At least one of those kids could be the centerpiece in a winter trade that could bring the team a badly needed veteran star.
That kid could be Matt Kemp.
Insiders say that although management was furious with Jeff Kent for publicly ripping the team’s young players last week, it agrees with some of the things he said. There is concern over some of the rookies’ attitudes and aptitudes. There are home runs, but there are baserunning gaffes. There are dramatic catches, but there are forgotten sunglasses that lead to drops. There are some leadership moves, but also some lazy ones.
The Dodgers wouldn’t offer specifics, but insiders say they have reached the conclusion that they can be contenders quicker and longer if one or two of these kids are traded for more developed players who could help them avoid a repeat of this September’s meltdown.
...Matt Kemp’s breathtaking ability makes him attractive. But his constant struggles to embrace the little things that turn talent into championships make him expendable.
Repoz
Posted: September 26, 2007 at 12:00 PM |
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Kemp has made mistakes - but he hasn't been the problem.
Last night the Dodgers lost thanks to dregs like Roberto Hernandez in the bullpen. But lost in that is that the Dodgers got three homeruns, all from rookies - and hr power has been deficient for the team. And they seem to be focusing on rookie mistakes in the field - when the rooks are still much better defensively than the vets they've had.
Isn't this exactly what one should expect from one's new employees as they learn and grow into their jobs?
EDIT: I know Jeff Kent isn't a shitty player. However, as best I can tell/recall, the veterans who are mouting off (Kent, Lowe, Gonzalez) also happen to be playing like crap while the rookies try and salvage the season. This whole thing is just ridiculous and I'm glad I'm not a Dodgers fan.
Didn't you read the intro? They want to get rid of the young guys because they need better veterans. Silly human.
Of course, next year, won't Kemp be a veteran, technically?
Heh.
I love LA!
Hey, here's a hijack. Does the incredible dysfunction of the 2007 Dodgers suggest that we should partially revise the unsympathetic reading of Paul DePodesta's tenure in Los Angeles? That is, if the organization appears once again to have been managed by a needy, petulant eight-year-old, is it possible that the person who lacks the proper skills to manage an organization is not so much DePodesta as McCourt?
I was thinking the same thing. It sounds like McCourt just doesn't know how to run a team. He's the common denominator in all this. All the more reason for DePo to get another shot with another organization. I find it bizarre that the Pirates didn't even consider him.
"In this corner, standing all alone, DePo, and in the far corner, weighing a combined 7,222 pounds, the nattering nabobs of negativity, incredible tag team of Conlin, Cataldi and Eskin.
Yeah, because if the Dodgers want to avoid fielding gaffes Manny is the man to get.
I've been fantasizing about a Bedard for Kemp+ trade for a while. Never thought it was actually possible.
What a bold opinion. Thanks Bill.
Plaschke is a bully, plain and simple. Feeling like he's somehome owed an explanation from McCourt is unreasonable. Just look at his smug looking picture...ewww...
I would think the throng of unrelenting morons saying whatever idiot nonsense they can re: the Dodgers and their supposed failings (inside & outside the organization) would mean DePo got the benefit of the doubt the minute he was thrown into the briar patch.
I mean, come on - "the veterans suck, and the kids are good but still learning - hey, let's trade the kids to get better veterans!" I can't believe some of these guys can actually walk upright.
I know that there's a certain type of baseball "fan" who always wants to trade prospects (who are fungible) for more established/reliable players (just as there are fans who never ever want to see a prospect traded).
But openly calling for the exile of young players who've already demonstrated that they are above average- simply because they are young?
Is Plaschke terrified of the thought of being replaced by a younger and better writer so he's projecting that fear?
Why do you want the team you suport to trade its best player?
If I'm not mistaken, Bedard is going to be a free agent relatively soon and the Orioles aren't goign to be good relatively soon.
And almost everything that's good on these Dodgers, nearly 2 years into Colitis's reign, was put together by either DePodesta or Evans and almost every bad player on these Dodgers is a product of Colitis.
Assuming yearrrrgh is an O's fan - if there's a chance of getting quality & quantity for your best player, when there's a distinct possibility your best player will bolt as a free agent before the team actually improves, I imagine you gotta jump @ it.
Tho I'd like to think the O's problems would sort themselves out if they just went back to the happy cartoon bird logo.
- Bedard isn't that young.
