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

On July 31, 1997, the White Sox executed their infamous White Flag Trade, which signaled their surrender of that season. Sending Wilson Alvarez, Danny Darwin, and Roberto Hernández to the Giants, the Sox got a number of quality players that, three years later, helped them to a division pennant. But at the time it was viewed by Chisox fans as throwing in the towel at a time when the club was a scant 3.5 games back of Cleveland in the standings. That's pretty depressing, but there are times when you must recognize that "win now" is futile.

The Cubs are well past that. And as my friend Al Yellon has repeatedly observed, the Cubs persist in running minor leaguers out in spring training well past the point when other teams normally would have reassigned them to minor league camp. All true, yet I see a certain, limited, possibly delusional amount of method to Theo Epstein's madness: it strikes me that a couple of things are possible, and maybe both simultaneously:

• He has no faith in the 25-man roster, and so wants to see what the next generation is capable of against major leaguers.
• He is showcasing minor leaguers most likely to figure in trades.

It seems to me the second is much less likely than the first, given the Cubs are widely known to be in rebuilding mode, but if you are going to post a throw-in, why not give him some exposure? A risk worth taking, in other words.

If that was the point of today's outing for Hunter Cervenka or Neil Ramirez, it did both a brief glimmer of good, and therefore the team; but the frustrations of the 2014 Cubs are quite obvious. It strikes me likely they will lose 100 games, which will set a postwar record for that franchise of losing 90 games or more three years running for the first time. (The last time they had done that was 1928-1930.) It is genuinely disturbing that one of the game's marquee clubs should get beaten down so; but the world is different since Theo took over the club, as this Grantland piece ably demonstrates. While I remain a Dodger partisan in the National League, I am here with my wife to watch the Cubs, and root for them. We count the days until they return to competence.

MLB.com box

Labels: cubs, padres

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

It's pretty telling that this year the Cubs previews for the most part have photos of the iconic Theo Epstein on them, and no player. That's because, unfortunately, the team is not especially good, and because the major hope they have for the future is in the future. Strangely enough, the Cubs and Red Sox have still not finalized compensation for the "deal" that sent Epstein to Chicago, long after all parties agreed that was what was going to happen. (Former Cubs pitcher Chris Carpenter had to have bone chips removed from his elbow, sidelining him for 2012, leading the Red Sox to revisit the issue. Not that they wouldn't have anyway.)

The Angels got two runs on a Kendrick double and a Pujols homer, but that was it, as Cubs starter Paul Maholm settled down thereafter. Chicago got one back in the fifth off a two out double by Joe Mather, who scored on a Howie Kendrick error. The Angels more or less left the field in the sixth, leaving things to their minor league reserves. (There was a funny story about Albert Pujols miscounting outs and prematurely heading to the dugout, but, hey, it's spring.) Garrett Richards (who is so unfamiliar to me that I missed the final "t" in his name) managed a good outing (sub-quality-start level!) in his final bid for the fifth starter role, giving up only two earned runs (three total).

Really, I'm ready for the season to start.

Angels recap • MLB Box

Labels: angels, cubs, recaps, spring training

Yesterday was a split-squad day for the Dodgers, who I have followed almost not at all this year. In fact, this was the first and only game I planned on seeing them at, mainly due to the fact that I have a real loathing for their home park at Camelback. It's also because I don't expect them to do much in these twilight hours of the McCourt ownership fiasco. While I'm moderately optimistic about the new Magic/Kasten/Guggenheim partnership, I can't quite lick the feeling that the purchase price comes with hidden strings that may eventually tie down the team like Gulliver.

4A journeyman Fernando Nieve got the start, and amazingly — or not so amazingly, if you looked at the Cubs lineup for any length of time — he did pretty well through four innings, surrendering his only run in the fourth on a two out solo shot to Ian Stewart. Stewart had landed on the Cubs as part of the deal that sent don't-know-what-to-do-with-him quandary outfielder Tyler Colvin to Colorado. Colvin showed hope for eventual slugging in AA, but largely fizzled in three years of major league service. Stewart had injury problems in 2011 that precluded success, and so both ended up in a change-of-scenery trade.

