One of the most intriguing groups to buy the Dodgers is the one with former players Orel Hershiser and Steve Garvey. The group of 2 former Dodger players, World Series MVPs both of them, as well as the 1974 MVP and the 1988 CY Young award winner. But the real question is: where the hell did they get the money? I hate to say it, but there's really not much to say. There are some mysterious investors who are aligned with the group, but we may never know who they are.

Hershiser made $37.5 million as a player from 1985-2000 according to Baseball-Reference. Since then Hershiser has been an analyst with ESPN and a pitching coach for the Texas Rangers. Hershiser and his wife divorced in 2005, so $20m would be a pretty generous estimate of his net worth, assuming he invested well enough that he still had $37.5m before the divorce.

Steve Garvey has some high-profile financial problems. Forgive my pessimism, but I don't see how he's going to have really any money to his name after the past 6 years. Not much data is available for his career MLB earnings, but he did make $7.4m from 1976-1977 and 1983-1987. So assuming optimistically from 1978-1982, he might have made $6m during that time period, but it's doubtful it was that high. You could assume a high of $15m in career earnings. But still, Garvey is so deeply in debt it's unclear what he actually has. The most optimistic you could say for him and Orel combined would be $25m.

But we know one of the small partners in this group, a guy named Joey Herrick. Herrick is the president of Natural Balance Pet Foods, a 12-year-old company which brings in annual revenue of about $20-50m. And Herrick is the president of the company, not the owner or majority shareholder (from what I can tell the company is privately held). This is not a really big time company, and at most he's got maybe $10m to put in. It says he's a minority partner, but

Even if Darren Lowe of RBC Capital Markets thinks that there's enough money in this group, you won't really know who's got the money. There are a lot of partnerships that control baseball ownership groups, but they're going to have to show a lot more money to actually buy the team.

Buster Olney reports that Hanley Ramirez may be traded. Fangraphs shows that from 2009-2011, Hanley Ramirez has the 2nd highest WAR of MLB shortstops for that period, only behind Troy Tulowitzki (but by a lot; Tulo posted 18.4 WAR from 2009-2011 vs Hanley's 13.2, followed by Jeter at 12.2).

If the Dodgers were to do this, there are two things to consider:

First - players to offer. The Marlins may or may not be interested in more expensive major league talent. They don't need a first baseman that isn't Pujols, they could use pitching, a center fielder and a third baseman (and probably someone in the bullpen).

Second - payroll to clear. The Dodgers can't trade newly signed players, and YCTPYDWFPYDW (you can't trade players you don't want for players you do want). Candidates include Ted Lilly (22.5m* owed from 2012-2013) and Juan Uribe (owed 15m** from 2012-2013), but most likely will be Chad Billingsley (35m owed from 2012-2014).

Hanley Ramirez will be owed $47.5m from 2012-2014 (15, 15.5, 16).

Continue reading this post »

Most commentators are against the changes in draft compensation.  Commentators including Jonah Keri, Maury Brown, and Deadspin's Jack Dickey have condemned it, and I'd also like to recommend this satirical post from Bucs Dugout.

It's not too hard to see who would like it, though.  With some further investigation, we see that the higher a team picks in the draft, the more that team gets to spend, so small market teams can still get a little bit of an edge in the draft.  Big market clubs who consistently make the playoffs like that they can just pay to break the cap and then skip their picks from the end of the first and second rounds, which they may have otherwise lost pursuing free agents anyway under the old system.  Owners in general will like how the punitive rules will allow them to enforce not giving a lot of money to draft picks, especially ending giving amateur players major league contracts.  In particularly, it allows teams to curb the arms race of pursuing players that have signability issues because paying a lot for that hard to sign player can cost them their next year's draft pick, which might scare them more than losing that pick this year, ultimately taking leverage out of the amateur player's hands.  The MLBPA, of course, would be in favor of it, because it will make cheap young talent a more scarce commodity in MLB, so more teams will turn to signing veteran free agents.  When Kenny Lofton, Jermaine Dye, Barry Bonds, and many other veteran players have to retire when nobody gives them an offer in the offseason, that's bad for the MLBPA, but when teams won't have as many good players to pull out of the minor leagues, then signing an aging veteran makes more sense.

