Originally Posted by ToasterOven
It's an Astros picture.
It's an Astros picture.
Wins Above Expectations
I laugh at the Dodgers finally embracing the Sabremetrics movement a decade after the Red Sox. I am referring to the wonks the Dodgers have running the show. Moneyball worked then for the early adopters. Now everyone is in on the math.
If I were a glass half full kind of guy (I am not), I would be encouraged knowing Dombrowski is not a value guy. In fact the conversation here is wether he will accept the value crap Red Sox wonk Bill James cranks out.
I fully expect Dombrowski to splash around in the deep end.
There are going to be many free agent pitchers available this winter. Cueto, Price, Greinke ..... With our checkbook we get first right of refusal.
David Price - always loved this.
I definitely get my fair share of hatred from this fan base as well,” Price told Tomase of Boston. “The amount of hatred I get from this fan base blows every other fan base away.
Dodgers become first $300 million dollar team. Lol, is Chase Utley a relief pitcher? .217 smells like value - my sides. The Dombrowski post by Toaster reminds me that the Dodgers (like Dumbrowski) have done nothing in the past 2 years to address their bullpen.
Dodgers $300M vs Giants $166M $130M buys you a one game difference and nothing playoff ready. Mark my words the Dodgers are headed to that sad place occupied by the Sox. History repeats (except the World Series rings - sorry Druff). Too much, too late.
Warm wishes.
Last edited by Sanlmar; 08-22-2015 at 04:07 PM.
I'll be honest. I'm not too happy with what the front office has done thus far.
The Chase Utley thing was useless. Admittedly not too expensive for a team with deep pockets like the Dodgers, but useless. Kike Hernandez is playing fairly well in the injured Kendrick's place, and Kendrick himself is coming back this season. So why exactly do we need Utley?
I don't blame the Dodgers for the epic failure of their deadline moves. They looked good on the surface. Mat Latos and Alex Wood weren't front line starters by any means, but the Dodgers already had two frontline starters, and didn't necessarily need a third. They just needed decent 3-4 options, which Latos and Wood easily satisfied. The fact that hey have performed mostly poorly couldn't have really been predicted. Same with acquiring Jim Johnson from the Braves. He's been horrendous. But again, that couldn't have been predicted. I liked the move at the time, and the truth is that they really had no use for Hector Olivera. (Why did they sign Olivera in the first place for over $60m? No idea. But at least they finally realized how foolish they were and shipped him out.)
The big problem with the current Dodgers' front office, though, is that the main concept of Moneyball involves getting a lot of production out of a small budget. That's great for teams like the A's and the Rays, but it's useless (and often counter-productive) for deep pocketed teams like the Dodgers. The Dodgers have a number of decent prospects in their minor league system. Two of them, Seager and Urias, are considered A-level prospects who could turn into superstars. So I understand the unwillingness to part with them. But everyone else in their minor leagues should be considered expendable, and for some reason, the Dodgers are terrified to deal anyone of value. The irony here is that the main value of prospects is getting 6 years of high value production for very little money -- something the Dodgers don't even need, given their high budget. So why not just take the approach of trading away their good-but-not-great prospects in return for impact players who can help them win a World Series? No idea. That's what they should be doing, but they're not. They should have had Cueto, Soria, and Clippard.
Much like an NL player who just can't make himself fully adjust to Limit, I feel that the current Dodgers front office are small market GMs who can't quite get the feel for running a big budget team, so they are making all kinds of silly mistakes. I'm seeing a weird combination of overspending on useless/unneeded players and a refusal to part with prospects in exchange for players they DO need.
Part of me actually hopes the Dodgers miss the playoffs so everyone has 5 months to realize how stupid they've been, and things change.
BTW I think Greinke will stay with the Dodgers -- for a very inflated price.
The Dodgers will be afraid of a massive backlash if they refuse his vastly increased salary demand, and they will figure they have the money to keep him, so he will get way more from them than he probably would on the outside market.
The problem is that Greinke isn't that young (nearly 32), so I shudder to think about them giving him some ridiculous deal like 8 years, $250 million.
Honestly Greinke probably has about 4 good years left, and then he will rapidly deteriorate. And that's if his elbow doesn't fall apart before then. Coming into 2015, there were concerns about his elbow already, but obviously he's fine for the moment. However, the elbow thing has dogged him for years, and in fact that's the reason the Angels didn't offer him more money when he left them as a free agent.
