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

Roster Moves

• Dioner Navarro was sent down to AAA Las Vegas in exchange for C Mike Rose. DePodesta wanted Navarro to keep getting at bats and not rust on the bench. Rose was hitting .294 for Las Vegas. Rose, who was not on the 40-man roster, was added by DFA'ing Buddy Carlyle.
• Hee Seop Choi didn't play yesterday because of a stiff left forearm.
• The Dodgers will face minor leaguer John Koronka on Wednesday instead of Mark Prior.
• The Times says the Dodgers are thinking about bringing Ryan Rupe on board as an emergency replacement.

  Rupe pitched a complete game and struck out 11 for triple-A Las Vegas on Sunday. He is 2-1 with a 3.80 earned-run average, with four walks and 28 strikeouts in 24 innings.

• The Chisox' Frank Thomas injured his hip flexor during yesterday's game. He is day-to-day.
• Update: Raul Mondesi has been DFA'd, possibly ending his major league career.
• The A's activated SS Bobby Crosby, sending Keith Ginter to AAA Sacramento.

White Sox 5, Angels 4

Given Shields' heavy use lately, was it unexpected for him to finally blow a save? I think not. But, hey, the Rally Monkey got going there for a little while.

Recap

Dirtbag Star Shortstop Troy Tulowitzki Feature Article

Dirtbags Baseball has a feature article from the San Jose Mercury-News about CSULB's star shortstop, Troy Tulowitzki.

Tulowitzki, a former Fremont High standout who has become a blue-chip shortstop at Long Beach State, could be one of the top five picks in the baseball draft next month. MLB.com projected him to go third, to Seattle.

"He has endless potential,'' said A's shortstop Bobby Crosby, a former Long Beach State star who talks with Tulowitzki several times a month. "He's the same type of guy I was in college. He came into Long Beach a little raw, but you could tell he had a great work ethic.''

A's Snap Skid, Beat Rays 5-4

The victory snapped an eight-game losing streak. Idiot Philip Michaels contemplates what he wants in his postseason stocking if the A's don't win it, and he decides that, aside from the Angels and Texas losing the division, it's for the O's and Twins to win their respective divisions, and maybe the Giants to take the NL West, if only for co-author Jason Snell to have some fun toward the end of the season, though he "wouldn't mind" seeing the Dodgers win. The ambivalence of a baseball fan saddled with a weak team...

The Little Hall

The Vero Beach Dodgers recently inaugurated their own Hall of Fame, which made me wonder: why don't the Dodgers have such a thing? Or do I just not know about it?

Find A Tailor, Duaner

The Times reports that MLB says his pants are too long, and he must get them trimmed or else pay a $1,000 fine or more for each day in the future he doesn't get them trimmed. What's next? Making Gagné clean his cap?

In case you hadn't read. Also via AP, which reports no dollar figures have been released yet. Baseball America reports it's a minor league contract with a $4M signing bonus, pending a physical.

Congratulations, sort of, to both parties for coming to their senses. (And Drew signed with the Snakes.)

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Rich dropped me a line about his latest column on Weaver, soliciting my two cents. With inflation, that's probably about a penny or less, but I'll take a flyer:

From my vantage point, the system, which is stacked for the teams and against the amateur players, needs to be changed. I would argue that Major League Baseball and The Major League Baseball Players Association should discuss the following alternatives in their next Collective Bargaining Agreement:

1. Adopt an NBA/NFL-style pay scale for first round draft slots.

NBA and NFL players are ready to play in the pro leagues, tomorrow. There are no minor leagues. There are washouts, sure, but they're typically in the second rounds.

2. Allow teams the right to trade draft picks.

No problem with this. Teams don't wisely use the picks they have now.

3. Open up the negotiations to more than one team (perhaps an American and a National League club could each have the right to negotiate with first round draft picks).

4. Keep the system the same for high school players and underclassmen but allow seniors the right to negotiate with all teams.

Whatever for? These players haven't earned the right to a major league contract.

5. Disallow the right to a supplemental draft slot for teams that fail to sign their first round picks.

Why? So guys like Scott Boras can shake down teams and delay prospects development?

I would say if anything the draft is already too biased in favor of manipulative guys like Boras. I would make only one change in the draft, and that is a bonus cap. $3M, take it or leave it.

Normally I like Dodger Stadium's cheap seats when I'm paying for them myself, but today we sat in the Reserve Level, a good midrange option. In general, the number of idiots tends to go down with the higher dollar value tickets (viz. the magic tickets in the Loge Level). We didn't do it on purpose, but it worked out for the best anyway as Helen was wearing Cubs colors to the park in the guise of a now-obsolete Sosa jersey, and the last thing we needed was for some yahoo to harass us. We needn't have worried; Chicago fans fairly surrounded us, or at least, enough that violence would have been swiftly answered. As we were about to discover, that wasn't proof against stupidity.

No, I'm not talking about Jim Tracy's lineup here, though I could have been. With Drew 5-10 in the last series, it wasn't unreasonable to play him third, though the stone-cold Werth hitting second needed some second thoughts; he's now hitting .217 since coming back this year, and Greg Maddux is a bad experiment to try to heat him up with. Since the team has a late problem with Izturis getting on base and the 2-4 batters failing to plate him, you'd think Tracy would put somebody in those positions likely to actually do some hitting. Kent likewise has had his issues, 2-7 during the underuse from the Arizona series (he sat out the last game, apparently, while I wasn't watching).

Drew did manage one good thing with the bat tonight, and that was a hustle to first that beat out a bad throw by Maddux. Now, technically -- and the scorer agrees with this -- Olmedo Saenz drove in all three Dodger runs tonight, including Drew and Kent on a subsequent "double" to centerfield. Yet, the sneer quotes remain for a reason, and that reason is Corey Patterson. As readers of Al Yellon's blog know, Corey, You Suck. This is, of course, Al's superstitious way of ensuring Patterson won't suck. However, baseball curses are like the arrow of time: they only go one way, and so Patterson maladroitly displayed said suckage by cleanly fielding the ball -- and dropping it seconds later. Hence, the Dodgers got two gift runs. In my book, those runs should be charged E-8, but as it is, Greg Maddux finds his record unjustly padded. Such is baseball. Saenz' other run, a squeaker of a home run to center in the ninth, kept the crowd in the game but even the Cubs' uneven closers get a lot more wiggle room at Dodger Stadium than they do in the pitcher-unfriendly Confines.

The Cubs were all over Alvarez like a bad smell on week-old fish; it's obvious he really can't start anymore, not even in a spot role, and tonight just sealed that deal. In fact, like fellow good soldier Giovanni Carrara, he's nearing career's end, and the question for Tracy is how many more awful innings to let him go before he turns into a pumpkin, and the Dodgers back into mice. I note in my scorebook exactly zero innings where Wilson retired the side 1-2-3, and a surprising four strikeouts, two against Maddux.

Because of Wilson's weak arm, I therefore discount somewhat the Cubs' offensive surge; Jerry Hairston getting a solo homer, to the deep part of the home bullpen in left? Well, that would be my prima facie case right there, though the Cubs' other outbursts could contend as merely making up for lost ground. Corey Patterson isn't chopped liver, and neither Aramis Ramirez despite his .256 average. Oddly, Derrek Lee, on fire in May (.297/.416/.637 with nine homers and 18 RBIs) went down quietly 0-5; this game, for the Cubs, was about the sputtering parts of the offense lighting up.

The scene in the dugout could cheer the hearts of Cubs fans, too. Helen noticed Mark Prior minus a sling, which may come as good news to Cubs fans hoping for a quick recovery. I doubt it, though; Helen had a similar injury when she fell off a bicycle about ten years ago, and it was months before she could return to normal activities, let alone pitch. (For the record, she was 3-2, 3.02 ERA, 52 IP, no saves. Just kidding.)

Drew played a mostly competent center, but one episode merits comment. In the first, Drew made what appeared to be a highlight reel catch that in my book looked remarkably like a bad, late break on the ball forcing a mad dash. Helen defended Drew's play by noting that at that point, the sun was still fairly high in the sky, and Drew could have lost the ball in the sun. Perhaps so, but he still broke late.

The sun had another interesting side effect on the game, and on Neifi Perez in particular. Neifi!, as he is called in superhuman guise, is .360/.371/.535 in day games, and .247/.284/.377 at night. Sure enough, Neifi! (an All-Star write-in candidate, by the way) got his first and only hit when the sun covered both the mound and home plate. When his second at bat came around in the second inning -- and shadow covered home plate -- he struck out. I take this as evidence that Neifi is solar-powered.

