Technically, this is supposed to be a week recap, but I really only want to talk about one game this week ... I think you know which one.
I don't know about you, but for me, there seems to be a time every year where I just want to throw out everybody. GM, coaches, players. Everyone. I want to get rid of them all and start over.Eventually I settle down and come to my senses ... but Jesus, has this past week in a half been a punch in the gut. Or really, several punches.
Pictured: Gut punch.
Today's loss was so brutal because it was a game the Dodgers needed. I mean, I guess there really isn't such thing as a must win game in June, but taking two of three from the World Champion Yankees would be a step in the right direction for a team that's reeling.
Instead, a four run lead is blown. Then the rest of the bullpen serves up the game to the Yankees on a silver platter. And here we are, five games back of the Padres.
And I'm pissed.
And so, while I'm not going to throw out the whole Dodger organization, we do need change. Just a handful of things I want:
Move 1a. Ramon Troncoso to DL with anything. I don't care what it is, something is wrong with Troncoso and he needs to be on the DL. Honestly, it's probably a combination of overuse and Troncoso not really being as good as we once thought, but he has been horrible since April when he was used in 15 of the first 22 games of the season. Whatever the reason, since the beginning of May (and not including today because Baseball Reference hasn't been updated yet), Troncoso has a 6.86 ERA in 20 games. Opposing batters have hit .300 off him in that span and for a .889 OPS.
Move 1b: So, again, Troncoso to the DL. Bring up Travis Schlichting.
Move 2a. DFA George Sherrill. He's done. Everyone has figured him out. I mean, come on, he's giving up homeruns to lefties. If he's supposed to be able to get anyone out, it's supposed to be a left handed hitter.
Pictured: Not. Doing. Your. JOB.
Move 2b: Bring up Jon Link or wait for Carlos Monasterios to come off the DL. I realize this leaves just one lefty in the bullpen, Hong-Chih Kuo. Now, if you feel that he's too valuable to just be a left handed specialist, and you absolutely need one, then replace Sherrill with Juan Perez. Who?! Yeah, I don't know either. But scanning the Albuquerque roster, he's got a 3.19 ERA and 32 Ks in 31 innings, so he's not horrible. Admittedly, his stats against lefties aren't fantastic, but we're working with a coaching staff who insists on the lefty/lefty matchup rather than going with the most effective reliever at the time, so as long as he throws with his left arm, he should do the job for Torre and co.
Pictured: Lefty/Lefty matchup working out the right way.
Move 3a: DFA Garret Anderson. He still can't hit. After a good week, he reverted back to his old self with a 1-9 week.
Move 3b: Xavier Paul.
Move 4: Use Jonathan Broxton only when he is needed. (Broxton, by the way, isn't absolved of all blame for this recent incident, even with the overuse coming in.) Here's the thing, and maybe I just don't understand because I've never been a major league reliever, but does Broxton absolutely need to get his work in? If he doesn't pitch for four games, can't he throw a light bullpen session to keep the rust off? I mean, again, maybe I don't get it, but I just don't feel like Broxton is going to forget how to throw a fastball if he doesn't do it for a handful of days.
These are just a few things that could be changed immediately and improve the team. Some of this is with the front office, some of this is with the coaching staff.
Speaking of, I'm on the fence with Joe Torre. He obviously misuses the pitching staff, and he has such an unreasonable trust of aging veterans that it becomes increasingly more difficult to defend his choices.
On the other hand, he has led the Dodgers to two straight NLCS, which is impressive considering our playoff highlight reel before Joe Torre featured only Jose Lima and then JD Drew and Jeff Kent getting thrown out at home on the same play.
On the third hand, you have to wonder how much of our recent success is his influence, and how much is just the ability of the players. How many fewer (or more?) games would the Dodgers have won if the players just coached themselves? Torre might be gone when his contract is up at the end of the year, and at this point, I don't know if I'll miss him.
Anyway, I'm probably rambling. I'm tired, it's late, and I'm frustrated. Sometimes, it's just hard to be a fan.
Alright, I'm posting this week recap as the Dodgers trail 2-0 in the bottom of the 8th versus the Red Sox. So far, at least up until this point, it's been a pretty lame week.
It started well, with the Dodgers taking the first two games from Cincinnati, winning their first road series outside the NL West this season. And then they lost the third game to the Reds, and then they came into Boston and decided they liked losing better than winning, because they proceeded to lose the next two games.
And Garret Anderson is batting 5th today (yes, I know GA has been better the last week or so. I'm not ready to anoint him undead just yet) so I'm not holding my hopes too high for a win here.
So, I don't have much to add this week. Mostly because it's getting a little late and I'm on a borrowed computer so I just want to quickly talk about this one thing.