Agents, including Scott Boras, will naturally oppose such measures, because they also represent the unsigned players, and this will ultimately require them to take less money or go to college.  If you don't give Andy LaRoche $1,000,000.01, then he goes to Rice on a full ride.  And if you look at what most commentators are saying about what will happen with the future of the draft, they figure that more amateur players will go on to college, where they will find more scholarships available for higher-revenue sports like basketball and football (Nolan Reimold only got a half scholarship to Bowling Green, according to a guy I worked with who played basketball there).  But because of the minor league gauntlet and the steep learning curve in baseball, it's understandable when multi-sport athletes go to college for basketball or football, and get drafted in those sports.  Also, unlike the NFL and NBA, MLB has a strong minor league system that every player has to go through to reach the majors (with only the most occasional exceptions; in the last 15 years, only Xavier Nady and Mike Leake have made their professional debuts in the Majors).  But there is still another trick that MLB has.

Scholarships

The key might be for teams to improve their non-monetary compensation, particularly their college scholarship program (H/T JC Bradbury's old blog Sabernomics).  Highlights from the FAQ:

What is the maximum amount that will be reimbursed per semester or quarter?

The maximum reimbursable amount is determined by the amount specified in the participant's first Minor League Uniform Player Contract....

How are participants reimbursed under the Plan?

We would prefer to be billed by the college directly. All bills and statements covering reimbursable expenses for a semester should be submitted at one time, if possible. If the participant is required to make payment, the participant must submit the receipts verifying that the bills have been paid. Reimbursement checks will be made out to the participant, not to parents or other third parties.

To facilitate payment upon enrolling in school, participants should submit a statement stating the name of the school, the number of credit hours being taken and whether the school operates on a semester or quarter/trimester basis. The statement should include a listing of all actual allowable expenses and an indication as to whether or not such actual expenses have been paid. The statements should be sent to the Club's College Scholarship Plan administrator.

What expenses are covered under the Plan?

The Club is liable up to the maximum semester allowance for the participant's cost of tuition, fees, room and board (both housing and meals) and textbooks (not included are computers, calculators or materials other than textbooks) required for the course of study.

How is a participant residing off-campus reimbursed for living expenses?

If a participant resides off-campus, the participant shall be reimbursed through the college, if possible, limited to the extent the participant would have been charged for on-campus residence. If the school does not have room and board facilities, the participant will be reimbursed at the rate of $15 per day.

To qualify for reimbursement of room and board expenses, the charges must be verified in a statement by the college/university. The meal charges will be based on a semester/quarter meal plan.

A participant who lives off-campus may qualify for the $15 per day allowance by presenting the following documents to the Office of the Commissioner of Baseball: (1) a copy of the participant's signed lease or a letter from the landlord verifying that the participant is a tenant, (2) a receipt from the landlord showing that the participant has paid the first month's rent and (3) written verification by the college/university of the first day of class and the last day of class. The participant's allowance will then be based on the number of days the participant is in attendance at school for the term. Total room and board allowance, however, when added to the other covered expenses, may not exceed the designated amount per semester or quarter stated in the participant's contract.

There is no reimbursement for room and board if the participant lives at home while attending school.

Also of note: "The Plan does not cover trade, vocational or graduate schools."

But considering how little-known this scholarship provision is, it's not hard to think that it could be easily increased. Let players get as much as the full tuition at a private university reimbursed.  The off-campus living expenses, which were raised to $35/day as of the Fall 2011 semester, could be raised further, perhaps to $50/day (or more if they live somewhere like NYC, DC or SF).  You could put in a provision for a new laptop at the beginning of the first and third year.  But most significantly, teams could extend their compensation under the program to include graduate, trade or professional school (though they might specifically exclude them now because the Cubs paid for Scott Boras to go to law school, ruining the system for everyone). 

Employer-sponsored health insurance became popular during World War 2, when tax rates were very high and non-monetary compensation that was worth more to employees would cost employers less.  Similarly, it is entirely predictable that compensation not counted by the MLB tax limits would increase.  That's not to say that there aren't still those who prefer to go the route of being a student athlete, but I wouldn't be surprised if by the end of the next decade minor league scholarships become substantially more popular.

International Players

There's the potential that some teams may move to international signings more, and while this looks like a legitimate place for growth in signing players, there's more risk in knowing how well the players will project as major leaguers. The new cap will be $2.9m for international amateur signings next year, nearly 10 times what the Dodgers spent last year, though significantly less for other teams, will probably protect the Rule IV draft as the primary source of talent in MLB.  Additionally, players will have to register with the MLB Scouting Bureau, which may make scouting international players easier.  It's quite possible that this will lead to more international players in MLB, but these players will probably come more from Central and South America than Asia, where Selig really wants to see MLB expand.  Still, there's some room here to see how this plays out.

