I told you a few days ago that there would be peaks and valleys. That was not some genius idea I had… that’s just baseball. One day, no one can beat you… a week later, everyone can beat you. It happens, it’s maddening, fans hate it, but it is just reality. I don’t get caught up in the “the game.” I look at the big picture and in the BIG…
The strength of the Farm system is unquestionably the pitching. It is not even close. The breakdown of the MLB Pipeline Top 30 prospects is: 12 – RHP 2 – LHP 4 – Catchers 5 – SS/2B 4 – 3B/1B 3 – OF Baseball America pretty much resembles MLB Pipeline’s prospect list except BA includes reliever Josh Sborz, and OF Carlos Rincon, replacing Braydon Fisher, Marshall Kasowski, and Leonel Valera….
Ernest Hemmingway once said “Critics are men who watch a battle from a high place then come down and shoot the survivors.” I scanned several Dodger blogs today after the game and the silence was deafening! If the Dodgers had gotten smoked yesterday, man, the critics would have been cranking out the text! But, as it is, the critics did not have much to say. Well, I did read this:…
Dodger fans complained that the Dodger’s platooned too much last season, so Andrew Friedman got rid of the logjam in the outfield and announced that there would be less platooning. Of course many fans lost their minds because the Dodgers “gave away” Puig, Kemp and Wood and Kyle Farmer is a “Freaking All-Star! They conveniently forget about the two highly rated prospects the Dodgers got back… both Downs and Gray…
I have been doing a lot of thinking and analysis and while I am a believer in analytics, I do not think that stats are the end all, be all. Humans play the game of baseball and no human can be fully captured with a single stat. However, there are a few statistics that just totally jump out at me. For example, when a batter has two strikes on them,…
I drove down to LA this weekend to visit a very close family friend and sharing in his surprise 75th birthday. At the hotel, I turned on the TV only to see SportsNet LA and watched Access Dodgers. I do miss LA for Dodger TV and Dodger Talk Radio. One comment I heard from Pedro Moura was that the Dodgers are not flashy and have a ton of depth but…
There has been a lot of discussion about the potential of a slow start this year. I and others have pointed out how the “starters” cannot get through 5 innings before the proverbial melt down. Both Hill and Strip went a solid 4 innings, and then came the 5th. Hill is penciled for his final ST outing on Friday (Saturday?), while Strip is scheduled to start Sunday’s game against LAA…
We all look at the stats and sometimes believe that the stats tell you “you are what your stats say you are,” and while that is sometimes true, players can grow in their skill set or regress. However, the progression (or regression) is not always linear. Witness one Enrique “Kike” Hernandez. About this time last year (March 15, 2018, to be exact) I wrote this, while referring back to a…
First of all, Happy St. Patrick’s Day. We are down to 10 ST games with one week to go in Arizona followed by 3 against LAA. Two games in Anaheim and one game at Dodger Stadium. Thus far the Dodgers are 12-8-2, as if that means anything. Who have been the surprises? Offensively, Kike’ Hernandez and Austin Barnes have been red hot and IMO have established themselves as starters. Kike’…
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…