The game had its incidental distractions, on and off the field; of course, there was the idiot running on the field with his pathetic flag, whatever it was about, who eventually got himself ejected from the stadium. And afterwards, I stumbled across Joe Morgan and Jon Miller, and like a good Angelino (or close neighbor thereto), kept my mouth shut; one does not speak to stars, as they are easily frightened in their native habitats.

But most of our adventure took place after the game, in the parking lots and on our way thereto. While waiting for a pedestrian light to change crossing one of the inner circle parking lot roads, we saw an impossibly thin couple. He: short-cropped haircut, wiry, muscular, and in an unbuttoned Dodgers jersey. She: black-haired and thin, but in the unwell way lifetime smokers are, and wearing a Cubs jersey. Both were probably in their early-to-mid 30's. As the rest of the crowd waited for the light to change, they just advanced oblivious to the traffic, the woman shouting obscenities at the oncoming cars (who had the right of way), and flipping the bird to every driver she saw. They spat at each other at the tops of their lungs, and then they chased each other wordlessly for a while through the parking lot. We tried hard to give them a wide berth, but kept stumbling into them: fighting and swearing at the base of the parking lot ramp, and again in their ancient Camaro that could have been Jim Rockford's old ride. Hate will keep us together, I guess.

Recap

• David Pinto points out that the A's 6-2 loss to Cleveland completed a sweep at the hands of that club, their second in a row. Oakland hosts the Devil Rays for three starting later today.
• The Royals hitting coach Jeff Pentland was fired after yesterday's loss to the Angels.
• Frank Thomas of the Chisox has been activated. Will Carroll recently described Thomas as "likely the best player in White Sox history".
• Update: Casey Kotchman was recalled after Curtis Pride went on the 15-day DL with a wrist injury.
• I somehow missed this in today's Times, but Brad Penny's agent has forwarded a contract proposal to the Dodgers. Penny would like to stay with a contender:

  "This is a good place to play, this team will always compete for the playoffs," Penny said. "I'd like to stay."

• Derek Thompson will make another start on Thursday.

  "[Dodger Vice President of player development Roy Smith] told me he liked the way I minimized damage," Thompson said. "He said my stuff is good enough to pitch at this level."

  Ah, but good enough to stay at this level? That remains to be seen. Take a memo from Edwin Jackson, Steve Schmoll, Joe Thurston, &c.
• Again via the Times, Milton Bradley's ring finger, jammed during yesterday's game with the Diamondbacks, came back negative on X-rays, but he will have an MRI tomorrow.

Wow. I mean, just, wow.

For the first year in history, the 2005 major league schedule was generated on a computer. So why is it, with millions of people having the day off, that there are only ten games scheduled today, hmm?

Deadline Tonight For Weaver

The Angels have until 9:00 pm tonight (that would be 12:00 am EDT) to sign Weaver, says the Times, but neither side is budging. The Daily Breeze has harsher words for him:

Weaver is painting himself as an I guy. He's the former all-world pitcher at Long Beach State who burned a year of his precious career because (a) he's dumb, (b) he's willing to be agent Scott Boras' puppet, (c) his ego is out of control, (d) all of the aforementioned.

...

Not only has Weaver probably cost himself a considerable amount of money by wanting even more, he has cost himself valuable development time. Had he signed last June, he may have been ready to pitch in the major leagues in 2006 or 2007.

Factoring in the time he'll need to build his arm strength after a year away from the game, along with the strong possibility of another protracted negotiation period, he's looking at 2008 before he's ready for the major leagues.

Rich Lederer wrote to snipe that "I'll take the unders if anybody wants to book that bet." And yes, Rich, I will print that. Thanks for the heads up.

So, Kendry's Getting The Callup In July, Right?

Not hardly, explains the Daily News:

"Anything could happen in this game," [Angels Player Development director Tony Reagins] said. "If he shows progress that warrants him being here, he'll be here. But to say it'll be next month, or in two months, I don't know if that's fair to say."

Morales is 1-11 in his last three games after going 9-19 with two home runs in his first four games.

Angels Injury Updates

In that same Daily News article, Vlad's progress is rather slower than expected, and he won't be back on schedule as originally thought. He hasn't even started swinging a bat yet, and has only started light toss. His earliest return date is now June 16. Update: The latest UTK says he's "lost both strength and range of motion post-injury."

K-Rod will pitch a simulated game at Rancho today, and if that goes well, he'll be activated Wednesday vs the Chisox.

Dallas McPherson: A Report Card

In the Daily News, again:

"What he did the last three nights was terrific, but what Dallas has to have as part of his game is consistent run production," Scioscia said. "Walks are a part of his game. He has a good idea of the strike zone, and lately he squared up some balls he had been fouling off."

...

"We can accept high strikeouts if the power is there and the walks are there," Scioscia said. "Dallas is not going to be as much a situational hitter as some guys. You look at guys like Jim Thome, Tim Salmon, Troy Glaus -- even when they're struggling, the walks have been there."

Via Matt Welch's Warblog, Kevin Connelly recounts his fun time in the Dodger Stadium stands:

"There were some rowdy Dodger fans who had too much to drink who were talking trash to an Angels fan," said Dow, 22. "The Angels fan said, '3-1' [the final score] back to them after the game and they started beating him helplessly."

"There were kids around who were crying and screaming," he continued. "[My girlfriend and I] had food thrown at us as well because I was wearing an Angels jersey. I am appalled by these actions and want to say they were extremely uncalled for. There is never a need to fight at a sporting event. Do these [criminals] think they are bigger for beating someone up like this?"

Lindsey Bockoven, Dow's girlfriend and a 21-year-old college student from Moorpark, CA was also disgusted with what she saw. In a telephone interview, she said, "I feel threatened at Dodgers Stadium now as a young woman and I wouldn't want to bring a child to a game there, either. It's sad because people take their families to baseball games to bond and have a good time and you can't even go to a game with two rival teams without feeling threatened." The soon-to-be San Diego State University student and Georgia native said she will attend Angels games instead, if any games at all.

...

[Dodgers Stadium Vice President of Public Relations John] Olguin said Dodgers Stadium is policed by the Los Angeles Police Department as well as their own private security team, which was curious, actually, because there wasn't a security presence at the scene of the fight until many minutes later.

From what I could tell, not one of the criminals was apprehended [emphasis mine], fleeing in myriad directions before anyone realized what was going on. Olguin would not give the number of officers on duty at any given game for what he said were security measures. Reprehensibly, Olguin said Dodgers Stadium would not allow him to comment upon arrests made or injuries sustained as a result of violence at the stadium.

There's no doubt that Dodger Stadium is a rough place in some sections -- the outfield bleachers are notorious -- but it seems that lately even without the $2 Tuesdays promotion, the kinds of people showing up at the park tread at the edge of civilized behavior. Much as I love the Dodgers and Dodger Stadium, there's no question that Angel Stadium is both better policed and a generally mellower crowd. Unlike Connelly, I don't want to kick Frank for this -- how could he know who is and isn't going to cause trouble? -- but this could be a case where ticket price hikes could end up being a net positive.

The Dodgers Won? Dodgers 6, Diamondbacks 3

Not for one second did I believe Paul DePodesta's blatent BS that the Dodgers consistent losses to playoff teams were meaningless. This is not a good team. It is a team that's almost good enough to win the division, with some luck and good health, neither of which have they been getting much of lately. Today was kind of an exception to that rule, as they snuck past the Snakes, but boy can you see the end a-comin' for Gio. It fills me with sadness and fear; sadness because of what he's given the Dodgers over time, and fear because I have no idea how many games he'll be allowed to blow before Tracy finally relegates him to mopup duties.

Ortiz begins to smell a bit. Okay, a lot. This outing, his May finale, marked his second-highest earned run total of the month, and that's saying something in a month where he's managed zero quality starts; in fact, he's only had three all year. The Snakes must be wondering where all that money went.

Recap

Dodgers Still Pumped On Jackson

This Daily News story indicating the Dodgers' faith in Edwin Jackson despite their callup of young Derek Thompson and his very successful (for a rookie straight out of AA ball) outing reminds me that the Dodgers are thinking "deadline trade".

Dodgers pitching coach Jim Colborn, meanwhile, discounts Jackson's gaudy ERA, chalking it up to simple mathematics. Colborn pointed out that it takes only one or two bad starts to inflate a pitcher's ERA, but it takes several good ones to bring it back down.

"He went through a learning curve, which always sets a pitcher back," Colborn said. "They all go through it. He came in and had success early without knowing why, and then he had to learn why. In learning that, a pitcher usually regresses. It takes about a year and a half or so."

Thompson, Jackson and somebody else for a starter.

