What is your favorite sports team uniform? The one you like the most in all of professional sports? I expect anyone who is reading this article on LADT would say without hesitation that the Dodgers home uniform is, without doubt, the cream of the crop. Perhaps it is the history we have with the team, the passion the team has elicited within us or it was the uniform we encountered…
I was going to save this for the off-season, but with 2Demeter2’s fantastic blog yesterday on the Technological Advances in Player Development, I put this blog on the “fast track.” So let me start with this: I am not sure how it all worked out, but I can tell you that in the past, I have fired people, but we agreed privately (for the sake of their career) that the…
I have seen many technological changes in my lifetime. As a youth, my telephone was on the kitchen wall and was part of a party line. I couldn’t have imagined back then that a day was coming when I would carry my phone with me everywhere I went, including my car, and that I would not only be able to take pictures with my phone, I would also be able…
To lose a game without learning something is a sad state of affairs. Yes, the Dodgers lost last night game, but they learned a few things in the process: If you can’t jump out of a boat and hit water, you probably won’t win (OK, OK, we already knew that); Hyun-jin Ryu has gone from being left off the playoff roster (in some of your minds) back to Cy Young…
Well, it’s always been serious, but with two weeks left in the season, it’s “Playoff Tune-up Time” which is very serious. It’s likely that Rich Hill and Alex Verdugo will not be ready for the NLDS… or maybe the NLCS and the World Series. David Freese and Justin Turner are banged up and we have no clue how healthy they will be. This is the hand the Dodgers have to…
So, if you listen to the Herm Edwards, you would always play to win the game. Well, that might be true in a 16 game football season, but I am going to suggest that while you don’t ever play to lose, in a baseball season that is 10 times longer than a football season, there are reasons you don’t always play to win the game. “Sometimes we need to lose…
Since the 2016 First-Year player Draft, Dodger fans have been questioning the first selection made by Andrew Friedman and friends. That selection was none other than shortstop Gavin Lux who is currently pushing for a spot on the Dodgers postseason roster. When we questioned the pick we, of course, did not have the inside information that Director of Amateur Scouting Billy Gasparino and his team had. Yet, it seemed to…
The LA Dodgers as a whole were a pretty subdued group, save the rookies and AJ Pollock, as they celebrated their 7th consecutive NL West Championship. AJ Pollock could only watch the last six. He was part of this one. The rest of the team was subdued because they have been here before… several times and they know that winning the NL West is just another step in their quest…
Yesterday someone wrote this: I would want to see us put together rosters which are the best in baseball, at least in some of the seasons. Why should a franchise with this large and fervent fan base, and the second largest media network in the country, not have that? Well, they don’t have that because as we have repeatedly seen, over 70% of these big, fat contracts become boat anchors….
I have always had a fascination with the development of baseball players. It started when coaching youth ball, and continued on to high school baseball. But what happens after a player gets drafted and signs that contract? Are these young men receiving the best possible instruction? Are the teams creating an environment for those players to maximize their abilities? How exactly do you accomplish that? Strictly through Sabermetrics? Is it…