Despite the split squad, if you squinted hard, you could sort of see today's lineup as a regular season game lineup for the Dodgers if Andre Ethier were injured (say) and the team needed to give Matt Kemp a day off. Dee Gordon got the leadoff duties, and against Cubs starter Ryan Dempster he did nothing at all. The big rap on Gordon is that he lacks the experience to handle major league pitching (especially given his rapid ascent through the minors). Yesterday did little to dispel that, though eventually he did knock Manny Corpas around for a triple with two on, a hit that eventually cost Corpas the loss. I'm not sure I qualify Corpas as a major leaguer at this point, but it was a nice piece of hitting and an even more exciting few moments of baserunning.

From the pleasant surprises department, we got Matt Angle, who reached three times on an infield hit, a single, and a walk. Angle was a waiver pick of the Dodgers earlier in the year; he's speedy as all get out, but lacks any kind of offensive value with the bat, lacking both strike zone judgment and power. Another 4A suspect, Luis Cruz, managed to pick up a couple hits, as did regular James Loney.

The pitching staff held up well against the Cubs' popgun offense, though that was admittedly expected; it wasn't much of a contest. When you are throwing in a Logan Bawcom in a game, there's a reason. The Cubs accordingly managed to scratch out a run in the ninth, with a leadoff triple by Marlon Byrd, but Steve Clevinger knocked him in at the cost of an out. That foreclosed on the Cubs chances for the game.

Dodgers recap • MLB Box

Labels: cubs, dodgers, recaps, spring training

It is fair to say that Salt River Fields at Talking Stick is my favorite of the new parks in the Cactus League, mainly for its construction. Shade, in the infield at least, is nearly ubiquitous, which makes the sometimes scorching Cactus League much less formidable for the paying customers. I am less enamored of its predictable approach to "alternate" food. Every venue, save for concourse vendors and clearly-marked traditional hot dog hawkers, has its designated "alterna" chow. Here, a salad, there, a "burrito" as practiced in ancient refried-bean-and-yellow-cheese Mexican restaurants run by someone named Stan. But here I quibble; judging a spring training facility by the food is about like judging Miss America on her actual talents. Or something.

On to the Diamondbacks, who pulled off a worst-to-first turnaround nearly unprecedented in modern history. As BPro's writeup evinces, it had only been done three times by teams residing in divisions with more than four clubs, making it something of a rarity. They accomplished this feat by

• Radically reducing offensive strikeouts. Public enemy number one was Mark Reynolds, the team's whifftastic third baseman. (Reynolds staged a minor resurgence in Baltimore, hitting .221/.323/.483, but his OBP was roughly the same as from 2010, and his -22.9 UZR ranks among the worst starting defensive third basemen in the game.)
• This move, in turn, went a long way toward improving defense. Arizona went to fourth in the NL (.701 defensive efficiency) from an exactly league-average ninth in 2010 (.689).
• Fixing the bullpen. The Snakes had the second-worst bullpen in the league in 2010, so going up from there was almost an inevitability. Bringing in former (mostly) Mariner J.J. Putz as a free agent surprisingly did not backfire, and key acquisition from the Reynolds trade David Hernandez threw more innings than anyone else in relief for a very respectable 3.38 ERA.

Of course, it also didn't hurt that the rest of the division was not notoriously strong. The Giants' 2009 turned out to be a one-off, and with the Padres and Dodgers fighting for air amid the Moores and McCourt divorces respectively, nobody else was really poised to contend for the crown.

So, the Diamondbacks, for the moment, appear to be the class of the division, although I seem to recall thinking similar things entering 2011 about the Giants. With that in mind, we watched a split-squad Cubs team go down versus a very strong outing by staff ace Ian Kennedy, who pitched seven innings of one-run ball. Cubs starter Jay Jackson only lasted four innings but looked creditable, at least, which is all you can hope for from a minor leaguer who's hoping to eventually crack the rotation. He'll be playing out his age 24 season in AAA, and with a team as bad as the Cubs are expected to be, not to mention the usual injuries accruing to a starting rotation, he'll get his chance to shine sooner rather than later.

