Dustin May and Clayton Kershaw

April 27, 2019

I wanted Chris Sale at the 2016 trade deadline when he was burning bridges with the ChiSox. I cannot fault management because he was not traded until the Winter, and I have no idea as to who Chicago was demanding. We can speculate all we want, but nobody here knows. I was a strong advocate for Justin Verlander at the 2017 trade deadline, but understood why the Dodgers did not…

Read More >>

Contract Extensions The New Free Agency?

March 30, 2019

It must have been painful for some of these free agents going through contract negotiations the last couple of years. Led by AF, most teams are not all that keen on signing over age players/pitchers to long term $100MM + deals, and the players’ agents are having a rough time talking their clientele into accepting a deal much less than what they originally believed would be available, but probably closer…

Read More >>

Flawed Hypothetical

March 5, 2019

Last weekend Mark posed the hypothetical…”OK, the deal with the Devil is this: Dodgers win in 2019, but have a losing record and are like KC, TB or MIAMI for the next 10 years… big time suck!” I apologize, but I just could not let it go.  So please ignore if you so desire. I do not accept that as a plausible hypothetical.  There is no way the Dodgers are…

Read More >>

NL West First Look – Padres

February 23, 2019

Finally, ST has arrived, and the first ST game is today against the ChiSox.  The 7-man scheduled pitching rotation for Saturday’s game is Daniel Corcino, Jaime Schultz, Kevin Quackenbush, Josh Sborz, Stetson Allie, Josh Smoker and Joe Broussard. Sunday’s game 7 man scheduled rotation will be Hyun-Jin Ryu, Brock Stewart, Dennis Santana, Adam McCreery, Tony Gonsolin, Mitchell White, and Dustin May. I had already written a lengthy response to Mark’s…

Read More >>

Pending Big Name Trades???

November 24, 2018

There has been no big player transactions and it is a holiday weekend, so pickings for material are pretty slim.  However, as long as the Dodgers are mentioned in some big-name transactions, I will continue to think that something could happen.  At the very least it allows for a lot of conjecture and good writing material.  We all have our favorite Dodgers who we do not want to see moved…

Read More >>

2019 or 2020

November 17, 2018

Why do I think that there is virtually no chance that the Dodgers will sign Bryce Harper this winter?  Primarily because I do believe the leaked report that the Dodgers will not go over the CBT threshold for the next four years.  I believe the Dodgers are looking at next year’s salaries and next year’s FA class and saying that it makes much more sense to wait one year before…

Read More >>

Financial Considerations

November 10, 2018

There are currently 38 Dodgers on the 40-man roster without consideration of either Yasmani Grandal or Hyun-jin Ryu accepting their respective QO.  With the current makeup, the Dodgers will have a salary total of nearly $179MM or approximately $27MM under the 2019 competitive balance tax threshold.  We will all know no later than Monday, November 8 at 2:00 PM PT if either accept.  Assuming they do not accept, below is…

Read More >>

One More on FAZ and My Final 2018 WS Autopsy

November 3, 2018

I hope you all bear with me. I would like to somewhat continue the FAZ discussion from yesterday.  And then to give one last autopsy report on the 2018 WS. As Mark indicated, FAZ took over a team that had a payroll in excess of $250MM. One would think that a team with that payroll would be loaded.  However when they arrived on the scene, the team had only 3…

Read More >>

LA Dodgers vs. Boston Red Sox – 2018 World Series

October 22, 2018

WELCOME TO THE FALL CLASSIC 2018!! By the time the Dodgers and Red Sox square off in Game 1 of the 2018 World Series, it will have been 356 days since the Dodgers went down in Game 7 of the 2017 World Series.  It will be 30 year’s this month since the last Dodgers WS victory.  This year’s WS can make all of those bad memories go away (at least…

Read More >>

Tough To Watch

October 13, 2018

In a game where the two best hitters struck out 7 out of 10 plate appearances, this was a very hard game to watch much less write about.  Unfortunately for the good guys, JT’s strikeouts were much more problematic than Christian Yelich’s.  The Blue put up a good fight late, but Game 1 goes to Craig Counsell in his chess match against Dave Roberts.  It appears that Counsell played Roberts…

Read More >>