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

I saw, out of the corner of my eye, Manny Ramirez' final at-bat of his Dodgers stint in an embarrassing 10-5 blowout by the Rockies in Colorado; Manny notoriously took one pitch for a called strike one, argued and got ejected. This led to the usual smear from Bill Plaschke (whose moods change by the week). Strange to tell: Manny may, in fact, have actually quit on the team, as he allegedly refused to start on Sunday, according to helpfully anonymous sources allegedly within the Dodgers organization. Whatever, he's just as gone now.

Labels: dodgers, rumors, transactions

Geoff Young of Ducksnorts reimagines the 1981 draft at The Hardball Times. Excerpt:

8. Los Angeles Dodgers
Actual pick: Dan Opperman, RHP, Valley HS (Las Vegas, Nev.), N/A
Revised pick: Albert Belle, OF, Louisiana State U. (Baton Rouge, La.), 37.4 WAR

Drafted out of the same high school that produced Mike Morgan (en route to 17 losses for the Mariners that year) and Greg Maddux (then taking his lumps as a rookie for the Cubs), Opperman never reached the big leagues. He worked a tick over 300 innings in his minor-league career before retiring at age 23. Apparently there had been concerns about Opperman's elbow before the draft and the situation deteriorated from there.

Belle slipped to the second round. After a couple false starts, he made an impact with the Indians in 1991, hitting .282/.323/.540 (134 OPS+). Had he done that in Los Angeles, it might have made a difference.

The Dodgers went 93-69 that year, finishing one game behind Atlanta in the NL West. The Dodgers started Kal Daniels in left field; his WAR was 1.0. Belle's WAR in 1991 was 2.2. It is possible that Belle's presence might have been enough to lead the Dodgers past Atlanta and push them into the NLCS against Mussina's Pirates.

With Belle, the Dodgers almost certainly win the NL West in '96. Todd Hollandsworth enjoyed a fine rookie campaign, but there is no comparison between him and Belle that year:

Player         PA   BA  OBP  SLG OPS+
Belle         715 .311 .410 .623 158
Hollandsworth 526 .291 .348 .437 113

Add in the fact that the Padres don't have Caminiti (who won NL MVP that year) or Finley, and it's looking good for LA. How well the Dodgers would have done in the postseason is another story altogether. They hit just .147/.204/.221 while being swept by Atlanta, and Hollandsworth is the only guy who contributed anything on offense.

Of course, if the Dodgers had drafted Belle, this would have affected another organization as well, although perhaps not as much as you might think. The Indians produced some terrific young talent in the early-'90s (Belle, Kenny Lofton, Manny Ramirez, Jim Thome), and although they would have taken a talent hit without Belle, they also ran away with the AL Central in 1995 (finishing 30 games ahead of the White Sox) and 1996 (winning by 14.5). After the '96 campaign, Belle signed with the White Sox, who—you guessed it—finished second to Cleveland.

Labels: dodgers, draft, history

Ken Rosenthal reports that Angels catcher Mike Napoli has been claimed on waivers by an unknown team.

Update 8/30: The Angels did not reach an agreement with the Red Sox, so with LAAnaheim he stays.

Labels: angels, transactions

Killed off a surprising number of Angels blogs just now, including the now-defunct Travelerocity, whose penultimate post from July 23, 2009 seems horribly prescient now. But there were some others that got the axe (Steve Bischeff's short-lived Angels blog at the Times, and the LA News Group's defunct Halos Happenings) that hadn't been updated since 2009. I hate it when that happens ...

I expect I'll have to do the same with the Dodgers blogs presently. It seems like everybody started a new Dodgers blog in the last year, and I really don't expect many of them to survive.