One of the fun parts of the game, I confess, was a guy I found myself cheering for in last year's postseason, Paul Goldschmidt. Goldy got to Jackson in the fourth with a laser shot into the outfield berms. While it's kind of a stretch to think he'll have the impact this year he had on last year's NLDS (.438/.526/.813??), it's no big leap to imagine him becoming a high-OBP/SLG star the Snakes have needed at first base for a very long time.

For a spring training game involving the Cubs, actual attendance was surprisingly light, only 11,573. An engaging game at one of my favorite spring training parks: this is what Camelback Ranch should have been.

Cubs recap

Labels: cubs, diamondbacks, recaps, spring training

The book on the Cubs this 2012 is that they'll need an awful lot of things to go right for them to even hit breakeven, which, among the Wrigleyville faithful, will amount to something like an impossible dream. The soberer thinkers among them seem to have scoped out a 71-win season as the greatest likelihood, which is to say a long, dreary spring and summer lie ahead. The offense has little to offer in the way of legitimate thrills. Save for young Starlin Castro (whom Al Yellon recommended the team long-term recently), the team's young position players largely fall into the placeholder category.

The good news, such as there is of it, is that the team's downside due to creaky veterans is somewhat limited. The lone bad Jim Hendry-era deal appears limited to Alfonso Soriano, who will haunt the lineup (or at least the payroll) through 2014. Marlon Byrd, not a liability but not really a star, has one more year on his contract, this one, as does the surprising (but not overwhelming) Ryan Dempster. Even more good news — perhaps the best in generations — came from the exodus of Theo Epstein to Chicago following a tiff with ownership in Boston. With an unmistakable "we're getting the band back together" vibe, he hauled in Jed Hoyer and Jason McLeod, both who had only briefly been running things in San Diego as the team's GM and AGM, respectively.

"I had low expectations — and they were dashed!"
— my friend Genny Dazzo

Something very like that happened with the Cubs yesterday, who committed two errors, both of which were followed by runs by the Padres. What surprised me immensely was that starter Travis Wood was charged with no unearned runs. Is this the opposite of homer scoring? However you call it, Wood seemed to me to be beset by much worse numbers than he really deserved, and pitched reasonably well the first time and a third or so through the order, his plunking of Will Venable notwithstanding.

That said, it was a Padres split squad he succumbed to, and that team is notably not going to be very good, either. They finished last in the NL West last year at 71-91, a record the 2012 Cubs might even envy if things go really badly for them. One spring game is never going to tell you the whole story for an upcoming season unplayed; the whole point of the exercise is hope. For the Padres, much of that has to come from the crazy rich $1 billion/20 year TV deal the team unexpectedly pulled off in February. For the Cubs, it's all about the draft and international signings. Neither team has much real hope for winning 2012, and only limited aspirations the year after, either.

MLB Box

Labels: cubs, padres, recaps, spring training

Thus rectifying an appalling oversight by the BBWAA.

Santo becomes the 12th major league third baseman to be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, the first elected at the position since Wade Boggs in 2005. Including three selections from the Negro leagues, there are now 15 third basemen in the Hall of Fame. In 15 major league seasons, Santo compiled a .277 lifetime batting average, with 2,254 hits in 2,243 games, while totaling 1,331 runs batted in and 365 doubles.

Santo died a December 3, 2010. This goes a long way toward rectifying the reputation of the Hall, which notoriously underrepresents third basemen.