Raul Mondesi Pines For Better Days

The Braves demoted former Dodger and Angel Raul Mondesi, calling up OF Kelly Johnson from AAA Richmond. This move was predictable from the moment Mondesi was signed; retirement is an option on the table, as is demotion to the bench.

Giants DFA Matt Herges

The Giants DFA'd Matt Herges to make room for LaTroy Hawkins. Hawkins today blanked the Padres for one inning in his first appearance as a Giant. The Padres won anyway, 9-6, and are four and a half games ahead of the Dodgers in first place. The victory marked San Diego's twentieth win this month, a club record, and a road sweep of San Francisco.

By way of followup to the Hawkins trade, McCovey Chronicles has some good commentary on this; on the one hand, he reads the Hawkins move as a smoke signal that the club feels optimistic about Bonds contributing this year; minus that, why bother making this trade? Williams is a decent enough pitcher, and though he had some growing pains, why ditch him unless there's a compelling case to win now?

Dotel Will Have To Learn To Live With The Pain

Good news: Dotel won't need surgery. Bad news: he'll have to learn to live with the pain. Ouch.

Deadline+Columnist=Let's Get Rid Of The DH

Dumb idea; that pitcher-hits-a-home-run lameness is only so exciting and happens, what, once every three years for your team anyway (I saw OP smack one back in 2002 at the park and that was the last one I saw in person). Strategy? Guaranteed bunts. I'll put it this way: given a choice in the minors, they use the DH. It prolongs careers and adds excitement and real strategy to the game. Let's bring the DH to the National League, too, and end this destructive conflict. Or something.

Thanks to a brief LA Downtown News article for alerting me that there's going to be a documentary on Dodger Stadium -- or rather, on the political mess that came before Dodger Stadium called "Chavez Ravine". Based on Don Normark's black and white photographs of the people living in Chavez Ravine when it was a rural outpost of the city, the Jordan Mechner-directed film will air Wednesday June 8 at 9:30 p.m. and Thurs. June 9 at 8 p.m. on KCET.

Last year when the Angels played the Royals, despite the latter being oh-so-bad, the Angels at times made the Royals look like a real baseball club. You can't blow 'em out every day, but as evidence that Dallas McPherson is getting hot or something, please to note that over the course of the Royals series, D-Mac has more hits than strikeouts. This makes only the third such series this season, the other two being the series vs the Yankees (4 hits, 1 K) and the Tigers series at home (1 hit, no strikeouts). So, yeah, good things could be going on here.

A big game for Fins and J. Molina, both with three RBIs apiece. Colon got in constant trouble, giving up twelve hits, but somehow only letting four runs score.

A special shoutout to Time Warner Cable, for providing the picture-in-picture feature that lets me keep track of both the Dodgers and Angels games simultaneously. I knew it existed before this weekend, but man is that sweet or what?

Recap

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Hope you're having as happy a Memorial Day weekend as our bad dog Hannah is here:

Mike Carminati makes an interesting and fairly commonly made point about interleague play, and that is that it unbalances an already unbalanced schedule. Nominally, the argument goes, the Marlins get to see the horrible Devil Rays for six games or so a year, while the Dodgers see the Angels (who have been fairly evenly matched over the years), the Giants see the A's, and the Yankees get the reliably putrid Mets (though not so much this year). Carminati goes on to calculate those postseasons affected by interleague play, noting in particular that interleague play in 2002 resulted in an Angels record of 11-7, versus the Red Sox record of 5-13, thus showing it had an effect on the final outcome of the season.

But did he really show that? What he doesn't show is that the relative strength-of-schedule for each team was appreciably altered. Just because you have a bad record in interleague play doesn't mean you had an uneven chance to beat those teams. After all, this is baseball, and even the Devil Rays occaisionally stumble upon a sweep. Using Retrosheet data, I come up with the following data:

		Average Opponent
Team	Opponents	WPCT	Pyth. WPCT
Angels	Brewers (3), Dodgers (6), Cardinals (3), Pirates (3), Reds (3)	.534	.507
Red Sox	Braves (6), Diamondbacks (3), Dodgers (3), Padres (3), Rockies (3)	.564	.543

So you might say, well, the Red Sox sure had a tougher schedule. See? Well, not so fast. The Angels played the Dodgers for six games, and three games each with the Reds, Pirates, Cardinals, and Brewers. Pull the double dose of the Braves for a three-game set with the then-struggling Phillies, who would have been 48-55 at the start of June 27, the day of the last Braves set. Furthermore, assume the Sox took two of three from the Phillies. Now, in real life, the Red Sox were 1-5 against the Braves; but eliminating those three games brings down their opponent's average WPCT to .518, which is actually an easier schedule than the Angels opponents' .534. Assuming the pythagorean numbers were to remain the same, it would have been comparable (.507 for the Angels vs. .519 for the hypothetical Phillies). At the end of the year, the Sox would have been 7-11 in interleague play, and 87-75 on the year -- which still wouldn't have gotten them past the Angels. As much as I dislike the uneven schedule, it looks like Carminati has exaggerated the meaning of his data a bit.

Five kinds of players populate the Royals. The first is swirling-the-drain veterans, who themselves fall into two subcategories: failed players who want to start and can't justify their presence in that role on any other team, or abysmal bench players hanging on by their toenails. In the latter subcategory, I list outfielder Emil Brown; in the former, I note Matt Stairs, overvalued-at-$4.70M Terrence Long, Tony Graffanino, Eli Marerro, and the spectacularly bad Jose Lima. Lima, the ex-Dodger whose non-renewal late last year caused some handwringing, recently pitched his way out of the rotation; after eleven starts, he has yet to record a win. This is perhaps not a surprise, considering how dependent he is on his defense, yet his failures can't entirely be pinned on the men behind him. Kansas City's D is horrible, 12th in the league with a 0.6921 DER, but Lima's walk rate doubled over last year. As a result, he sports a major-league-unacceptable K/BB rate of 0.96 despite his K/9 rate "only" declining to 4.09, nearly a whole point down from his 2004.

The second sort of player, sui generis, is the useful player. Since there's really only one on the current roster, we shall dispense with Mike "Tradebait" Sweeney and move on.

The third sort of player is the failed experiment. This is a list of draft and/or minor league futility, some of whom are lifetime Royals proving how systematically decrepit Kansas City's organization is, and who have reached or exceeded their sell-by dates. I include here guys like Angel Berroa, Runelvys Hernandez (not due to his major league service time but due to his 1998 professional start and his failure to find success thus far), and last night's starter, former Giants prospect Ryan Jensen.

The fourth player type is the undoomed youngster. Too young to be condemned, with a decent if not great minor league record, this includes guys like Rule 5 draftee Andy Sisco, catcher John Buck, RHP Zack Greinke, and 3B Mark Teahen. (I could start a sixth type for guys like Teahen who had an undistinguished minor league career, but after a while it all gets blurry.)

The fifth and last sort of player the Royals have is the rushed rookie. Examples of this category include Ambiorix Burgos, who hasn't had an ERA under 3.00 in the minors and still got promoted to the big club straight from single-A ball, and Ruben Gotay, culled directly from the Royals' Wichita AA affiliate in 2004, now starting at second. Also in this category is Leo Nunez, another player called up straight from A ball who gave up five runs in yesterday's game. These players testify to the Royals' rather flexible usage of the word "ready".

No matter how you slice it, the Royals are one sick organization. The only quality Royals blog I know of, Kauffman Confidential, tries to unravel the manifold and manifest illnesses and mysteries to which the team has succumbed since the playing days of George Brett. Take, for instance, this piece about the Royals' immense problem developing quality hitting talent. It exposes what author Bill Heeter believes is an extrapolation-from-a-single-player that's caused the team to fail over the years:

Our organization has been preaching the concept of patience all through the system, when what they really need to be working on is discipline. A patient hitter is one who will take pitches that he may be able to hit because they may be balls instead of strikes. This is a very passive approach to hitting, and one that the Pena era of Royals baseball exemplified with it’s [sic] anemic offensive attack that had trouble instilling fear in the most average team. A disciplined hitter, on the other hand is one who can accurately identify balls from strikes quickly enough to have time to react when the opportunity presents itself. Barry Bonds is the perfect example of a disciplined hitter. He doesn’t swing at bad pitches, always puts good wood on the ball, and draws an insane number of walks because of his ability to distinguish balls from strikes so well and so quickly. The antithesis of Mr. Bonds would be former Royal Mark Quinn, who’s [sic] propensity to swing at anything and everything in the ballpark was a major factor in the development of the Royals “Patience” mantra. He was a gifted hitter, but could not lay off bad pitches to save his life. ...

I believe that by using such passive terms in their system’s hitting instruction, the Royals organization has crippled a crop of what could have been much better hitters by trying to control their natural aggresiveness [sic] with words like “patience”.

