rhyme. It's a dog and doggerel, all at once!

More howlers from today's Times, reminding one of the Robert McNamara-era pronounciamentos about Vietnam. The McCourts just aren't worried about high-level defections in recent weeks:

Speaking on behalf of her husband, Frank, Jamie McCourt said they were not concerned about the high-level defections that have occurred in their first month in charge. The McCourts have not addressed the club's approximately 250 full-time staff members about the resignations of Bob Graziano, team president; Kris Rone, executive vice president of business; and Derrick Hall, senior vice president of communications, and they won't dwell on them when meeting with employees sometime before opening day at Dodger Stadium.

The McCourts said change is simply part of the transition process and they expect more from everyone.

"We expect an enormous amount of accountability," said Jamie, the vice chairman. "We're going to try to change the culture of the Dodgers, because this should be a team that's in the playoffs every year. To not be in the playoffs is crazy. They should have been drawing 4 million fans, not 3 million fans. They should be making money, not losing $50 million [a year].

"The Dream Foundation, for example, should be doing even more in the community than it's doing. The Dodgers can do better. We're not nervous, because it's our intention to have better baseball, do better for the fans, do better for the employees and do better for the players. Whatever it takes to assemble that team, that's what we're going to do."

The team doesn't have a CEO, a head of communications, a business manager, and they're worried about the Dodger Dream Foundation? And they haven't even spoken with the remaining employees about upper-level vacancies? What color is the sky in that little world of yours, Jamie? In the playoffs? Hah! They'll be lucky if they're in the division! The article goes on to mention that Dodgers employees found out their bosses were no longer working there from the Times, not the McCourts, of which the Wicked Witch of the National League West said:

"I hope we can talk [to the staff] because I think it's very important," Jamie said. "I hope it's soon. Everything is just a little bit awkward in terms of timing because of when the purchase was approved, and now it's spring training. Certainly, we would hope to do so before opening day, but I don't think we're going to focus so much on resignations.

"Surrender, Dorothy" might not appear in the skies over Dodger Stadium, but management-by-press-release doesn't sound like a strategy you'll be reading about in the latest fad business book, either. Now, where did I leave that bucket of water?

She said the Dodgers, sold to the McCourts by News Corp. this winter, operated in a "silo for business, a silo for baseball and a silo for [public relations]"

At the rate upper management ranks have been launched out of the Ravine, can we expect a counterstrike from Russia or China at any moment?

"What we'll focus on is what our expectations are and how we hope everybody who wants to be here will stay involved with the turnaround.

A number dwindling by the hour, no doubt. But that's okay, because at least Jamie recognizes her shortcomings:

"I can't speak for Frank. No one asked me if I thought we should get a hitter or not," she said. "You probably have to talk to Frank. This is bad because you guys remember everything and you write everything down."

Because, yeah, illiteracy is probably, for a lawyer, like, a bad thing. And to think, before this revelation, I thought they had a shining career opportunity writing sitcoms. So, if you can, write this one down, Jamie: get some bats. Oops, scratch that. Try: sell the team.

Update: I suppose I should have seen this one coming: they fire the communications guy and immediately one of the McCourts steps in it. Call it the revenge of the press. Some years ago, there was a story circulating about the early days of the Clinton White House that the staff wasn't maintaining its little touches for the press covering the Washington "beat" (if you can call the usual press release journalism that goes on there a "beat") that the Bushes did, including remembering which candy bars they preferred in the box lunches. So the story went, it was this lack of attention to detail that caused much of the press -- from that day hence -- to be anti-Clinton. I don't know for sure, but I bet Ross Newhan likes Snickers.

