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

A few thoughts about Jon's Lichtman interview earlier today:

1) Flashback to October: the Dodger season has just ended. Name the most important “do” and/or “don’t” for Paul DePodesta.

If you mean in terms of trades and acquisitions, the do’s are: Dump Green and his ridiculous salary,

Green's ridiculous salary amounts to a one-year overpayment; I could certainly have seen keeping him around, but DePodesta decided the team needed another starting pitcher more than Green's salary. Moreover, he already decided Green's gimpy shoulder wasn't going to be any better after 2005, hence the firm... kick... out... the.. front... door. At seven million and change, the Snakes didn't badly overpay for him (but then, I'm more optimistic about him than several folks -- write this day down on your calendar).

find a permanent defensive position for Werth,

Left field doesn't count?

teach Jackson how to pitch or trade him,

That's what Vegas is for...

plan on cordially and gracefully letting Beltre, Lima and Finley go (because the former will be overpaid and the latter two have no value),

Oh, baloney on Lima and Finley (see here for Fins); the more compelling argument is that Lima's worth was just as likely to be zero as positive, and Fins amounted to surplus baggage.

figure out how to get Alvarez into the rotation,

Alvarez in the rotation? In my best Ren voice, "Are you mad?" The guy was talking about retirement in midseason... but a quibble.

get Weaver to stop fidgeting so much on the mound and act like he cares, try to resign Hernandez and Bradley (for cheap),

Hernandez gone thanks to arbitration rules that do not encourage loyalty; otherwise, Bradley back for cheap, check.

get Penny healthy, replace Mota with another good short reliever, pitch Gagne more, figure out why Dessens sucks as a starter,

Easy: no stamina. Insert several ellipses and proceed:

2) Back to the present, what has been DePodesta’s strongest offseason move to date and what has been his weakest?

Hmmm… Valentin was a steal, although I’d much rather see him at SS than at third. A platoon of Valentin and Hernandez (at SS) would have been lights out, sabermetrically speaking. Drew is one of the few high profile players who are worth their contracts. He is a top 10 player and only a top 10 player is worth 10 mil a year or more. I think the health concerns with Drew have been overstated. I don’t particularly like long-term contracts, but one, sometimes you have no choice, and two, people forget that salaries in baseball have risen 12% a year for the last 16 years, and I see no reason why that should not continue. The Kent contract is not a bad one.

Valentin: DePo likes his .226/.298/.503 split against righties in 2004, and at $3.5M for a single year, he's a nice pickup -- but only two-thirds of a player. For sure, you're paying for that .503 SLG, this year's answer to Jose Hernandez.

Drew: Don't underestimate the time he spent on the DL. Will Carroll labels him a yellow for his injury risk level. Missing about a third of a season in 2003 doesn't attest to his sturdiness. (As Carroll put it, "Drew broke out once he didn't break down.") It's not a great signing by any mreans, but DePodesta had to do something, and Drew's walk totals look a lot better than Beltre's, stacked at-bat for at-bat.

The weakest (and most controversial) move by far, and that is an understatement, is Lowe’s signing. Funny I thought he was going to be underrated (since he had an unlucky regular season in ‘04) and able to be had for a bargain. I don’t know what happened. Lowe should benefit from a very good Dodger IF defense. There is also some evidence that groundball pitchers do anomalously well in Chavez (and Fenway, BTW); I am pretty sure that Depo knows this. I have a hard time believing that even if true (that Lowe will benefit greatly from Chavez), it makes Lowe worth anywhere near 9 mil a year for four years. If Lowe even has a little bit of bad luck or a severe injury, Depo is setting himself up for a crucifixion.

Done to death elsewhere by both Neyer and Tom; if Lowe tanks due to injury, yes it's a bad deal, but the pluses outweigh the minuses, plus the club has lots of spare parts in the minors.

3) For many people, the offseason priority was retaining Adrian Beltre. For me personally, his transformation seemed completely legitimate. What is the range of expectation for Beltre’s performance in 2005, and what should the Dodgers have been willing to spend on him?

I don’t know, or care too much about, the “range of expectation” for anyone. ....

I also don’t believe in breakout years or “transformations” as you put it. Not that players don’t change their true levels of performance (including having breakout years), sometimes even drastically, from time to time. It’s just that it is very difficult to identify a real change among all the random fluctuation (noise) in a player’s stats. A scout can help with that of course. This is true of lots of things in baseball.

If you wanted to get rid of Beltre, here's a good justification.

I (and most other forecasters I think) expect Beltre’s offensive performance next year and beyond to be somewhere in between last year and prior years, with more of an emphasis on last year of course. His defense appears to be great. One of the best. He has no other above average peripherals, by the way. My observation (which I don’t particularly trust) of Beltre this year was that pitchers starting pitching him away too much, he adjusted, and crushed the mistakes. I think he will and should be pitched inside more often this year. This is the sort of cat and mouse game (game theory) you sometimes see between pitchers and catchers.

He's right about Beltre's peripherals, but prior to 2004, Beltre would chase the low outside slider 100% of the time. I even remember Kevin Appier offering up such a pitch at a June 2003 game on a full count, thinking, "one low outside slider and Beltre's done for". Sure enough, and this from a pitcher who had nothing left in the tank!

5) Jeff Kent next. First, talk about what we might expect from him offensively as he goes from Houston to Los Angeles (and parenthetically, perhaps, how much of a change to expect from Dodger Stadium now that the foul territory is being reduced).

There are lots of people who know more about that than I, and the answers are sort of obvious anyway. Less foul territory equals fewer foul outs equals more of everything else.

Who cares what Chavez will do to Kent’s stats?

Uh, DePo.

All the Dodger opponent hitters at home will suffer the same effect on their stats, right? Sure some players may benefit more or less from a stadium than other players, but one, it is usually de minimus, and two, we don’t have a great understanding of how that works anyway. That is one of the uncharted territories in sabermetrics, although I am sure that some teams are already working on it (see comments above on Lowe).

Tom, you have your opening. My complete and utter guess is a slight reversion, maybe amplified a bit by age, but he won't be terrible.

15) Any other insights about the team you’d like to add?

Nothing I can think of that hasn’t been covered. Good luck to the Dodgers and best wishes to all the Dodger fans!

And thankee back, MGL.