I was hoping to get action but you made a good fold Druff.
Pretty good article in Sports Illustrated about Cardinals. The main point of the article imo was the quality and uniformity of instruction in their minor league system. This is not news but is timely as teams look for the next big edge.
SI also had a pretty good article on Brian Cashman too. Guy has attitude. Which makes him different than most of these MBA's.
The Red Sox just smoked their useless GM Ben Cherington. No original thinking. No strength of personality. Just a guy.
I have written about Ben Cherington's wife, Tyler Tumminia ,before. She is the "Trouble With the Curve" chick. The Red Sox hired the wrong spouse. She runs or owns 4 minor league teams. Son did a year on one of her teams. She's a pip. I can't believe that some major league team hasn't brought her in, especially in an age when NFL has women refs & coaches for pink hat ratings.
Scouting and minor league development is the new frontier.
Another good article on her for seamheads.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/2...Z5H/story.html
What kills me is seeing these managers in 2015 who still have no clue about ideal lineup optimization. Two of the biggest offenders are the teams talked about frequently in this thread, the Royals and Dodgers. Yost and Mattingly are setting their lineups like its 1985. Primarily, they seem to ignore OBP and just put a speedy guy batting leadoff.
The Dodgers were fine for parts of the season with Joc hitting 1st. The decision to switch back to Rollins is mind-boggling, with dropping Joc to 8th! Obviously Mattingly did that when Joc's 1980's baseball card stats were in a slump....but he was still getting on base at a tremendous clip! joc's OBP is .358 now, for comparison Adrian Gonzalez is at .361...and he is in no danger of being dropped in the order. Rollins meanwhile, has been horrible no matter what stats you use. Donnie Baseball would still rather see Rollins pick up ~30-50 more PA's than Joc the rest of the way though. Makes no sense at all.
Royals have been doing it all year with Escobar (career .648 OPS) leading off. The guy should be no higher than 7th in that order. Even better, I seem to recall Lorenzo Cain being the leadoff guy for awhile the last couple years. Made sense again in the traditional old views, fast speedy guy. Then he hit his prime at the plate, became a more complete hitter, improved at just about everything....and Yost drops him down in the order to give more at bats to the SS who cant get on base.
Look at the surging Blue Jays for the counterpoint. After their deadline moves they basically decided to put their best 4 hitters 1-4...so you got Tulo, Donaldson, Bautista, Encarnacion. They even have 2 speedy OF's in Pillar and Revere....1 of those 2 would surely be batting leadoff for Yost. Tampa, oakland, St Louis, Arizona are other teams who are usually great with their lineups, my Twins have been much better this year as well with Molitor as the manager and dinosaur Gardenhire gone.
I'd like to nominate Terry Collins for the worst lineup setter and in-game management award. He's being bailed out by incredible pitching.
Greinke & Kershaw don't matter with a bullpen like that. Astros sweep.
Coming up Reds, Cubs then Giants
Pucker up.
I have no idea why Hatcher wasn't DFA'd a long time ago, let alone used in critical situations.
Jays back on fire
Being a Mets fan suddenly got really exciting.
Puig is a pussy with no heart. Reminds me of Sosa, a self centered asshole.
I have a few of the Ken Griffey Jr. Upper Deck rookie cards from back in the day. Anyways, he just recently re-did the photo of the card for a music video:
Not sure wtf these are worth these days (value based on psa grade) but it shot up a lot for a few years then the entire sports card industry collapsed a lot due to having way too many brands of cards coming out and even some fakes being pushed off as real.
It's still a shame how many injuries he had throughout his career but even so...
GRIFFEY JR = GOD
I remember when that was the most coveted card. It was worth like 80-100 bucks in the early 90's. Then I checked in early 2000's and it was worth like 20 dollars.
Dodgers swept the Reds, but every game (including a 6-0 lead in Game 2) was full of drama and uncertainty. Greinke pitched 7 shutout innings yesterday, and somehow the bullpen held a 1-0 lead for the final 2, WITHOUT Jansen.
This makes fans a little happier, after the disasterous first 5 games of the road trip, where the Dodgers went 0-5 against the A's and Astros.