Much is being made on the Angels forums of Brad Fullmer's comments regarding his playing time that "There was some stuff regarding me that was set in stone, and no matter how I swung the bat or how well I played, it wasn't going to change, no matter how hot I got." At issue is Fullmer's at-bats versus lefties, with some accusing Mike Scioscia of a conspiracy to take away Fullmer at-bats. Well, let's look at this a mite closer, shall we?

			vs. lefties				vs. all
Year	Team	Manager	AB	Avg.	OBP	SLG	AB	Avg.	OBP	SLG	left%
2003	Angels	Mike Scioscia	30	.267	.324	.400	206	.306	.387	.500	.146
2002	Angels	Mike Scioscia	63	.221	.231	.365	429	.289	.357	.531	.147
2001	Blue Jays	Buck Martinez	119	.202	.233	.286	522	.274	.326	.444	.228
2000	Blue Jays	Jim Fregosi	93	.226	.279	.430	482	.295	.340	.558	.193
1999	Expos	Felipe Alou	50	.240	.264	.480	347	.277	.321	.464	.144

And there ends the splits data on mlb.com. I liked Brad as a player, but I have to wonder whether he didn't say the same things about Alou, who also benched Brad versus lefties. When he played for Toronto, his large numbers of LH at-bats dragged down his average and certainly his slugging percentage. In any case, his outburst would explain why management released him shortly after he injured himself. What's funny, though, is that Scioscia used him exactly for his strengths, and Fullmer proceeded to set career records for OBP and average, not to mention picking up a championship ring. And for this, Fullmer is angry? It reminds me of the old Mark Twain quote, "If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man."

As good as Mark Prior was at the same stage of the game:

The two pitchers had similar freshman seasons, the Long Beach State 49er eclipsed the USC Trojan in their sophomore campaigns, and Jered is on pace to equal or better Mark’s outstanding junior year.

So much for the Angels getting him. Tigers'll pick him up and ruin him, I bet.

Update: Looks like I should have read the previous day's entry, which says the Padres are following young Master Weaver's progress closely; here's his Team USA numbers:

           IP   H    R   ER   BB    K    ERA    W-L
Weaver     48   21   2   2    11    36   0.38   4-1

Yowzah.

The Boston Herald reports that Frank, in his efforts to sell his Fan Pier-adjacent property, has been telling folks that it's pre-permitted for the projects he envisions. Trouble is, it isn't:

And McCourt's pitch appears to go awry when he claims the land is ``shovel ready'' and has a special City Hall development designation needed to undertake major development projects, contends one local real estate executive.

McCourt, who for years has operated a lucrative parking empire on his Southie land, does not have any city or state permits to build the projects detailed in his property sales prospectus, city officials confirmed.

"There is a very, very specific process you have to go through before you can build anything,'' noted Bill Collins, senior vice president at Spaulding & Slye Colliers International. Collins' firm spent years obtaining permits for a $1.2 billion project on the neighboring Fan Pier site.

Looks like Frank's been shoveling something back in Boston, but it ain't dirt. I wonder if this will have a negative effect on the value of his property since it seems he doesn't have any of the permitting done?

Gibbons Has A Role In Dodgers Decline And Fall?

The Dodgers are interested in Jay Gibbons in exchange for a pitcher, the Times says today.

No Giambis In This Lineup

And in the same story, it looks like Jeremy Giambi's back will keep him out of the Dodgers, or any other lineup, as he's due for surgery to "stabilize" it.

Vinny Through 2006

Vinny plans on fulfilling his contract through 2006. Vinny, whose prose we have been privileged to hear, says this of the McCourts:

"The new owner has borrowed a lot of money. We all know that," Scully said. "He has a tremendous passion to succeed. My only feeling is a simple one: Give him a chance. He's the one with everything at stake."

Well, Vinny, we did, and now lots of folks in the front office have either been fired or are quitting. But it's good to see you're a trouper, still, just like Alvarez. Of course, who knows if the Dodgers' other broadcasters are around much longer. It's not like there aren't those who want to see Monday or Porter go away. As Dodger Blues put it,

At some point, however—probably in the not too distant future—Vin Scully will retire. And at that time, there will be absolutely nothing that is consistently good about Dodger baseball.

Found, in our front yard this afternoon: one long-haired dachshund. No collar. Sweet-natured.