Labels: cubs, hall of fame

• Steve Dilbeck takes a look at the potential list of suitors for the Dodgers. Just say no to Chinese tongs.
• Maury Brown reckons the Dodgers could fetch up to $1.5 billion. Unfortunately, he doesn't explain how that happens, but argues that the minimum bid for the Dodgers would be at the Forbes valuation of $800M. Of course, that opens a significant question: why is it that the creditors have to be made whole? Presumably, that gets into how trustworthy MLB as an entity is, and they're not going to ever let that happen (especially with the hired help, doubly so with labor negotiations ongoing). Unfortunately, that sets a floor of about a billion dollars on the sale price, making me wonder what kind of ultra-rich guy (or guys) would have the scratch to buy, and what would the add-on effects be of spending so much money up front.
• You may have heard that Tony LaRussa announced his retirement on the day after his Cardinals won the World Series. The hole in St. Louis' coaching situation may well be filled by an ex-Cub, Ryne Sandberg, who was the Phillies' AAA manager this last season. Sandberg was passed over for Quade two years ago.
• the Cubs announced Theo Epstein, Jed Hoyer, and Jason McLeod are all coming to the Cubs, in the roles, respectively, of team President, general manager, and scouting director. Compensation to the Red Sox and Padres has yet to be established ...
• The Dodgers named Sue Falsone head athletic trainer, the first woman so named in any major sport.
• Three Dodgers and three Red Sox (and one Angel!) won Gold Gloves; the Dodgers were Clayton Kershaw, Matt Kemp and Andre Ethier, and the Angel was Erick Aybar.
• The Dodgers made their first signing of the offseason by giving Juan Rivera the starting left field job on a one-year deal with a team option for 2013, dollars unknown.
• Bill Shaikin just tweeted that there will be no minimum price for the Dodgers, but potential buyers will be approved by MLB before bidding starts.
• Update: Peter O'Malley-era GM Fred Claire is active in a group seeking to buy the team.

Probably to be updated as the day wears on ...

Labels: angels, awards, cardinals, cubs, dodgers, hot stove

NBC Sports' Hardball Talk passes along a report from the Sports Blog Nation DRays Bay that Arte Moreno, Angels team president John Carpino, and Rays GM Andrew Friedman were seen having dinner in a St. Petersburg restaurant.

If that happens, it would be the third GM ganked this year from that chair and into another one, as Bleed Cubbie Blue reports Jed Hoyer will leave the Padres to become the Cubs' GM. How this happened I have no idea, but it seems ridiculous to me that the smaller market teams are letting bigger market teams just yank their GMs like that. (I assume the Rays gave the Angels permission to speak with Friedman. If not, it could be considered interference.)

Labels: angels, cubs, padres, rays, red sox, rumors

Joe Posnanski can get severe logorrhea at times, but mostly he's the kind of guy I wish the Times would replace Bill Plaschke with: sensible, great writing chops, not afraid of number crunching, and honest. His piece on the Cubs' acquisition of Theo Epstein is typically understated and charming:

See, this is not about how the Cubs have not won a World Series since 1908. Everybody talks about that, but it’s deceiving. Between 1909 and 1945 the Cubs won seven pennants. They were a dominant team in the National League. It just so happened that they kept losing World Series. That was a different kind of pain.

No, the streak we’re talking about here is 66 years of not even reaching a World Series. It is the longest such streak in the history of baseball. Every single team except the Cubs that was in existence in 1946 has been to at least two World Series since — and the only team with only two pennants since World War II is the Chicago White Sox, who have probably had something rub off. The Pittsburgh Pirates have been to three. The Cleveland Indians have been to four. The Baltimore Orioles — formerly the St. Louis Browns — have been to six. Even before Theo’s so-called-jinxed Boston Red Sox had won in 2004 and 2007, they had been to four World Series since World War II. They just hadn’t won any of them.

Labels: cubs, front office

Various and sundry on a Wednesday morn:

• T.J. Simers unloads on the McCourts, which these days is shooting fish in a barrel, but they deserves it.
• MLB withdrew a bid to have the McCourts' attorneys disqualified from bankruptcy proceedings.
• The Dodgers and MLB traded charges at yesterday's bankruptcy proceedings, the Dodgers hauling out their "MLB forced us into bankruptcy, boo hoo" schtick again, while Fox threatened not to air the last two years of Dodgers games they were contractually required to do if the Dodgers rebid their TV rights including the final year of the contract and in advance of the negotiating window.

  Under the MLB Constitution, the league cannot strip an owner of his team without providing him a list of charges in writing, extending an opportunity for a hearing and securing the vote of three-fourths of other owners.

  "The commissioner does not have the authority to force an owner to sell," the Dodgers' filing read.

  Instead, the team claims, Selig responded to the "enormous negative publicity" of last year's divorce trial by refusing to let the Dodgers sign a new television contract with Fox, take a loan from Fox or tap into the MLB credit line.