The Dodger Schedule Is Unfair Because Of Who Is On The Payroll
Now, granted, schedules are inherently unfair based on things like what division and league you play in. The Baltimore Orioles have to play more games against the Yankees and Red Sox than any other non-divisional teams.
But, I'm just talking about interleague play.
The theme for the NL West in interleague play this year seems to be AL East.
For example, the Giants played the Orioles and Blue Jays this week. This coming week, they'll play the Red Sox.
The Padres, this week, played three game sets against the Blue Jays and Orioles, and next week they'll play the Rays.
The Dodgers, meanwhile, obviously played the Reds and Red Sox, and this coming week, they'll play the Angels and Yankees.
So, here's the thing that bothers me. It's not just that the Dodgers play a tougher schedule, it's that the Dodgers are playing this tougher schedule because of people on the payroll.
I'll explain... what's the reason the Dodgers are playing a three game set in Boston rather than against any other AL East team? It's because MLB wanted to pump up Manny's return to Boston. Obviously, it has worked because every sports program, website, or blog mentions it: SportsCenter mentioned the Dodgers in the first twenty minutes of the program for the first time this year. Don't quote me on that, I don't know for sure. It just seems that every time I've watched SportsCenter this year, the Dodgers don't come up til somewhere in the last 4th of the show. Suddenly, Manny is back in Boston and boom, Dodgers are one of the top stories.
In fairness, this only took three minutes of searching.
So then, what's the reason for the Dodgers playing the Yankees next week and not the Orioles? Obviously, Joe Torre versus his old team. The main stream media is going to be all over it.
Yeah, I'm probably making too much of a deal about this. Sure, it doesn't help anything that the Dodgers are a storied team with something of a rivalry with the Yankees.
I guess all I'm saying is, I wish George Sherrill had said some really horrible, inflammatory things about the Orioles after he left so we could've played them this weekend instead.
So ... that was an odd week.
If I were to tell you at the beginning of the week that the Dodgers would go 3-3 in three games sets versus the Cardinals and Angels, would you guess a sweep of the Cardinals and then a sweep by the Angels? Would you?! I think not. The results this week were not necessarily odd, just unexpected.
No, no. The odd this week seemed to come more from off the field than on it.
Draft Dodgers (SEE WHAT I DID THERE?!)
The annual amateur draft was held this week, and the Dodgers made a couple picks that might be considered odd.
First, they drafted an 18 year old pitcher who almost everyone feels is "unsignable." You can read my thoughts here ... as if you didn't already.
But, here's just a couple other things I noticed.
Logan White seems to have something against the coaches at LSU because he's trying to steal all their players.
First he drafts Zach Lee in the 1st round, who has a strong commitment to LSU.
Later, in the sixth round, White drafted Kevin Gausman, another high schooler with who seems committed to LSU.
But White didn't stop there. Before he drafted Gausman, he drafted LSU's center fielder Leon Landry in the 3rd round, and after, in the 8th round, he drafted LSU's 1st baseman Blake Dean.
In an ideal world, the Dodgers would take both of LSU's top pitching recruits, their center fielder, and their first baseman.
Lucky for LSU, the Dodgers will probably sign neither Lee nor Gausman, so at least their rotation will be ok next year.
The second thing I noticed was the Dodgers drafted (and signed) someone who already has my support because of his facial hair.
"What?" you ask. I'll tell you.
In the 28th round, the Dodgers drafted Mike Drowne out of Sacred Heart University. Now, I like to look up a little bit of info on the players the Dodgers draft so I went to Sacred Heart U's website and navigated my way to the athletics page and then to Drowne's page, where I found this amazing profile pic.
They look like vertical parenthesis for his mouth!
Immediately, I was intrigued. I mean, it's fantastic! He looks like a villain from the 1800s. A train magnate who wants to demolish a small town to build his railroad empire ... and yes, he's wearing a tophat in this scenario.
However ... I was disappointed when I visited the website a few days later to see an article talking about Drowne being drafted. Accompanying said story was this picture of Drowne.
Suddenly, heart-breakingly mustache-less.
Admittedly, this soured me on Drowne just a bit.
I later realized, though, it does take a certain kind of bravado (or stupidity) to take a profile picture of yourself with a crazy set of fake facial hair and allow it to go up on a website that's going to be visited by a good amount of people.
So, Mike Drowne, if you are reading this, and I'm sure you are, I'm not mad at you for the fake facial hair, and I'm telling you this: if you grow back that facial hair and keep it through your trip in the minors, and you have my full support.
The McCourts Did Something Crazy, Though Really, Not Totally Surprising
Ok, seriously, at this point, is there anyone left in the McCourt camp?
I mean, is there any Dodger fan who's been following the events of the past year or so who still fully supports either of the McCourts as owner of this team?
If so, this one is for you...
