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

Via Abort McCourt, Frank and Jamie have reached a settlement, which is contingent on MLB approving the Fox TV deal. A sad coda from the ensuing presser with Frank:

The settlement is contingent upon Major League Baseball's approval of a long-term television contract with Fox. Would he sue if MLB rejects the contract?

"I fully expect MLB to approve the Fox transaction. MLB has taken the position that, before they approved the transaction, they wanted to see either a settlement of the divorce, or Jamie's consent, or an order from the judge. Today, they received all three. I fully expect that they will be good to their word, and they'll approve the transaction in a timely way."

I hope and trust he is wrong, and MLB crushes the contract, as ESPN's Molly Knight has suggested:

But it's highly unlikely MLB would approve the TV deal, a source told Knight, in part because Gordon could force a sale of the team and saddle a new owner with what could be a below-market television contract in the future.

Labels: blecch, dodgers, mccourts

Mark Teixeira got soundly booed again and did in his former team with a couple home runs, exactly the way this impotent script was supposed to play out. Tony Reagins underbid for the services of a competent first baseman, and he comes back to haunt the team. Of course, this narrative forgets the presence and now absence of Kendrys Morales, but in a year that has been so probable, the likely has happened, and to ill effect.

The Angels looked their best offensively in the third, when they tied things against Yankees revivified starter and ex-Angel Bartolo Colon. (Remember when the Angels actually won bids on the services of good free agents? Me neither.) But the Angels kept stranding baserunners, as the limitations of smallball became increasingly evident. In all, the Halos stranded ten, two more of which would have sufficed to tie the game.

During the course of the game, the radio team — I think it was Terry Smith — suggested that the Halos lack a true cleanup hitter. It was all I could do to keep from screaming into the afternoon air, "Mark Trumbo"! Even if you believe in Mike Scioscia's ancient religion, Trumbo is outhitting Hunter, and not by a little: .256/.346/.488 including three home runs, where Hunter has an anemic .225/.337/.268 with two extra-base hits of any variety (a double and a triple). While I do not claim that the broadcasters are necessarily close to the understanding of the people helming the team, they do get a chance to talk with them on a daily basis and are thus infused with some of it. I do not for a second doubt that Scioscia doesn't feel Trumbo is sufficiently advanced at this point to take over batting fourth, but at this point, what could he possibly lose by moving him up, say, to fifth in the order? Indeed, Hunter led the team yesterday with a -.411 WPA, capping a ridiculous afternoon with a GIDP to end the game while the tying runs were at first and third.

Finally, one comment about this violation of rules 7.06(a) and 7.06(b):

Basepath obstruction: it's not just for home plate anymore! Of course, the Rev informed me on Facebook that Bobby Grich used to do this with impunity and was never called for it. You want to end those kinds of collisions at the plate, calling this and plate-blocking what it is — a clear violation of the rules — and you've made a big step to preventing the kinds of injuries sustained by Buster Posey.

ESPN Box • Angels recap

Labels: angels, blecch, ex-angels, recaps, yankees

I don't know the answer to either question, but his open letter excerpted in the Times looks like an apologia from a man who wants to get paid for his trouble; perhaps a piece of the Dodgers at a fire sale price?

Excerpt:

The Times reported this month that the Dodgers are $433 million in debt and that at least three parties had rebuffed McCourt last year in efforts for additional financing. In 2004, Fox sold the Dodgers to McCourt for $430 million, in a deal into which he put "not a penny of cash in," according to his lawyer, Steve Susman.

"He is far from broke," the letter read. "Despite what some may say, the Dodgers are worth at least $300 million more than all the debt everyone seems so excited about. …

"The naysayers are spreading rumors, lining up to snatch the team at some fire sale. Fox had the fire sale. McCourt has the equity and created real value."

The letter saluted McCourt for the Dodgers' on-field performance — four playoff berths in seven seasons of ownership — for spending $150 million on Dodger Stadium renovations, for his decision to move spring training "closer to home," to the new Camelback Ranch facility in Glendale, Ariz., and for his "continued commitment to spend among the highest amounts in baseball to field a competitive team."

So oily only another MLB owner — or maybe a prospective one — would publish it. It reopens the question, of course: if not Frank, who? We could be dealing with somebody even greasier and more venal than Frank here. Recall also that Walter O'Malley was a late addition to the team's ownership structure, but eventually successfully forced out all others.

Update: Soboroff's Wikipedia page: mover and shaker, perhaps second only to Eli Broad as the "greatest [living] Angeleno".

