Tag Archives: Dodgers

How Don Mattingly can try to get fired (HUMOR)

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In a Ken Rosenthal article earlier today, a rival GM said that Dodgers Manager Don Mattingly is practically trying to get fired after his infamous ripping into of longtime RF Andre Ethier on Wednesday. However, despite that and the horrible 19-26 start for the Dodgers, he is expected to still be the skipper of Los Angeles when the sun rises on Friday.

Therefore, if we were to foolishly take the rival GM’s quotation literally, we can only guess that Mattingly has not done enough to get fired. Therefore, I have suggestions for him as he tries to escape the black hole of horrible the Dodgers’ season has been so far:

  • Accuse Tommy Lasorda of not actually bleeding Dodger Blue, but instead bleeding the red that everyone else has.
  • Hit the pitcher in the clean-up spot for kicks.
  • Leave game in the 7th inning to beat traffic.
  • Criticize Vin Scully. Note that doing this is not just grounds for termination, but is grounds for being shot into the heart of the sun.
  • Say that you wish the Dodgers had go-getters like Carlos Quentin.
  • Call AJ Ellis by the name of “DJ Elliot” for no apparent reason whatsoever.
  • Show up in Anaheim in a Angels uniform, see if you can get past security.
  • Sign Dwight Howard to play CF.
  • Give a long discussion on how you would approach 5-base baseball.
  • Donald Duck suit.
  • And the easiest way of all to get fired: keep having the team play .422 baseball.

Random Video Of The Undetermined Amount Of Time: Matt Kemp is awesome

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Matt Kemp visited a disabled Dodgers fan after a Giants-Dodgers game last weekend and signed a ball for him.
And gave him his hat.

And his jersey.

And his cleats.

Carlos Quentin has broken The Code and will suffer the consequences

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The Code. The unwritten rules by which all baseball players live by, held intuitively inside every clubhouse from Little League to the Majors. Rules like…

  • Don’t steal when you have a big lead.
  • Don’t mention a no-hitter in progress.
  • Don’t injure an opponent during a fight, especially one you started for no apparent reason.

Actually, the third one is one that many probably have always assumed, but never said. After all, in baseball fights, nobody, it seems, has gotten hurt since Juan Marichal took a bat to John Roseboro in 1965 (okay, that isn’t true, but sometimes it feels like it). Until last night.

On a 3-2 count, in a one-run game, Zack Greinke hit Carlos Quentin of the Padres. Quentin charged the mound, they collided, the usual basebrawl ensued, and when the smoke settled, Greinke had broken a collarbone and Matt Kemp, Jerry Hairston and Quentin had been ejected.

It’s unlikely that there is anyone- not even Padres fans- who will dispute that the incident was because of Carlos Quentin. While he and Greinke have a history, nobody would think that Greinke had hit him on purpose- things like that do not occur on 3-2 counts in one-run games. Quentin’s charge and the resulting fight, and the resulting injury, had no reason to occur. At all.

And, if that isn’t enough, after the game, Matt Kemp met up with Quentin in the parking lot and exchanged words.

And as that incident in the park lot proves, this isn’t the end. Merely the beginning. The next time these two teams meet- especially if Quentin is playing (it’s entirely possible he’ll be suspended during next week’s series in LA)- there will be retaliation. I know it. You know it. The social media department of the Dodgers knows it (and pulled out a Ron Burgundy reference to boot). And so does Major League Baseball, which must have the sinking feeling that next Monday’s game between the Dodgers and Padres, which was supposed to be a yearly tribute to Jackie Robinson, could get very ugly.

As Vin Scully would say: “Fertilizer.”

Picture of the day: Fernando-Mania never died

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Mexico may not have advanced in the WBC, but they certainly were popular with the fans during their time there. Just look at the crowd trying to get pitching coach and Mexican baseball legend Fernando Valenzuela to sign for them before a exhibition game against the Dodgers:

This picture, taken by “rwarrin”, is under a creative commons license.

Picture of the day: Casey Stengel wears sunglasses

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And now, because nobody asked for it, an image of a young Casey Stengel wearing sunglasses, circa 1915.

This photo, from the Library of Congress Flickr, has no known copyright restrictions.

So about the weekend…

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Things we learned over the weekend:

The Dodgers have a lot of money

You know how I wrote that analogy of how the Yankees are like Godzilla sleeping between rampages? Well, the Dodgers think that’s adorable. This weekend, they’ve signed Zack Greinke for $147 million dollars,  Korean ace Hyun-Jin Ryu for $36 million and presumably the moon for a few billion dollars they had left over. For the first time since the ill-advised 1998 Orioles, it looks like a team will top the Yankees in the payroll column.