  His lies are getting bigger and bolder over time:

  The Dodgers said it was "unlikely that Fox Sports can assert any meaningful damages" for an early sale of the television rights. In turn, Fox threatened a damages claim so high it would threaten McCourt's promise to repay all creditors in full and "render meaningless" his financial projections.

• Bryan Stow is out of the hospital for good now. Godspeed to him, and I hope Frank pays and pays for that man's misery.
• In Boston and Cubs news, it appears that Theo Epstein has a 5-year/$15M deal with the Cubs, per a report from WEEI, the Red Sox' radio broadcaster.

Labels: bryan stow, cubs, dodgers, front office, mccourts, red sox

Per ESPN, though an interesting tweet from @bigleaguestew claims he was told he was fired on July 22 but stayed on to sign the draft picks. How weird is that?

I do wonder if Tony Reagins' head will be next. An expensive, bad team should be a fireable offense.

Labels: cubs, firings, front office

The ex-Angel is 38 years old, and as Matthew Pouliot points out, Ortiz could be one of three pitchers with more than 1,300 innings pitched with a career ERA over 5.00. (He currently stands at 4.93 ERA in 1389.2 IP, with a 85-82 record in 212 starts.)

Labels: cubs, ex-angels, transactions

Maury Brown tweets that the Dodgers are now in ninth in attendance (he must mean attendance per game rather than overall total), and could conceivably end the year behind the Cubs. The Dodgers have never been outdrawn by the Cubs in any year since moving to Los Angeles. That would really be something. May as well have Vin Scully calling the Albuquerque games, then.

Labels: cubs, dodgers

Dodgers Find It's Ethier To Lose With Your Starting Outfielder Sidelined: Cubs 5, Dodgers 1

Andre Ethier a late scratch due to elbow trouble, and what is it with elbows this year? First Casey Blake, then Jonathan Broxton, and minutes later, Ethier all had elbow troubles that kept them off the field. As the rules for hitting streaks make no mention of whether the streak is logged by consecutive team games or player games, I assume this means that the latter is favored over the former. It's a question MLB.com columnist Anthony Castrovince asks but frustratingly never answers.

So, the Bud Selig Dodgers after getting out to a 3-0 start are now back down to 7-7. The Dodgers were done in by Ted Lilly's propensity to give up gopherballs, and while he does that normally, I note he does not lead the club in this aspect, that being Clayton Kershaw's dubious honor.

The Dodgers' only run came on Jay Gibbons' sac fly in the sixth. A disappointing outing, to be sure.

Update: I should add something pointed out by Eric Stephen on Twitter yesterday, namely that the Dodgers' 28,419 listed attendance was the fourth sub-30,000 game this year; the Dodgers hadn't had a single game with less than 30,000 listed attendance since 2004.

ESPN Box • Dodgers recap

Announcer Rally Masks Help Angels Win In Extras, Extras, Extras: Angels 5, Red Sox 3 (13 Innings)

Not only an incredibly long game — there was a 2:35 rain delay, and the overall time to completion was a butt-numbing five hours — but the outcome was more than welcome despite a bullpen implosion from closer Jordan Walden, who gave up the tying runs in the bottom of the ninth to force extras. I don't think I've ever seen Fenway that empty before, and given the ultimate outcome, I just can't complain.

Stuck in a scoreless tie during a duel between starters Ervin Santana and Josh Beckett, the rain delay — which started in the top of the fifth — took both out of the equation, and the game henceforth became a battle of bullpens. The Angels took the first lead off, improbably, a two-run homer by Vernon Wells in the seventh, who gifted Dan Wheeler with an 11.32 ERA afterwards. The Angels got what looked like an insurance run in the top of the ninth after Hideki Okajima gave up a bases-loaded sac fly to Erick Aybar. Boston had previously scratched out a single run in the bottom of the eighth on Fernando Rodney's ill-advised wild throw to the plate on what was ruled an infield single; Rodney would have been better served to keep the ball in his pocket, though it's not clear to me that the baserunner at third, Adrian Gonzalez, wouldn't have scored anyway.

