With the Dodgers epic struggles early this season firmly fixed in the rear-view mirror, the fan expectations are lukewarm… at best. However, here the Dodgers sit, tied for first place with the D-bags and I tend to like it that fans are not too excited (I like it a lot) because conventional wisdom is frequently wrong. Don’t get me wrong – the 2017 Dodgers weren’t bad, but they were a…
The Good News While the Dodgers couldn’t jump out of a boat and hit water last night, the good news was that Rich Hill is rounding into form and becoming the type of starter the Dodgers thought the were getting until he turned into the Poster Child of Blisters. Thanks to Laser Technology, Rich Hill now has a bionic finger (I just made that last part up because it sounded…
Right now, I trust Yimi Garcia, Pedro Baez, Scott Alexander and Company about as much as I trust a fox to guard the hen house. However, in baseball, many other sports and the stock market, it is best to see what can be, not what is. You don’t buy a stock hoping it will stay where it is. You don’t get a player who already has a high value unless…
Injury News Julio Urias, who has only been throwing off a mound for a few days, hit 88 MPH on the gun yesterday. He is set to thow a couple more bullpen sessions this week and hopes to pitch soon. The Dodgers are very encouraged. I would expect to see him pitching out of the pen this year. After hitting 88 so quickly, I would think he can find another…
There have been a lot of speculative discussions on a potential trade for Baltimore SS Manny Machado. Bumsrap referred to a May 4, 2018 article from an Orioles fan’s point of view. If I am going to trade for a rental, it can only include players that are replaceable by others in the organization. Alex Verdugo, Mitchell White, and Jeren Kendall are all replaceable, but not Gavin Lux. If the Orioles…
Just to clarify – yesterday I did not say that Stripling was the Dodger’s Ace… yet! Just that he could be by the end of the season and a lot of that depends upon how he pitches the rest of the way. Unlike Alex Wood who was often hitting 97 MPH early in the season last year, which was totally unsustainable for him, Strip is usually 92-94 MPH with an…
When I wrote the title, I wondered if I was really serious… and let me assure you, I am! Before this season started, I wrote that Ross Stripling just needed to accept that he’s a reliever… and even if he was a starter, he would never be any more than a #5 or #6. Boy, was I wrong! Dead wrong! Ross never bought into accepting he was a reliever and…
A lot of Dodger fans mocked and ridiculed Farhan Zaidi for saying three weeks ago that the Dodgers needed to hit more Homeruns? What? That’s stupid! Shows what he knows… Here we are, three weeks later… and the Dodgers were leading the NL is homeruns and were on a 16-5 streak…. well, after last night they are 16-6 and 2nd in HR. Maybe Farhan should say “How do you like…
Editorial Note – I wrote this before the Buehler injury. The 2018 Amateur Draft is now over. All that is left is the signing of the draft picks. The Dodgers did not select a high school player in Round 11 indicating to me that they expect the top 10 to be close to the bonus pool + 5%. There will be some savings with picks #9 and #10 as…
In the first 45 days of the season, the NL West could have buried the Dodgers, but they didn’t… and then the Dodgers went 15-5 in their last 20 games, so they are right back in it. You can call them “lucky” for what they have done in the past 20 games… and you might be right, but they were about as unlucky as you can get before that. This…