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

Buy your "Congratulations, 2009 AL Champion Yankees" merchandise right now at MLB.com. (Direct link to the merch.)

Angels 2009 AL Champions merch here. Via HH in the comments.

Update:

Labels: angels, morons, postseason, stupid ideas, yankees

Following Alex Rios' golden sombrero Thursday, the following fracas ensued (h/t: Fanhouse via BTF):

The moral is: do not argue with idiots.

Update: A subsequent e-mail makes me want to emphasize something, and that is that Rios does himself no favors here, especially in an era of YouTube and cellphone video cameras. But the guy upbraiding him for his bad day at the plate is being an idiot.

Labels: blue jays, morons, stupid ideas

The Beaver County Times/Allegheny County Times reports the Dodgers are talking to the Pirates about a deal to get shortstop Jack Wilson.

The stumbling block appears to be what the Dodgers are willing to give up in return. Two sources indicated the Pirates are having a hard determining exactly which players Los Angeles would give up in a trade.

A Dodgers source indicated that Los Angeles might be willing to deal center fielder Matt Kemp. The 23-year-old right-handed hitter, who has both power and speed, is considered a potential superstar.

Kemp is hitting .283 with seven home runs, 45 RBIs and 18 stolen bases in 82 games this season.

Labels: dodgers, morons, rumors, trades

This:

The Angels are all about winning in October.

Which is why they've only won one postseason series since 2002. They've assembled some good teams, but certainly not world-beaters.

McCourt finally has the right manager,

Who kept running an apparently injured Scott Proctor out there in game-critical situations until his ERA inflated to 6.82, despite never having an in-season ERA under 4.00 as a straight reliever.

Blake DeWitt, he's a ballplayer.

Sure. And one that owns a .260/.323/.380 line, a good kid who was hitting way over his head back in the first couple months of his callup. Is he for real? He could be, and only continued playing time — maybe not at the major league level — will be able to tell. But trust me, you put a lineup like that together at a couple more positions and we'll start to hear from Ned how it's time to unload the kids.

Yet the Angels had won 11 more games.

Why?

The Angels have a culture that believes in winning over statistics, winning over awards, winning over everything.

The Angels also have more home runs (71 as of this morning, vs 58) and a higher slugging average (.382 vs. .377).

Some nights, many nights, the Dodgers are the worst possible embodiment in a town that understands baseball.

They are the anti-Angels.

Part of the reason that Paul DePodesta was fired from his job as the previous Dodgers general manager was because, during his final aborted managerial search, he did not even inquire about the availability of Scioscia.

Because, right, like Scioscia's gonna work for the team that kicked him out unceremoniously. Like working for Frank McCourt's dysfunctional front office was tops on his list of life's unfilled checkmarks. Remember when the Dodgers spoke with Bud Black and he told them he'd "sleep on it"? Just how many milliseconds did he have to wait before picking up the phone next morning to tell them "no"?

What really occurs to me with this piece is it amount to a kind of smokescreen. Having chased off the one good GM the Dodgers just happened to stumble upon, Plaschke's now stuck — if he has even the littlest of self-realization available to him, and I find it hard to imagine he doesn't — trying to rationalize his role in that. The result is gagging columns like this one, lashing out at no one and everyone in the Dodgers organization; he could do us all a favor by taking a cue from Oedipus, but it's harder to fall on your typewriter than it is your sword. Is there some reason Plaschke and Simers aren't part of the 250?

Labels: dodgers, morons, plaschke

Via BTF comes this gem of Robothal genuflecty silliness, a possible trade for C.C. Sabathia:

The Brewers aren't the only team pushing hard for Indians left-hander C.C. Sabathia. The Dodgers also are heavily in the mix, according to major-league sources.

However, the Dodgers' bid for Sabathia is complicated by their pursuit of Pirates shortstop Jack Wilson as a replacement for the injured Rafael Furcal, sources say.