- the Orioles have a ton of holes and aren't going to contend for a while.
- Bedard has a ton of value b/c he's a couple years from FA and a #1 starter.
- Better to sell high.
- A package of good young players could help turn the franchise around and help them contend in a few years.
Unless this is some sort of euphemism for throwing Angelos off the warehouse, you are deluding yourself. He'd just nix any Bedard trade like he has done with a couple Tejada for prospect trades in the past couple years.
Also, I wonder if the Dodgers would be interested in Damon.
What they need is something that captures the spirit of their decision-making process. Like this!
I would buy that jersey.
Signing Bedard wouldn't "prove they were wrong for signing him" as it would with a free-agent signing like Tejada. Why, it would confirm once and for all that the Orioles farm system produces valuable prospects. And it can easily be rationalized by hints that Bedard's sullen personality was not conducive to The Team's New Winning Attitude.
And the anti-Depo writers almost unanimously loved Ned the day he arrived... of course some are turning on him now...
I'm guessing that Ned's days are numbered, oh he'll last longer than Depo did, but his days are numbered. Will his replacement be any good? It's a crapshoot with McCourt. However, this is a team that could be turned around REALLY fast, a wealth of young talent, tremendous cashflow. Ned hasn't irreparably screwed the pooch, he;'s really only delayed the emergence of this as an elite team by a year or so.
IF: The team didn't sign Pierre and re-sign Nomah, they could have had Loney and Kemp up from almost the beginning.
IF: The team left Betemit alone at 3rd...
If: the team had put Billingsly into the rotation sooner
I think they make thr playoffs this year
They'd also have a lot more $ to play with
He didn't seem disliked in this thread (which turned into a discussion on California water politics with a little tinfoil thrown in.)
This quote from that thread is hilaripus!
Should I bother reading that thread, or can I guess that that was posted by one of the usual Beanophobes?
The outfield is even more of a disaster. Gonzalez, like I said, can't run too well anymore. Ethier and Kemp miss the cutoff man like they have never heard of the concept. Pierre in center field is the funniest outfielder I've ever seen. A ball hit in the gap is a double. I don't mean a ball that goes to the wall in the gap, but a ball that barely rolls to the warning track, is a double if Pierre picks it up. Furcal moves halfway out onto the outfield grass to take his cutoff throws from the wall, but Pierre invariably bounces the ball no matter how far Furcal goes out. All season long opposition baserunners never stop, or even slow down, in taking the extra base when Pierre has the ball in the outfield, and the league, it seems, doesn't respect the arms of the other outfielders, either.
Last night's game against the Rockies held the perfect example of this. Rockies runner on second, Matsui at the plate. Matsui singles to left, runner on second comes home. Ethier throws the ball over the cutoff man at third. The throw is a day late anyway, even a perfect throw would not have gotten the runner. Russell Martin comes out about 20 feet from home plate toward the mound to intercept the throw, since Matsui is heading for second. Martin's throw hits Matsui as he begins his slide. Kent isn't near the bag, Furcal is just getting there. The ball bounces into short center field, where Pierre has to hustle in to pick it up, since he is still standing halfway out in center. Matsui never stops running around third and scores easily, as Pierre's throw barely makes it to the pitcher's mound. The Little Leaguer in center field couldn't throw the ball from medium center field to home plate, and everyone in the park knew it. The third base coaches of the National League will take up a collection to send Pierre a Christmas gift this year, and for many years to come.
And, if you've watched the Dodgers all year, the missed cutoff by Ethier and the poor throw by Pierre could have been predicted.
That's why the Dodgers have fallen out of the race, and what Kent meant by the tirade about "playing the game the right way." Unfortunately for Kent, he can barely produce in the field, either. The other veteran position players may not make the mistakes in the field, but they aren't getting there to make the play, anyway. Mike Lieberthal has the best gig on the planet. Olmedo Saenz, anyone? Hillenbrand? Sweeney? I can't see Kent or Garciaparra taking on the "wise veteran" role in any situation. Derek Lowe? Brad Penny?
The issue for the Dodgers is this: will this team "rebuild" in Los Angeles? This is a major market team, and I can't remember the dreaded "Rebuilding" phrase ever being used in association with this franchise. When Kent and Gonzales go this winter, and the Ethiers and Kemps and Loneys go to spring training next year anointed as the Dodger starters, the pressure will pretty much be unrelentless for them to produce. They have had it easy this year, they only went around the league twice as a group. As the eminent Dodger old timer, David Wells, said yesterday: "They are going to get humbled by this game." Its what they do after that humbling, however it happens, that will count.
