1. Kenley Jansen is Fixed False. With his 8th Blown Save last night, he again demonstrated that he was lacking command and in order to get a strike, he throws some very hittable pitches. I was against the re-signing of Kenley Jansen and this is why. Big contracts to relief pitchers seldom pan out, but here we are and the Dodgers have to make do with what they have… and…
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…
“What we do see depends mainly on what we look for. … In the same field the farmer will notice the crop, the geologists the fossils, botanists the flowers, artists the colouring, sportmen the cover for the game. Though we may all look at the same things, it does not all follow that we should see them.” ― John Lubbock, The Beauties of Nature and the Wonders of the World We Live…
Kenley Jansen has blown six saves and broken Dodger fans’ hearts more than that this year. We can analyze until we are paralyzed but in essence, his problem has been the overuse of his cutter, which is still good, but maybe not as good as it used to be. It’s also likely that the advanced hitting coaches are helping hitters “key in” on what he is throwing. Most Dodger fans…
Let me preface this by unequivocally stipulating that I believe that Dustin May has a much higher ceiling than does Ross Stripling. Dustin May has had a great start, but has not yet faced any good offensive teams to establish his 2019 bona fides. May is a career starting pitcher and a sudden move to the bullpen could prove to be as problematic as it was for Walker Buehler. I…
Joe Kelly was a trainwreck early in the season, but when I last checked, he was pretty good. The Dodgers plan when they signed him was to change his grip and smooth out his mechanics. In case you have been hiding under a rock, it did not work very well… at least for a while. But, it’s how you end up that counts. They say that good things come to…
I was doing some research for a post I was trying to put together when I encountered one of my All-Time favorite Dodger pitchers, Burt “Happy” Hooten. I have no idea why, but I seem to favor pitchers from University of Texas, and pitchers from Texas in general. Nolan Ryan, Roger Clemens, Clayton Kershaw, Dustin May, Ross Stripling, Howie Reed, Huston Street, Brooks Kieschnick, Ryan Pressly, Greg Swindell, Shawn Tolleson,…
(Excuse my first-grade Photoshop skills). Lot’s of guys hit .300 in the Pacific Coast League. The combination of altitude, heat, thin air, juiced baseballs, and fairy dust make it a hitter’s league. Ty France, 3B of the Padres AAA affiliate is hitting .399 with 26 HR in just 276 AB’s. Shoot, AAAA player, Conner Joe is hitting .300. However, not many are hitting .456 while OPS’ing 1.381 in 131 AB’s…
Since getting off dairy products after last season, Clayton Kershaw has seen no flareup of his back issues and every game he has started he puts up at least 6 innings… or more. Simply put, Clayton is still the Dodger’s Ace, even if Hyun-jin Ryu wins the Cy Young Award. He is now 11-2 and has a 2.77 ERA to go with a 1.04 WHIP. He’s the amazing part: His…
This is AF’s 5th full year, and hopefully he will continue for several more years. He is human so he is prone to making mistakes, but never has he made an error without a very good reason for making a change. Most of us may not have understood the decisions, but they were always made to help the team. And I recognize and appreciate that it was a rhetorical statement,…