Bobby Abreu's bases-loaded single off Daisuke Matsuzaka finally won the game in the 13th, but the most fun part of this game was the lucha libre rally masks the announcers wore in the booth. Pure awesomeness, and I expect to see them in the team store presently.

Update: Last night's 2:45 AM EDT finish time is the latest finish for any game, ever in available Red Sox records.

ESPN Box • Angels recap

Labels: angels, cubs, dodgers, recaps, red sox

Can We Just Stop Playing The Red Sox Already? Red Sox 7, Angels 4

The AP recap claimed this amounted to a "thumping" of Danny Haren and the Angels; the latter was true (oh, how it was true), but the former -- four runs over seven innings? Not a quality start, but hardly a "thumping".

Another night, another no-show from the offense. I've really had enough of this. Somebody needs to wake Mike Scioscia up from his slumbers. That's, what, one game they've won from the Sawx in the ensuing time since their 2009 ALDS victory?

ESPN Box • Angels recap

Broxton Bombs, Ethier Goes 29: Cubs 4, Dodgers 1

Once more, the league's worst bullpen coughed up another loss, with Jonathan Broxton featuring front and center, and showing why he can't be counted on anymore, walking two batters on eight consecutive balls. Both scored after Blake Hawksworth entered the game, sealing Broxton's fate as the losing pitcher.

The Dodgers took a 1-0 lead on Matt Kemp's RBI single in the sixth, but that was the only lead they had in the game. It was quickly erased in the top of the seventh on Carlos Pena's solo bomb off starter Chad Billingsley.

Andre Ethier's sole hit, a single to right, came in the fourth, to no effect; he was stranded on base. That takes him to 29 consecutive games, putting him alone in second place in franchise streaks, with two left to tie Willie Davis in 1969. It seems to me meet that he's chasing a record set in what was basically a lost year, the team going 85-77 and finishing fourth behind the Atlanta Braves (remember that craziness?). It's a sideshow.

Update: Jon thinks Broxton might be hurt, especially with his fastball down around 91.

ESPN Box • Dodgers recap

Jon On The McCourt Fiasco

His word against everyone else's, and what's interesting to me is just how little effort McCourt seems to be putting in to convince people he's sound. Instead, he either openly dissembles or answers questions that weren't asked. As I tweeted yesterday at the conclusion of the Mason and Ireland show, McCourt will keep showing up to not answer these questions. We have to reckon that the main reason is that he wishes to appear contrite without ever expressing it that way, because that means confessing his actual mistakes. (It's funny that he keeps wanting absolution without ever describing what it is that he did wrong.) McCourt was on another talk show this morning, on 1360 AM, and pulled more of the same sort of non-responsive answers, followed up by much fawning from whoever it was behind the mic at the radio station. These guys don't see a lot of owners, and so they extend much flattery to any that do show up. I don't see why; Frank will cease to have that title presently.

Update: Molly Knight was following McCourt's appearance on KTLA today (that's four in less than 24 hours), and tweeted

McCourt tells KTLA: "The Dodgers do not have a financial problem." I will re-tweet this in a month.

Why Vernon Wells Sucks

Toronto is a nice field for right-handed power hitters, while Angels Stadium de Anaheim isn't. But more than that, I expect we're seeing a significant regression from Vernon, perhaps of the career-ending variety. What a terrible trade.

Labels: analysis, angels, cubs, dodgers, mccourts, recaps, red sox

Weaver Takes His First Loss — Where Else? — At Fenway: Red Sox 9, Angels 5

I stopped listening to this game not long after Dustin Pedroia's epic 13-pitch at-bat that ended in a two-run RBI single for the Boston second baseman. Ironically, it was the only hit he got that day, but it was a huge two-out blow. Weaver threw over thirty pitches that inning, and just couldn't get one past Pedroia when he needed to. If your lone bad outing consists of a quality start in Fenway, you're doing something right, loss or no.

Though the Angels scored five runs, two on a Vernon Wells home run (yay, maybe he'll actually prove to be useful, though I'm not holding my breath), the score was by then 9-2 thanks to bullpen implosions by Hisanori Takahashi and Francisco Rodriguez in the seventh. That is to say, the offense looked better in the box score than it really was, and the bullpen let this one get away.