To get Wilson, the Dodgers would need to trade the Pirates some of the same players that the Indians want for Sabathia, leaving Los Angeles with a choice of one deal or the other.

Sabathia, 6-5 with a 2.16 ERA in his past 14 starts, is scheduled to pitch twice more before the All-Star break. His next start is Tuesday, but several baseball people expect he will be traded before then.

While the Dodgers might not offer a prospect better than Brewers Class AA left fielder Matt LaPorta, their proposal for Sabathia would include three players, sources say.

Class AA right-hander James McDonald, Class AAA shortstop Chin-Lung Hu and third baseman Andy LaRoche are among the Dodgers' prospects likely drawing consideration form the Indians.

Oh, that's rich. The Dodgers have re-committed to weaning themselves off free agents, right? Eh, not so fast. Via Sons, the most damning thing written yet about Colletti's intentions:

"We're more open-minded to who we may have to move," Colletti said.

Asked if he were referring to the young players, Colletti said, "They're not really young kids anymore."

Colletti's comments echoed what owner Frank McCourt told me earlier in the week when asked about the possibility of trading some of the kids. He said the ones they will hold onto are "the ones who are prepared to put in the work, listen to coaches and get better every day." The kids who they would be willing to part with are "the ones that can't do those things."

Got that, you stubborn cuss Matt Kemp? You've got between now and the trade deadline — which, by my count, is a little under a month — to show you're improving every day, listening to coaches, not moving trash cans, and whatever other nebulous witch-doctory the Dodgers have set up so they can justify trading you. Maybe this isn't on the order of the idiotic Carlos Quentin trade/Eric Byrnes re-signing, but it has every possibility of becoming Ned's Waterloo. Ignore, for the moment, the possibility of Ned pursuing Sabathia; Dodgers pitching is the best in the league, something that even Ned ought to understand. Consider the following:

1. As we already know, Colletti cannot tell a good player from a bad one.
2. The Dodgers "position of need" is offense at short. (As Buttercup showed us, a weak GM makes his dumbest mistakes when being overly concerned about what he's losing at one position instead of what he can do to improve elsewhere.)
3. Colletti has already shown he's willing to deal for junk in the middle infield (e.g. Julio Lugo), even on a short-term rental.

Ipso facto, it makes perfect sense that a trade bringing the aging, OBP- and SLG-challenged Jack Wilson makes a certain amount of sense from the standpoint of being able to see how Ned could justify to himself such a deal. Of course, one of the things Robo likes to do is to stir up the likes of you and me, so his track record on these non-deal deals is rather poor. But viewed from a certain perspective, it's plausible, and Ned's recent published statements make them sound more rather than less so.

Finally: a word from the BTF thread linked above:

McCourt: Are you a Windows or a Mac guy?

Colletti: Huh?

McCourt: Welcome aboard.

Labels: dodgers, morons, rumors, trades

This was the Sunday night ESPN game of the week, and I only heard about a half-hour of the game, total, but what an embarrassment the radio announcers were. Dave Campbell in particular was just awful, on no fewer than three occasions mentioning how Yankees starter Chien-Ming Wang was just "unlucky" that a couple of balls just happened to miss infield gloves. Wang wasn't terrible; in fact, he retired the side in order in five of his seven innings. But when he missed, it just rained on him, as in the four-run fourth that should have been a six-run inning. The umpires (according to the radio callers themselves) huddled and got wrong a foul ball call that should have been a three-run homer for the Mets' Carlos Delgado, probably the first time I can think of that an umpire conference has resulted in the wrong call. And then, later in the game, out comes the old nonsense about how Derek Jeter is one of the great defensive shortstops in the game. No wonder (some) Yankee fans are so arrogant: everyone tells them just how great their team is, even when it's not true. I doubt any of the ones with brains believe it; certainly, the standings would indicate otherwise.

