So, I was out and about today, and I finally got around to checking the news, and what did I see?
Well, lookey here. The Dodgers resigned Ronnie Belliard and Brad Ausmus.
And like almost every thing we've done this offseason, I am just ... feeling ... blah ... about it.
Ausmus is fine. He did well enough as a backup catcher last year, and he'll be back this year relatively cheap. If he continues to play adequately and maybe impart some old catcher wisdom on some of the younger players, then he's a good guy to have around.
Plus, he's got connections.
Which I guess brings me to why I'm so unsure about Belliard. What is his point? Is he here to start or come off the bench? And if we have Belliard, what's the point of Jamey Carroll? They play the same positions. Both bat right handed. Carroll gets on base better. Belliard slugs better. Neither excels at both. It's just a little ... blah.
On the bright side, Yahoo! Sports reports that Belliard's contract comes with a stipulation that is both sad and funny:
"The infielder’s $825,000, one-year contract, which was announced Tuesday, will become guaranteed only if he reports to spring training at 209 pounds or less. If he reports at over 209 pounds, the Dodgers can release him and owe only termination pay."
Basically, show up fat and you lose everything!
I can only imagine the horribly depressing conversation that would take place between the coaches if Belliard doesn't show up in shape in Spring. The inevitable: "Is Ronnie looking sluggish?" question. The debate whether or not to bust out the scale. The decision on whether or not to cut him for being 215.
"Are we supposed to add the weight of dreadlocks, too?"
Say what you will about the signings, but at the very least they've added a little bit of suspense to Spring Training.
And really, isn't that all you can ask for in a blah offseason?
The Dodgers announced today that they have resigned Vicente Padilla to a one year contract worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $5 million.
Now, I'm having trouble deciding how I feel about this.For one, I don't care much for Vicente Padilla, the man. And that's not just me, lest we forget his Rangers teammates threw a small party when they learned he was let go from the team last year. But this is also the guy who mysteriously got shot in the leg this offseason. Seriously, did we ever get the straight story about what went down? The article on Dodgers.com said he did it, but until I just read that, I was pretty sure his bodyguard did it. Look, this has obviously nothing to do with his pitching skills. I'm just saying that this guy seems to have trouble follow him around wherever he goes.
Also, is it Vincente or Vicente? That always messes me up.
Which Padilla is going to show up for us in 2010? Is it going to be the one who posted a 4.92 ERA in Texas for the good part of 2009, or the one who showed up in Los Angeles and had a 3.20 ERA over seven starts and made two excellent starts in the playoffs?
Also, how many innings can we get out of Padilla? In his last six seasons, Padilla only made over 30 starts and cracked 200 innings just once, in 2006.
To be honest, I was hoping to fill the #4 starter spot with Jon Garland (or someone like him, though, really, I'm too lazy to think of a comparable name on the Free Agent market). Garland is someone who has made 30+ starts in each of his last eight seasons and has gone 200+ innings in five of those (the other three ending with him in the 190 inning range). Garland's ERA, though similar to Padilla's over that stretch, seems to be slightly lower. Oh, and, in each of those eight seasons, Garland was never run out of a city, nor has he been shot or shot somebody (or both, at the same time).
But, I guess you go into the 2010 season with the team you have, not the team you want. Look, Padilla isn't horrible. He isn't good, but he'll probably give us 20 something starts and a 4.00 ERA, which for a #4 starter at $5 million isn't horrendous.
It's just, after Milton Bradley, Jeff Kent, and Manny, you start to get a little tired of the headcases.
So, I haven't written a blog post in almost a month. But can you really blame me? There hasn't really been a substantial bit of news in that time.
Matt Kemp is dating Rihanna? Good for him, but how sad is it that the biggest news the Dodgers have had in the last month was reported by TMZ?
Big News.
What then, you might ask, is this post about? Well, a small bit of Dodger news was reported today and I'm jumping all over it for two reasons. One: Guilt for not posting anything for about three and a half weeks. Two: I'm starving for any kind of Dodger news. I keep checking Dodger news sites and blogs just hoping for some sign of a pulse in this team's offseason.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, that pulse was found today!
The Dodgers have signed ... RUSS ORTIZ!
HUZZAH! HUZZAH! ...
Wait a second. Russ Ortiz? RUSS ORTIZ?! WHAT?! WHY?!
Look, normally I'm a sucker for these stupid "Local Boy Comes Home to Pitch for Dodgers" stories, but even I can't get behind this one.
Russ Ortiz? Russ Ortiz who's last "just above average" year was 2004? Russ Ortiz who's has been dreadful in every following year (and I mean dreadful, ERAs: 6.89, 8.14, 5.51, 5.57)?