... and very, very tired, especially after a long walk around the neighborhood looking for possible owners. Our two dogs, a husky-shephard mix and an Australian Shephard/Keeshond mix, nearly killed him when we took him in our backyard, even after we did everything we were supposed to. We're not sure what we're going to do, but first we're putting up "found" posters around the neighborhood. After that, he probably will go to the Seal Beach or Huntington Beach shelters. ("Doosie", as my wife has taken to calling him, is curled up under my feet beneath my desk.) We're going to spring training in a week, and this dog just can't be here.

We find too many dogs like this one, really. A year and a half ago in October, while the Angels were busy winning their first championship, I found a little white mop of a dog in the elementary school behind our house. Like an idiot, I conned my parents into taking it, and it has subsequently proven to be a complete bust -- one of the few mean-tempered dogs I've ever known. And then there was another dog I found on one of our walks in the neighborhood, a sweet Lab mix we took to the shelter. That one was tough. Sometimes it works out okay, like the time the guy came and retrieved his dog from us.

Once, when I was in Arkansas visiting my in-laws a few years ago, the power went out in the middle of the worst ice storms in a decade. A sad, short-haired, liver-colored retriever of some kind -- maybe a Springer Spaniel or some kind of coon dog -- came up to my in-laws' house, naturally, wearing no tags. He was freezing -- literally, he had icicles hanging from his belly. With no time to observe formalities with my in-laws' dog, no place to put him besides a downstairs bathroom, and no real heat, we took turns watching him. The next morning, after I left for home (and of course the power came on -- I have a knack for causing natural disasters, a subject of some amusement), his real owner showed up. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief, because my sister-in-law's kids had given him a name already.

I hope this little guy has a home. He sure deserves better than to be abandoned.

Update: We washed him and gave him a flea treatment or two. We forget, having used Advantage for years, that dogs really do have fleas, and they need to be kept in check. We hadn't seen a flea for ages, but caught sight of a bunch in the bathroom after we gave J. Random Dog his bath.

Raul apologizes for writing about non-baseball related issues, but it's really not. The government of the Dominican Republic is as advanced as any in the art of voting itself rich on the backs of everyone else. That is to say, their ruling class consists of parasites and nuisances who have no other talents than getting re-elected. This is no different than things in the United States, except that in the U.S.

1. occaisionally, someone, frequently a judge, takes the rule of law seriously, and
2. naked vote-buying is generally frowned upon.

But this has not stopped the likes of FDR and Johnson, who engineered schemes so enormous and expensive that their true costs must be hid from the public for fear of backlash. And, as senior citizens have nothing to occupy their time so much as voting down those who don't vote them enough largesse, we now have the spectre of intergenerational machine politics.

The government of the Dominican threatens baseball, and worse, the pocketbooks of their already poor citizens, by buying nearly a million dollars in tickets to give away to their friends, thereby associating the game with the Republic's native criminal class. In the U.S., the McCainiacs now threaten baseball with more anti-drug hysteria, when it is crystal clear that all the hype about steroids is election-year humbug on the order of Tell Your Children, aka Reefer Madness. Probably the biggest risk is for reporters, who must brave interviews with surly players, and it is for this reason we hear endless tirades against the stuff. No wonder the Senators left Washington -- twice.

Now, at the very bottom of this here blog, a Google search box, for searching the contents of this fine blog. Enjoy.

A Slippery Scale

"Monkey see, monkey do", goes the old saw, and if you''ve spent any time at all watching this offseason, you'd know that Frank's been watching the Red Sox a lot. Do the Sox have a young stathead brainiac in the GM's chair? Well, time for the Dodgers to pick up one, too. And when it came time to pick a new CEO, McCourt tried to raid the Sox front office by getting Mike Dee. In fact, I'm not sure he even understands he owns the Dodgers. So it is with some trepidation I present this Boston Globe news item about the Red Sox introducing variable pricing:

The right-field seats, which went on sale last week, are priced according to whom the Sox are playing. Tickets for Opening Day, for games against the Blue Jays, games against the Yankees, plus the interleague opponents (Dodgers and Phillies), will sell for $100 apiece. All other games will be for $75. Monster seats, which went for $50 apiece for every game last season, will have a new pricing scale, expected to be announced this week.

