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

Details on the Greinke deal later, but the return includes Jean Segura.

Update: NBC Hardball Talk says it's RHP Ariel Pena and Johnny Hellweg.

Labels: angels, trades, transactions

I caught this Ramona Shelburne article on the post-McCourt Dodgers yesterday, which specifically addressed the question of what the team — and more specifically, Ned Colletti — will look like and do as we approach the trade deadline. The story was fairly soft in places, and nowhere more so than here:

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. -- It was a coincidence more than anything. A function of the proximity of the Los Angeles Lakers' training facility to the airport that Dodgers general manager Ned Colletti was landing at Wednesday afternoon.

But man, was it fitting that Colletti and the Dodgers borrowed the Lakers' conference room to speak Wednesday afternoon about the team's trade for Miami Marlins shortstop Hanley Ramirez.

For years the Lakers have been the gold standard in this town. Always willing to spend what it takes to compete for championships in the NBA, always believing that those investments pay off in the long run because of what they mean to your brand and fan base.

It has been a long time since the Dodgers were that kind of franchise.

In truth, they never have been. The O'Malley's proffered reason for selling was the changes in the free agency marketplace, which they didn't wish to meet. Fox did, but faceplanted when they did, with points to be given for the productive years of Kevin Brown, and subtracted from his injury years. That is to say, the Dodgers, when they were anything like the Lakers, were mediocre at best.

Labels: dodgers

• The Dodgers disabled Adam Kennedy (15-day; for a right groin strain) and called up RHP Shawn Tolleson.
• The Angels have released RHP Trevor Bell after he returned from the minor league DL. He had a 1-6 record with an 8.27 ERA in ten appearances, all as a starter. Good luck, grandson of Bozo.

Labels: angels, dodgers, transactions

When I heard about the Hanley Ramirez trade, sending Nathan Eovaldi and minor league pitcher Scott McGaugh to the Marlins for Ramirez and reliever Randy Choate, I was at least skeptical. Ramirez is two years away from a good season, but continues to be paid as a star. But, as MSTI pointed out,

As for Ramirez, there’s risk here for sure. He’ll be 29 in December, and from 2007-10 he was an MVP caliber player, mixing power, on-base skills, and speed together to make for a very productive package, though he was probably always miscast as a shortstop. Last year, slowed by back and shoulder injuries, was nothing short of a disaster, as he played in just 92 games, hit .243/.333/.379, and probably got his manager fired. After an offseason dispute with the Marlins about moving to third base, he was expected to bounce back in a healthy 2012, but has hit only .246/.322/.428 and has recently missed time after a bizarre incident in which he cut himself on a fan and then didn’t take antibiotics, leading to infection. Ramirez is signed through 2014 with something like $36m remaining, which the Dodgers will apparently be paying all of.

So the concern is obvious: Ramirez is expensive, moody, and a poor defender. (Why does that sound so familiar?) Yet he’s on the right side of 30 and undeniably talented, and players like that rarely come available in the free market. Offense, particularly infield offense, is so hard to find these days that you’re going to have to take some risks in order to try to find production. The hope is that Ramirez can be a good change-of-scenery guy, and while his attitude is indeed a concern, running a solid clubhouse is one area where Don Mattingly has proven to be adept. It remains to be seen where Ramirez plays, but my guess is he’ll stay at third for now, since he’s hardly a top defensive shortstop and since Luis Cruz has been an adequate fill-in, especially with the glove.

I'm not as sanguine about Ramirez' chances overall; it seems to me that the left side of the diamond is a tough place to make a living, especially for someone who is a power threat and claims to play shortstop. Nomar Garciaparra comes to mind, particularly, and while he had a wrist injury from which he never really recovered, Ramirez is a couple years away from 30 still, which is kind of a big deal. The hope, certainly, is that way from the toxic atmosphere of south Florida he might be able to pull himself together. This strikes me as somewhat wishful thinking, but it is all we have at the moment. That, and the fact that he's better right now than Juan Uribe.

The pessimist's view is that while that latter's true, it is also the case that he has put up sub-100 OPS+ numbers for the last two years at a position normally assumed to be power-first if he is to take over the third base slot for the Dodgers. It's also worth mentioning that the new Marlins park isn't really well known enough to understand how it plays, but the early returns seem to indicate it's a slight hitter's park. However it breaks down, the Dodgers owe him $31.5M over the next two years, plus the prorated remainder of the $15M remaining on his 2012 salary.