Russ Ortiz, seen here being slightly above-average.
Oh, and the Dodgers signed Michael Restovich, too, which immediately places him 7th on the Dodger outfielder depth chart, behind Jamie Hoffmann, who's on another team.
Alright, let's talk about a couple things that have gone down recently.
Jamey Carroll signed with the Dodgers for two years and I am apathetic. Carroll's an average bat, and not bad with the glove. It kind of goes down like this: if Carroll is our starting 2nd baseman, we're in trouble. If Carroll fills the role that Mark Loretta had last year, then we are better off. Either way, the contract is only two years and it's under $4 million, so it's not a bad signing.
The Dodgers also added Luis Ayala on the cheap. As Mike at MSTI points out, Ayala's been (in Mike's words) a "monumental jackass." He did a write up about Ayala here. I don't like how much of a jackass Ayala is, but I'm not worried much about him affecting clubhouse chemistry or anything. The brilliant thing about Joe Torre is, say what you will about his coaching style but the man knows how to control a clubhouse. I don't think Ayala will be a problem. He might suck at pitching, but that's another story...
Speaking of adding players on the cheap, Diamond Leung reported on his Twitter that the Dodgers also brought back Doug Mientkiewicz and Ángel Berroa on minor league deals. I like Mientkiewicz, he's not great, but he's an okay option as a backup to Loney or being a left handed bat off the bench. If we have to use Berroa, I'm going to be off-put.
Off-putting.
And finally, Juan Pierre is gone, and he's still getting on my nerves. When Dylan Hernandez covered the Pierre trade for the L.A. Times, he went to Pierre to get some quotes. Here's a piece of the article:
"'I've been in the witness protection program for the last two years.'
Pierre said he didn't consider his last three years a waste.
'When I first signed with them, people were like, 'What in the world were they thinking?' ' he said. 'I've been criticized so much in the last three years, so I'm ready for the Chicago media. All in all, it's made me a stronger person.'"
Long sigh...
"Witness protection"? You appeared in 264 of 324 games the last two years and started 162 of those games. You weren't a ghost.
And I'm glad this whole experience made you "a stronger person." Guess what, Juan? You were getting paid millions upon millions of dollars to play baseball, so take a little criticism in the media.
And by the way, most of the things I see about you in the media are complementary. Writers and television announcers have had almost nothing but praise for your "grittiness" or "baseball attitude" or whatever.
You're a baseball player, not a pariah. Get over yourself.
I was going to call this post something along the lines of "Our Long National Nightmare is Over" but I always seem to come late to the party.
Anyway, sources (I'm looking at you, Tim Brown) are reporting the Dodgers have shipped Juan Pierre off to the White Sox. Dodgers will eat $10.5 million of the $18.5 million left on the two years of Pierre's contract.
In return, we are getting a couple of PTBNL's, some salary relief, and a new lease on life.
Ok, maybe it's not that bad, but Pierre has been somewhat of albatross on the Dodgers the last three years. A combination of his strikingly sub-par ability to get on-base (as a leadoff man, no less), his horrifyingly below average throwing arm, and his dwindling stolen base rate (71.% in 2009) has made Pierre somewhat of a negative word amongst Dodger fans.
... But all that's over. That's Chicago's problem now.
Now, as for the trade, we could talk about Pierre's (mostly) professional attitude to becoming a bench player for the first time in his life, but that's been covered.
We could also look at the implications of the trade: is this money we just opened up for a free agent or lawyers' bills? Given that we are eating much of his contract, will the PTBNL's we get have some nice value or are we just happy if they have a pulse? Questions to be answered.
... But you know what? That's for a later time. For now, I'll just leave it at this: Pierre it's been fun. Enjoy the fact that you will actually be playing in Chicago. (We all will.)
So, another week has gone by without any substantial Dodger news taking place, at the GM winter meetings, no less. Well, I suppose that's not necessarily true. We did lose Randy Wolf to the Brewers for three years and about 9.25 million a year.
Now, you can debate whether giving that contract to Wolf to keep him would have been in our best interest or not, but what's become pretty clear is that, at the very least, arbitration should have been offered. Milwaukee was the 14th worst team in the league last year, so we would have been given their 2nd round pick, as well as a sandwich pick in between the 1st and 2nd round of next year's draft. There's a lot of quality to be found in those picks, especially when Logan White is running the draft.