Labels: blecch, dodgers, mccourts

There's almost no point in recapping this; the Dodgers stank. It didn't help that Matt Kemp misplayed Ryan Doumit's ball into a triple. It's their fifth straight loss.

The last time they were blanked by the Pirates at home was an 8-0 embarrassment on September 5, 2000, putting the Dodgers at 73-66, nine games back of the Giants; the team never led the division after April 23, getting as far back as 13 games by September 14 following a 5-4 loss to the Rockies.

This team doesn't look as bad as the 2000 squad, but saying that is conditional on a lot of other things going right, i.e. the injured starters return to the lineup, the pitchers discover competence, and the offense stops being offensive.

ESPN Box • Dodgers recap

Labels: blecch, dodgers, pirates, recaps

One of the surprises I didn't mention earlier was the fact that Rule 5 pick Carlos Monasterios made the team out of spring training. If you were listening to or watching today's catastrophe of a season opener, he, Ramon Russ Ortiz, and Jeff Weaver were the only Dodger pitchers to escape unscathed. Vicente Padilla (seven runs, all earned over four and a third wretched innings) and George Sherrill (three runs, all earned, over an inning) both got spanked by the Pirates — the Pirates! — on Opening Day, a rather humiliating development that we hope will pass tomorrow. (Update 4/6: Ramon Ortiz pitched in relief of Padilla in the fifth, and not only allowed all his inherited baserunners to score, giving up a bases-loaded double to Ryan Church, but let Ronnie Cedeno knock in Church on a doinker single. Both the Yahoo and ESPN box scores — which I suspect are derived from the same sources — originally failed to record Ramon's appearance in the game. The possibility that having two R. Ortizes on the team is confusing the scorers may prove problematic for as long as both are on the 25-man roster.)

Zach Duke wasn't terrific but lasted long enough for the win. 28-year-old sophomore Garrett Jones, who only once before had a SLG over .500, that in a partial season at AA New Britain, started off this year with a bang, hammering a pair of longballs off Padilla; shockingly, the second, a solo blast in the third, was not a knockout blow.

So the Dodgers, and the day. Claims that the Dodgers weren't aligning the rotation for starts by Billingsley and Kershaw at home ring somewhat hollow now, at least, it seems so to me.

Incidental notes:

• About MLB.com Gameday Audio: This has been renamed "At Bat with Gameday Audio". On Linux, I had terrible problems with it hanging up; on my iPhone, not so much. I eventually gave up and hauled an AM radio to my office. I know, it sounds like I'm whining, but dammit, I'm a paying customer. Stop using Flash if it's so breaky, or quit reworking everything every single year.

  The new Gameday is huge. I expect next year it'll be a mandatory fullscreen, at which point I'll stop paying for it if they keep this up.

• There's also no more "Multimedia" on the mast of all the MLB.com websites; there's only a single link called "Video". But I don't want video, I want audio.
• The new dropdown is now a mega-layer, with images and tons of crap that cause it to be very slow to load on Firefox. Why?
• Every damn year — and in fact, more often than that, since IIRC it demands a cookie with an expiry date of about 60-90 days or so — MLB.com demands I renew my request that their idiotic home page autoplaying video be disabled whenever I go to angels.mlb.com or dodgers.com, etc. Why? Why be such irritating jerks about it?

ESPN Box • Dodgers recap

Labels: blecch, dodgers, pirates, recaps

I remember catching some heat recently when I suggested the Angels' starting rotation has been doing far too much imploding lately, and it's exactly this sort of thing that I'm thinking of. Bell clearly had nothing, and pretty much gave up the game in the first couple innings; the rest was denouement. Nothing against Bell — he's a kid who was clearly rushed to the majors following a long string of tragedy and injuries — but this is simply happening too often. The offense can't carry the team every game.

Yahoo box

Labels: angels, blecch, blue jays, recaps

John Lackey recorded eight of his 20 outs by means of the strikeout, but as has been often the case with him this year (and pretty consistently against Texas), he kept leaking baserunners. Some of these weren't his fault, as in the fourth, when Bobby Abreu muffed a routine catch of Esteban German's lineout, turning it into a two-base error, and again in the fifth, when David Murphy reached on catcher's interference. In the end, Lackey only got charged for two earned runs, but it really wasn't a very compelling performance. Unlike Derek Holland, who got early count outs virtually the whole game, Lackey was constantly throwing a ton of pitches to every Texas batter. It didn't work.