It's an interesting insight, and one that's surprisingly applicable to the A's lately; no doubt but that this will encourage Stephen Smith's contempt for Earl Weaver-style offenses. The Royals weren't born bad; they were built that way, and it will probably take a half decade or more to fix. So far, Allard Baird doesn't seem to be the guy to get that job done.

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Back to the game. It was hardly a wine-and-roses outing for Kelvim "Hand Grenade" Escobar, whose 84 strikes to 58 balls would have sunk him against any other team, but, see above. I discount at least half his strikeouts, too, though they're certainly welcome. With those bone chips still in his elbow, and surgery far away beyond the end of the season (so far), this may well presage the kinds of outings we'll get from him over the rest of the year. The other hand grenade in the Angels' bandolier will turn out to be Ervin Santana: will he be healthy? Will he be good? Will he even be on the team? With two outings, one a wretched performance in front of the mediocre Tigers, and the other, a stellar complete game shutout to the Chisox, we just don't know which guy is likely to show up. But the question is moot: making room for Escobar, young master Santana got sent down to AAA Salt Lake, if we are to believe the Times.

Speaking of the west coast's Gray Lady, one presumes Mike Penner penned his barb about the Angels' lack of hitting prior to last night's game. The merry-go-round of the fourth inning (and its near-repeat in the fifth), combined with a total of sixteen hits made for the kind of tonic the Angels have needed lo these many. But I say that with some trepidation; how many times have the Angels gotten a few hits this year only to find them lost at the plate in the very next game?

So with the 2005 Angels, I will take my joys where I can find them. One such must surely be watching Dallas McPherson get a pair of hits and -- are you sitting down? -- a pair of walks. One of the hits was a home run off Ambiorix "Debbie" Burgos, making three straight games he's homered, but for me, I'm much more interested in him getting on base. He presently leads the team in K/AB (.317) for players with more than 20 at bats; this has to stop or he'll find himself becoming Rob Deer.

Finally, an encouraging word here about the Angels bullpen, an entity I thought was possibly in dire straits at the start of the season. With Donnelly moved down a notch, K-Rod closing, Percy moved on, Gregg inconsistent, and Yan never having two consecutive good years in his career (unless you count his last two years with Tampa Bay, 3.90 and 4.30 ERAs respectively, as "good"), the bullpen looked set to have a serious falling apart. That could still happen of course, but the recent callups of Chris Bootcheck, Jake Woods, and Joel Peralta have, so far, ameliorated my concerns. That isn't to say they won't return; recall early last year when there was such a thing as the Kevin Gregg Marching and Chowder Society, and even insane, misdirected calls for him to start. But for one day -- things look pretty good around the Los Angeles of Anaheim. Wherever the hell that is.

Recap

Do not throw your glove at the ball. When Vinny says it's the first time he's seen a play in the fifty-some years he's been broadcasting, you know it's weird; maybe, like the now infrequently seen "No Pepper" signs, they need to put that over the field entrances for the players. Duaner just hadda throw his damn glove up there, which gave Luis Terrero an automatic triple. Now, this does not appear to be in the Official Rules anywhere (if anyone can find them in there, please let me know), which means it's probably one of baseball's Double Secret Rules. (Update 5/29: thanks to the commenter who said it's 7.05(c).) I'll be looking forward to reading about this on Baseball Prospectus and/or Hardball Times presently. What would be really cool is if MLB would actually publish their instructions to umpires book so the rest of us could have a clue.

So, yeah, after Duaner gave up the "triple" (nitwit), Chad Tracy cashed him in (4-3) and the clearly rattled Sanchez gave up a solo shot to ... Javier Vazquez.

I'm still wiping the "yick" off.

The top of the order just stank like month old gym socks, going a collective 2-18. Antonio Perez, hitting an improbable .516 in 31 AB, clearly needs to move up in the order until he Peter Principles himself out of the job. But -- 12 hits for the Blue on the night versus five for the Snakes.

Dodgers pitching -- including young Derek Thompson, whose near-win and shiny scoreboard numbers covered up obvious laboring on the mound -- was actually decent (outside the collapsing Carrara), if not good.

Vazquez: shaky, by his lights, for most of the night, but helped out by his offense and his own bat. And another solid outing for the Diamondbacks' bullpen, with Lopez and Cormier giving up nothing in two innings.

ESPN Box MLB.com recap

... because I'm sure he wouldn't have wanted to be around for this 17-1 drubbing of the Yankees at the hands of their mortal enemies, the Red Sox -- at home. But perhaps I underestimate the estimable Mr. Jaffe. Perhaps he's already inured to these kinds of blowouts.

It was a game no Yankee was good at; Carl Pavano gave up five, former bullpen stalwart (and ex-Dodger) Paul Quantrill coughed up another six, but Mike Stanton and Buddy Groom both gave up three each. It's hardly news that the Yanks' pitching, 9th in the league, isn't what it was in the Clemens/Pettit/El Duque days, but now that Randy Johnson's become just another soft-tossing lefty, now that Andy Pettit hangs out in Houston, now that Vazquez makes his starts under the Arizona dome (though perhaps not for much longer if he exercises his out), the Yanks find themselves in disarray.

Baltimore is 30-18 and unexpectedly in first place but beset with injuries; with five starters on the DL, the Orioles nervously watch the Red Sox and Yankees beat each other up behind them. Scratching and stumbling to stay ahead of those two team, losing to the mediocre Tigers (so depleted is the Baltimore bench that Lee Mazilli recently used reliever John Parrish as a pinch runner), the road ahead looks both uncharted and rough.

More On Prior

Will Carroll fired off a special e-mail alert about Mark Prior's injury; there's no damage beyond the listed bad news, but if the Cubs choose to be "cautious", his season is over. The Cubs may designate swingman Todd Wellemeyer to take Prior's place in the rotation. The 26-year-old Wellemeyer has a 2005 record of 1-0 with a 1.35 ERA in 13.1 IP.

Lies, Damned Lies

From Neil de Mause's "Lies, Damned Lies: Revisiting PECOTA", we learn that

• Regarding the Orioles' startling second baseman Brian Roberts:

  I think we're looking at a guy who is probably among the 15 or 20 best players in baseball going forward. ... The precedent that I think works reasonably well here is Jim Edmonds, who did not hit for much power until he was 25 or so, but did a lot of other things pretty well, and didn't look back once he did start hitting the longball.

• Eric Chavez:

  Chavez was my MVP pick prior to the start of the season, and he has no obviously exploitable problems in his profile, except for his persistent problems against lefties (Chavez isn't hitting lefties this year, but he isn't hitting righties either). The base hits at least have come back during the past ten days or so and it's tempting to wonder whether there was some kind of undiagnosed injury problem at the start of the season. This exercise is not kind to Chavez, lopping a full 25 points off his long-term EqA projection, but I'm going to go on record as saying that I think he deserves the benefit of the doubt, and will be fine long-term.

• Jim Thome: "Players with this profile tend to lose it all at once--look at Mark McGwire...."
• Adrian Beltre:

  Some preliminary work that I've done suggests that flukish performance in contract years is a real phenomenon. Statheads might be guilty at times of treating ballplayers as automatons but economic theory suggests that players really do have every incentive to post the very best numbers they can when free agency is impending, especially in a world where one good season nets a player a $64 million deal that is widely lauded as a bargain.

  Whatever the reasons for Beltre's performance, it's virtually impossible that a player with a player with a "true" EqA on the order of the .332 that Beltre posted last year could have a run of performance this bad, even over just seven weeks or so: [graph excised]

  Beltre's revised EqA estimate is at .263, which is almost exactly at the baseline he'd established between 2001 and 2003, when his growth appeared to have stagnated. I see absolutely no reason to take anything other than the Occam's Razor explanation: Beltre's 2004 was one of the biggest one-year flukes in baseball history.

  That seems to be the rapidly converging wisdom around the blogosphere; another writer who recently came to this conclusion was Derek Zumsteg of U.S.S. Mariner slagging on him in the Seattle Press-Intelligencer:

  Beltre's striking out five times for every time he's getting a walk. He's being rung up over and over without taking the free pass. And with his power missing, pitchers aren't afraid to keep coming right after him -- and Beltre's watching a lot of those pitches go by, and not putting the bat on the ones he goes after.

  Theories abound. Beltre is vulnerable to low, outside pitches, chasing the unhittable. Did an injury he had last year keep him from diving after those pitches then, curtailing a bad habit developed over seasons? Or are umpires calling more outside strikes, frustrating him into swinging at balls he couldn't hit with a palm tree? Either way, couldn't hitting coach Don Baylor just have someone throw Beltre low, outside pitches over and over until the kid stops going after them?