The Dodgers scored no runs today that did not involve Ramirez, either hitting or scoring, so there is that, but the real questions lie down the road.

Update 7/26: This move reminded me substantially of Manny Ramirez's star turn in his Dodgers debut, which ended with a thud when he hit into a double play with nobody out in the bottom of the ninth. In that regard, this Ramirez did much better, but still, it seems futile at this point in his career to expect a lot. Indeed, an overall nobody-wins-this-trade vibe seems to be the sense I'm getting from the BPro review yesterday.

Dodgers recap • ESPN Box

Labels: cardinals, dodgers, recaps

Monday:

"Greg [Holland] got two outs, then came the hit by Callaspo and the bouncer over Eric," Yost said. "Then he walked Bourjos on four pitches, and that was the game. Greg got a fastball up to Morales and he hit a laser beam, but the walk to Bourjos is what killed him, because we knew they would send up Morales to hit. We're giving up walks in crucial situations, and we've got to find ways to eliminate that."

Yesterday's game notwithstanding, the Royals pitching staff may not have had trouble with walks (they gave up only two today) but starter Luke Hochevar got pelted to the tune of eight runs (six earned) and nine hits in only three innings. Really, a terrible outing, his second-shortest this year. Meanwhile, Jered Weaver was pretty good; the day game seemed to sap him somewhat, and so he only lasted five.

The game mostly belonged to the Angels' offense, who banged out six runs in the first two innings. Trout again had a multi-hit game, starting a new streak, including an impressive two-run shot in the eighth. Torii Hunter, shaking off yesterday's rough game, banged out a homer immediately afterwards, one of four hits he had in today's game. The major concern late was seeing lefty Scott Downs get knocked around for three runs (on a home run by Jeff Francoeur). There's talk now that the Angels are seeking a left-handed reliever to stabilize the recent problems that Downs has had; it makes sense even while being a little over the top.

Angels recap • ESPN Box

Labels: angels, recaps, royals

If a random lefty shuts down the Angels' offense in the forest, does it make a sound? That probably makes no sense, but not much about last night's game did. I forgot my new Trout foam hat — purchased over the weekend — and immediately thought, "They're gonna lose now." Well, of course that had nothing to do with it, but Trout's hitting streak came to an end (even though he did manage to get a walk, he failed to get on base any other time), and the Angels pretty much flailed at random Kansas City lefty Will Smith, a guy who started the game with an ERA over 7.00. Baseball-Reference says it was 7.97, but I remember it as a tad lower than that, which might be due to the fact that I wasn't able to get into my seat before first pitch, about which, more later.

One of the tweeps I follow, @SimpleGame (Kristen), made the observation that Garrett Richards is like Star Trek: the odd numbered starts suck. I don't entirely know if that's true, but he sure has been inconsistent, and last night looked like he might be chased by the end of the third, giving up four runs after two innings and a hell of a lot of baserunners, facing 13 batters total with five hits, two for extra bases and one of those a homer to Lorenzo Cain, and two walks. Really, it was a terrible outing, and not one I really hope to see repeated. It also doesn't give me much hope that the Angels will ever manage to catch the Rangers (who also lost last night 2-1 to the Red Sox), because they've got to get better pitching from their starters.

The good news was that the Royals did no further damage past the second, and in fact Jerome Williams looked quite solid in a new long-relief role following Richards' exit after the fifth. Terry Smith in the radio booth was making Kansas City out as a good offensive team, which jibed with my recollection. However, upon looking it up, their record is much worse than that in reality, turning up 12th in the league in runs scored, so this was not as great a feat as he made it sound.

The Royals brought in a pair of relievers who gave me brief hope — the goat from Monday's game, Greg Holland, and ex-Dodger Jonathan Broxton — but both blew off past bad outings, and in the case of Broxton, sported a fine 2.27 ERA at the end of the game. The Angels never got past second from the second inning on in one of their more futile displays of offense in the post-Trout era.

Perhaps the worst moments in the game came in the sixth, when Torii Hunter missed Eric Hosmer's line drive, sending him sprawling in the outfield. He came up lame after the ball got to the wall and went for a triple, but he was unconvincing to me, limping around for some time after. And then in his next at bat in the bottom of the frame — he was the inning's leadoff man — he fouled off a ball on his leg and danced out of the box. Later, Pujols took a foul ball off his arm, hard, but stayed in the game. I have to wonder whether we'll see production declines from both Hunter and Pujols over the next few weeks because of those hits.