The lineup was minus regulars Kendry Morales, Mike Napoli, and Chone Figgins, but none of them have been especially hot in this series, and given how well Holland was throwing today, it's doubtful they would have made a difference offensively. Defensively, it's possible that Napoli might not have airmailed a throw in the top of the sixth that allowed Esteban German to take third, and in the seventh allowed recently called up Julio Borbon to steal second on a pitch out. In the fourth, Lackey and Robb Quinlan collectively got away with an uncharged error, as neither made it to the first base bag in time to receive a throw from Howie Kendrick, allowing Hank Blalock to reach, and the inning to continue. Abreu's misplay of German's line drive fly was next, and allowed two runs to score.

It's still early, of course, relative to the number of games left in the season, and the Angels lead the division by three and a half games, but I couldn't help but recall my enthusiasm after Vlad blasted a game-winning homer off Rangers closer Francisco Cordero to reduce the Angels' magic number to four after a season in which they trailed the A's virtually the whole year; only a late collapse of Oakland's starting rotation ultimately saved their season.

The Angels' starters look mighty beat up this year, too.

Yahoo box • Angels recap

Labels: angels, blecch, rangers, recaps

I didn't see much of either of the Angels wretched 10-1 loss to the Twins or the Dodgers' 8-6 loss to the Marlins. It's been a busy weekend.

Labels: angels, blecch, dodgers, marlins, twins

This is the Mets patch commemorating the opening of Citi Field. Notice it doesn't mention what it's for or show any images, partial or whole, of the new stadium. Brilliant, huh? Thanks to LoHud Yankees Blog (via today's DT thread).

Labels: blecch, mets, stupid ideas

This is pretty unbelievable (hyperlinks in the quoted text below are all mine):

So now we know where Manny’s money went. To a new beachfront home in Malibu for Jamie McCourt. Wait, not one home.

Two of them, side by side.

For $46 million dollars.

...

$46 mil isn’t just garish, it’s WAY over the top, especially when Mrs. McCourt was recently quoted saying how tough times are, how the economy calls for more prudent decision-making, and that’s why the Dodgers ought to reconsider big-money investments in top-end free agents.

What hysterical hypocrisy!

Maybe I’m a home buy or two behind, but don’t the McCourts already own some giant mansion in Holmby Hills? Like some $20 million dollar palace?

Of course, that was my initial reaction, too. It's all about cash flow; in this era where jumbo mortgages are hard to come by, I wonder where they came up with the financing for that. It also bears repeating that the Dodgers != the McCourts.

Labels: blecch, mccourts

There is no reason that I can think of that the Dodgers should be losing to the Giants, especially a series at home.

Unless, yeah, they're not really that good a team. But I figured, hey, having swept the Snakes Sep. 5-7, that should have been enough, right?

Eh, not so much. The D'Backs crushed the Rockies 13-4, and the Dodgers' magic number remains stalled at five, while the Snakes edge back into the NL West, only 2.5 games back now.

The Dodgers failed to score in the first with the bases loaded in the first and nobody out. The Dodgers only had one other opportunity the whole game, and Angel Berroa was thrown out at the plate in the fifth on Andre Ethier's would-be RBI single. Ouch.

Yahoo box • Dodgers recap

Labels: blecch, dodgers, giants, recaps

Dear Frankie:

Enjoy your big dollar contract this offseason, no matter who that happens to be with. After this crappy outing, I really don't care whether it's with the Angels.

— R.

Unreal. I was out and mostly ignoring this one after Jered Weaver gave up a run, only to get back in it with a pair in the top of the ninth on the strength of a Mark Teixeira two-run homer. In comes Frankie, who gives up a single to Daric Barton (compounded by Gary Matthews, Jr.'s bone-headed throw to push him to second), a four-pitch walk to offensive zero Jack Hannahan, and a ridiculous throwing error on Cliff Pennington's sac bunt attempt that allowed both those baserunners to score. In all, Frankie got zero outs — the first time in his career he's ever done that — and looked as lame as I've ever seen him.

So much of the team was banged up it stopped being funny. Torii Hunter, according to the radio broadcast, took a foul ball off his face in batting practice and ended up a late scratch for GMJ. Garret Anderson was the only regular in the outfield, and while Erick Aybar did go 1-for-3 at leadoff (Chone Figgins again was unavailable for anything other than pinch-running duties), Scioscia yanked him for Brandon Wood late in the game.

Way to go, guys. Way to go. I know, it's only one game. But given how vital home field advantage is going to be this year, I begin to wonder whether the Angels are capable of winning that. They need to get healthy; more, they need to stop making these kinds of stupid mistakes.