Angels UTK Update

Will Carroll's "Under the Knife", yesterday (forgot, sorry):

Reader K.B. wrote in with this: "It absolutely kills me that the LA/OC/Anaheim media didn't get on Scioscia more for sending Vladimir Guerrero all the way from first when they had a 4-0 and thus, resulting in is injury that is going to sideline him for another 2-3 weeks. Of course some journalist questioned that call, to which Scioscia replied something like, 'If I had to do again, I would send him every time.' I am not even sure I know what that means but honestly, let's have a little bit more accountability. Anyone have any numbers on how many runs the Angels can expect to not get now as a result of this injury? Was the ONE RUN with a 4-0 lead really worth it?"

Tom Gorman did some amazing research that answers this common "How screwed are we?" question and others like it. For this one, Tom's system tells us that, no, the one run was certainly not worth it in isolation. While there were certainly other factors and no one has a slide rule in the third-base coaching box, we can look at this objectively. Assuming that Guerrero comes back at the 15-game minimum, the Angels stand to lose 4.77 runs. That's the difference between Guerrero's .276 expected runs per game and the -0.042 that Juan Rivera would be expected to contribute per game, plus some technical adjustments. So, a DL stint for an elite-level player with a near average player like Rivera is worth about a half game in the standings.

Regarding Escobar:

The Angels are tossing a grenade out on the mound every time they let Kelvim Escobar pitch. Sure, that could be said about most pitchers, but for Escobar, he's pitching with a bone spur that's already significant enough to cause problems in the elbow. It will need surgery, a procedure everyone hopes will wait until the off-season. Baseball is all about the calculated risk. For Escobar's sake, let's hope his elbow doesn't crap out.

I've always been a little skeptical of the value of mixed-case names, but given my surname, I have no reason to. In any event, the Giants acquired setup man LaTroy Hawkins from the Cubs, for prospects David Aardsma and Jerome Williams (ESPN).

Hawkins had a breakout year in 2002 where his K/9 rose almost a full point to 7.06, while his K/BB more than quadrupled to 4.20. He's had terrible control problems lately (1.86 K/BB in 2005) after becoming the Cubs' part-time closer, precipitating the trade.

Aardsma, the Giants' 2003 first-round pick (22nd overall) was recently ranked their 9th best prospect by Baseball America in a mediocre system (17th overall). Aardsma was Rice's closer on the 2003 championship team, but the Giants have used him as a starter. Here's his last two years' records:

Year   W-L  GS  ERA    IP     K/9  K/BB
========================================
2004   6-4   0  3.09  55.1   8.62  1.83
2005   6-2   8  2.93  46.0   5.87  2.31

Williams has been with the Giants over the last two years, with steadily rising ERAs and declining peripherals. Arthroscopic elbow surgery last year shelved him in the second half.

In the other room, Kevin Kennedy is nattering on about how it's hard to turn on a 96 mph fastball, and I'm sure he's right -- if it's one of us doing it. Dallas McPherson, of course, should be a little more used to it by now, and so I'm somewhat less than impressed when he says such stuff. They pay him to fill airtime, and that's what he's doing.

Angel fans who've been reading this blog for a while know of the Grabowski Principle, and Mike actually succumbed to it by putting Esteban Yan on the mound. But perhaps just as bad was Garret Anderson's multiple bad plays in left. I'm now completely convinced Anderson's arthritis has deteriorated his legs to the point he's well below average, even in left. With his still-poor running, he gave up a single in the seventh with John Buck at bat that should have been an out; and in the eighth, he overran a certain single that turned into a de facto inside-the-park home run after the ball rolled to the wall.

This is one of the worst defensive outfields I've ever seen.

Angels fans reading my blog over time will probably recognize that Scioscia pulled at least one instance of the Grabowski Principle; leaving Byrd in was the first, possibly, but for sure bringing in Yan when the team has been struggling to hit was a huge mistake.

D-Mac's game winner was the focus of the postgame interviews, but if it takes the likes of the Royals' struggling closer to serve up the kind of meatball needed to get the ball over the fence, it's going to be a long season. The frustrations of Anderson and Finley got me recalling Jon's late words of wisdom, namely: anybody suggesting better alternatives need to have a good answer to the question, "better than what?" I bring this up because my coworker's cousin, Nick Gorneault, is currently leading the Stingers with a .319/.364/.617 line. The discrepancy between his average and OBP isn't all that encouraging, but it might be worth a trial run while Vlad is down to have him come up and take a few hacks as a fifth outfielder. Can Jeff DaVanon (.228/.308/.272) find a way to get injured? As one of the commenters on the Halos' Heaven gameday thread remarked, it's hard to tell from this game which team is worse. That the Angels won by only a single run places the Angels' organizational shortcomings in stark relief at all levels:

• The general manager continues to make bad signings. Cabrera and Yan are two players who should never have made it to this club. Come to think of it -- is there even one offseason signing Stoneman made that's working out? Here I'm not talking about promoted farm system products like Peralta or Woods, but free agents.
• The GM makes poor assumptions about what rookies can actually accomplish. I had no illusions that McPherson could actually hit respectably in his rookie year; he's got a history of increased strikeouts at each level. That's not to say he's going to fail, but to fail to account for this is a sign of a failure to plan adequately.
• Scioscia continues to misuse players. Yan is probably the most egregious example, but why is stone-cold Steve Finley batting third?

This is just one ugly team to watch. If I hadn't been driving home during the sixth and seventh innings, I would have been throwing things. Man, it's gonna be a long season. It sure as been a while since you got the feeling the teams in the AL West could compete on an equal footing with the likes of the Yankees and Red Sox, hasn't it?

Recap

• Reserve catcher Paul Bako was moved to the DL with a sprain of his left anterior cruciate ligament. Dioner Navarro will be called up in his place.
• Chicago Cubs starting pitcher Mark Prior took a batted ball off his pitching elbow. An MRI detected a fracture, and it is unknown when he will return. There's no indication yet who will replace him for next Wednesday's game against the Dodgers.
• Arizona closer Brandon Lyon won't need reconstructive surgery according to Angels team physician Dr. Lewis Yocum.
• Oakland placed DH Erubiel Durazo on the DL with left elbow tendinitis. He is replaced on the 25-man roster with 1B Dan Johnson from AAA Sacramento.

• Kendry Morales failed to get a hit yesterday against Lancaster yesterday in the 11-7 loss; time to panic! Nonetheless, Brandon Wood went 3-5, and is hitting .301/.340/.640 on the season.
• Vero Beach SS Andy Laroche hit his 19th home run, leading the league, in a game against Fort Myers. His solo home run was the only run scored in the game.

• Frinklin, who used to be a semi-regular around here and at Pearly Gates, has a pretty damn good review of the latest Star Wars posted. Just say "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!"
• Second, David Pinto's Baseball Musings has an interesting post, apparently from one of the guys running MVN, responding to a Peter Gammons crack on WEEI that bloggers don't deserve no respect, this itself in a brief mention that Gammons had nice things to say about Baseball Musings.

I've spent time bagging on MLBlogs before but since Josh recently brought this up at Pearly Gates, I wanted to showcase the real problem I have with them, namely their absurd terms of service. I won't bore you with all the language in the ToS -- what fun is there in that? -- but I will excerpt a few choice passages here. All highlighting is my own.

1. Website Ownership

The Website is owned by MLB Advanced Media, L.P. ("MLBAM"). All materials distributed in the Website (the "Materials") are either owned by or licensed to MLBAM. MLBAM and its licensors retain all proprietary rights to the Materials. Except for downloading one copy of the Materials on any single computer for your personal, non-commercial home use, you must not reproduce, prepare derivative works based upon, distribute, perform or display the Materials without first obtaining the written permission of MLBAM. Materials must not be used in any unauthorized manner.

As is usual, copyright owners grab as much as they think they can get away with, which is, everything. Who determines what an "unauthorized manner" is? Does that mean if Batgirl moves her blog to MLBlogs and they don't like Legovision -- or the Lego Group doesn't like her use of it -- they can kill the fun at any second? Of course it does. The precedent set by the now-useless fan forums and their bans on URL posting is not encouraging. Moving on:

2. Message Features

Participation. The Website may offer opportunities for you to transmit messages in connection with various features including vanity email, auctions and message boards ("Message Features"). You must use Message Features in a responsible manner, and are solely responsible for any content you transmit. You must not transmit any message ("Message") in connection with any Message Feature that: (i) imposes an unreasonable or disproportionately large load on the Website's infrastructure, or otherwise adversely affects, restricts or inhibits any other user from using and enjoying the Website; (ii) is threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, offensive, pornographic, profane, sexually explicit or indecent;

Well, we know Fire Jim Tracy won't be signing up anytime soon; and neither Dodgerkid, nor for that matter, me --

Update: This point needs further emphasis. MLB.com here uses boilerplate from their existing website ToS, and we have to believe that they mean the same thing therefore. Now, that website has a naughty word filter prohibiting any cuss words from appearing on the site, but it's so restrictive that Atlanta fans (or anyone else, for that matter) can't write "Bobby Cox" without it getting bleeped. I'm not kidding. What's obscene here isn't the occaisional naughty word; it's the attitude that says such stuff should be annihilated on contact.