But, interestingly, the Dodgers aren’t getting as much hate as the Yankees do when they go on sprees like this. I have a theory: The Yankees’ public image is of the Steinbrenner family and it’s surrogates, old money with a superiority complex, real or imagined, and with the YES network filled with varying degrees of homerism. By contrast, the public face of the Dodgers’ ownership is Magic Johnson, one of the most beloved sports figures in America, and their games are called by Vin Scully. Add in the fact that there are 20 titles between the two, and it becomes clear that the Dodgers are going to be regarded as benevolent overlords, at least by comparison.

The Dodgers have a lot of pitching

Oh, the other thing: here’s the list of MLB-ready pitchers now on the Los Angeles Dodgers-

Of course, there are only, at most, five rotation spots for these eight guys. Presuming that perhaps they will keep six pitchers (with the sixth pitcher being a long-relief and spot-starter who can go in when somebody inevitably gets hurt), that means that two pitchers, likely Harang and Capuano, will probably be traded. Traded, presumably, for prospects that could one day further reinforce the Dodgers.

The Royals actually have done something, but the Rays may have gotten the better part of the deal.

The big move this morning/late last night is that the Royals and Rays made a trade: James Shields, Wade Davis and a player to be named (or cash) go to the Royals, who send top hitting prospect Wil Myers, pitching prospects Jake Odorizzi and Mike Montgomery, and long-term (he’s still in the low minors) 3B prospect Patrick Leonard.

In the short-term, perhaps, the Royals have gotten the better part of the deal, getting “Big Game” James Shields, a perennial Cy Young Aaward candidate, as well as fellow MLB pitcher Wade Davis. But in the long-term, this could be a disastrous move for the Royals. They gave up four prospects, three of whom were on Baseball America‘s list of the minors’ top 100 prospects. Myers is said to be one of the best power-hitting prospects in all of baseball, Odorizzi had a brief stint in the majors last year and had a 3.03 ERA between AA and AAA last season and Montgomery isn’t as big a prospect as he once was but could still blossom into a big league pitcher. The Rays will be able to have these players for at least another five or six years.

And for this, the Royals get Shields for two years, and Wade Davis for maybe three or four years. And even with these upgrades, it’s unlikely that the Royals will be able to compete in the AL Central, although perhaps it makes them a outside contender for a Wild Card spot.

Could the Royals still “win” this deal? Of course. But I agree with many of the other people online: the Rays will probably win this deal in the long run.

The Black Swan and the Rise of the Dodgers

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In my rundown of The Palace Hotel Putsch, I noted that there was one possible outcome that we wouldn’t see coming. Actually, it was a category of possible outcomes: the Black Swan. Here’s what I wrote:

A black swan is an event that very few, if any, people see coming, but ultimately changes lots of things. The idea’s names comes from the fact that everybody thought that a swan couldn’t be black, until they found a species of swan that was black. The creation and wide-scale adoption of the internet, for example, was a black swan event. While it’s unlikely that there will be some earthshaking revelation or breakout player that will change the situation in the Boston clubhouse, it also is key that the possibility is not completely abandoned. In other words: expect the unexpected.

The Black Swan came into being with the trade that shook the world: Adrian Gonzalez, Josh Beckett, Carl Crawford and Nick Punto (who I can only presume was thrown in to make it a nice even number) for James Loney, prospects, and money. And all of this happened after the trade deadline.

While many have focused on the Red Sox, and deservedly so, what’s being lost in this is how this is another step in the rebirth of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Just think, last year at this time, they were one of the saddest stories in baseball, having been ravaged from their old glories by the decadence and divorce drama of the McCourt family. Now, they are ascendant, on the heels of the Giants in the NL West race and close to a Wild Card spot. They have good baseball men running things behind the scenes, the smile of Magic Johnson (which, if it could be harnessed as energy, would be able to light all of Southern California) as the public face, Vin Scully still on the call and Don Mattingly managing in his forever-hunt for a World Series ring (he is, by my calculation, the only person to ever play for the Yankees who remains in the hunt for a World Series ring. Okay, him and Mike Mussina.)

And it is only beginning for the Dodger Blues. This coming winter, the Dodgers will be selling the local TV rights to various interested buyers. Those rights, it should be noted, will be big. Very, very big. We’re talking billions of dollars,or a similarly high amount that is in Scrooge McDuck territory. Why, they could start making so much money, the Yankees will call for more revenue sharing…

…Okay, that last one is an exaggeration. The fact remains, though: the Dodgers are moving on up, and the big trades they have pulled this year could just be the beginning of a new era of Dodger Green. While there are some pitfalls that could strike this rise down- trading prospects, for example, could very easily come back to bite the Dodgers- it is clear that this new era might last awhile.