SB Nation User Blog: bhsportsguy

Winter Meeting Primer

bhsportsguy — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 08:10:37 -0000

The tweets, texts and news flashes will be a plenty starting Monday morning. How should you act? Remember that last year, no major deals were made until after the meeting so this week is more of a sounding board.

This year, I believe the "meeting" will be in a convention center, last year they were in Vegas and everyone was on the main floor of the Bellagio Hotel walking between the lobby area to where the elevators were located. There will be a press area in case of a special announcement (last year it was Maddux's retirement)

If you ever get a chance to go and you like hunting down baseball media types, then this is the place for you.

I am sure at some point, bloggers like TBLA will be able to get credentialed, I understand that once a day, the Dodgers will bring the local papers covering the team up to the room for an update. That was last year and I will be interesting to see if that remains the case.

With everyone fighting to break a story, I think there will be a lot of misinformation being floated out there, remember that in the past Ned has tended to play his cards close and will often surprise you with what deal he makes. This year, the surprise will be if they make any signings at all.

My two cents or maybe one cent view on recent events

bhsportsguy — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 22:31:20 -0000

In my recently posted comment on the post Jon Weisman wrote last night on DT, I said that I wondered if my lack of outrage or sense of perspective makes me less of a fan and more of a spectator.

I say this because while the inside baseball side of me really want the Dodgers to make good baseball decisions, I can also at least argue (if making a losing argument) on why they do the things that they do.

Phil and Eric (and others) rightly wonder why the Dodgers could not offer arbitration to Hudson and Wolf, outside of the risk (albeit small says the aforementioned others) of having to pay them 8 figures for a one-year deal (in 2 positions the Dodgers have said since the end of the season they needed to fill), it just doesn't make baseball sense not to offer arbtitration.

To counter that, I bring up a few thoughts.

One, Frank McCourt probably feels that his Front Office team hasn't been very lucky in the results of his recent signings. Being real cynical here, I even can believe he never thought he would pay as much as he ended paying last year to Randy Wolf and Orlando Hudson. The thought of a bottm floor of $10M a year for each of them probably was to much to bear especially given both players injury history.

Two, realistically no matter how much WAR or other statistical measurements say those two are worth, Randy Wolf and Orlando Hudson are not worth that much money for one seaon.

And three, I am pretty sure the Dodgers believe they can get 3 players, an infielder and two reclamation projects aka as starting pitchers for less than what Hudson and Wolf would have cost.

There already reports of agents checking out the market before next Monday to find out if their clients can make as much if they pass on arbitraiton.

If this was even 2 years ago, and the Dodgers were in the same situation, personnel and money-wise, I think they offer arbittration because those players would have refused it immediately. Or better yet, they would have been signed before the Dodgers had to decide.

For the record, I agree with Phil, Eric, Jon and everyone else that the Dodgers should have made those offers. But I cannot bring myself to get angry about it. And I do wonder if that makes me less of fan.

Link to Winter League Stats for Players in Dodger Org

bhsportsguy — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 07:53:16 -0000

Link to Winter League Stats for Players in Dodger Org

Just a convenient link, you can find it at Dodgers.com

An apology of sorts

bhsportsguy — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 07:39:35 -0000

I was never a McCourt apologist (or a Colletti collaborator) but I often found myself trying to put myself in their place with respect to how the Dodgers operated their team. I believe the first moment I went one way and most everyone else went somewhere else was the Pierre signing. Not that I agreed with the price and the years but generally my point was that I understood why they made that deal.

I believe for Frank McCourt, the Jason Schmidt and in particular, the Andruw Jones deals were something that changed his tune about the future operations of the ball club. With Schmidt rehabbing (in the second year of a three year/$48M deal) and Jones becoming person non grata with his two year/$40M deal (and full disclosure, I liked both of those deals), Frank McCourt decided to go on the cheap. Which to a certain extent, at that time, I could see why, more than thirty percent of your payroll (along with others like Nomar and Kent being in and out), not playing and worst yet, one player is so unpopular, people appear to boo him no matter what he does. However, I think McCourt let it get personal and that was wrong.

Now as we move towards the off-season and all that mess, I say to all my friends here, I'm sorry that I tried to logically figure out what the Dodgers were doing because as we begin to see behind the curtains, it as if are worst fears may be true.

And while, I certainly believe every person deserves their day in court, I think it was poorly chosen forum to basically take their private lives and shove it in front of the millions of fans who one, don't want to get involved in a family matter but more importantly, don't want that family matter to harm their team.