Yahoo box • Angels recap

Labels: angels, athletics, blecch, recaps

The last time the Nationals swept the Dodgers, they were called the Expos and the year was 1998. Montreal did it in three games from August 4 through 6, the first one interesting and the other two not.

• August 4: Chan Ho Park nursed a 4-0 shutout through seven innings, but imploded in the eighth, walking the bases loaded and then driving in a run on a bases-loaded walk to centerfielder Terry Jones. "That was stupid," Park said later. "I tried to be too perfect, and I wound up hurting the team. I should know better than that, but I wasn't thinking." A subsequent bullpen implosion by Scott Radinsky allowed all but one of his inherited baserunners to score, and the Dodgers lost 5-4 in extras on Chris Widger's RBI single. Vladimir and former Dodger Wilton Guerrero, playing on the same team for the first time that year, both drove in a run; the Dodgers had only days before, at the trade deadline, sent Wilton Guerrero, Ted Lilly, and minor leaguer Jonathan Tucker to Montreal in exchange for Carlos Perez, Mark Grudzielanek, and Hiram Bocachica.
• August 5: Raul Mondesi left his second consecutive game with back stiffness, replaced by pinch-hitter Trenidad Hubbard in the third. Starter Darren Dreifort got off to a terrible start in the first, giving up two runs and ultimately losing the game on four runs, one unearned thanks to an error by Hubbard in the seventh. The Dodgers failed to do anything against rookie starter Carl Pavano, and only scratched out a single run against reliever Shayne Bennett, ultimately falling 5-1.
• August 6: Gary Sheffield missed his third straight game following a suspension resulting from a brawl in Pittsburgh, and it really showed in this one. The Dodgers only got one baserunner to third, while the Expos mauled them to the tune of a 9-0 score, with starter Carlos Perez giving up seven runs; it was Perez's second start as a Dodger.

The 1998 Expos finished 65-97; the current generation of Nats will likely come close to that, maybe a bit more in the loss column, but the bottom line is that both Dodger teams are beleaguered despite their marquee players in the lineup. Manny Ramirez homered in the second to give Clayton Kershaw an instant 2-0 lead, but he imploded immediately for five runs in the bottom of the frame, capped by a three-run jack to Elijah Dukes. More misery awaited the Dodgers in late innings as the Nats cadged runs in every inning form the fifth on. About the only good thing to be said about the evening was that the Snakes were idle.

---

Additional fun factoids about the current losing streak:

• The last time the Dodgers lost seven straight on the road was just last year, from September 9 through September 22 against the Giants, Rockies, and Diamondbacks.
• The worst road losing streak in Los Angeles history was in the tumultuous 1992 season. From June 2 through June 21, the Dodgers lost every road game they played to Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Cincinnati, and Houston, eleven in all. Since that was also mostly one contiguous road trip, the Dodgers managed to rack up a 10-game losing streak in that span.
• The epic-est fail in franchise history befell the dreadful 1944 Dodgers, the last stand for extended loserdom by a team that was about to be transformed by integration into one of the league's marquee franchises. For a solid month — June 16 through July 17 — the Dodgers failed to beat any opponents on the road, falling to Philadelphia, Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, and Boston.

Also, I have to make mention here of the fact that Christian Guzman hit for the cycle. Christian Guzman!

Yahoo box • Dodgers.com recap

Labels: blecch, dodgers, nationals, recaps

The Angels led after the three-run fifth, which they stupidly ran themselves out of; Vlad was going on a contact play, and Torii Hunter allowed himself to get thrown out trying to advance to third, or something like that. They've been doing that a lot lately. Once Francisco Rodriguez gave up the tying run on a wild pitch and an RBI single to David Wright, the conclusion was foregone considering that Mike had used up five pitchers before loser Justin Speier came in to cough up the losing home run to ex-Angel Damion Easley.

I think I'm gonna be sick.

At least the Angels are still in first place.

What a godawful series.

Yahoo box

Labels: angels, blecch, mets, recaps

I had to stop for gas on my way home and when I turned on the car radio, Scot Shields had intentionally walked A.J. Pierzynski so he could face Carlos Quentin. Oh, mistake (to the tune of a grand slam), but if Aybar hadn't misplayed the ball, there would have been at least one out, and maybe the rest of the inning goes differently. Speier hit the first batter he saw, walked Konerko, and was about as wobbly (from the ESPN game play-by-play — what, you think I was going to watch the rest of that?) as you can imagine.

Jose Arredondo made his major league debut, and gave up a solo homer to Nick Swisher. The bullpen just can't get any worse, and they have to get better. It's incredible to me that the bullpen hasn't blown more games than they have given how bad they've been all year.

