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

The Bench Coach writes about a new blog on the scene, Raul Tavares' Dominican Players. Raul brings first-hand knowledge of the Dodgers Dominican academy and other teams to bear. Good work, Raul, and hope to see more of you.

Fox shill Dayn Perry makes the stupendous claim that nobody with money wanted the Dodgers. Here's this impossible quote in an otherwise solid article:

Expect plenty of grousing in the press and among fans about the Dodgers' newfound frugality, and they have a point. It would be better for everyone, the game included, if we had more John Henrys out there willing to invest in their own products. But we don't. And if you're going to have a team with tight purse strings, better to have someone like Paul DePodesta making the baseball decisions.

Chimps! Morons! Petunias! DePodesta is, I'm sure, a fine gentleman, but lazy factual errors like this one just burn me. Or, just who do you think Eli Broad and Dave Checketts are? How do these guys get paying jobs doing this stuff? Sign me up, please...

Oh, To Be A Fly On The Wall

The Governator attended the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce's 113th Inaugural Dinner honoring Eli Broad and Kent Kresa. Also present was the Parking Lot Attendant. Hope they checked Frank's chair for charring afterwards.

Sale Closes Today

The actual sale of the Dodgers closes today. In honor of this event, the team will hand out an authentic, unpaid Visa bill to every fan in attendance on Opening Day.

Do Reporters Even Read The Papers?

Doug Krikorian, Long Beach Press-Telegram hack, writes that firing Dan Evans will be a signal of McCourt's intention to rise above mediocrity. Tommy Lasorda, he says, lobbied for Pat Gillick, but he won't come cheap. Well: Gillick has wisely decided to get out of the GM business for now.

These guys get paid to write the papers, and can reasonably be supposed to read them -- do they even do that much?

No, I Reckon They Don't

T. J. Simers has bigger targets than ESPN columnist Tim Kurkjian lying around, so it comes as a surprise when he takes a dig at a fellow writer.

ESPN'S TIM Kurkjian weighed in on the Dodgers' situation Thursday, and finished his gushing story with this: "It's time for the Dodgers to start winning again. They have the right man to do it in McCourt."

How would he know? Did McCourt do such a good job managing parking lots that it makes him a good baseball guy overnight? To date the guy has hired no one but his wife, so how can you even gauge whether he has the ability to make good baseball decisions? He's got to be just guessing.

"I checked around," said Kurkjian, who has been one of the best sports reporters in the business for years. "I think he's going to be good for baseball. I talked to a lot of people. I could easily be wrong. I've been wrong plenty of times before, but I'd like to give the guy the benefit of the doubt."

I've got to remind myself to try that some time.

Who was Kurkjian talking to, Bud Selig?

"Just Enough" Gets Enough

Eckstein won his arbitration case with the Angels. Good grief, with Arte's offseason splurge, a measely $550k is practically a rounding error. Pick on somebody your own size, Stoneman!

Oh, A Weiss Guy, Eh?

I got a response to my brief missive to LA City Councilman Jack Weiss encouraging his home-rule resolution over the Dodgers. Since the fine print supposedly prohibits me from sharing, I must say it was an art form -- saying as little as possible while still sounding like he agrees with me. Too little, too late, Jack.

Let's all get up and dance to a song
That was a hit before your mother was born.
Though she was born a long, long time ago
Your mother should know
Your mother should know
  -- Lennon/McCartney

The offseason grows late and weary and dull, big trades and free agency moves finished or nearly so. Columnists snipe and belabor obvious points about football's mindshare and market share. Maybe we don't care so much, true. Who could imagine, now, a program like that old 50s show where they paid players to clout homers and make stupid gabble betwixt jacks? Is television over-fond of football's carnage? Well, let it be. The smack and thump of fibula and rib, the sounds of careers being ended daily -- this is football's toll. Why I love baseball:

1. Baseball is kind to its practitioners. Great players can have 20-year careers. The merely adequate -- and lucky -- can have 25-year careers. Show me a football player who's been in the game for even five years and I'll show you a grizzled veteran.
2. Baseball has lots of games. Because many games can be played without annihilating the players, many games are played. And, at the end of 162, we have a good feel for who won and why. We also have a feel for who the best team is. Could the NFL even survive a three-round playoff? Hardly.
3. Baseball's numbers inform. Baseball gives us things to count, as Bill James observed, and we've been counting them for a long, long time. We know things. We can compare the greats of other eras, and have that comparison mean something.
4. Baseball's languid pace demands thought. As my correspondant Sarah Bunting over at Tomato Nation once wrote, " if you think baseball is boring, either you don't understand the game, at all, or you need to learn to shut up and sit still for a few hours, or both." Maybe others find this one of baseball's failings, but for me, it's the game's strategy I find alluring.
5. Baseball's pace lets its fans relax. In a world overcharged with instant and pervasive communications, and the market's hot breath at everyone's back, isn't nine -- or however many -- innings refreshing? To just be at the ballpark, languid and full of beer in late summer's sweaty afternoon, or salt peanutty and bundled in early April's night games, forgetting the abrasive day -- that's baseball. Sure, I've been at extra inning games where I've wished I could ask the ump to throw a couple strikes to our pitcher so's we can get this thing over with -- but it's rare.
6. Baseball's postseason is played in front of home crowds, not the Superbowl's nosebleed prices in some city far away from the fans who supported the team. I've been to a World Series game. Name me a half-dozen football fans of your acquaintance who attended a Superbowl.

Play ball, already!

The Boston Herald published an article with the headline "McCourt righting Dodgers' troubled finances". The contents are mostly old news -- except for a ticket-price spike blamed on News Corp I hadn't heard of -- but who did he pay off for that lede?

Well, not really, unless you count the other guys from the blogosphere, and occaisional e-mail missives from my wife, who claims to enjoy my rantlets. In the absence of real feedback today, the Bench Coach has on his blog an open letter to Dan Evans today. The greasy, ignoble end of Dan's tenure goes down with flagons of vinegar from McCourt, a man clearly devoid of any semblance of civility or humanity. I don't want to engage in lachrymose eulogy -- Dan, I think, will go elsewhere if Jon's Monday blog entry turns out correct. But Evans had his faults, and amidst the justifiable sorrowing over his shabby treatment, we should also recall them lest we become hagiographers:

• Yes, Evans unloaded Sheffield. He also failed to get a replacement (though he was working on it when McCourt pulled the plug).
• The 2003 offense collapsed principally due to a weak bench, and lost bets on Jordan's and McGriff's health. I agreed with the Hundley-Karros-Grudzielanek move at the time, but it left the Dodgers with too few options at too few positions.
• More lost bets: Alex Cora, Dave Roberts (as a starter), and, to some degree, Izturis.
• Failures to get midseason offensive help. But, that had severe mitigation written all over it.

And that's it, really. Evans goes down with this big fat asterisk on his record:

Of all the words of tongue or pen,
the saddest are: 'It might have been.'"

Three years ago, Baseball America ran a survey of GMs-in-the-wings. They ran one again, listing alongside their new picks, those they had selected three years ago.

Evans name was at the top.

Searching for something else on Google today I stumbled across Eric Neel's diary from 2002. Neel wrote this entry on September 10th, when the Dodgers were technically still in the hunt for the postseason, as were... the Angels:

Giants fans are loyal, and they have that peculiar L.A. loathing going for them, so they get a good rabid lather going at a time like this. Dodgers fans (despite what Skip Caray says about them) are schooled in the old ways and loyal to a fault. (They're sometimes cool, but they never waver -- call it the Vin Scully factor.) Your typical A's fan brings a little blue-collar love and anger to the park every night; he's righteous and rowdy.

But make no mistake, there is only one kind of fan worth being right now and that's an Angels fan. ...

It's simple, really: Giants, Dodgers and A's fans can summon stories and memories of past championship glory. They can talk Bobby Thomson, Kirk Gibson and Vida Blue. They can believe in their teams. On those cold, dark nights of doubt and despair, they can console themselves with the knowledge that good things have happened before and convince themselves that those things are the evidence, and the promise, of future glory.

The Angels and their fans, by contrast, have no world championships; they have never even been to a World Series. ... Which means that Angels fans' devotion is utter, pure; it does not lean on the easy proof of past glory, but flies blind and brave in the face of doubt and discouragement. The Angels fan holds on to the stuff of hope. He clings, as the Apostle Paul once said, to the "evidence of things not seen." He does not believe in his team; he has faith in them.