Last week, I had the pleasure of going to Opening Night for the Clippers with Phil, and we spent a fair amount of time talking about this and in the end, I said that for the fans, it will probably be best if the team is declared community property since that would probably force an outside buyer. However if the analysis of Josh at DodgerDivorce.com is accurate, I would guess that MLB will require the next owner of the Dodgers have to come up with a great deal of the purchase price in cash, if the McCourts owe more than $500M on the notes, they could very well lose whatever equity they have or at least may only split $100M or so, which is not bad but they would also no longer own those nice pieces of property in Boston anymore.

Again, how this affects the team on the field, I don't know, there really isn't much I think they were going to do anyway. But my eyes are wide open and I reading everything with interest. Just remember folks, litigation is not about justice and the truth, its about winning.

Super Two Boo Hoo

bhsportsguy — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 00:00:09 -0000

Per a tweet by John Perrotto of Baseball Prospectus, he states that the Super Two cut off for the upcoming season will be 2 years and 139 days. Unlike last year, the Dodgers do not have any candidates for Super Two (last year both Russell Martin and Andre Ethier were Super Two and thus got an additional year of arbitration eligible contract status). This year, it affects two of the Dodgers fellow NL West teams, Arizona and San Francisco.

For Arizona, this cutoff was good news, if it stands, slugging third baseman, Mark Reynolds, will be oh so close but no luck as his service time sits at 2 years, 138 days. Not only does Reynolds lose the extra year, he loses probably 5-6 million dollars since generally, any raise from the minimum to first arbitration salary is no more than in the mid-three million dollar range (Ryan Howard excepted). So that means that Reynolds would only get a really big check starting in year 5 instead of year 4 so that's not a small deal.

For San Francisco, they have known all year that Tim Lincecum would be a Super Two, there issue will be how much do they offer since Lincecum has a chance to be the "Ryan Howard" for pitchers in terms of a Super Two contract. Also closer Brian Wilson will get a nice raise as a Super Two.

Only Adam Jones and Matt Garza will really take advantage of this status, they are others, Carlos Gomez but the real stars of this class remain the Giants and Jones/Garza.

General Managers - Will there be anymore openings for 2010?

bhsportsguy — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 07:02:16 -0000

The worst kept secret in baseball will apparently be made public in the next day or two, the San Diego Union-Tribune is reporting that the Padres will announce tomorrow that Boston Red Sox Assistant GM Jed Hoyer will become the next San Diego Padre GM.

Hoyer has been the leading candidate for some time now, even though last weekend, it was announced that the Padres had interviewed Dodger VP and Assistant GM Kim Ng had also been interviewed.

One of the annual pastimes for Dodger fans is will some other team hire either Kim Ng or Logan White away from the team. One note, for the last 2 years, Ng has interviewed for the Mariner and Padre GM positions, Logan White had one interview with Houston but that was a few years ago.

Now, lets take a look at the rest of baseball and see if Dodger fans can put this worry aside for another year.

NL West

Dodgers - reached agreement with current GM Ned Colletti for unspecified length of time extension.

Giants - Brian Sabean signed 2-year extension (2011)

Rockies - Dan o'Dowd is expected to sign extension

Diamondbacks - Josh Byrnes is signed through 2015

Padres - Jed Hoyer hired in 10/2009

NL Central

Cardinals - John Mozeliak signed through 2010

Cubs - Jim Hendry - signed 4-year extension in 2008

Astros - Ed Wade signed through 2010

Brewers - Doug Melvin signed through 2012

Reds - Walt Jocketty signed through 2011

Pirates - Neal Huntington signed through 2010

NL East

Phillies - Ruben Amaro signed through 2011

Marlins - Larry Beinfest, Michael Hill signed through 2015

Mets - Omar Minaya signed through 2012

Nationals - Mike Rizzo just hired in 8/09

Braves - Frank Wren promoted in 10/07

AL West

Angels - Tony Reagins promoted in 10/07

Athletics - Billy Beane signed through 2014

Mariners - Jack Zduriencik hired prior to 2009 season

Rangers - Jon Daniels signed through 2011

AL Central

Tigers - Dave Dombrowski signed through 2011

Twins - Bill Smith promoted in 10/07

White Sox - Ken Williams has contract that renews every year

Indians - Mark Shapiro signed through 2012

Royals - Dayton Moore signed through 2014

AL East

Yankees - Brian Cashman signed through 2011

Red Sox - Theo Epstein signed extension in 2008 for unknown length of time

Rays - Andrew Friedman promoted in 11/05

Blue Jays - Alex Anthopoulos promoted in 10/07

Orioles - Andy MacPhail hired in June 2007

It would appear that there will be no other openings this fall, for next year, I would look at Houston but there can always be a surprise now and then.