Labels: angels, meta

Losing a series at home to the worst team in the AL East should be a late wake-up call to Tony Reagins and every single person in the Angels front office that this team has quit. Like it or not, it's time to move everything that isn't nailed down and sell, sell, sell, as though that shouldn't have happened prior to the trade deadline anyway. The Angels will probably have to eat some contracts; Bobby Abreu's unmovable deal looks like one. But Torii Hunter seems a reasonable possibility to get some value in the offseason, as good as he's been, and Jered Weaver as well, who almost certainly won't be coming back after he hits free agency, as all Scott Boras clients eventually do. Speaking of that, I wonder if Kendry Morales is worth shipping out, or better to wait him out? Mmm, plenty of time to figure this stuff out in November, I guess.

ESPN Box

Labels: angels, orioles, recaps, suck

SRSLY. His career is damn close to being over.

"It’s about getting at-bats, working on my swing and my stance, and I didn’t think it was necessary to go to the Dominican Republic to do that," Wood said. "The AFL season is four or five weeks. I can get 100 at-bats. It will be good for me."

It's all too easy to see a scenario where he ends up cut in spring training (he's arb eligible next year, thus expensive) and spends the rest of his career lost in a maze of minor league deals.

Labels: angels

Per a tweet from the Times; certainly of the "Great trade, who'd we get?" variety. Fuentes had pretty much degenerated into a LOOGY sort in his Angels tenure, and given the team is stuck firmly at the .500 level, getting any kind of value for the various parts they can sell is a good idea.

The Times story on the piece says he was traded for a PTBNL, presumably not named Joe Mauer.

Update: Bitter, party of one:

"It was funny. I felt like I was pitching on the road quite a bit. I came in to a lot of boos, but the fans here come out in droves. They’re here to be entertained. They’re entertained one way or another, through my frustrations or through my success. I felt like I’ve given them a lot more success than failure."

These comments seem ill-advised for a couple of reasons:

1. Do you really want to rip the people who paid for the tickets and stuff that allowed you to be paid $17.5 million over the past two seasons? On a fundamental level, should it be that hard to hold your tongue when you step back and look at the big picture?

I'm sure the guy was stung by the lack of support at home, but rise above it.

2. They were perfectly within their rights to boo him, especially when he was blowing three out of eight save chances from April 21 to May 26. And yeah, they still remember that awful pitch to Alex Rodriguez in the playoffs that might have cost the Angels the ALCS.

Sorry, Brian, but, have a nice career.

Labels: angels, trades, transactions, twins

MSNBC's Matthew Poiliot passes on a Jayson Stark tweet that the White Sox have won the Manny waiver wire claim, despite earlier reports indicating that the Rangers had claimed him. Whether this will result in a deal remains to be seen, but given the Dodgers swept the Brewers on the road (admittedly, an easy proposition this year), they might hold on to him now that they're "only" five games out of the Wild Card.

MSTI had good advice on this subject: pick a course and stick with it.

Labels: dodgers, rangers, transactions, white sox

And Jamie disagrees, unsurprisingly. The Dodgers are worth (according to the fanciful account of Jamie's attorneys) a billion dollars, while the real estate Jamie owns uncontested is worth $70M, assets she can't afford because it's all leveraged to the hilt.

Sell, Frank, sell...

Related: T.J. Simers reports Joe Torre has been approached to possibly join a group interested in buying the Dodgers.

"I get people who make all kinds of suggestions all the time, and especially with the mood of everything going on around here right now it's not surprising," said Torre, his way of confirming such an overture has been made.

Labels: dodgers, mccourts

A tad late, but isn't everything these days ... the Diamondbacks released former A's Rookie of the Year (in 2004) Bobby Crosby, who hit .224 in limited service with Pittsburgh and only .167 with Arizona. Likely the end of his career, I'm guessing, and a testament to how ephemeral major league success can be. The weird thing is he only hit .239 in his RoY season, and only hit .276 as a career high thereafter (in 2005).