Being a Dodger fan is and has always been a lot easier than being an Angels fan, that's sure. It requires the patience of a saint to cheer for the Red Sox or Cubs. By that same yardstick, Tigers fans near canonization.

Googlebot crawled me sometime Monday. I'm legit now! Fame, fortune, mine, mine, mine! Move over, McCourt, 'cause I'm buying the Dodgers after your sorry run is over in 2007!

Jim Callis of Baseball America ranked the Dodgers and Angels farm systems as being the fourth and fifth best in baseball right now. Considering the Dodgers haven't had many high draft picks in recent years, that's impressive.

The Dodgers best drafts in recent years occurred under the Dan Evans/Logan White administration, so I have to wonder what the effects of adding Beane, Jr. to this will be. Of course, one nice thing -- if you can call anything about this ugly affair "nice" -- is that DePodesta is working without a contract at the moment, so acquiring him won't cost anything in prospects (at least, not immediately -- more on this in a bit). If the newspaper reports are to be believed, Frank's clearly being disingenuous with the public about his actual projected budget levels. Hence all the talk about "how you spend it", as well as the itch to get Billy Beane -- or Beane, Jr., DePodesta -- in town. It's well-known that the A's like to acquire college players in the draft, for two reasons: first, they have playing time against teams with known quality (i.e., their stats, unlike high-school players, have some meaning). Second, because they've played at a higher level of competition, it takes less time for them to get through the minors. Both these factors are appealing to a team on a budget. Other teams have seen this and are emulating it -- except for the Dodgers, who, last year, made a pointed effort to pursue toolsy prep players:

"A lot of teams are pressured and afraid to take high school players. They'd rather take college players they can sign easier," said White. "A lot of college players we'd take in the third round are taken earlier and it leaves high school players for us in the early rounds. We'll see in five years how it shakes out."

We already know how Jackson and Miller worked out. By pursuing guys the other teams aren't, we get some good deals, and in some cases, great ones.

I only hope DePodesta's economics background doesn't let him forget that. But, it may not matter. With Beane, Jr. in the Dodger henhouse, and a treasure chest of talent Beane couldn't get to under Schott, will we trade away that bright future for a quick fix? Beane gave a clue at the recent Oakland Fanfest:

"You always like to see the people you work with branch out and succeed," Beane said at an A's fanfest event last weekend. "If he goes down there, trust me, you'll see a lot of Oakland-Los Angeles trades."

Yeah. That's what I'm afraid of. Or, what else besides prospects do we have that Beane could (a) afford and (b) want?

The guys running Athletics Nation, Fire Bavasi, Mariners Wheelhouse, and Texas Rangers Blog got together and did a position-by-position survey of the AL West. Fire Bavasi performed the honors for the Angels, and while he did a creditable job, I must admit that, coming as it does from an M's fan, I think he's got a few places where he got it wrong. Forthwith, my criticisms thereof. Warning: this will get a bit lengthy.

Infield

Here's the link from Fire Bavasi for the stuff below on the infield.

Catcher

Yeah, Benji isn't friggin' Mike Piazza -- so what? The only possible good news here might be the short-term substitution of Tom Gregorio for the even weaker hitting José Molina. José's gone after 2005 anyway once prospect Jeff Mathis makes it to the big club. No change.

First Base

I want to get to this one at length, so I'll quote it at length:

Gone is Scott Spiezio, an adequate offensive first baseman with a flattering defensive reputation. Gone is Brad Fullmer, a righty-masher who singlehandedly improved Anaheim’s first base OPS by 27 points despite getting only 62 at bats. In is Darin Erstad, someone who put up a line that wasn’t particularly close to league-average in center field. The Angels hope that staying healthy will help Erstad rediscover his 2000 magic, which is part of the reason he’s been moved to first base, but if the 1500+ at bats Erstad’s had since his sensational year tell us anything, it’s that he’s simply not a good hitter anymore, and that his career hit a premature peak four years ago.