"There are about 14 or 15 teams in Major League Baseball that are engaged in some kind of variable pricing," Dee said. "Some are as simple as this. Others are crazy: day of the week, opponents. There's sort of a general migration toward the airline model: You fly on a Tuesday during the peak time on a 14-day advance ticket, you pay less than you would on a Saturday during a peak time, with a two-day advance.

We should look forward to $12 "cheap seats" in Giants matchups presently in Chavez Ravine. Update: should the Orioles take offense that their away games at Fenway aren't selling for a premium?

Lies, Lies, Lies, Yeah

Also in that same article, McCourt denies earlier reports in the Times that he vetoed the Vlad acquisition.

Eleven years ago, when the Giants were being sold by Bob Lurie to the current ownership group headed by Peter Magowan, Magowan was given the go-ahead by Lurie to sign Barry Bonds to what was then the game's biggest contract, a six-year, $43 million deal. Why couldn't McCourt have done something similar during his transition stage? "Baseball feels very, very strongly that prospective owners not act like presumptive owners," McCourt said. "They feel very, very strongly about that. I am familiar with the Giants situation. That caused a lot of consternation. That was not something we felt any need to replicate in this particular situation. We've already made a very big move here. The big move we made was to bring in Paul DePodesta [as GM].

Unfortunately, Paul cannot hit. I think it's altogether possible to draw two valid conclusions here:

1. The Dodgers' 2004 is over. There will be no bats added one way or another.
2. Frank is a pathological liar. Or, who do we believe more: McCourt, who's already broken several promises, or Bill Stoneman?

Hall of Shame

And speaking of the front office, Jason Reid in the Times reports that Director of Communications Derrick Hall has resigned due to "philosophical differences" with the McCourts:

The news disturbed All-Star right fielder Shawn Green.

"He's one of the unsung heroes in the organization," Green said. "He's the best in the business at what he does. I don't know all the dynamics of the situation, but I have a lot of respect for Derrick. I know he would only do this if he felt he had to."

Hall, who had left briefly in 1999 to become a sports radio talk-show host, declined to elaborate on the philosophical differences that drove him from the organization he joined in 1992 as a member of the Vero Beach Dodgers.

However, multiple team sources said Saturday that Hall was concerned about the new owners' handling of many situations and apparently feared his credibility would be called into question.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense: a man can only be so creative, and maybe he figured the position would go to the Coen brothers or somebody else with extensive screenwriting experience. (Update: Jon, I know you don't have extensive experience in Hollywood's tarpits, but think of the tongue-in-cheek fun you could have with official press releases!) God knows the truth is going to be pretty harsh in the upcoming weeks and years. I wonder how long it'll take before the peanut vendors develop "philosophical differences" with Frank-n-Jamie? Heck, forget the peanut guys -- what about Vinny?

"In Oakland, They Really Don't Karros"

Ross Newhan, with a brain as thick as a rhinoceros tusk (and, thanks to the Times circulation rates, nearly as deadly), goes back to beating dead horse Dan Evans, whom he today wails upon for not picking up an idled Eric Karros:

Deprived of first base in Chicago, Karros scanned the market, saw an opening with the Dodgers, thought about how it might be to possibly end his career where it started, and was relieved to learn over lunch with Tracy that their sometimes heated and closed-door talks involving playing time and other issues in 2002 had left no scars.

Ultimately, Karros said, he also talked with Evans and Chairman Bob Daly and came away thinking an offer was imminent, although he laughed in reflection and said:

"It's just that Daly would say he had to clear it with Evans, and Evans would say he had to make sure Trace was on board, and it obviously took Dan about three months to walk downstairs to check with Trace because that's about how long it was before I decided that I'd better find work. In the end, I guess, Dan felt he could go in another direction and there were other things he could do, although I don't know what they were."

Neither does anyone else.