In the long term, this will matter only for teams that have substantially high costs from their scholarship programs, as international players may be less likely to negotiate for this in their first minor league contract.  I don't see the scholarship programs becoming a prohibitive cost, since they can be controlled by contract.

Conclusion

It's usually not a bad idea to assume that people who are predicting doom and gloom are exaggerating the negatives.  I think ultimately the most important changes to the draft are in limiting compensation for signing free agents, which will benefit current players and prevent teams from dominating the draft like the Rays this year or the A's in the Moneyball draft, and this will help a lot of middle of the road teams that are ready to improve.

I don't think there will be that big a net impact in how the draft works.  The biggest net result is that teams will spend more on non-monetary forms of compensation for draft picks in the long term and will be more likely to sign aging veterans in the short term.  I don't see this as a move that will pull players away from MLB - it offers the best salaries and longest careers at the major league level in a league with no salary cap and easily more room for revenue growth than the NFL or NBA.

I'll pretend that one of you remembers that last year I wrote a piece on the best team the Dodgers could put together from free agents (because I'm too lazy to look at other teams' farm systems for trades).  I declared the best lineup you could buy, which with non-tendering Martin, Loney and Theriot and not counting the $20m or so in deferred money came to $160m (so $180m or so with deferred $$), so here's that team again:

What could you do with a lineup of:

Furcal
Crawford
Martinez
Dunn
Ethier
Beltre
Kemp
Hudson

And a rotation of

Lee
Kershaw
Billingsley
Kuroda
Lilly

Continue reading this post »

Joel Sherman of the New York Post reports:

Negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement for Major League Baseball are moving at a fast pace and one issue the sides have all but agreed upon is adding two wild-card teams and holding one-game playoffs in each league to determine which of the wild cards advances, The Post has learned.

The question is what impact this will have on MLB teams as they try to compete.  You can speculate on who it would help - people generally think of the Rays, since they're going to have to fight for the wild card as it is, in what is an exciting race, even if it is largely being brought on by the Red Sox imploding in September under the weight of the piles and piles of cash that they carry.

What I attempted to do was just examine 16 years of postseason baseball under divisional play (1995-2010), looking for whether adding a second wild card and then having those two wild cards play a sudden death game would have made the September hunt and the October series better or worse.  I kind of generally kept in mind that 100 game winners absolutely should be in the playoffs, 90 game winners probably deserved a shot, teams that rally to win a lot of games in September should get rewarded, and division rivalries matter.  I gave each a ranking, and while those numbers are barely ordinal I'll assume cardinality for this exercise, keeping in mind that when I assume I risk making an ass out of u and me.  I'd welcome anyone to criticize this or  improve upon it and come up with a good formula, because that means you bothered to read this 3700 word monstrosity of a blog post.

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"My salary is increasing each year. I would say the likeliness of me being here beyond this year, it's not just my decision. ... I have been kind of lucky to be in one spot in baseball for as long as I have been, for six years now. That is a long time to be in one city playing for one team. There is no inclination now other than to go out and play this year and see what we've got."

Andre Ethier of course said that at the beginning of the season, Ned Colletti said he had no intention of moving him, and everything was cool.  We just attributed that to Ethier being weird or jealous of Chad Billingsley's contract extension, or at least I did.  But then Bud Selig stepped in, making it painfully obvious how disasterous things were for the Dodgers.  Of course, the team has performed even worse than expected too - good starting pitching, no offense, and as of this writing they lead all of MLB in losses by starting pitchers who pitch a quality start, currently at 16 (4 each for Billingsley and Kuroda) was expected, but one might have assumed how much went wrong.

Before the season, I would have thought Blake and Furcal would have been healthy more often, that the platoon of Jay Gibbons and Marcus Thames would not have both been DFA'd (I had Thames hitting .275/.325/.520 25 HR in 390 PA; oops), that James Loney would not continue to become even more anemic at the plate, that Juan Uribe would not  struggle to stay over the Mendoza line (though we knew he wouldn't be an OBP machine), that Aaron Miles would never be the 3 hitter, and that the Dodgers would have at least been semi-competitive in the NL West in July when Buster Posey is out for the year with a broken leg.

But, as the hitting coach for a potent offense once said, I'm not here to talk about the past.  Rather, I'm just thinking out loud about whether Andre Ethier will still be around on August 1.