ESPN Box • Angels recap

This One Goes To 28 As Dodgers Cruise Past Cubs: Dodgers 5, Cubs 2

Andre Ethier extended his hit streak to 28, getting there on a fifth inning infield squibber that drove Jerry Sands home from third base. The Dodgers got to Cubs starter James Russell in the second inning, quickly inverting an early 1-0 lead Chicago picked up off Clayton Kershaw on Geovany Soto's two-out RBI single. All of the Dodgers runs scored against Russell, an emergency expedient whose time appears to have passed.

Noted: a good outing for Jonathan Broxton, who pitched a clean ninth.

ESPN Box • Dodgers recap

Labels: cubs, dodgers, recaps

A chilly, windy day at Wrigley was no help to the Cubbies, whom the Dodgers dismantled with contributions up and down the lineup, though four of the runs were driven in by Juan Uribe, on a pair of homers. Every starter — and this includes the pitcher, Chad Billingsley — got at least one hit. That kind of a day.

ESPN Box

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As Jon notes, the Dodgers have outscored their opponents 23-6 in the Bud Selig ownership era, which seems as though they are celebrating something. Of course, I don't put any stock in such flights of fancy, but it seems kicking this interloper to the curb can only mean good things, and if the team goes on a tear in his absence, so much the better. On that note, a number of related linkies from hither and yon regarding the McCourt non-ownership situation:

• McCourt went to Time Warner in addition to Fox hat in hand looking for money, and was well received.

  "I can't think of another situation in baseball where this has happened," Andrew Zimbalist, an economics professor at Smith College and an expert in sports contracts, said Thursday. "Fox has been doing unprecedented things in baseball all along but it seems pretty apparent what this is about. Fox sees an opportunity to forestall the Dodgers' one day creating their own sports channel and locking Fox out of the telecasting market.

  "Fox sees an owner in distress, under duress to raise capital that allows McCourt to keep his head above water. That was their ploy."

  If, as seems likely, McCourt loses the Dodgers, the Bingham McCutcheon lawsuit as collateral seems pretty flimsy.
• McCourt is testing the limits of what he can actually do as a non-owner. Tim Brown tweeted that he gave the employees Friday afternoon off, a common enough occurrence on Good Friday, but if MLB is in charge of operations, who is running the show?
• Steve Garvey and Ron Burkle announced they are launching a group to buy the Dodgers.

  Burkle, 58, has a home in Beverly Hills. Forbes estimates his net worth at $3.2 billion. At least two other local billionaires also have been reported to be preparing bids for the Dodgers: developer Alan Casden, who pursued the team when it was last up for sale, and financier Alec Gores, whose brother Tom bought the NBA's Detroit Pistons earlier this month.

  Another NBA owner, Mark Cuban of the Dallas Mavericks, previously has expressed interest in the Dodgers. In an email Friday, Cuban declined to say whether he would be interested in the Dodgers — "They aren't for sale," he wrote — but said he had received numerous messages from Dodgers fans in the three days since Selig acted.

  "Between tweets and emails, I couldn't count them all," Cuban wrote.

  Milwaukee Brewers owner Mark Attanasio, Boston Red Sox chairman Tom Werner and Chicago White Sox executive Dennis Gilbert, all of whom live in the Los Angeles area, are expected to consider bidding should the Dodgers go up for sale. Attanasio told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel he was "committed to Milwaukee"; Werner told the Boston Globe he had "no interest" in pursuing the Dodgers.

  Of course, as Bob Timmermann reminded me on Facebook, Garvey has his own profligate, debt-soaked financial past that would scarcely make him a better owner than Frank:

  For years, Garvey and his wife, Candace, have neglected bills large and small, leaving dozens of people who either worked for them or sold them merchandise wondering if they were ever going to get paid.

  The Garveys drove luxury cars, shopped in upscale boutiques and traveled extensively even as they were pursued by creditors. Garvey's gardener took him to small claims court to recover $1,773. A mirror installer did the same over $809. A caterer received a court order to seize valuable artwork from the Garveys until they paid her $14,000 bill.