(iii) constitutes or encourages conduct that would constitute a criminal offense, give rise to civil liability or otherwise violate any local, state, national or international law; (iv) violates, plagiarizes or infringes the rights of third parties including, without limitation, copyright, trademark, patent, rights of privacy or publicity or any other proprietary right;

The right of publicity has lately been used as a way to shut down fantasy baseball vendors; one wonders what other complaints they might end up conjuring up.

(v) contains a virus or other harmful component; (vi) contains any information, software or other material of a commercial nature; (vii) contains advertising, promotions or commercial solicitations of any kind; (viii) constitutes or contains false or misleading indications of origin or statements of fact;

Well, so much for Tommy Lasorda's blog!

But really, this looks like so much boilerplate left over from the old message boards; there's a lot of junk in here that isn't necessarily applicable to a blog. However, even though they restrict your right to use their materials, they make the following astonishing claim:

License. By transmitting any Message or Screen Name, you are granting MLBAM a perpetual, royalty-free, non-exclusive, and irrevocable right and license to reproduce, prepare derivative works based upon, distribute, perform or display such Message or Screen Name, in whole or in part, in any form, media or technology known or hereafter developed.

Not even Google's terms of service (those applicable to Blogger) are that bad. It's rare when a for-pay service is appreciably worse than the free one on the Internet, but this is one such case.

Roster Moves

• Jayson Werth returned to the Dodgers a few days ago, something I managed to miss in my forced amnesia during the team's chronic awfulness.
• Drew finally made it further south in the lineup, and thank God.
• The Royals are talking to Dodger minor league player development director Terry Collins about their vacant manager position.
• Echoing my call for the farm to get productive or shut up, RHP Derek Thompson will get the callup from AA Jacksonville to fill the hole in the rotation. Should we be worried that the Dodgers still have nothing of note pitching in Las Vegas? I can't find a mention of him in either Baseball Prospectus or the Baseball America Prospect Handbook; his 3.89 ERA doesn't give you a lot of hope. He's on the 40-man roster to prevent him from getting swiped in the Rule 5 draft, but he seems awfully fringey to me.

The Angels As Trend Reversers

Not only did the Angels end Johan Santana's winning streak to open the season, ever since then he's had only one win.

OT: Two From Science Blog

• Knives Don't Kill: ... only people with knives kill. Seriously. It's its own reductio ad absurdam.
• Researchers at Yale and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine discovered that half of all women are sexually dysfunctional, but maybe all that means is that scientists with vibrators aren't a turn-on.

A win. They come too infrequently for the Dodgers these days, and as with Jon --

I do have a rule, though, that if my team drops below .500, I cease all scoreboard watching. At that point, the season becomes about getting your own condo in order, rather than worrying about anyone else. Dismayingly, the Dodgers are near that point.

-- I begin to stop thinking so much about what they're going to do this year and more about walking the dogs.

I didn't really watch this one, but reading about the heroics from Ricky Ledee and Antonio "Mr. Small Sample Size" Perez and his .478/.520/.696 line (23 AB) was just enough to maybe think about leaving the condo and watching the next game.

Recap

Now on the diamond … uuh, huh … whoo … chilly evenin’ … uuh, huh
Lie the Chisox -- just oozin' life … eeek!
And someone’s sneakin' ‘round the corner
Could that someone be Lack the Knife?

Well, with apologies to Kurt Weill and Bobby Darin, Lackey was on tonight, despite his chronic jam-accumulation; though D-Mac ended up stealing the show with his over-the-fence heroicism, Lackey's return to his 2002 level of play is just fantastical, right up there with tossing the One True Ring into the fires of Mt. Doom. Or something.

Meantime, color analyst Steve Finley correctly notes something the boys at Baseball Prospectus already figured out when Joe Sheehan wrote that the Angels offense "works when you hit .280, and doesn't work when you hit .265". Arte Moreno is "concerned", but no changes are imminent.

Next: Kansas City and a chance to cave in some heads.

We must be cautious.

Recap

Behind Hideo Nomo and his Frankenstein shoulder, the Devil Rays swept the A's in a 2-1 victory at Tropicana Field. The victory brings the D-Rays to 18-30, still last place in the AL East, 13 games back of the Orioles; it was the team's first sweep of the year. Including Nomo's Japanese career, it was his 199th win. Marco Scutaro hit a solo homer in the eighth inning to score Oakland's only run.

Mike Carminati breaks out his taunt:

I don't like to say "I told you so." Scratch that—actually, I love saying, "I told you so". And I said in the offseason that the A's strategy of dumping of both Mulder and Hudson and going with four youngsters to complement Barry Zito was ill-advised and that "history isn't really on their side." I actually did a whole series on it: "My verdict is that Beane has jumped the shark, at least that's how it looks so far."

Shark repellent, anyone? Blez might want some...

I have one simple question, and the answer is probably yes now since we're in the moment, but is this the lowest you've felt as an A's fan? Is there another time when it felt worse in recent years? I can't remember. Maybe the Boston series with Tejada and Byrnes? I realize that this team was built for the future, but no one really thought it would be as bad as it is right now before the season began.

Blez, if you're reading this -- from the Dodgers side of the house, I understand your misery. Conversely, even though the Angels are the top team of the AL West, it's a tenuous kind of lead that could collapse over the next month given the teams the Angels are up against.

Update: I wanted to find something a little stronger for this, but Google News and Athletics Nation reminds me that there was a rumor about that Macha may not last the year, something Gammons previously denied.

Box

After a fresh rasher o' skepticism about Jered Weaver's value, comes Halo's Heaven citing circumstantial evidence that Jered Weaver might be under the Angels' control. At the park, observing the scene with his binoculars, Halofan notes the presence of Scott Boras in the owner's suite and that of Bill Stoneman and AGM Ken Forsch (among other Angels execs) in the adjoining suite at last night's game. He writes

By about the 5th inning, everyone has some papers in their hands, in both suites. Lots of activity, some buzz - then there are two guys in the suite with management, not in red shirts. I could swear it is Boras and another guy. One even reaches over from Arte's suite and shakes Stoneman's hand.

... or else they've signed Wash to an extension. Or else Boras finally got Arte to pay up on his golf bet. We'll see.

The "T" Word

Mike DiGiovanna suggests that a trade is in the wind after the recent lackluster hitting by the Angels, but I've already explained why that won't happen. Arte's money quote, "We're focused on building from within the organization, but at the end of the day, we want to win", doesn't take into account Stoneman's reluctance to do anything.

"Deal Still Unlikely" For Weaver

Wake me on May 31.

Schilling Out Through Mid-July?

So says ESPN via the Boston Herald.

A few words regarding Fire Jim Tracy's analysis of the season to date:

But those of us who were optimistic about the coming season (including, obviously, DePodesta himself), severely underestimated regression in the pitching corps. Key parts of the bullpen, Carrara and Alvarez, appear to be compromised. Jeff Weaver is again, either 1) hurt or 2) lost forever. We have no fifth starter at all. None. To call Scott Erickson or DJ Houlton a fifth starter is to give them credit for circumstances beyond their control. They just happen to breathe. Lowe and Penny appear to be fine complimentary parts in a solid rotation, but neither is consistent enough to hold up the rotation on his own. Odalis Perez is hurt, and even if he comes back, every start of his taken by a Houlton or Carlyle is an automatic L—and those add up at some point, particularly when that makes the third black hole in a five-man rotation.

My preseason dread regarding Derek Lowe has thus far been unwarranted, but I still sense a kind of desperation in DePodesta's offseason maneuverings, an offseason in which severe underestimation factored into several things, and not just the pitching. The Dodgers' DER, fourth-worst in the NL, can't be hung on the post of third base, at least to the extent that I can find; Mike Edwards and Jose Valentin have RAA2 values of -2, which is pretty impressive, all things considered.

But I have to disagree, somewhat, with this:

DePodesta’s first response to this crisis, recalling Buddy Carlyle, was not the sign of a proactive GM who recognizes a problem. It was the sign of someone who thinks the pitching staff is unlucky. The pitching staff is not unlucky. They aren’t regressing below the mean—they are regressing to their mean.