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We're all familiar with who Frank McCourt is, the Parking Lot Attendant who leverages the hell out of everything.  Sure, he oversaw the renovations of Dodger Stadium (including the urinal rooms), and the team reached the postseason 4 out of the 7 seasons he's been the guy in charge (vs 0 of the 6 seasons Fox ran the team, or 2 out of 13 seasons from 1989 to 2003 when MLB had playoffs).  But, as Eric Gagne said after the 2005 season, before pitching all of two innings in 2006, "We're the fucking Dodgers," and we have standards, dammit!  So with the help of Wikipedia, and other sources, a little bit about the other 29 teams and who runs them (yeah, you can look up most of this crap on Wikipedia and Forbes, but it would take you a while; this thing is 2371 words).  If nothing else, useful perspective for when you possess the perfectly natural desire to lambast Frank McCourt as the worst owner in MLB.

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Not sure what good this will do, but I have a graph and questions.

One of those things that comes up when you look at Jim Palmer and Nolan Ryan's career lines is how low their BABIPs were.  Ryan's came in at .269, and Palmer at an astonishing .251, both unheard of in the modern era, but really not too much of a stretch in the 1970s.

Arbitrarily beginning with 1950, I plotted BABIP over time for the NL and AL (the NL in orange, the AL in blue).  There are two very notable jumps - in 1973, the DH was introduced to the American League, and in 1993, MLB added the Florida Marlins and Colorado Rockies to the National League.  There are a few things that do not make sense, though.

1) Why did BABIP drop in the AL from 1950-1972 while it rose slightly in the NL during that period?  And how is it that adding a DH to the AL managed to equalize BABIP with the NL?  Did AL umpires have drastically different strike zones from NL umpires?

2) Why did BABIP rise for both leagues in 1993 after one league's expansion?  Did the expansion draft make that much of a difference?  And even then, why didn't any other expansion seem to have that effect?  Does this mean we should assume everyone took steroids in 1993?

Maybe you know.  Even if you don't, I probably won't know the difference.

With all the woes of how the Dodgers don't have money to spend on free agents, what would the team look like if LA really just went all out and got the best players available on the market to fill all the holes on the team?  Intuitively, a surefire winner.  You'd see Adrian Beltre, Adam Dunn, Carl Crawford, Victor Martinez, Orlando Hudson, Cliff Lee, Hiroki Kuroda, and all would be good.  Right?

What could you do with a lineup of:

Furcal
Crawford
Martinez
Dunn
Ethier
Beltre
Kemp
Hudson

And a rotation of

Lee
Kershaw
Billingsley
Kuroda
Lilly

That would only bump payroll up to about $160m.  

Continue reading this post »

After looking back at Depo in 2004, I figured that there was enough to be said about Colletti that it would be too long to say in a comment.  I think we have to understand what Colletti was thinking and how that led him to make the decisions he did.  It's one thing to say he made terrible decisions now, but remember, at the time they were made, many of his decisions seemed reasonable, though many more were also terrible.

Going into 2006, the Dodgers were supposed to have as everyday outfielders Jose Cruz Jr, Kenny Lofton and JD Drew.  Ricky Ledee, who Depo signed as a 5th outfielder and pinch hitter, remained and the out of options Cody Ross got the call to be the 4th outfielder.  Andre Ethier would begin the year in AAA, Matt Kemp in AA.  Jayson Werth would spend the entirety of 2006 out with an injury.

Lofton got hurt pretty quick, so Jason Repko got the call.  Repko had a great April, hitting .328/.414/.574 for the month.  Once Lofton got back, though, something had to give, and especially once Jeff Kent was hit on the wrist by a pitch and a backup 2b was needed, that forced Cody Ross out.  While Ross just had a great game where he hit 2 home runs, he hadn't demonstrated a lot more major league success, and there's only so much stock you should put in one good game, especially when the first homer was hit off Oliver Perez.  While Ricky Ledee could have been dropped, he was your lefty bat of the bench (the bat flip was in 2007, and sadly never repeated), and the guy who shows up on the 2005 team's baseball-reference page as the primary left fielder.  So Ross goes.

Repko would be optioned eventually, and Andre Ethier would be called up to play left field in the wake of the deteriorating play of Jose Cruz Jr.  Cruz made almost $3m in 2006, coming off of a season where he played for 3 teams but still put up an .837 OPS and 18 hr.  A 30-30 player 5 years earlier with a career .795 OPS up to that point, Cruz was not expected to fall off a cliff at age 32, or at least he was expected to rebound sometime later in the season.  But he continued to suck, while Ethier played very well until he hit a wall in September and was benched for the hot hand of Marlon "Merlin" Anderson.  Cruz and Ledee would be released or claimed much, much later in the season.