Finally: about that first pitch. I went into Chronic Tacos before the game, and it took me — no exaggeration — half an hour to get through the line. Yes, the food's good, but it's not that good, and I won't be making that mistake again. I've been there three times, and twice the line has been this bad or worse, wrapping around the corner of the building. Their strategy, which works well enough in a regular store, for some reason just takes too long to execute in the ballpark. Bummer.

ESPN Box • Angels recap

Labels: angels, recaps, royals

I have a silly picture of me in a foam Trout hat, which is the only thing you can do this year. Even with the series win, the Angels ended the day five games back, which isn't insurmountable, but they'll have to sweep in the Texas series upcoming to even get to one game back and make it a race. I'm mostly focusing on Mike Trout, who's doing impossible things with pitched baseballs now that he can hit big-league fastballs and positively pwns breaking stuff, what can't he do? Eventually he'll come back to earth, but I plan on enjoying every single day he's in uniform, regardless of what else happens. Last night, he set a rookie league and franchise record for scoring runs in 14 consecutive games. That's ... amazing.

Jeff Passan yesterday on Twitter alerted me to the fact that since June 1, Josh Hamilton has been hitting .201/.290/.396, while Albert Pujols has a healthy .327/.411/.605 slash line over that same time. Endpoints matter, of course, and small sample sizes have consequences for everyone, but it was significant a few days ago that Rangers manager Ron Washington had publicly called out Hamilton for not making adjustments. Certainly, last night's game was a case where he really had a horrible time; he looked to be swinging for the fences all the time, and missed badly almost every time.

Meantime, Dan Haren had a great return game from the DL, giving the Angels better than a quality start in six innings. If Ernesto Frieri was scary in the closer role, and Scott Downs a bit tired and wheezing from overuse early in the season, you could forgive them both given the Rangers' offensive firepower. But the biggest surprise of the second half so far has to be a rejuvenated Kevin Jepsen, who cruised through the seventh, and with the seemingly effortless way he did it suggests he might take an occasional eighth inning role going forward. That's always a pleasant surprise.

The Angels two home runs, the first Bobby Wilson's improbable shot that chased starter Matt Harrison; and the second Pujols' off Alexi Ogando, whom Rangers blogger Evan Grant thinks may be somehow off — possibly hiding an injury? However they came by it, it was good to see the Halos cadge another win off the Rangers at a time when they desperately needed it.

ESPN Box • Angels recap

Labels: angels, rangers, recaps

Congratulations to Ron Santo's family, and to Barry Larkin, both of whom were inducted into Cooperstown today. Two years ago, I posted Bill James' concise argument for Santo's inclusion. In Santo's case, an overdue bill gets paid. Here's Al Yellon's thoughts on the matter. I certainly hope that, if the general decline of daily newspapers has had any upside, it is that the sophists who kept Santo out of the Hall are now on the streets looking for jobs (and are without BBWAA credentials).

Labels: cubs, hall of fame, reds

The incredible thing is that yesterday's start wasn't even Santana's shortest of the year; that happened two starts ago against Cleveland. One complete game shutout doesn't make up for all the other dreadful starts we've been forced to watch, and the Angels have won only four of his 18 starts this year. It's pretty much a lock that unless he figures something out in the bullpen — and given the team's paucity of pitching options in the minors, even a conversion to relief isn't a given anymore — he won't be back in 2013.

This season has had its blessings, most notably the meteoric rise of Mike Trout, and the revelation of Mark Trumbo as a middle-of-the-order thumper the Angels have needed for years. But almost everything else, especially the pitching, has disappointed.

ESPN Box • MLB Recap

Labels: angels, rangers, recaps

The Angels had the prospect of ending this series nine games back of the Rangers, so to say that every game in this series is a must-win is only slightly hyperbolic. But the Angels pulled ace Jered Weaver in the first game, with a better than average chance of winning.

So it was, and they did. Elvis Andrus' first inning solo homer was the extent of the Rangers' offense, while the Angels pounded Derek Holland for six runs, all earned, including homers by Trumbo and Trout. Keep it going.

ESPN Box • Angels recap

Labels: angels, rangers, recaps

... Google autosuggest fills in your surname when someone just enters your first name:

Labels: angels, wow