The Dodgers designated Bobby Abreu for assignment today to make room for Shane Victorino, recently acquired in a deadline trade with the Phillies. The Dodgers gave up two relievers, Lindblom and Martin, for Victorino, and dump Abreu from the team so Victorino can play left and bat leadoff. Is this a good decision? Continue reading
Winning a championship is not necessarily the mark of greatness. This is one of the classic mistakes people make when discussing sports, placing too much emphasis on a single moment at the expense of the big picture, a view which seems to have taken a stranglehold over sportswriting in the last ten years.
Winning is often a byproduct of greatness, but it’s not a direct correlation, and as anybody who has ever flipped through a college coursebook late at night and stumbled across the 9AM statistics class they have no intention of taking will tell you, correlation is not causation.
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The Dodgers have lost four straight and face a long road trip without their starting center fielder, their starting second baseman, their starting third baseman, their starting left fielder, perhaps the worst starting shortstop in 2012 and a manager who is batting the team’s best hitter 7th in the lineup. Frankly, it’s amazing the Dodgers have been able to maintain such a torrid pace to this point given the injuries, and the heady days of playing .670 ball are now gone, never to return.
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The shift is nothing new in baseball. Ted Williams was crushing it seventy years ago when he was hitting over .400, but it does seem to be enjoying a new era of popularity. Tampa bay has been torturing teams in the Al with it all year, the Yankees being a particular hapless victim.
A defensive shift is exactly what it implies, the normal pattern of defensive position is altered, or shifted if you will, to better position themelves for a particular hitter’s tendencies. A helpful photo:
Prince Fielder, the subject of the above diagram, is a tremendous power hitter who tends to pull the ball, hence the removal of the third basemen from third base, plugging up the hole on the right field side of the infield instead. What shocks me about this is not that managers attempt to limit the effectiveness of power/pull hitters, but that power/pull hitters allow the shift to defeat them so easily. When properly approached, the shift can only lead to failure for the defense.
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STOP BATTING DEE GORDON LEADOFF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Gordon went 0-5 against the Cardinals on Friday night and he didn’t get a ball out of the infield. His batting average is .200, his on-base percentage is .239. and his OPS is .494. Only seven players in all of major league baseball get on base less often than Gordon. Only five have a lower OPS.
This cannot continue, as much as Dodger management is clearly hell bent on playing Gordon, his production simply isn’t up to major league standards. It’s not even close to major league standards. You could put a below-average player, not even an average one mind you, into his slot and they would dwarf his production. The kid needs to be dropped from the leadoff spot immediately, and the more likely scenario at this point is to send him to the minor leagues for a while. There is absolutely no legitimate justification for continuing to give one of the worst hitters in all of baseball the most at-bats on your team. It’s beyond idiotic.
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It’s hard not to be romantic about baseball watching Kerry Wood pitch. Limitless talent, high character, endless injuries, Chicago Cub and all the agony that entails.
I went to Wrigley Field to watch Kerry Wood pitch in his rookie year of 1998, went back in 2000 to see his first start after the arm injury that kept him out for all of 1999. A year and a half on the shelf, and he defeated the Astros in that first appearance back, giving up only one run in six innings, hitting a home run just for good measure. I watched every pitch of his absolute domination of the Braves in the 2003 NL division series, I skipped work on opening day one year to eat pizza and watch Wood defeat the Reds despite giving up four runs. I watched him come back from injury after injury, his transition to a closer, his brief stint with the Indians and Yankees, and his return to the Cubs, where he functioned as a very solid reliever.
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There’s a strange phenomenon that occurs at Dodger stadium, and at most ballparks for that matter, where the hometown fans boo the opposition’s decision to issue an intentional walk. Intentional walks are almost always a bad idea, because they put additional runners on base and this opens up the possibility of scoring more runs. Why in baseball’s name do fans boo something that is advantageous for their team?
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Back when Mattingly was good at his job.
Don Mattingly was a great player. Injuries might have limited his place amongst Yankee greats, but this is a player who put up spectacular numbers during his peak years. From 1984-1989, Mattingly averaged 27 home runs, 43 doubles and 203 hits. From ’84-’87, his worst OPS was .918, and for his career, he walked 588 times, which is nothing to write home about, but he only struck out 444 times in 7722 plate appearances. Exceptional performance.
He’s not a very good manager, though. Continue reading
Frank McCourt is an evil genius. Wait, check that. Frank McCourt’s legal representation and negotiating team are the geniuses. McCourt is simply evil. The man took ownership of the Dodgers in 2004 and every season since has been worse for Dodger fans. It’s not all his fault, of course, but that doesn’t make him exempt from blame.
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I have a Baltimore Orioles jacket, which my parents bought for me during our visit to Camden Yards back in 1992, and this is meaningful in many ways but certainly in part because I have very little baseball paraphernalia of any sort, my favorite being the Cubs Christmas stocking that I hang with care in the hopes that winning seasons will soon be here.
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Summer of Baseball 