Matt Kemp, dubbed "the Bison" after Don Sutton remarked that he looked like a buffalo stealing second (or because he's built tougher than a robot made of nails), went on a tear and hit 7 home runs in the first two weeks of June.  From June 15 on, Matt Kemp hit a Michael Jordan-like .202/.233/.275 with 5 walks to 42 strikeouts for the rest of the season, though he was mentored by proven veteran leader and baserunning master Jeff Kent.

Going into 2007, the plan was JD Drew, Andre Ethier, and some stop-gap solution until Kemp was ready.  Then Drew exercised his option, and Colletti was shocked that Drew didn't do what he said to the media he would do.  The Dodgers needed two outfielders, though Jayson Werth was not selected to be one of them, or given a chance to be one of them.  Werth had just missed all of 2006 with injury, and in 2005 hit an uninspiring .234/.338/.374.  Desperate for outfield help, including an outfielder who could play center field, Colletti opted for Juan Pierre.  Other marquee names on the outfield market were Alfonso Soriano (8 yrs, $121m), Carlos Lee (6 yrs, $100m), Gary Matthews Jr (5 yrs, $50m), and Dave Roberts (3 yrs, $14m).  To fill that third spot, the winner was Luis Gonzalez, who is probably best known for being an ass.  During the course of the year, Matt Kemp played well while Loney hit a wall, and then finally took over first base.

Going into 2008, Colletti was beginning to see that Pierre would not be a viable centerfielder for very long since he had a noodle arm.  The obvious answer was to stick Matt Kemp in center field, move Pierre to left, keep Ethier in right and prove that you know Joe Torre isn't a good manager, but that he (along with a gigantic contract) can draw A-Rod to LA.  And you're wrong.  First of all, we know now (and suspected then) that McCourt wasn't going to shell out for A-Rod, even if he would draw more fans and make the team successful.  Secondly, other than that, the free agent market wasn't great for hitters, but Colletti had to make a splash after a losing season, thus the signing of Andruw Jones.  It was a lot of money, but it was only for 2 years.  Jones turned out to be horrible, Kemp eventually took over centerfield after splitting some time with Ethier, and then came the trade that nobody saw coming.  Manny.  Ramirez.  Manny was on fire and helped to carry the team to the division title.

Unable to see any way the Dodgers could do well (and sell tickets) without Manny, Colletti almost had to re-sign him, but it was becoming obvious that the Dodgers didn't have any money to spend.  Manny and Casey Blake were acquired without the Dodgers taking on salary in 2008.  So in the offseason before 2009, Manny was signed to a contract deferring money over three years after he had left the team.  This compounded with the restructuring of Andruw Jones' contract that led to his release - he would be paid until 2014, giving the team more short term flexibility while sacrificing payroll from 2011-2013, when the core of the team would be reaching free agency.  

Meanwhile, Jayson Werth is just hitting free agency this offseason, and Cody Ross has one more year before he hits the market.  While they would have been good to have in 2007, who knows what Werth, Ross, Ethier would have done in the outfield.  What if Werth goes down and Ross toes the Mendoza line?  Or if they do well, what becomes of Matt Kemp?  And is it too much pressure on the sophomore Ethier to be the 3 hitter already?  Would this have prevented Manny to LA (or for that matter, the 2 year deal after 2008), and would that have been a good thing?  

My inclinations are to say that even with Werth, Ross and Ethier, you need to sign someone else to be a starter for a year, so you need Alou, Catalanotto or even Gonzalez in 2007, assuming that Kemp will play over Ross once he gets it together and proves he's better at the major league level.  Get an outfield with some depth, then keep flexibility for trading for third base or the rotation later in the season.  But what would you have said 4 years ago?  Truth be told, I was really excited when the Giants were about to sign Pierre and pissed that Colletti swooped in and signed him for an extra year, but then again, I thought Carlos Lee and Alfonso Soriano were reasonable signings back then. 

Some would say that two weeks of a disappearing offense and increasing lead for the Padres in the NL West is insurmountable.  Some would say that it's just a rough two weeks and things will normalize for the better.  While truth and facts tell us that things will get better, Fake Plaschke has this to say:

Anaheim is the land of all-stars.

Chavez Ravine is the land of Movie Stars.

The Angels do all the little things right.

The Dodgers do all the little things and big things wrong.

Maybe Matt Kemp needs another trash can pushed next to his locker.