Nothing like twisting the knife a little, eh Ross? Maybe you could have made it clear whether this was before or after the Vlad revelation, when it became crystal clear that Evans was unable to lift a finger? Update: ... and would Karros have been the answer to any offensive question in a full-time role anyway? I dunno. He might have made a decent acquisition as a bench player, especially now that the Dodgers don't have a full-time solid first baseman.

In the NL West roundup at All-Baseball.com, Jon has some interesting things to say about the one- (or two-) big-bat theory:

Jon: Regarding the Dodgers (and by the way, I don't know that a good year from Jeff Weaver is the key to their success any more than a good year from Neifi Perez is for the Giants), here are the questions:

* If the Dodgers add one legitimate bat, do they not become a division contender?
* If the Dodgers add two legitimate bats, do they not become division favorites?

I say yes to both.

Let's take a closer look at those contentions. Using Rob's New Favorite Toy, VORP, let's subtract Burnitz (-7.8), Jordan (11.3), and Henderson (-2.1) from the Dodgers' 2003 lineup and replace them with the 2002, uninjured version of Vlad (71.3). That is a difference of 70 runs, approximately. Plugging this in to last year's stats using Pythagorean projections, that would equate to a WPCT of .573 or a final record of 93-69, not enough to eclipse the Giants but enough to get into the postseason.

But that was last year.

I don't have time right now to do a 2004 projection justice, but it's conceivable that this might have worked. But I would be willing to bet that we'd have to keep Brown around.

Tyler Bleszinski at Athletics Nation has released his 2004 bullpen preview for Oakland, and while that's fine, normally Fire Bavasi would have something going for the Halos. Since not, I'll just do it for him. First, I'll start off with links to the usual commentary about the ground rules:

• The Basic Bad Assumption
  
• The Better Assumption

Now, on to the pitchers:

Brendan Donnelly

This one's easy: he's about to decline. You don't just step up, deliver a pre-All-Star-Break ERA of 0.36, and expect to repeat that the next year. Heck, he didn't even deliver that in the second half, once his elbow started breaking apart, he came back down to earth to finish the season with a 1.58 ERA. His age of 32 says he's on the downward slope.

Troy Percival

Another year of age-related decline as his K/9 took a big hit last year. Last year's degenerative hip condition isn't going away, and he'll continue to make me nervous. Of course, a lot of that nervousness is due to watching Misseur Gagné on the mound, as automatic a closer as I've ever seen.

Francisco Rodriguez

Frankie's going to bounce back this year with a terriffic year. Like Lackey in the starting rotation, he had an awful sophomore year, but Rodriguez's K/9 went through the roof in the last three months of 2003 even though his ERA took a hit. I see him a big candidate to improve substantially even if he doesn't become Mariano Rivera.

Scot Shields

Shields name, IMO, shouldn't even be on this list -- he should be in spring training working on a third or fourth pitch, working on pitch sequences so he can start. He's better than Lackey was last year. He's got very, very good stuff for five innings, and with some training, I think he could be extended to even more. That said, I'm going to suggest he'll decline a little as his K/9 regresses to his career average.

Ben Weber

Weber's 2003 and 2002 K/9 rates are nearly identical, but trending slightly down, and that's where I'm headed with Weber: decline.

The Rest

My guess is that Sele's most likely to enter the bullpen, which actually might solidify it further. Scioscia's plan to keep Aaron on a five-inning leash worked for a while, and I tend to think a bullpen job would help him out. If not Sele, then Ortiz, and if it is Ortiz, watch out; his walks ramped up while his strikeouts nosedived. Ortiz in the pen could be gasoline to the fire. I see once-highly-regarded Chris Bootcheck as a longshot to make the pen. Last year's spot starter Kevin Gregg is more likely to supplant Shields as a swingman if it comes to that, though it has been said he's liable to spend his days in AAA. Derrick Turnbow has one option left, and the Angels may deal him a similar fate. Too much depends on who actually ends up here, so I decline judgement until Scioscia and Stoneman make their picks.

First I've heard of this: Doug Miller today says Aaron Sele could be released if he doesn't have a good spring training:

The good news for Sele is that he's finally healthy and ready to regain the form that helped him win 69 games from 1998 through 2001, the most in the American League in that span.