In turn:

• Lowe is actually doing a pretty good job.
• Weaver's injured, and as usual, the Dodgers are lying about it.
• Penny and his 3.79 ERA aren't actually doing that badly.
• OP -- the main trouble -- is on the DL with another shoulder injury, a concern before the season started.
• Nobody thought much of Erickson before the season started, so that's hardly news.

In short, this isn't ability talking so much as injury.

On Edwin Jackson:

If you’re going to bring up Edwin Jackson, just bring him up. Don’t bring him up and send him down. Call him up and say “You’re going to start every five days regardless of how you pitch. You can give up back-to-back home runs to Tike Redman and Jack Wilson. Just learn how to pitch.” Putting off Jackson’s development is only going to retard our chances in 2006. Stop with the Carlyle nonsense.

Jackson isn't ready for the majors, period. He's blowing games, and while, yes, he has been pitching in the thin air at Vegas, he also sports a 6.59 ERA against AAA hitting.

It is absurd that Buddy Carlyle is on this team right now. The Braves and Angels, both in the last week, have pulled 21 and 22 year old pitchers up to the major league level who are contributing successfully. This suggests not only aggressiveness in their will to win, but a confidence in their young players and in their system.

Not only that, but the Angels brought up the 29-year-old Joel Peralta yesterday, who struck out four in two and a third perfect innings. Could it be that the Dodgers' system isn't producing so much as a single usable relief pitcher? As Bryan Smith pointed out a few days ago, the system hasn't produced a single actual Dodger; there may be a reason for that. I begin to wonder whether the Las Vegas altitude is too much of a negative for the team. Everything's bad on this team -- pitching, defense, and offense -- and a lot of it can be attributed to age and injuries. The latter couldn't have been foreseen. The former could, to some degree, but I'm not willing to hang DePodesta just yet over it. But this marks at least the second year I've said "wait and see" about the farm, and not a single productive piece has come from it. It's time for those great, Baseball America-approved draftees to start playing like real major leaguers in a Dodger uniform.

Weaver said his arm felt close to 100% after reports of arm weariness after his last start.

"Obviously, I think there were some positive in the game," said Weaver, who gave up five runs and eight hits in four innings.

"I'm starting to think you might need to get your head beat in a couple of times before you turn the corner."

-- Jeff Weaver, after Tuesday's blowout

"He's a winner; he's a championship-caliber player on a championship-caliber team. He's a Gold Glove-caliber outfielder … he'll be back."

-- Jim Tracy, on .231/.302/.436 (4 HR, 78 AB) Jason Repko

"When I signed here I knew what I was supposed to do," said Ledee, who signed as a free agent on Dec. 6, 2004. "The whole time I knew I would be [the fourth outfielder] if everybody was here so I'm just grateful for the playing time I did get.

-- Ricky Ledee, on his expected contribution to the Dodgers

If you are going to lie, at least make it credible

-- The Fourth Outfielder

Towel-Throwing Time: Giants 10, Dodgers 2

The Dodgers have now been awful for about three times as long as they were really, unreasonably good.

Enough.

There's too many guys injured (OP, Weaver, Drew, Werth), too many guys approaching old-age ineffectiveness (Alvarez), too many holes in the bullpen, too many questions.

I've had it. Ship-turning time: two weeks, or it's time to start trading pieces to actual contending teams. Weak division or no, the Dodgers are four games out and showing zero signs of fixing their profoundly bad pitching and offensive problems, not to mention their chronic problem with hiding injuries (and not very effectively).

Recap

What Broke? White Sox 4, Angels 2

Is there a need for a game recap? Not really: Aside from Washburn's early-innings heartburn, this was just a showcase for the anti-Cabrera/Glaus un-signings. Lousy offense, surprisingly good pitching (especially rookie Joel Peralta, and for which, woo hoo), nothing new here, move on.

Recap

Joe Blanton and the A's gave up ten earned runs in the first inning, a club record for the Devil Rays. Man, did that spell wear off or what?

Thanks to Pearly Gates for these --

• The Register reports the Angels and Scott Boras are $750,000 apart on asking price. Potentially good news for both parties, as they only have five days left (is that right?).
• Vlad's dislocation won't need surgery, and he thinks he'll be back to swinging a bat as early as four days from now.

Jon isn't on the A list? Or even the C list? What is the matter with you people?

Thanks to Slashdot for the nod.

The voice of Tony the Tiger, Thurl Ravenscroft, is dead at 91; of prostate cancer. Aside from Tony, Ravenscroft was the voice of countless Disney feature animated films, and sang "You're A Mean One, Mr. Grinch" in the animated special "How The Grinch Stole Christmas". He voiced characters in Disneyland's Enchanted Tiki Room, Haunted Mansion and the Pirates of the Caribbean rides. "He is survived by a son, Ron; a daughter, Nancy; and four grandchildren."

I one time attended a performance (of Bernstein's Chicester Psalms?) by the Pacific Chorale in which he narrated; he almost didn't need amplification, that's how well his voice projected. What an instrument he had in that voice! Just like you heard it on the TV, too.

Last year, it took Jim Tracy two months to even admit that Hideo Nomo's shoulder was generating more home run balls.

This year, Tracy says J.D. Drew's just fine:

J.D. Drew underwent an MRI on his right wrist Monday that revealed fluid, but no structural damage. Tracy said the wrist has been stiff "off and on" since Spring Training, possibly explaining why Drew's slugging percentage is .404, compared to his career average of .513.

"It's nothing to prevent him from playing, with regular treatment it's no problem," said Tracy.

Well, what about Weaver?

The pregame media session with manager Jim Tracy on Friday naturally turned to the health of pitcher Jeff Weaver, whose erratic velocity has raised a red flag.

"He feels fine today," Tracy said. "Trying to figure out what everybody's searching for. He's fine. At times after games he has a little tightness, like that, but nothing that anybody's said indicates it's a real issue or anything like that."

Too bad you only lasted four innings yesterday, Jeff. What of OP? OP, are you feeling okay?

"... I battled. It's nothing to be concerned about, because it's just the muscle."

Phew. Thank goodness the Dodgers are being straight with us. I'd hate to think they were hiding injuries or anything.

---

Bitchy footnote: no thanks to MLB.com for removing search from all their history prior to 2005.

Giants 5, Dodgers 3

dodgers.com Headline: "Dodgers Scrap With Giants In San Fran"

There's an extra "s" in there somewhere.

I'm increasingly concerned that Weaver is pitching injured. I had a premonition that Weaver would last 4.2 innings, but he didn't even go that far. I also had a premonition that Matheny would get a big three-run double in today's game, and while I was wrong about the double, I was right about the three runs. That it was a homer was just added salt in that wound.

Teensy bright spot: DJ Houlton goes two without giving up any.

Update: Buddy Carlyle is coming back up? J.D. Drew gets an MRI revealing fluid in his wrist, preventing him from swinging properly, but the Official Tracy Line is "with regular treatment it's no problem"? Pardon me while I hork.

ESPN Box MLB.com recap

White Sox 2, Angels 1

No (nearly) fecally-themed headline here, but the results were about as bad. The Angels pay Esteban Yan $1.25M for his "services" this year, and while it could be a lot worse, 4.71 out of the bullpen is just awful.

I'm really starting to get to the point where I'm mad, though not necessarily at, say, Steve Finley (though he should oughta be hitting way better than he is). No, I'm getting mad at Stoneman. Cabrera: an offensive hole. Finley: another hole (though I still think he can come out of it). Vlad on the DL for two weeks. McPherson, a raw rookie with an affinity for the strikeout. Who knows, maybe Rich is right: he's just never going to be useful until he gets better knowledge of the strike zone. Look at all those left-handed bats the Angels put up there, and look at all the strikeouts.

And a brilliant performance by Colon, wasted.

You can talk all you want about pitching depth, but this team is intensely shallow offensively.

ESPN Box MLB.com recap

• May 23: Vladimir Guerrero slid while scoring and dislocated his shoulder partially, hurting the Angels' chances of fending off their AL West competition. Guerrero's injury is more like that of Derek Jeter a few years ago than that of Ken Griffey Jr.. The biggest negative so far is all the swelling. Thus far, the Angels have been unable to do an MRI to see how much damage happened internally. Until we have those images, we're just guessing as to his return. With Garret Anderson also hurting, some have speculated about a Darin Erstad return to center field. The shift makes sense, and rumors that Erstad's back would not hold up in center might be given more credence if there were no consideration being given to this move at all.
• Today: The Angels backtracked quickly in regards to Francisco Rodriguez and his availability, moving him from "ready to pitch" to "on the DL" in very short order. What happened? According to reports, Rodriguez threw a "full bore" bullpen session on Sunday, and his reaction to that session had to have told the Angels something. One unconfirmed report said that Rodriguez was unable to throw his slider without pain. At one point, according to this same source, Rodriguez flinched after throwing a "Frisbee slider" and had to shake his arm out before making the next pitch. The move made was retro, meaning that the Angels could have Rodriguez back early next week. Scot Shields is doing so well in the closer role that the Angels aren't going to rush.
• The Angels might not rush Kelvim Escobar back either, given the performance of Ervin Santana. Escobar is expected back soon, though a five-hit shutout against Jon Garland and the White Sox might keep "the other Santana" around a while. The Angels' pitching depth is disguising their offensive problems.