Given his proneness to injury, it’s hard to believe that Erstad is still only 29 years old. He’s young enough to recover some of his talent, as long as he avoids the nagging aches and pains that caused him to put up a .617 post-All Star Break OPS over the last three years. A healthy Erstad should approach the .290/.343/.398 line he’s put up in the first half over the same time span, but at this point, it’s irrational to assume he’ll go through a full season without hurting himself.

Defensively, Erstad is incrementally above-average, similar to Scott Spiezio. Should he injure himself, Robb Quinlan or someone similar will be able to step in and perform just about as well (along with better offense, most likely).

Darin Erstad won’t come close to matching the .293/.362/.492 Anaheim’s first basemen contributed last season. The Angels will be considerably worse off at 1B this year than in 2003.

Agreed, Erstad's bat is questionable. In fact, if anything, the Angels should have used a little more restraint in re-signing Erstad to so many years, but Disney had the team on the block, and the team had just won a title. As Stoneman put it at the time (and this is an approximate quote), "I only wish I could have made the [2003] team more the same." Back came Erstad again, balky hamstrings and all. The Angels are stuck with his mediocre bat for two more years.

But, all that said, FB's line on the Angels' 2003 1B stats are simply wrong. The players were Spiezio, Shawn Wooten, Robb Quinlan, and Bobby Riggs, in descending order of at bats; their collective line was actually .259/.324/.417. While the Angels stats site is giving me conflicting data (it shows Fullmer fielding 19 games and starting 17 at 1B with no ABs), it's hard to imagine that's true given the 148.2 innings he fielded at that position. Ersty's last three years' OBP has declined consistently, so I'll go out on a limb here and say he'll put up .270/.320/.400 -- a slightly better average with a little less power. Defensively, he'll be a great first baseman, but with a vastly reduced defensive value overall. Offensively, it looks like a wash. No change.

Edit: I forgot that Ersty is scheduled to bat second, directly ahead of Vlad. That might be enough to boost his average and maybe even power some. But the same concerns about his career trajectory apply, so if the improvement does show up, I tend to think it will be incremental. The Erstad of 2000 is unlikely to return. And more: "... at this point, it’s irrational to assume he’ll go through a full season without hurting himself." Well, the whole point of putting Erstad at 1B is to keep him off the DL.

Edit yet again (2/14/04 7:14 pm): my bad for calling out errors when the MLB.com stats were the problem. My sincerest apologies.

Second Base

I'm not going to repost this one because I mostly agree with it; Kennedy should continue to do well defensively, but the big question for him is OBP increase, as well as the necessity to play an entire season at 2B. Kennedy will likely pick up an extra dozen games or so this year, and while his 2003 second half proved he can play every day, the usual caveats about injury apply. No change.

Shortstop

Eckstein haters... well, I don't really care. Say what you want about Tejada or Jeter, I still love Eckstein. The guy scraps just to stay where he is -- "mysteriously solid" indeed. A healthy Eckstein will, once more, be a joy to watch. Improve, provided Eck doesn't have any serious health problems like in 2003. The bench is thinner than 2002 from what I can tell; Amezaga and Delgado (how did Delgado ever end up with a .320 average?) collectively can't make up a single full-time player.

Third Base

Two things that FB didn't mention:

• Troy came off eye surgery in the offseason. There's been much speculation about Glaus' eyesight, and while I doubt he suddenly loses his visual acuity around June every year, it might make a substantial difference.
• Troy's shoulder, of course, is the big question, with rumors back and forth about its condition. We just won't know until ST starts.

Overall I think we'll improve, but it's a very tentative improvement.

Outfield

The link to FB.

Left Field

Minus GA, plus Guillen? Had we to do it all over again, I would have left Guillen on the steps of the GABP, or Network Associates Coliseum, looking for work. He reminds me too much of Erstad: a lot of mediocre to lousy years with one great year mixed in. The worst part is that his great year came in a hitter's park. With the Angels, he'll be hitting in the AL for only the second year in his career. No wonder he popped the cork on his signing four days early. Hate to say it, but I agree with FB on this one. Chances are we'll see an overall decline unless he's really ready to break out. Nah, that never happens.

Center

GA in CF is worse defensively than Ersty, but better than the guys who replaced him. No change.

Right

Vlad. Pow. If he stays healthy. Improve, big time.