The McCourts hired and paid a six figure salary to an old Russian to send positive vibes, or "V Energy" to the Dodgers.
This has already been sufficiently discussed/made fun of on various blogs (like MSTI, MoKM, and SoSG) so I'll just add one thing, the thing that makes me most sad about all this.
Yes, this whole thing is impossibly stupid/incredibly insane/a tremendous waste of money ... pick your choice.
The real sad thing about all this is this question: were you really shocked? To be honest, I wasn't.
Sure, I was surprised. It's hard to see something like this coming. But at this point, did anyone read this article and react with disbelief. "Noooo ... the McCourts couldn't have done something so irrational ... they wouldn't have paid all this money to some crazy Russian guy who knows nothing about baseball! Impossible!"
I think, at least for Dodgers fans, the McCourts have entered the Tyson Zone. For those who don't know, the Tyson Zone (described here) was created by Bill Simmons as a way to describe an athlete (or in this case, team owner) whose behavior is so odd that any story you ready about them, no matter how bizarre, is believable.
For example, if you were to read tomorrow that the McCourts spent a million dollars two seasons ago to uproot the grass in the outfield and replant it with special Australian fertilizer that would bring good fortunes to the team, would you blink an eye? Oh, and by the way, to pay off the dirt, parking is being raised to $25 a car.
Or, say you read tomorrow that the McCourts were fighting for custody of Reed Johnson. Would you faint from surprise?
It's really unfortunate that it has come to this. The Dodgers are one of the most historic franchises in baseball, and right now the McCourts are making them a laughing stock. I mean, how many pre-season predictions did you read this Spring Training that had the Dodgers not finishing in first in the NL West because of distractions with ownership?
Luckily, at least so far, the Dodgers have been able to avoid front office issues. I mean, hey, they were in first place at one point this week before finishing the week a game behind the Padres.
But that's not to say the Dodgers haven't been affected. Just this week, the Dodgers most likely forfeited a first round pick on a player that was always going to be too expensive to sign. And this comes after they forfeited two other early picks when they didn't offer arbitration to Randy Wolf and Orlando Hudson this offseason.
... What do you believe an owner's role should be with a team? I see it as this: First, the Owner should pony up the money. The Owner should never be afraid to put money into their team. If they don't want to spend, then they shouldn't be an Owner. Two, the Owner shouldn't embarrass the team. That doesn't mean they necessarily need to be the face of the team (see Arte Moreno), but if you aren't going to put on a good front, then just disappear into your Owner's box. Be a silent owner. Show up to hold up the Championship Trophy and then go away. The last thing you should be doing is filling newspaper headlines with your divorce hearings or doing things like hiring Rasputin for a six figure sum to send brain waves and advise you on team decisions.
Mike Drowne: this facial hair is also acceptable...
Look, McCourts, if you guys are fans of the game like you've always purported to be, then you should understand that you are making a mockery of one of the storied franchises.
If you were really fans of baseball, you'd sell the Dodgers or step down as owners.
Because at this point, you are not just embarrassing yourselves, you are embarrassing all of us.
So, I was watching the first round of the MLB draft on MLB Network earlier today, and the Dodgers were on the clock.
Now despite the fact that I know almost absolutely nothing about the kids being drafted except the most basic of information (I've heard good things about #1 pick Bruce Howard ... he's going to be the next Steve Strasman) I still get pumped for the draft.
Horrible, insane looking Strasburg picture courtesy of Yahoo! Sports.
So even though I had to sit through Bud Selig pronounce Los Angeles as "Los Angeleees" several times, I patiently awaited the announcement of the Dodger pick.
The time came, and Bud Selig stepped to the podium in all his wrinkly glory and proclaimed the Dodgers had selected Zach Lee with the 28th pick.
And almost immediately there was some negativity. The Twitter-sphere was confused. The MLB Network guys already started talking about signability issues. And then, oddly enough, in the space where the MLB Network guys had been showing scouting footage of other players all day, they began showing clips of Zach Lee playing high school football.
And that was it. They showed some grainy footage of Lee completing a pass in some football game then went immediately to an interview with an unrelated old guy.
It was all very ... different.
I mean, seriously. Google Image search "Zachary Lee baseball" and you get mostly football pictures.
Response continued to pour in, most of it confused or unfavorable.
Jim Callis chimed in with: "WOW. LAD was about the last team I would have expected to take Zack Lee. Can they really sign him?"
Joe Sheehan felt that the Dodgers were "blatantly pushing [their] pick into 2011."
The more I read about, the more it started to seem like the biggest question was not whether Lee would be signed or not, but rather: is the best analogy for what the Dodgers did in the first round a punt or a fold?
I mean, this kid seems all ready to go play two sports as LSU next year. Some reports say he was asking for at least $5 million before considering not fulfilling his commitment to LSU (although others have said it's all a ploy to get more money at the bargaining table).