The bad news is that the offseason bolstering of the Angels' pitching rotation with flamethrowers Bartolo Colon has put the heat on Sele this spring. If he doesn't pitch well, he might not be on the team come Opening Day.

That's a lot of dough to be eating, Arte.

A stylesheet test.

Italicized words go here. Normal font words go here.

Spiezio Wearing Cape And Tights In Seattle?

Strange and murky are the fever dreams of statheads and fantasy baseball players, projecting performance with statistical gimcrack and mudflap. Its mystics now divine a new superhero playing third base at Safeco. So read the Optimist's tea leaves. If true, Scott, we are so sorry.

Bonds Flat On His Back Through Monday

Barry's horizontal posture is likely to continue through the weekend. How will the curses flow, if Bonds misses large chunks of 2004? Especially since Sabean has gone into full savage-the-farm-win-at-all-costs mode over the last year?

Angels Could Use A Guardian Angel Themselves

As if to prove that aging superstars aren't the only ones who get injured in spring training, the Angels have absorbed quite a beating this year. Aside from Donnelly's nasal adventure, third baseman Glaus sprained an ankle, Guillen fouled a ball off his ankle, Anderson still hasn't played in ST thanks to biceps tendonitis, Benji Molina's got stiffness in his legs, and Vlad took a pitch on the hands. It already sounds horribly familiar...

Weaver... 15 K's... Zzzz

One hit. 8.0 innings, 15 K's. No big deal. Wake me when he's in the bigs, will ya?

Every blog must have a purpose, as a dog must have fleas. This one's is

• working as hard as possible at seeing Frank McCourt to the door.
• getting as many belly laughs at his expense as possible in the meantime.
• cheering on the Dodgers and Angels, the former despite whatever bankrupt stupidity the McCourts may inflict upon that team.

If I amuse, instruct, or edify in the process, well, so much the better.

Another unintentional humor moment courtesy of the Frankster. McCourt, on keeping the front office staff now that he's decided to be interim CEO:

McCourt also said he hasn't decided to bring in an entirely new front office staff.

"Everybody here is going to be given a chance," he said.

Just like Dan. I'm sure they all have their resumés faxed off to the Angels, Giants, A's, Diamondbacks, etc. by now.

Frank, on priorities:

"Spring training is great, but, really, what we're focused on is June 11, 12 and 13 in Fenway," McCourt said, "and, of course, playing in October is as good as it gets."

Apparently, the other games don't count for much. Or are you just going to the games you live close to?

On the life expectancy of Dodger players:

"I have a lot of confidence in the players on the squad," McCourt said. "This team is a lot better than people give them credit for. That said, we're going to plug holes."

Hah! I knew it! He's going to finally plug Dreifort! I envision a scene like that from The Untouchables where Sean Connery has a violent staged argument with a corpse -- which he promptly and bloodily re-kills, the better to extract information from the live gangsters unaware of the street theater in their presence. After Dreifort, Hundley... and Beltre...

Update: As if that weren't enough, get this Ken Gurnick article. On the Dodgers picking up a hitter before opening day:

Continuing the general feeling around the club that a major acquisition is unlikely, McCourt lowered expectations on player movement.

"I promise to do what is necessary to win on the field," he said. "The emphasis on one bat, a fix-all and cure-all, is a little misguided.

Especially when you can't get one, right, Frank? Just as I suspected: firing Dan Evans had the same atavistic motivation as a dog peeing on a fire hydrant, and so far, with the same results. The lies, the brittle promises, they're all here on display, in as big a showcase as Fox Sports West has for 162 games -- or however many actually get televised. Oops -- there goes another blown promise. But that's okay, we can count on Frank to at least know which team he owns, right?

McCourt spoke to reporters before watching his old favorite team play his new favorite team Friday.

"I wouldn't say I have divided loyalties," McCourt said before the game between the Dodgers and Red Sox. "I have 430 million reasons to root for one team and not the other."

And just how many of those reasons are really yours, Frank? Go home, Frank. Just sell the team and go home.