Yahoo box

Labels: mets, morons, radio, yankees

News

• Time to start with the big story, Jeff Passan's Yahoo article about Clayton Kershaw. What is most interesting about it is not what it says about Clayton — the Minotaur almost defies superlatives — but what it says about Ned Colletti's view of prospects:

  "People can become enamored watching prospects play in the minor leagues," Colletti says. "It's always been there. It's heightened with the way communication is now. The Internet. Cell phones. The interest is overwhelming."

  Must ... stifle ... urge ... to ... kill ...

  "What can be lost on them in the excitement of accomplishment is how good the big-league player is," Colletti says. "I believe it's difficult to play in the big leagues. I always try to measure what I'm seeing myself and what I'm hearing, and how that will play in a different environment. I have to hold back from time to time."

  ...

  Then Colletti remembers Edwin Jackson, with the Dodgers under a previous regime, and Matt Riley and Rick Ankiel and David Clyde and a dozen others summoned too early. Fractured psyches or arm troubles or control issues or burnout — all of them, up as teenagers, bombed hard.

  But of course, how can you know whether they've burned out unless you give them enough time, Ned? Seriously, there just about couldn't be a worse time for that level of stupidity to be uttered if Ned tried. If there were any justice on this earth, he'd be fired, not just right now but yesterday.
• After naming Mason Tobin organizational Pitcher of the Month in April, the Angels put him on the DL retroactive to May 11, with a right triceps strain. Replacing him on the Cedar Rapids roster will be LHP Chris Armstrong from AAA Salt Lake.
• Jason Schmidt — speaking of imaginary creatures — is ready for his second rehab start.
• Here's today's Angels and Dodgers system wraps.

Scores

Labels: minors, morons

The Arizona Diamondbacks are playing the Chicago Cubs this morning. With the Snakes leading the NL West, do we here, in Los Angeles, get to see this contest? Of course not... we're stuck with the damn Yankees/Tigers matchup, and of course Extra Innings won't carry it because of the idiotic Fox blackout. As if Fox's "news" coverage wasn't reason enough to hate them, their MLB coverage is equally stupid. Pull your heads out, guys.

Labels: fox, morons, tv

Starting A New Streak: Dodgers 5, Mets 1

This was a fun game, if only because of Blake DeWitt's first major-league home run and the silent treatment his teammates gave him on his return to the dugout. I was going to say something here about the state of the Mets and Oliver Perez in particular (last night's losing pitcher), but time prohibiteth.

Yahoo box • Recap

Bud Black Earns His First Ejection

The Padres are having a rough road of it so far, and while I forgot to mention that Bud Black got his first ejection of the year on Sunday in the Pads' game against the Marlins, you do have to wonder whether San Diego will ever get any offense; the team is next to last in the National League with 108 runs scored, ahead of only the lowly Giants (with 106).

On Buzz Bissinger

When a man so directly declares himself opposed to others based, not on the body of their work but the medium in which they ply their trade, that person is, ipso facto, a jackass. To give you a sense of how I think the writing about sports should be practiced, I point my klieg light at Jon Weisman, and recall James Joyce's quote on his own aims, namely, "to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated consciousness of my race". While that amounts to a grand overstatement, and what we do here on the Internet is hardly capital-A "Art", the discovery of plausible truth amidst diversion remains the focus of the enterprise. Obscurantist hacks like Bissinger, whose work includes the execrable hagiography Three Nights In August, only serve to pollute that discussion, and openly seek to debase it. His difference with the bloggers he scorns is not so much in kind as in pay grade, as though he should be given epaulets and chevrons for having achieved the rank of "sportswriter".

Labels: dodgers, mets, morons, padres, recaps

Is it too much to ask, MLBAM, that when you go to a team home page that plainly has an RSS feed on it, that it also has the <link> tag to promote autodiscovery? I provide this free, as an example, from my own blog, in the text of the HTML. C'mon, people, get with the program. It's just not that hard.

Labels: mlbam, morons, stupid ideas, tech