  Garvey owes attorneys more than $300,000, according to court records.

  Many a former athlete has fallen on hard times, but Garvey -- known during his Dodger days as "Mr. Clean" -- is different. As his own financial troubles deepened, he continued to cast himself as a principled and accomplished businessman, charging up to $10,000 to give motivational speeches.

  The only good news about this is that Garvey wouldn't be providing the operating money to run the team. The bad news is that all the temptations that lured McCourt into leveraging the team into a person ATM would still remain.

Labels: cubs, dodgers, mccourts, recaps

Stuck with the fourth-worst offense in the league, Oakland last year had little reason to think they were going to markedly improve this offseason. Signings of an increasingly decrepit Hideki Matsui, and trades for Josh Willingham and David DeJesus, while not awe-inspiring, made for enough of an improvement at DH, left field, and right, respectively. Of that trio, we only got to see Matsui and Willingham, but neither one was overly impressive against Carlos Silva.

Silva himself had something to prove, as he has been largely a cipher for the Cubs this spring training. Even after yesterday's favorable results, Silva ended the day with a 10.90 ERA in five appearances and 17.1 IP. The Cubs faithful had been looking to eject Silva and let him land where he may, $12M (minus $5.5M paid for by his former team, Seattle) remaining on his deal or no. Left to my own devices, I would leave him in the rotation for now and see how long he lasts before throwing him out; it's not as though the Cubs have a lot of rotational depth this year.

The A's got a single run in the first on a leadoff single by Coco Crisp and a followup double by Willingham, but Oakland failed to get a runner into scoring position thereafter, and only even had a single baserunner past that, Cliff Pennington's one-out single in the eighth. Pinch runner Andy LaRoche erased himself on a badly timed steal attempt that ended the frame; if that was an indication of the sort of baserunning the A's have going for them, they're not going to get any better offensively.

One surprise was seeing Brad Ziegler struggle as much as he did in his half of the eighth. He gave up an infield single to lead off the inning, and that seemed to unhinge him a bit. Even though the next two batters mde outs, he gave up an intentional pass to Scott Moore, and an unintentional one to Welington Castillo; he then plunked Alfonso Soriano to drive in an insurance run for the Cubs. Probably just early season jitters for the A's submariner, but it's worth keeping an eye on.

Cubs recap

Labels: athletics, cubs, spring training

The only time we're going to be at Camelback Ranch this spring, and the game was shockingly lightly attended. How lightly attended? Last year, we parked offsite, accidentally, and it turned out to be a great idea thanks to the poor design of the parking lot — which has only one way in and one way out. This year?

The overflow lot on Camelback and 107th wasn't even close to being used. As mentioned yesterday, the Dodgers' spring training attendance is down 43% from last year, and I would say that figure looked even a bit short in the fields today, even despite the opponent Chicago — the Cubs drawing well everywhere in Spring Training owing to the paucity of tickets at Hohokam.

One consequence of this is that I have no complaints this time about the parking lot situation, it being I elected to park elsewhere. Too, the modest crowds allowed for better shooting and a general ease within the seats that felt missing last year.

Both starters pitched creditably, and though Chad Billingsley lasted six, he labored in that inning, walking the bases loaded with two out until finally he got ex-Rockie Scott Baker to line out to center. Offensively, the Dodgers nibbled and bit at Ryan Dempster until finally breaking through in the fifth, when Rafael Furcal converted Eugenio Velez's leadoff single into a run. Sadly, Velez later ended up getting carted off the field with some sort of injury running out an infield single. Never a strong candidate to make the 25-man roster out of spring training, Dylan Hernandez says he's liable to start the season in AAA, and MLB.com reports it's a "severe ankle strain".

Baker crushed an offering from Ramon Troncoso to tie the game at 1-1, but the Dodgers eventually rallied in the tenth against Jeff Samardzija to win on a little bloop single from, of all people, Orlando Mercado, the third catcher to enter the game and the least likely to get a job on the major league roster this season. Spring is full of surprises.

MLB Recap

Labels: cubs, dodgers, injuries, spring training