How can that be? Does Spring Training mean everything, or does Spring Training means nothing? Well, it depends… and if you are a person who sees everything as black or white, you may never understand how those two opposing statements can embody what Spring Training is all about. It seems like every year, some player comes out of “nowhere” and hits .350 or .400 in Spring Training and yet is…
Yesterday, Dave wrote this: “Last year you posted your stats predictions for the season. As it turned out they were pretty accurate. So looking forward to that again. But I think we need to wait until end of Spring training for that.” So, I am going to do it a little differently this year. I am going to it now, and I might revise my predictions at the end of…
The Dodgers’ hopes to win a World Series in 2023 hinge on a lot of things, including JD Martinez’s resurgence, J-Heys and David Peralta’s ability to come back, the pitching staff’s health, the ability of rookies to seize the day, and whether Freeman, Smith, Muncy & Betts can have All-Star Caliber years. However, nothing is more vital to the Dodgers’ hopes than Gavin Lux and his ability to play SS….
I should have thought of this before, but Andrew Friedman can’t go trading a number of Prospects for Bryan Reynolds without first seeing how Gavin Lux handles SS and, to a lesser degree… how Miguel Vargas handles 2B. If Lux and Vargas settle in as a solid Keystone Combination up the middle, then if James Outman has not been the second-coming, the Dodgers can afford to go out and get…
This year will be Julio Urias’ 8th season as a Dodger, during which time he has made almost $30 Million Dollars. His next contract will be for ten years and be around $400 Million. He will make more in one season than he has in his whole career. When he hits free agency, he will be just 27 years old! That put him at the intersection of entering his prime…
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…
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…
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…
I liked that headline, but I am joking… partially! I hate to keep saying this (no, I really don’t), but there was no way that Andrew Friedman and Josh Byrnes were going into the season with Gavin Lux at SS and Miguel Vargas at 3B. The conventional wisdom was that Lux was going to be the SS. Muncy was at 2B, and Vargas was at 3B. I said that I…
Michael Busch is a Minor League Player for the Los Angeles Dodgers who just finished his second full season, even though he was actually drafted in 2019 and had all of 24 ABs in the Minor Leagues because he was hit by a pitch and missed the rest of the season with broken bones. Of course, in COVID-2020, Busch did not play, so 2021 was his actual “first season,” and…