Maybe Andre Ethier should sit on the bench while veteran Garrett Anderson shows how it's done.

Maybe.

But as John Madden would say, until they're winners, they're just losers.

Continue reading this post »

via cardboardgods.files.wordpress.com

I was going to write some fake Plaschke to introduce Garvey, but then I realized that there was no need for that.  Josh Wilker* of Cardboard Gods wrote a brilliant piece on Steve Garvey.  One excerpt:

 

Here are two versions of history. Both could be said to follow the logic of dreams.

Version one: Steve Garvey did not go to Vietnam because he was a star. He had been a star in college and he was drafted in the first round by the Dodgers and one year later he made his debut in the major leagues, and once you were in the major leagues there was no more Vietnam. The year he made his debut, 1969, he played in spring training alongside a struggling minor leaguer named Roy Gleason. Gleason had played briefly for the Dodgers in 1963, doubling in his only at-bat, then in 1967 after failing to further distinguish himself in the minors he was drafted into the army, the only man to serve in Vietnam after logging so much as a single moment in the major leagues. He was sent home on a stretcher, wounded with shrapnel from a blast that killed the man standing beside him, his friend Tony Silvo. He left behind in Vietnam some personal effects, including his 1963 World Series ring.

Version two: Steve Garvey did not go to Vietnam because there was no such thing as Vietnam. Look at the card at the top of this page and tell me there was such a thing as Vietnam. Look at that card at the top of the page and tell me there was a place somewhere full of contradictions and ambiguity and needless suffering. Tell me there was a place where America has been defeated. Tell me there was a place that replaced our innocence with the knowledge that we were capable of unspeakable cruelties, that mutilated or killed our young men, that even stole one of our 1963 World Series rings. If you tell me there was a Vietnam I’ll tell you I don’t believe you.

I have another excerpt to include, but first I'll describe Garvey's case for the Lords of the Ravine a bit more.

Continue reading this post »

The Los Angeles Dodgers announced today that they will re-sign Darren Dreifort to nearly the same contract he signed before the 2001 season, this one paying him $52,079,999 over 5 years.  When asked how he could manage such a move given the tight payroll constraints from the McCourts, Ned Colletti responded, "Well all the players receiving deferred money kind of felt sorry for Drei, and figured that since they're due some money when they aren't playing baseball, they would be generous and put that money towards giving Dreifort a chance to play."

"It's a great win for the club, too.  If Dreifort throws an inning, then the club actually gets something for all that money over the course of the next five years."

Contract details below the jump

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James Loney is a likeable personality.  He's also the king of nicknames - J-Lo, Crazy Eyes, Geoffery, Big Game James, etc.  But do we really know what to expect from him as a hitter?

Batting Line and EqA:
2006: .284/.342/.549  .297
2007: .331/.381/.538  .312
2008: .289/.338/.434  .274
2009: .281/.357/.399  .278

It's not exactly comforting to see a falling ISO every year, particularly at an age where he should be developing power.   It seems like it wouldn't be right to give up on the guy, particularly since he's still young (turns 26 next May), but given that he's going to start making more than the minimum soon, how worried should we be?

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We begin this post with a foreward by Bill Plaschke*, sort of, but then I use numbers below the jump to avoid getting banned from True Blue.  So without further adieu, the Poet Laureate of the LA Times:

Call it the devil collecting his due for 2006, to be historical.

Call it bad luck to be positive. 

Call it a mental collapse, to be negative.

I call it a glaring hole in his game.

Chad Billingsley should have been an ace, but when the going got tough, he was a joker.

A wild card.

New for us, and new for him.

Well, sort of.

Continue reading this post »

Dodger Hitters vs Phillies Pitchers

Cliff Lee faced off vs Clayton Kershaw on June 20, 2008, his only game against the Dodgers.   The Dodgers' starting lineup was Pierre (not in beast mode), Kemp, Kent, Loney, Laroche, Ethier, Berroa, Ardoin, Kershaw, so it's not too surprising that Lee went 7 1/3 giving up a walk and 6 hits.  Casey Blake was a member of the Indians at the time.  Manny is 6 for 14 with 3 2B, 2 HR and 6 walks against Lee.  O-Dog is 2 for 6 lifetime with a triple and a homer against him.  Ronnie Belliard and Casey Blake have never faced Lee.  Four current Dodgers have in their careers hit home runs off of Cliff Lee - Jim Thome, Manny Ramirez, Orlando Hudson, and Rafael Furcal.  Maybe start Hudson for that one.

