Predictably, the Dodger fandom is restless. By the time Spring Training started, many fans had pronounced the Dodger’s Off-Season as a colossal failure, and some even said that the Dodgers would not even make the playoffs. When that was proven false, the same fans are now clamoring for the Dodgers to make some epic, “gut-the-farm” trades. Trayce Thompson is on the IL, and his return is far from certain. He…
The greatest of all time. That question gets asked in sports so many times. And you ask any 10 fans who is the greatest, you will get 10 different answers. Younger fans usually base their answer on players they have seen. Older fans tend to stick to who was the best in the era they associate with. The stat geeks go to the stats, and then dissect everything and re-evaluate,…
The bad news is that the Dodgers lost to the Yankees, setting up today as the rubber match. The Good News is that last night was a “breakout” game for Michael Grove. In his best-pitched game so far in his young career, he was dominant… except for two bad pitches to the same hitter. Sometimes certain hitters just have a pitcher’s number. Groves’ mechanics were in sync and his release…
On June 15, 2016, Yordan Alvarez signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers as a scrawny, wide-eyed International Free Agent out of Cuba. He received a $2 Million Dollar Signing Bonus back in the days when guys like Hector Olivera (who was an adept hitter… of women) got $62.5 Million Dollar Deals. In his initial scouting report, it described him as “an athletic contact hitter who has shown some power.” What…
This is something new that I am going to try to stimulate conversation, but that only takes me a few minutes. Subject: Noah Syndergaard Ever since Noah (THOR) burst on the scene, he was a manacing physical specimen. He threw 200 MPH and was built like the Hulk. After he blew out his arm and need TJ, he can only throw about 93 MPH now. In his latest interview, which…
Tim Busch has been a practicing attorney in Orange County for the past 35 years and is the founder of The Busch Firm, which specializes in high net-worth estate planning, real estate and business transactions, tax, and Religious Organization representation. Tim is also founder and CEO of Pacific Hospitality Group, LLC a hotel development and management company that owns and manages eight hotels, including the Doubletree Hotel at Irvine Spectrum,…
I was reading an article on yahoo about players who played in both the majors in baseball and the NBA. Multi-sport athletes are nothing new. Jim Thorpe played in the majors and also in the fore runner of the NFL. Babe Didrickson Zaharias played golf and numerous other sports in her life. And of course, Michael Jordan, and Deion Sanders both played two sports at the professional level. 13 players…
Some players burst onto the MLB scene and seem to be ready to play in the Show in their first game. Witness one James Outman! With other players, it’s a process. I watched Miguel Vargas struggle for a month or six weeks every time he went up a level. Gavin Stone flew through three levels of baseball last year, but has struggled at AAA and for the Dodgers this season….
What’s for breakfast? How about some Stone-Ground Deviled Rays? If you have not been paying attention, maybe you have not noticed what The Bazooka has been doing: He has been taking 2-3 MPH off his fastball, and it is moving like crazy. He can still throw the Big Kahuna Heater occasionally, but hitters can time flat pitches… they can’t time movement! As I suspected, Julio Urias’s bullpen session has been…
Today, on Dodgers.com, Juan Toribio has a great piece on Noah Syndergaard, who sounds like he has had a fork stuck in him. Andrew Friedman has made a number of excellent acquisitions, but this is not one and you can’t win them all.I think AF is about to end the charade. Toribio writes this: Thor still struggling to regain his thunder With diminished velo, Syndergaard has seen ERA soar to…