Never doubt statistics. This is especially true when looking at minor-league players. You can always predict for a certainty how a player will perform in Major League Baseball by looking at what they did in the minor leagues. We don’t need scouts, GMs, Baseball America, or MLB Pipeline, and we don’t need any stinking Keith Law.. All we need are statistics. Statistics are King – they are God-like. Statistics will…
Time stops for no one. And as the Dodgers get ready to enter their 65th season in Los Angeles, they approach the 67 years the Dodgers were part of the Major Leagues in Brooklyn. The National League as we know it, was formed in 1890. The Dodgers won their first title that season. Their roots in Brooklyn as a professional team go back a little further. And they also have…
I am fully resigned to the fact that Gavin Lux is going into Spring Training as the starting SS. I did not believe that he could play SS at the MLB level, but I will have to defer to Andrew Friedman, who knows “a thing or two I don’t!” Lux has added 15 pounds of muscle which might bring his arm up to average. The first time he makes an…
Getting information on player movement has always been rather irritating to me. Some trades and signings come as a complete surprise, and others do not. The internet has made instant notification a lot more prevalent than back in the day. There was no Yardbarker or MLBTR, with reports from baseball insiders linking teams to different players. I think one of the reasons so many Dodger fans were totally frustrated with…
For the past several weeks, we have been discussing who is going to play where and how the rookies will fit in. Will Lux play SS or 2B? Will Vargas play 3B, 2B or LF? Will Outman start in CF? Will Busch play anywhere? There is a lot to be decided, and we are not going to solve all that today. That is why they have Spring Training. If I…
The election for the Hall of Fame was held last week. Scott Rolen was the only player getting the requisite 75 or more percent of the vote. Todd Helton, former Rockies’ first baseman, fell short by 11 votes. There were some who questioned Rolen’s Hall worthiness. Today’s voters value players much differently than in the past. Had he played in the 1960s, Fred McGriff most likely would have gone in…
I started working on this piece with the intention of showing that the 2023 rule changes are significant to the game, and this season will show major changes that baseball has seldom seen. That morphed into a look at baseball history and the rule changes that have occurred over the years. Maybe I went too far, as dipping back into the origins of the game and rules at the outset…
I see similarities between Jason Heyward and players like Tyler Anderson, Andrew Heaney, Thor, JDM, and others. Anderson and Heaney came to the Dodgers hoping that the Dodgers could “fix” them. JDM didn’t come to the Dodgers to get “fixed…” maybe to get better, but in the past, he did work with Robert Van Socyoc, who is now the Dodgers’ hitting coach and credits RVS with making his career!. The…
Many fans are more than a little bit disgruntled with the lack of action by the Dodgers this offseason. Most felt they would make a move to retain at least one of their own top free agents besides Kershaw. But it did not happen. And fans are left to wonder why. Especially since there was no real explanation coming from Andrew Friedman and Company. We were told that they were…
Let me start with the obvious. The Dodgers want to get under the Luxury Tax Threshold this season! Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman has stated that there is no mandate to stay under the tax threshold Guggs & Company, but also noted, “there are benefits to doing it.” However, the Dodgers went over the luxury threshold in both 2021 and 2022, meaning if they go over again, they…