But alas, no arbitration offered, no picks gained, and the farm system becomes harder to replenish. It's kind of amazing how this whole McCourts' divorce thing is not only finding ways to screw up the Dodgers in the present but the future as well. Really, though, I feel like the worst part about all this is that there never was any real intention of bringing Wolf back. There were some reports about Wolf being open to returning to the Dodgers at two years for around 8 million a year. Whether these claims were valid or not, I don't know, but ultimately, I don't think it matters. I think the key to the claims is that Wolf wanted to remain a Dodger. And why not? We've had success (at least more so than Milwaukee). We've got a good young core. And, probably most important to Wolf, we're his home town team. He had reason to stay, and yes, he probably would have given us a home town discount. But again, I just get the feeling that we weren't having any of it.
So, that's where we stand. No Wolf. No draft picks. Nothing but memories of one of our best pitchers last year. Sigh.
...and even worse: no more "Hungry like the Wolf" jokes.
Meanwhile, in lesser news: Jamie Hoffmann was taken in the Rule 5 draft by the Yankees. The key here is that Hoffmann has to stay on the Yankees roster the whole season otherwise he is offered back to us. The Yankees have Curtis Granderson and Nick Swisher on the roster for next season, as well as Melky Cabrera and Brett Gardner, who serve as reserve outfielders and pinch runners. If the Yankees don't add a free agent outfielder, I could see Hoffman making it as the 5th outfielder. But let's be honest. They have a field of Jason Bay, Matt Holliday, Johnny Damon, and Hideki Matsui to choose from... The Yankees will buy one of them. Maybe two. Unless they ship off Cabrera or Gardner (or both), Hoffmann probably doesn't make it the whole season. Of course, then the question becomes: how willing are we to take on the added payroll of a Jamie Hoffmann?
Hoffmann is likely to demand a salary of at least six figures.
Elsewhere, the Dodgers tendered contracts to all nine players who were contract tender-able. Eight of those players pretty much compose the young core of the team, and there's also Jason Repko. What? Yeah, he's still with the team. Some people are upset we are still paying him, I don't care. He's like a remnant of the Dan Evans era. Keep him around. Meanwhile, the other eight players are in line for a big raise through arbitration. So, look for that to be one of the reasons given for our lack of free agent spending at the end of the offseason.
And finally!
The Dodgers signed Josh Towers to a minor league contract this week. Now, when I heard this news, I was happy for some reason. For a while, I couldn't remember why. Towers has had minimal success in the majors, and none really since 2005. He spent all of 2008 in the minors, and he made a couple appearances last year for the Yankees and was ok. Apparently he was pretty good in AAA for most of the year.
Basically, what I'm saying is, it's not a fantastic signing. Towers might make it as the swingman/long relief guy, but more likely, he'll probably come up from AAA to make a few spot starts sometime during the season a la Eric Milton. I mean, this is not a bad signing, but it's not lighting the Dodger world on fire.
But for some reason, I like Josh Towers. I looked him up, he's from Port Hueneme. That's round here. So, he's a local boy. I always like when we bring back local players. But that wasn't the reason I knew Josh Towers. I mean, there are a lot of players from the Los Angeles area. I don't know them all.
So, I kept thinking about it, and finally, it hit me.
Josh Towers was a very valuable part of the 2005 World Champion Dodgers... on my copy of MVP Baseball 2005. I won't delve too deeply into how good a game MVP Baseball 2005 was, but I will say that it was, and still is, the only baseball video game that I've been able to go a full season in. Most games, I'll start a season, make 30-40 games in and eventually lose interest. Not with MVP Baseball 2005. 162 games... and I'm pretty sure I went 162-0 over that span, too. And then I swept my way through the playoffs and won the World Series in 4 games. And Josh Towers was my number five starter that year. He probably won 20-something games that year. I don't remember how or why I traded for him, but I do know that he provided 30+ quality starts for an improbable championship team.
Josh Towers, Starting Pitcher, 2005 World Champion Dodgers
If that's not enough of a reason for me to be happy we signed him five years later, then I don't know what is...
So, it's been a while since my last post, and it's not for lack of not being around. It's just that the biggest news recently is the signing of Justin Miller, so you can understand my lack of enthusiasm.
Whoo-pee...
I'll probably have to figure a way to write posts about nothing, because the way this off-season is shaping up, I don't get the feeling there's going to be a lot of action.
Hence this post.
If you are bored, take a hack at one of the following puzzles based on statistics from the last season.
HERE'S THE BATTER'S ONE
and
HERE'S THE PITCHER'S ONE
The pitcher one is admittedly tougher, though the whole thing is kind of tough if you don't follow baseball as a whole.
Anyway, while you are at it, you might want to take another swipe at the Dodger based quiz I posted about earlier this offseason.
If you want, you can post your scores in the comments section of this post.
Plus, he's got connections.
"Are we supposed to add the weight of dreadlocks, too?"
