Monday, March 05, 2007 |
Pickoff Moves
Today's Birthdays
Lu Blue BRO b. 1897, played 1933, d. 1958-07-28
Chad Fonville LAN b. 1971, played 1995-1997
Bernie Hungling BRO b. 1896, played 1922-1923, d. 1968-03-30
Paul Konerko LAN b. 1976, played 1997-1998, All-Star: 2002, 2005-2006. I'm going to get some hate mail over this one, but the non-character reasons for firing Tommy Lasorda really come down to two things: first, his role in exiling Pedro Martinez from the Dodgers, and second, the Paul Konerko trade. (If you believe Felipe Alou, he was also instrumental in chasing superb closer John Wetteland from the team as well.) There was simply no justification whatsoever for the staggering ignorance of contractual reality that cost the Dodgers a future star at first base, especially for a player — Jeff Shaw — who had the right to demand a trade at the end of the season. Instead, Shaw got a huge payout for the remaining three years he would play for the Dodgers, earning that money only in the first year of his deal.
The whole affair stank of panic, the trade going down with the Dodgers twelve and a half games back of the Padres, on July 4, 1998, of all days; surely, the Dodgers owed it to themselves to see whether Konerko, who had all of 151 at-bats in a Dodger uniform, would eventually catch fire, especially seeing as how they were trading a 22-year-old. It was so laughably one-sided that Ross Newhan called it "a slap at the former regime by a current regime that is trying to secure permanent jobs as much as salvage the season."
The Reds repeated the Konerko mistake at the end of the season and flipped him to the Chisox for centerfielder Mike Cameron; the real winner turned out to be the Chisox, who got the 30-homer, 100+ RBI man the Dodgers thought they had. And people wonder why I don't have much respect for Tommy Lasorda.
Phil Roof CAL b. 1941, played 1965
Elmer Valo BRO,LAN b. 1921, played 1957-1958, d. 1998-07-19
Bullety Stuff
- Omenous Arte: The HGH situation with Gary Matthews, Jr. is gonna get fixed, and soon:
"It's going to be resolved by opening day, one way or the other. I promise you that," Moreno said.
Hell hath no fury, or something like that, but it's far from clear there's anything baseball or Matthews, Jr. can do about this."I'm not a very happy guy. It should have already been resolved."
- Casey Kotchman homered in yesterday's game and started an unusual 3-1-6 triple play on Saturday. Where are all those "trade Kotchman" lunatics now?
- Speaking of that sort of thing, Francisco Rodriguez, Garret Anderson, and Scot Shields are all expected to make their spring training debuts this week, by Friday.
- Meet the new Kevin Gregg, 29-year-old Marcus Gwyn.
"He throws 93, 94 [mph] with live action, good sink," Scioscia said. "We can get him up to 75, 90 pitches by the end of spring. Coming out of Spring Training, any pitcher is going to be limited. He has the ability to go five or six innings.
- Five errors in two split-squad games? "Nobody is this bad," said Grady Little, and he's right, because the chances of the team breaking camp with the likes of Fernando Tatis or Ivan DeJesus on the 25-man roster are about zero anyway.
- A's shortstop Bobby Crosby took batting practice for the first time this spring.
- Ex-Dodger Danys Baez will deign to pitch as a setup man with the Orioles. How nice of him.
Labels: angels, dodgers, spring training
: 3/05/2007 09:43:00 AM
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