Still, this team has problems, and it's a shame because Greinke and Kershaw are having such monster seasons.
How do the 2015 Dodgers compare to the 2014 edition?
The 2014 Dodgers were the best offensive club in the NL, aside from the park-skewed Colorado Rockies. This was despite playing half their game in a pitcher's park.
The 2015 Dodgers are having trouble scoring on the road, and overall have the fewest runs scored of any winning team in the NL, except for the Cardinals. But the Cardinals have had amazing pitching (only 377 runs allowed thus far), so their mediocre offense hasn't slowed them.
The 2014 Dodgers had decent, but not great pitching. The bullpen was awful, aside from Jansen. Kershaw was amazing, and Greinke was very good.
The 2015 Dodgers have the 3rd-fewest runs allowed in the NL, which is better than last year. However, that is misleading. Greinke is having a much better year, and will almost certainly win the Cy Young. Kershaw has recovered from a mediocre beginning and again dominating teams nearly every start. So the Kershaw-Greinke combo is producing huge numbers (way better than any other team's 1-2), meaning that Dodgers pitchers not named Kershaw or Greinke aren't doing too well.
The 2014 Dodgers had somewhat of a running game, especially with Dee Gordon on the team.
The 2015 Dodgers do not run. They are last in SB in the majors. This is really frustrating to watch, as the team simply does not manufacture runs.
The 2014 Dodgers hit a lot of HR.
The 2015 Dodgers hit even more HR, and lead the NL. This was a pleasant surprise at first (as this year's lineup wasn't expected to have much power), but has turned out to be a weakness, as they seem to rely too much on the home run ball to win.
The 2014 Dodgers won 94 games.
The 2015 Dodgers are on pace to win 90 games.
Sadly, despite the front office change, the team has actually regressed. The 2015 edition no longer scores a lot of runs like the previous team did, so that negates the improved Greinke we are seeing this year. And the bullpen, a big weakness in 2014, amazingly got even worse.
I'm not that optimistic for this year. The Dodgers could get hot at the right time and win it all (like the Giants did last year, also with a flawed team), but I don't see it.
I believe the Dee Gordon trade hurt a lot more than people think. He's hitting .333 for the Marlins, but more importantly, his departure really took the air out of the Dodgers' running game. It's like everyone gave up on stealing bases with Dee's departure. His presence was also valuable in low-scoring games where the Dodgers were having trouble hitting. They don't have someone like Gordon anymore, who can lay down a bunt base hit, steal second, and scamper home on a bloop single. Now they're leaving a ton of men on base, and it's mainly station-to-station baseball.
So pretty much the complete opposite of the rich mans Royals at this point huh?
It's hilarious that we as a society think everyone can be a dr, a lawyer, an engineer. Some people are just fucking stupid. Why can't we just accept that?
fun with random baseball stats:
Kershaw has a 2.29 ERA and a 0.92 WHIP in 25 starts, the Dodgers are 13-12 in those games
Nate Eovaldi has a 4.00 ERA and a 1.42 WHIP in 25 starts, the Yankees are 17-8 in those games.
The Dodgers are 1 in OBP and 2 in slugging but 8 in runs scored. Their biggest problem on offense seems to be they are unlucky.
Last edited by ToasterOven; 08-28-2015 at 11:56 AM.
You wrote "unlikely" but I think you mean "unlucky".
I've been watching this team all season, and they just don't translate runners on base into runs.
They hit a lot of home runs, and they get a lot of men on base, but they leave a ton of men in scoring position.
Much of this has to do with a complete lack of running game, and poor situational hitting.
Joc Pederson unfortunately is the embodiment of exactly this. He stole a lot of bases in the minors, but doesn't try on the Dodgers, for whatever reason. I think he was discouraged by being caught a few times at the beginning of the season. Anyway, Joc walks a ton, but hits for a very poor average. He also has 23 HR, though most of those were in the first half. So if you want a guy to simply walk himself on base, and sometimes jack a HR out of the park, Joc is your man. But he's a disaster when there's runners on first and third, and one out. Here you want a base hit or sac fly, and he's not that likely to deliver either one.
Perhaps they have been unlucky, too. Maybe some of those fly outs and line-outs in critical spots would have been base hits if just a few feet to the left or right, but I've been watching this happen for 120+ games, and it seems like a lot more than running bad.
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