What a lousy way to greet John Lackey in a fine debut game. Too bad Mike Napoli's sac fly was the only offense the team could muster against Chisox pitching.

ESPN Box

Labels: angels, blecch, recaps, white sox

Not literally, of course, but in two ways, Jon Garland does resemble the Gumpian box:

1. "You never know what you're gonna get."
2. In that he resembles something, soft, squishy, and brown, though in this case wholly inedible.

It's hard to put my head around just how awful Garland was in this one. Garland gave up a freak triple in the first to Frank Thomas, f'r chrissakes, a man who owns a career eleven, and hadn't hit one in six years. At the end of the day, Thomas was a measely home run away from the cycle. Garland gave up bloops (Thomas' triple), bleeders, and blasts (homers to Daric Barton and Jack Hannahan). Hard-hit balls to guys like Thomas are forgivable; multiple home runs to guys with sub-.500 slugging averages in the hitter-friendly PCL are not.

So it went with Garland. Those of us in the stands were encouraged by the early traction the offense got against Chad Gaudin, a pitcher they've typically teed off on before. The Halos recovered the first run in the second inning on a Torii Hunter single and a two base error during Robb Quinlan's at-bat, when Gaudin threw away a pickoff toss and Q knocked Hunter in with an RBI single. But that was, really, it for Angels-style baseball, because no other Angel batter got past second, save for Mike Napoli and his majestic blast that glided over the centerfield wall.

The rest, of course, was so much forgettable dross, with the A's posting an ungodly eight runs in the seventh, as Garland struggled to make outs, or count his fingers, or whatever it is he was doing out there on the mound. Maybe it involved swatting away the innumerable bugs that plagued us all night long. Even in our vantage from the cheap seats in 524, hundreds of these tiny bugs lit all over us (I was wearing shorts so it was even more noticeable) all night long. I slapped at my exposed skin constantly throughout the night, the bugs not biting but providing a constant nuisance — much like the Angels' pitching in this game. I can only imagine how much worse both must have been at field level.

Regardless of the awfulness of the insects, after Garland faced Thomas to lead off the seventh and surrendered a double in the gap, that called out Chris Bootcheck. Bootcheck, we learned from the radio broadcast, was among those touched by the same flu that knocked out Jeff Mathis, a leftover from the Boston trip. (This ailment prompted some roster moves that sent Jose Arredondo and Rich Thompson down to Salt Lake, and recalled catcher Bobby Wilson and SS/3B Brandon Wood.) If he was infected, it showed up in his pitching right away, as he gave up a two-run jack to Emil Brown, and didn't retire a batter until he got Mark Ellis to strike out looking, six batters later. Bootcheck left the game with a tail-between-legs ERA of 37.80 according to the Yahoo box score, the scoreboard reckoning it as 43.20. In the end, the last out of the inning was recorded by Darren O'Day, who didn't face another batter lest the inflamed ERA disease infect him, too.

All the buggery going on in the background meant that Robb Quinlan got a rare start, and he actually didn't do too badly offensively considering the barnacles growing on his bat, but he might have had a hand in extending the obscene seventh inning by failing to make a good throw on Denorfia's infield bouncer. Erick Aybar also uncorked a bad throw in the third on Ellis's infield hit, pulling Casey Kotchman off the bag; Kotch, at least, recovered to get the ball rather than letting it fly into the stands.

This kind of mayhem is pretty damned unusual. In fact, the A's have not beaten the Angels by 12 or more runs since an 18-2 shellacking at Anaheim Stadium on June 27, 1996 that included a very functional Jason Giambi, pre-Cardinals Mark McGwire, Scott Brosius before the Yankees polluted him, and seven home runs (two by Brosius). The last time the Angels were blown out at home in April by any team by 12 or more runs was on April 27, 1994, in which the Orioles whipped the Angels 13-1; the only Anderson in the game was Brady, and he wore a Baltimore uniform.

All of this is to say, these are pretty inauspicious signs, but it's not like the Angels are without depth. If Garland continues to be this awful (and he's been pretty much Jeff Weaver, 2008, albeit with more good outings than the Angels got from Jeff), Nick Adenhart beckons, incomplete as he might be.

Bobby Wilson made his major league debut and got a hit in his first at bat, in the ninth against reliever Dallas Braden. Go him.

I also note, with some sadness but also recognizing the thing's inevitability, a few scattered boos when Garret Anderson struck out to lead off the ninth. Patience is running thin.

Yahoo box • Recap

Labels: angels, athletics, blecch, recaps