DH

Again, the MLB stats break down, because we know the Angels had a DH at that position for every game, but they only show splits for Fullmer. Well, Brad was good for .306/.387/.500, but we can assume whoever hit in that slot afterwards (Wooten? DaVanon? Spiezio?) got worse numbers. Salmon's 2003 line was .275/.374/.464 -- not as good as Fullmer, but not (likely) as bad as the platooned DH position. Still, Salmon's on the downward arc, and we can only assume his numbers decline, possibly big time. (Note his 2001 season, after which he very nearly quit; it could happen again.)

---

More as it comes.

ESPN reports that Paul DePodesta will be the Dodgers' new GM after Saturday. All of which reminds me of a great quote by Abraham Lincoln about the position of slaveowners: "You work and toil and earn bread, and I'll eat it." Dan's bread -- the fruit of the farm system -- is just about to come to bear, just as he's evicted by McCourt in favor of DePodesta, thanks to McCourt's terminal case of Alexander Haig Syndrome.*

I take solace in the fact that McCourt's financial tether is very short.

Update:The Dodgers deny the ESPN report that Paul DePodesta will be the next Dodger GM. Sure, and if you put wheels on my gramma she'd be a go-cart.

The fat lady hasn't sung on Dan Evans' tenure as GM. But she's warming up. Dan, McCheap done you wrong.

---

*Thanks to the Bench Coach for that particularly vivid phrase.

Jered Weaver, that is, from my alma mater, Long Beach State, throwing 90 pitches in 7 innings against Cal, with the opposition collecting a scant three hits. He's received national pitcher of the week accolades three times in his career; now he's going up against USC's nine this weekend. The season's early yet, but it must be nice to have an ERA of 0.00. This guy's gonna be a first-round draft pick for sure from what I've read. Now that the Angels have two picks in that round, maybe they end up with him?

Update: Kurt of "Arrive in the Third, Leave After Seven" (to which I have added a link on the sidebar) e-mailed me with the observation that Jered "may be the best Weaver pitching in Southern California." Ouch.

Travis Lee, ex-Ray, now in talks with the Yankees about being a backup 1B for Jason Giambi, whose balky knee limits his playing time at that position.

I can't blame Dan Evans for this. I won't. But I can tell you who I will blame...

Am I Getting Old Or Is This Really, Really Good?

A friend forwarded me the link to Outkast's "Hey Ya" video a few months ago. These guys are good! Funny, melodic, and bursting with energy, their Ed-Sullivan-meets-the-Beatles-themed video is the most fun I've had watching or listening to a group in years. The fact that they just won a Grammy made me question my taste a bit (when have they ever been right?), but no matter -- try it, you'll like it. And in the imitation is the sincerest form of parody department, check this out...

Science Fiction Single Feature

From Becky, who never recommends a movie unless it's really, really good -- The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, a "loving, but very funny spoof of '50's and 60's low budget sci-fi movies." Looks like it's leaving town very soon, as they've got one set of prints. Head to the Nuart quick!

Over at But It's A DRY Heat, Jim McLennan notes that Jon manages to write quite a lot in the offseason. All perfectly true, especially with the Wagnerian McCourt saga crushing the Dodgers' 2003/2004 chances of picking up a serviceable right-handed bat in left field. From that point of view, I'd certainly much rather the Dodgers were in the Angels' position of having an effective offseason, and have little to write about except for positive (or at least, some) trades.

Meantime, it's only a few days from pitchers and catchers. The wife and I will be headed to ST in Arizona for the Cubs (her team) and Angels some time in mid March.

I can't wait!

Young Edwin Jackson is featured on today's Dodgers.com home page, with a gaudy announcement from Jim Tracy that the #5 rotation spot is his to lose. Last year, similar announcements regarding Joe Thurston resulted in disappointment for "Joey Ballgame", who spent his 2003 mostly in Las Vegas. Since I hope for and expect great things from Ed Jackson, I certainly hope homepage positioning isn't like the Sports Illustrated curse.

The Bench Coach has a piece whose ground I'm not sure I want to tread on, but the boisterous side of me is spoiling for, well, not necessarily a fight, but certainly an understanding of terms, anyway. The fundamental issue I have with the line of thinking that says the team must interview someone of X racial heritage is that it completely inverts the whole Jackie Robinson affair.