Cole Hamels finished the year 10-11; why isn't Plaschke trashing him (Did Joe Morgan?)?  Are you telling me Plaschke actually noticed that Hamels went 16 innings in 2 starts against the Dodgers, striking out 14 and walking only 1, surrendering only 2 runs?  Those starts were May 14 (which the Dodgers won, thanks to Brad Lidge in the 9th and Chad Durbin in the 10th, who intentionally walked James Loney to get to Matt Kemp), and a complete game shutout on June 4, where he gave a hit to Pierre, Loney, Ethier, Kemp and Kershaw.  While the announcers on TBS discussed Slam Range, the Dodgers may need to keep the game within Lidge range (3 run lead) if behind.  But let's remember also that he has surrendered home runs to Belliard, Loney, Martin and Manny in his young career, and Kemp is 7 for 17 career with 2 doubles against him.  Clayton Kershaw has a .400/.400/.400 line against him in 5 AB.  It is a bit worrisome, though, that Furcal hits .071/.071/.071 in 14 PAs lifetime vs Hamels.  Joe Torre, if you read this blog, let Matt Kemp lead off against Cole Hamels.

JA Happ appeared in relief against the Dodgers, giving up a single and a walk in 2/3 and inning of work.  I don't think it's terribly necessary to elaborate here.  He's kind of new to everybody.

Pedro Martinez was once a great pitcher.  Now he's pretty good, I guess.  In the past 2 seasons, he's pitched 153 2/3 innings and given up 26 HRs (1.5 HR/9).  Orlando Hudson owns a .280/.308/.520 line against him in 26 PAs, the best of any Dodger who has faced Martinez in over 20 PAs.  Pierre is 4 for 11 lifetime with a double against him, and Pedro was one of Matt Kemp's early home run victims when he broke into the league back in 2006 (Kemp is 2 for 3 with a homer and a single against Pedro).  Thome hits .167/.314/.476 lifetime with 4 homers in 42 AB vs Pedro.  So Thome, O-Dog, Bison are your guys to start against him, and Manny should let Pierre start ahead of him (.167/.211/.222 in 38 PAs), hanging out on the bench with Belliard when O-Dog starts.

Dodgers Pitchers vs Phillies Hitters

Randy Wolf has pushed Ryan Howard, Chase Utley, and Jayson Werth far below the Mendoza line, but Pedro Feliz is a big pain in the ass.  Feliz is .294/.316/.824 in 19 PAs against Wolf with 3 homers.  Shane Victorino is 3 for 9 lifetime against Wolf, a triple shy of the cycle.  Carlos Ruiz and Jimmy Rollins ahve also homered against Wolf.  As one would expect, it's the right-handers that give him trouble.  This season, he held the Phillies to 1 run over 6 in a 9-2 win on May 13 in Philly while losing one at home after giving up 2 homers in the 7th inning, entering the 7th with a pitch count of 88 on June 7th (nice one Grady, er, Joe).

Chad Billingsley had one start, in Philadelphia.  He went 7 innings surrendering 1 run while striking out 9.  He got a no decision as the Dodgers managed little against Hamels on May 14 (see link under Hamels), the win instead vultured by Broxton.  Billingsley has surrendered long balls to Rollins, Feliz and Howard, although Phillies starters all have an .800 or higher OPS against him except for Victorino.  Rollins is the most dangerous with a .400/.471/.867 line against him, although he has kind of sucked this year with the .296 OBP.

Clayton Kershaw ran into pitch count trouble against the Phillies this season, getting to 100 pitches before the 6th inning in two starts, May 12 and June 4, taking the L in both.  The only Philly to homer against the Minotaur is Chase Utley in 72 AB, but they can do their damage with patience.   "Current Phillies" have hit .222./345/.347 vs Kershaw, as that walk rate has been problematic for the 21-year-old lefty phenom.  Howard, Rollins, Werth and Victorino have been held under control, but in addition to Utley, Feliz and Ibanez have given him trouble.

Hiroki Kuroda, if healthy, is a great option.  He pitched 6 scoreless innings against the Phillies on June 6th at Dodger Stadium.  He didn't get the win thanks to Belisario surrendering 2 runs in the 7th, but the Dodgers won in 12 after forcing another Lidge BS in the 9th, ultimately winning on an Andre Ethier walk-off against Chad Durbin.  Pedro Feliz is 2 for 4 against him and Chase Utley is 3 for 9 with 2 doubles against Kuroda.  But other than Werth's .222/.300/.333, the rest of the Phillies lineup has less than a .450 OPS against Kuroda!