  When I hear the words "Angels" and "pitching depth" in the same sentence, and without detectable sarcasm, it means either (a) the Angels pitching staff is finally earning its keep, or (b) the sarcasm center of my brain isn't functioning properly.

• Oddly, there's no definitive word on Vladimir Guerrero today, other than some quotes from him. Yes, Guerrero did come back from a similar injury quickly, but self-reduction isn't exactly advisable. The All-Star outfielder was refusing a sling despite significant swelling that delayed the MRI another day.
• Octavio Dotel's elbow has "calcifications", and "yes, this type of situation is often a precursor to Tommy John surgery." Dotel's in wait-and-see mode until the swelling goes down.
• Mark Loretta's ligament problem apparently has been made worse by a prior surgery; the screw already in place made the injury difficult to diagnose. The Pads, disappointed in Nevin's jump to the surgeon's table, are looking around for help, and supposedly dangle disappointing 1B Phil Nevin and his $17M contract in front of the Rangers and Angels.
• Regarding Cubs starter Carlos Zambrano's funky elbow, Carroll says carpal tunnel, not tennis elbow, is the result of too much typing. "Even the worst-case scenarios, given the known facts, aren't that bad for Zambrano himself."
• "The Cubs are also likely to put Mike Remlinger on the DL to bring up Sergio Mitre for an emergency start."
• "It's impossible at this stage to put Bonds on a normal scoped-knee timeline, so look for milestone activities like running and swinging the bat."

A couple from Hardball Times:

• First, this Aaron Gleeman piece about the Hee Seop Choi and Dallas McPherson, in which he quoted my earlier brief piece. Thanks for reading, Aaron.
• JC Bradbury goes another round dissecting DIPS, and basically, concluding yet again that McCracken was right. Is this really necessary, though? I'm beginning to think there should be a class of sabermetric "off limits" categories for lack of being able to show any useful work, and one of them is disproving the fundamental thrust of DIPS: namely, that the pitcher has only a very limited ability to control the behavior of a batted ball in play.

Thanks of course to Purgatory Online via Pearly Gates, the Angels have designated the apparently useless Kevin Gregg for assignment to AAA Salt Lake. In his stead, RHP Chris Bootcheck will get the callup. Bootcheck, the Angels' first-round pick in 2000 (20th overall), was highly thought of as recently as 2003, though Jim Callis in the 2004 chat accompanying the Angels' top 10 prospects ranking said he projects more as a middle reliever. In Alan Matthews 2005 chat, he mentioned Bootcheck's new split-fingered fastball, but also noted "there are not a bevy of arms that are ready to contribute in 2005 out of the system".

The Dodgers Ministry of Truth opens:

Are the Dodgers built to compete against San Diego, Arizona and San Francisco in the relatively weak NL West but to go no further?

"Not at all," DePodesta said. "We have to beat the teams outside our division in October, not necessarily every time we play them in May.

"We get another crack at each of those teams in the regular season. I think we are going to live up to it."

It all depends on how you define "mild":

J.D. Drew has been a mild disappointment with the bat, but he is a marked improvement defensively in right field. He reaches base even when the hits aren't falling and runs the bases well.

That, and finding replacements for Schmoll, and Erickson, and ...

The return of Eric Gagne from the disabled list makes the bullpen whole. Yhency Brazoban, who had 11 saves in Gagne's absence, will pitch the eighth inning.

Longtime reader Bruce forwarded a couple over the last couple weeks that I haven't commented on, but here rectify that situation. First, as regular Dodger Thoughts readers already know, first-time Stanford grad and filmmaker Michael Wranovics has made a documentary film getting good notices, Up For Grabs. About the legal maneuvering surrounding the Bonds 73rd home run ball, Alex Belth also ran a brief piece about it, as did Evan Brunell of All-Baseball and Only Baseball Matters. Now playing at the Laemmle Sunset 5 in West Hollywood and at the Laemmle Playhouse in Pasadena.

The second matter is this Joystiq post about Ultimate Baseball Online. A MMOG (Massive Multiplayer Online Game), it's got some interesting features:

Ultimate Baseball Online promises to be the first massively multiplayer online sports game. Build your character, manage a team, join a quick pick-up game for some xp, or play in a league game. It’s an ambitious project and so far it seems stable and fun. Standing on the field, waiting for the ball to come to you while you talk trash to the base runner is as much fun as being up at bat. But the real appealing part of the game to me is that superstars will be built. Those who play the most will be recognized for it, taking the premise of cyber-athlete into a new direction.

Seeing as how I run Linux on my desktop at home and at work, this isn't usable for me; if anyone who has a Wintel box out there can tell me how this plays, I'd be grateful to hear from you.

Lastly, I got a note today from Larry O'Connor, who hunkers down at the periphery of what Sean labels the Halosphere in much the same way Josh did prior to joining Richard at The Pearly Gates. Larry wished to draw attention to his comments about last night's game at OC Chronicle. It looks like he and Richard should get along just fine politically.

Update: A couple more I forgot to mention. Mudville Magazine has a remembrance of 1977 in the Bronx; and the Golden Baseball League's Long Beach Armada launches their new mascot, and inaugural press conference on May 25th at Blair Field. Much as I'd like to be positive about the Armada and the GBL generally, the fact that the team isn't actually starting its season on May 26 (maybe I thought that because the GBL website says opening day is in two days) is a little odd, at least; the Armada opens its season June 13th.

Reds DFA Closer Danny Graves After Digit Incident

After his awful explosion (following a not-too-bad Ramon Ortiz performance), Graves flipped off a member of the Cincinnati audience. Subsequently, management decided the better part of valor is eating his contract and designated him for assignment, meaning the team has ten days to either release him or trade him.

"If I recall I'm not the only closer who has struggled this year. I expected to lose my closer job as a couple of guys have. I don't feel like anything is wrong (physically) or it may be just my time to go. Changing roles to a starter may have ruined my career. I don't know."

After averaging 31.3 saves with Cincinnati between 2000-02, Graves was converted to a starter in 2003, going 4-14 with a 5.33 ERA in 26 starts. He was put back into the bullpen before the close of the season.

Some words to think about for Dodger Thoughts commenters who have recently started in on a "Start Gagné" meme. Just Say "Close".

Update 5/24: Yard Work, aye: 'tis enough; 'twill serve.

Speaking Of "Game Over"...

Jon, I think you just handed me the quill I needed to slay the argument that Gagné should be used, at least unsparingly, in non-save situations. At 84 2/3 IP, I'd like to see the "small sample size" crowd shrug that off. Add in his pre-2002 starts and the case becomes airtight. I need to keep reading my stats textbook to get a good handle on what the parameters of the minimum sample size is for the error bands, but I think this is getting better and better.

Roster Notes

• Barry Bonds has been cleared to start rehab.
• Padres 2B Mark Loretta will have surgery on his thumb as a result of a headfirst slide into first base. He will miss two months for sure, and could miss the entire season if reconstructive surgery is needed. Loretta is hitting .300/.388/.344 in 160 AB for the Pads.

Lookout Landing Analyzes Sele's Stunning Outing

If you ever needed a reason to love bloggers, here's a really good one: insightful commentary you will never, and I mean never, find on ESPN or any of the big dailies. Check out this Lookout Landing tour de force analyzing Aaron Sele's recent complete game shutout. As he makes plain in the stills, Sele finally managed to get his mechanics straight so the batter hasn't a clue whether he's throwing a curve or a fastball. Before, his body leaned just a little to first base on his fastball, and straightened up on his curve, telegraphing his pitches. During his complete-game shutout, he cleaned up his delivery so as to fool the batters. This is brilliant stuff. I may have to get a RAM card for my TV so I can capture a few stills.

Snark

From The Fourth Outfielder:

Remind me never again to visit the dodgers.com fan forum message boards. I’m not exactly sure what segment of the population frequents them, but it surely must be a distinct section, if you catch my drift. Plenty of intelligent posts surrounded by, well, not-so-intelligent posts. Moving on.

Seconded.