Jackie -- and anybody else with dark skin -- was kept out of baseball because he was black, until Branch Rickey signed him in 1945. Jackie came up in 1947 as a first baseman, though he would eventually play second, third, outfield, and one game at short. Well: here's Jackie's 1947 numbers, against what he replaced:

Player	AB	Avg	OBP	SLG	OPS
J Robinson	590	.297	.368	.427	.795
E Stevens	310	.242	.301	.426	.727
H Schultz	249	.253	.290	.353	.644

There's clearly no question that Jackie was a huge improvement over the Stevens/Schultz platoon; his OPS was .068 higher than the better of the two. Even though Jackie's SLG was a relatively weak .427 (for a first baseman), he represented a tremendous improvement in OBP over either of them. But -- the important thing is he was better than the guy he replaced.

Some time last year, I can't remember exactly, there was a bit of a hubbub about black managers not managing for any but the scrub teams of the majors. Perhaps the thinking was aimed at Lloyd McClendon over in Pittsburgh, but I will take this as a vote of no-confidence in the Cubs and Dusty. There's a long line waiting to become GM's, and only 30 jobs. Build a winner, and they will come. Who did you have in mind, Coach, who would be better than, say, Dan Evans?

The Angels' very first offseason acquisition was former Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Kelvim Escobar. At the time, Escobar looked like a good pick up, with a solid 2.84 ERA on grass in 2003, and a career K/9 of 7.89. As Voros McCracken's work tells us, the only things you can reliably judge pitchers' ability on are strikeouts, walks, and home runs, in order of reliability; everything else is defense dependent. So Escobar looks like a pretty good bet, yeah? He's definitely in the Angels' mold of finding buried pitching treasure. Groundball pitcher on turf, and wow -- gasoline, meet fire.

Except maybe not. Escobar topped Baseball Prospectus' worst signings list. Joe Sheehan, who wrote the article, claimed the Angels signed Escobar largely on the strength of his 2003 second half. Whether that's true or not, the longer-term view of Escobar's grass splits cast some doubt on his ability off the rug:

Escobar Splits on Grass
Year	IP	ERA
2003	82.1	2.84
2002	32.1	4.45
2001	31.2	3.69

While McCracken would tell you to look skeptically at ERA, the encouraging thing is that his 2003 split occurred with more innings on grass. And speaking of McCracken, his 2003 DIPS numbers would seem to indicate he's getting shortchanged by his defense. While I'm feeling less certain about Escobar's future performance having read the BP article, there's enough positives that I think it was the right move for the team.

Baseball, the sages tell us, is a boy's game. I wouldn't know from direct experience, but it has the smell of truth. I had no athletic bent as a child, which has carried over to my adulthood; my increasingly oblate spheroid shape attests vividly to it. But -- yes, a boy's game. The players let you know this by occaisionally acting childishly -- Kevin Brown, for instance, assaulting unarmed plumbing, or Gary Sheffield storming up to his room if he doesn't get Kevin Brown's contract and NOW. But sometimes -- and in the modern game, it doesn't happen much -- sometimes something reminds you about the childlike part of the game, something like Gibby's '88 miracle.

And sometimes, something reminds you of the commonplace tragedy of those whose dreams don't come true.

Seung Yeop Lee is, as his website will tell you, the "Home Run King of Asia". Last year, he broke the Korean single-season record with 56 HRs, hitting 324 in his career. Late last year, stories started to surface about Lee's availability, testing the waters in the US majors. The 27 year old first baseman got courtesy tours of (then-) Edison Field and Dodger Stadium. Likewise with the Mariners. No deal was struck and no formal negotiations were ever mentioned in the press.

At the time I thought he would have been a risky signing. I still think that. His home park, Taegu Stadium, has right and left field fences 312 feet from the plate, and centerfield at 384. Short fences will pad numbers something fierce.

Lee returned home without a contract from the U.S. majors.

He took a job in the Japanese leagues, playing for the Chiba Lotte Marines, though he knew the Japanese would look down at a Korean player. The press conference announcing his signing was not a moment of celebration; instead, it was very nearly an admission of defeat.

A lot of similar stories take place behind closed doors all over the minor leagues. This one was merely recorded for posterity.