Vicente Padilla has not faced the Phils this year, but Utley is 1 for 3 with a homer, Howard is 1 for 2 with a homer, and Raul Ibanez is 9 for 28 against him with 2 homers and 4 walks lifetime.  Matt Stairs has hit .308 against him career, but all singles.

Jon Garland had one decent game and one awful game against the Phillies while playing for Arizona.  The awful game was August 18, where he gave up 5 runs 11 hits and 2 walks in 5 1/3, including homers to Werth and Ruiz.  The other start was July 27 and featured 3 unearned runs.

Kuroda, Wolf, and Kershaw appear to be the best choices to face the Phillies (2 starts each), and I'd probably go with Billingsley for Game 4.  Personally, I'd also start Hudson against most of the Phillies pitchers (although I could understand Belliard against Happ or Hamels, I guess).  But I think this should be a good series.

Note: vs batter stats based on regular season and postseason play

The Dodgers have two outstanding young pitchers in Billingsley and Kershaw.  Even though they're now mainstays in the rotation, consider that Billingsley is 10 years younger than Kevin Brown was when he signed his $100,000,000 contract, and Kershaw is 13 years younger.  So for right now, I just want to look at Billingsley.  He's taken a bit of heat for not being as amazing as he was last year, but I want to know if that's warranted:

2008: 200.7 IP, 32 GS, 201 K, 80 BB, 2.51 K/BB, 14 HR, .248/.324/.363 against, 1.336 WHIP, 3.35 FIP, 3.14 ERA, 135 ERA+
2009: 178.7 IP, 29 GS, 159 K, 75 BB, 2.12 K/BB, 13 HR, .245/.326/.370 against, 1.304 WHIP, 3.62 FIP, 3.93 ERA, 106 ERA+

Based on the three true outcomes, it's not surprising to see a dropoff; he's got a slightly higher walk and home run rate in 2009, and a significantly lower K rate (8.0 vs 9.0 the previous season).  But it's equally strange how opponents have nearly identical batting lines against him.  Can 0.79 of ERA be explained by productive outs?  Or is it possible that Billingsley was a little bit lucky in 08 and a little bit unlucky in 09, but he's roughly the same good pitcher each year?

I do want to look at some pitch data that stuck out at Fangraphs:

Fastball
2008: 59.2% (91.5), -.06 wFB/C
2009: 51.1% (91.7), -.02 wFB/C

using his fastball significantly less means more breaking balls.  These could be more stressful on his arm (which would go nicely with the 6th inning struggles story).  This could also mean there might be a problem with some of his breaking balls.  Let's examine:

2008: 2.1% SL (85.4), 0.35 wSL/C, 18.8% CT (87.6), 1.96 wCT/C, 17.7% CB (77.8), 1.37 wCB/C, 2.4% CH (84.1), -0.96 wCH/C
2009: 4.1% SL (84.1), 3.47 wSL/C, 22.9% CT (88.9), 0.25 wCT/C, 21.5% CB (78.4), 1.57 wCB/C, 0.8% CH (85.7), -9.07 wCH/C

Billingsley improved every breaking pitch that he took a little velocity off, except for his curveball.  Given the velocity, I'm wondering if he actually abandoned his changeup and that's just the designation given to his slider when it doesn't work right.  And even if his fastball isn't his best pitch, it's probably not helpful to significantly back off of it.  Looking back at Baseball-Reference Splits for 2008 and 2009, his K/BB in 2 strike counts drops from 5.91 to 4.82 from 08 to 09.  Additionally, by counting the "after 0-1" and "after 1-0" PAs, Billingsley got first pitch strikes 55.6% of the time in 08 vs 54.3% in 09.  I'll hypothesize (but without looking at game data pitch by pitch won't say for sure) that relying less on his fastball has led more to Billingsley being slightly less dominant in 2 strike counts as well as slightly less able to come back from behind in the count.

Billingsley has been dinked around a bit more, and that seems like the biggest difference.  Despite even less playing time for Juan Pierre, Billingley has actually had more bases taken on him than previous seasons (34 thus far vs 22 all last season).  Further, he's had 11 sacrifice flies against him rather than 5 last season; while this is partly due to luck, not getting as many outs by strikeout does make a difference here; the sac flies alone account for 6 ER; Billingsley has so far this season a mere 8 more than last season.

Billingsley might need better advice about trusting his fastball to get ahead and stay ahead in counts, but otherwise, I don't see too much cause for alarm.