Labels: diamondbacks, ex-dirtbags, pirates, transactions

Fun video for a Thursday morning:

Labels: dodgers, funny

Those of you left who are friends on Facebook know I've been back from my vacation for going on a week and a half now, but I haven't really felt compelled to talk much about what's going on for either the Dodgers or Angels; both teams seem to be mainly making bad decisions in the player acquisition departments, with the Dodgers taking a bit of an edge in that department:

• Their odd rental of Ted Lilly was a deal that got them older, more expensive, worse defensively at second base (swapping out almost-25-year-old Blake DeWitt for 30-year-old Ryan Theriot). It also didn't help my feelings about this deal that they shipped minor-league pitchers Kyle Smit and Brett Wallach to the Cubs. The good news is that Lilly, whose deal expires at the end of the year (and to whom the Dodgers certainly won't grant arbitration, so kiss off any possible draft picks), has been lights out in his five starts as a Dodger.
• Not that this matters, because the Dodgers' offense has utterly stalled in the second half. One reason why has been Manny Ramirez' extended absence. Shortly after his second trip to the DL, the Dodgers removed the Mannywood sign from left field. After much speculation, the late rumor has been that Manny was finally placed on waivers as I write this, his likely destinations the Chisox or Boston.
• The Dodgers also picked up Rod Barajas for cash from the Mets, which is somehow an upgrade.
• The team's best acquisition turned out to be, not a player, but Vin Scully, who will return on a one-year deal for 2011 under the same conditions he's working now (NL West opponents and home games only).
• The list of players placed on waivers has only gotten longer in the brief time I've been looking at it, as Dylan Hernandez tweets that Scott Podsednik — himself only picked up on July 28 — Jay Gibbons, and Casey Blake have all hit the waiver wire, too.

As welcome as this late activity is for the Dodgers, it's not really enough to salvage their season (as wag Jay Jaffe put it, "EVERYTHING MUST GO AT CRAZY NEDDIE'S!!!" This was a team that wasn't going anywhere near the trade deadline and mistakenly became buyers. They're now 64-62, in fourth place in a five-team division and twelve games out of the division.

The Angels haven't been quite as nutsy (and frankly counterproductive) as the Dodgers, though it's probably closer than I'd like to admit (speaking as a season ticket holder). The big acquisition was Dan Haren from Arizona for Joe Saunders, minor league pitchers Rafael Rodriguez and southpaw Patrick Corbin, and a PTBNL. I'm running a bit short of time at the moment, so I haven't heard the identity of the PTBNL yet, but the fact that Haren has another year on his contract is a net positive. But at ten games out of the division and three games under .500, the Angels just aren't going anywhere this year, and they needed something for next year, too. It's nice to see them recognize this, but at the same time, the offense is going to be a disaster next year, too.

Anyway, I inadvertently picked up a copy of Doug Glanville's The Game From Where I Stand, which looks to be an interesting book. I probably won't be writing much in this space for the balance of the season, unless something juicy comes up, such as news about the McCourts' divorce. Hope you all have a fine end of the season, and for me, I'm rooting for a Padres/Rays World Series.

Labels: angels, dodgers, mccourts, stupid ideas, trades, transactions

Paco Torres, a Stanford Law student (and according to this OCR Angels Blog post, also a graduate) has a new blog in conjunction with another fellow Stanford grad, The Payoff Pitch. Paco has done some really brave and outstanding work as an attorney-in-training with the Criminal Defense Clinic to reform the harshest aspects of California's Three Strikes law. By way of intro, here's a nice piece on Torii Hunter's transition to right field, something else that happened whilst I have been in National Parks in Montana and Wyoming. Welcome, Paco and whoever his unnamed co-conspirator is!

Labels: angels, blogs

In case you couldn't tell, I'm out of town, making a sweeping tour of the upper Midwest starting in Montana. I have only sporadic Internet access, and have only negative opinions (pre- and post-emptive) of the various trades I hear about. But since the Angels' season is over (and the Dodgers' only just so), this is actually a relief. See you all in mid-August.

Labels: meta