Basically, a big part of the picture being painted here is something like this: Lee is going to need a lot of money to sign. A lot. (Lest you forget that Matt Kemp is only making $4 million this year.) The rest of the picture is two words: Frank McCourt. As a whole, the picture looks pretty bleak.
But I started giving it some thought.
First I read the article on Dodgers.com. Logan White was optimistic, saying:
"People can think what they want, he was the best talent available and I want to sign him, absolutely ... I didn't take Zach to not sign him. You'll see as the summer goes along we'll make every effort to sign him, and I want to sign him. I know it won't be easy, but hopefully we'll get it done."
Now sure, this is probably just a PR job, and White said almost the exact same thing after the Dodgers picked a similarly unsignable Luke Hochevar in 2005:
"We took him with the intention of signing him. I talked to Scott a couple days ago. I feel he's signable. He wants to play. As long as the family thinks we're fair, I think the kid will sign."
I and my 5.35 career ERA demand 40 million dollars!
Still, despite all the evidence mounting against actually getting this signing done, I kept thinking about it and finally I came to this peace:
What's the worst that could happen?
Well, I mean other than spending millions of dollars on Lee to have him be a total bust.
There's really two scenarios to what happens here:
1. McCourt shells out the money, the Dodgers sign a good young pitcher.
2. The Dodgers don't sign him, he goes to college, and the Dodgers get another high pick in next years draft, which is expected to have a higher quality of amateur talent than this year's draft.
The key to all this is the fact that Lee is a quality prospect and as such, I think I can appreciate this technique. White didn't draft a more mediocre prospect who might sign for less. White went for broke.
I guess, ultimately, there's two ways to look at this: either the Dodgers punted/folded a first round pick in an act of cheapness/insanity or ... or the Dodgers made a shrewd pick at number 28 that's a possible win-win.
Of course, I might just be trying to talk some sense into a first day of the draft that didn't seem to have much.
The more I think about it, the more it seems like this week was a bad week disguised as a good week.
Don't get me wrong. Anytime you can go 5-2, you are doing fine. It's just that some of these wins really could have ended up losses.
Monday, for example, when the Dodgers beat the Diamondbacks 5-4. The Dodgers were trailing 4-2 into the 8th before scoring two runs on an error and winning the game on a balk. That's not really winning a game so much as having it handed to you on a platter.
Then you have Tuesday and Wednesday. There's two sides to these two games. You can appreciate how Dodger pitching completely shutdown the Arizona offense, but at the same time, you have to realize that the Dodger offense looked pretty weak against Arizona's starters. In fact, Arizona's starters, Dan Haren and Edwin Jackson, pitched a combined 17.0 shutout innings over the two days and it wasn't until the Dodgers cracked into the terrible Arizona bullpen that they were able to finally score some runs.
All I'm saying is: yes, the Dodgers swept the D-backs but frankly, the D-backs could have almost just as easily swept the Dodgers right back.
The Atlanta split was a little more straight forward, with neither team scoring a whole bunch of runs ... except, for, you know, when the Braves scored 9 in two innings against the Dodger bullpen.
Anyway, I only have two more things.
I'm A Little Worried About Next Few Weeks
You know this last four game series with the Braves? It was tough and close ... and the Dodgers fought for a split.
Guess what. It ain't gettin' easier.
And not just the next series. The rest of this month. Every team the Dodgers play for the rest of the month, at this moment in time, has 30 or more wins.
Here's the schedule until the end of June with the team's current records:
3 vs. Cardinals (33-23)
3 vs. Angels (31-28)
3 at Reds (33-24)
3 at Red Sox (33-25)
3 at Angels (30-28)
3 vs. Yankees (35-22)
3 at Giants (30-25)
Yeah, maybe some things change by the time we play those teams, but I'm guessing whatever the record, this next month is going to be a challenge.
Garret Anderson Hit A Walk-Off This Week And I Still Want Him Gone
Because he still went 1-13 this week.
Look, I get that Joe Torre and gang love busted down veterans better than young players, and as such, it's going to take a lot for Xavier Paul to replace Anderson on the roster.
But Joe Torre, for God's sake, stop starting Anderson. Take a look down that bench. You see Reed Johnson? He's a veteran, too. Better yet, he's a gamer. Hard-nosed and stuff.
And the best thing? He can still kinda hit. And run. And, for the most part, play defense. What's the worst that could happen? Johnson can go 0-3 like anyone else.
You seem hellbent on only starting Manny four games a week, but Anderson doesn't have to be his replacement.
I mean, neither does Johnson, but Paul isn't 30 yet, so he's out of the running.
Anderson, seen here celebrating getting a base hit.
Pictured: Gut punch.