Poor defense is bound to have an effect on the pitching staff going forward. What is the point
Since you misspelled it twice the same way, I assume you don't know it's spelt C-o-l-l-e-t-t-i, not like the disease.
Is this a joke?
Are you having a laugh? Are you having a laugh? Are you having a laugh? Are you having a laugh? Are you having a laugh? Are you having a laugh? Are you having a laugh? Are you having a laugh?
If anyone is wondering what Eric Enders thinks, check the sponsorship of Kemp's page on bb-ref.
1. Should Plaschke be fired, or at least prohibited from writing about baseball? Yeah, but there's no way to make it happen.
2. Should Colletti be fired? The charges against him: Betemit for Proctor. Acquiring Hendrickson and Tomko. The five-year contract for Pierre. What can you put on the positive side to counterbalance that? Picking up Furcal was probably a good move, although someone should have forced him onto the DL this year. But is there any sign in all that that he knows what he's doing? I'm not holding out much hope. I'd like to see either Logan White as GM, or Kim Ng as GM with White staying in his current job. Of course that runs into the sentiment expressed in #38. I'm just wondering: would Plaschke pull his worst punches rather than publicly slag the only female and only Asian GM? Would that give her any breathing room?
3. Should Grady Little be fired? The main charges against him would primarily be about this nasty generation-gap stuff that's come up at the end of the year. He should have known that Kent and Gonzalez have been divisive forces wherever they've been; it was his job to make sure that they didn't have the loudest voices in that clubhouse. He didn't do that. If he were to be replaced, who is available in the Dodger system? Once upon a time, this was an organization that relied on its own resources.
Show me your Westergren tubes.
Yes. Jeff Karstens and Edwar Ramirez are well aware as well. I like Dioner, I think he's still got a shot to become good. I'm curious as to exactly how slow he is, because when you look at his LD% and his BABIP...something's not adding up.
Being traded for Corey Smith?
I was hoping that this was discussed more. I'm glad he didn't buy the Red Sox based on the stories out of LA and his underfundedness.
I am, as I fondly recall my favorite mondegreen, "The girl with colitis goes by."
Insiders? Who is on Plaschke's Rolodex? Is it Colletti himself, who has already decided to do this and wants a slag-Kemp campaign going before it's announced? Is it some underling with who knows what agenda? Or is it the face in Plaschke's shaving mirror?
Apparently, I'm on a low-irony diet today. Oops.
FWIW, Fox Sports rumors page says Colletti's working a Clayton Kershaw and Matt Kemp for Johan Santana deal. Another decade of third-place teams awaits.
Holy crap. A trade I pulled out of my arse might actually happen? Awesome!
I hope the Twins insist on LaRoche as well. They need a 3rd baseman, right?
C'mon guys. If they can get Santana and get him to agree to an extension as part of the trade, then this isn't AJ Trade Part Deux. Johan is pretty freakin good.
Awesome. Absolutely fantastic. Are "Primey's" passe?
I wonder if his second half, (14 starts, 95 IP 16 homers allowed, 3.98 ERA) was just a bad second half, (for him) or the sign of a longer term problem.
That's what I was thinking.
What's really funny about this is that Ned worked for the Giants when they had Neifi. So why did he have to ask Alou about his talents? Shouldn't he have known already?
No, he's referring to the 2002-03 offseason, when the Giants acquired Perez.
Though Perez had been in the NL since 1996, and the Giants had seen him play a gazillion times, so why Alou's scouting report would be so informative does seem quite odd.
Exactly Dan. I personally hated that De Po opted to start 2005 with Choi and Valentin at the corners, but at least those moves, if somewhat misguided, were part of a greater plan to keep the Dodgers contending through the decade. Sure, they stunk that year, but it wasn’t due to panic, that team was doomed by injuries and faulty, almost stopgap, personnel decisions. But at least those mistakes were made WITHIN the context of a plan. Again, I was never a huge DePodesta fan [though I think he definitely deserves a second chance somewhere] but maintaining a plan, creating an organizational philosophy and believing in it, this is a must for any general manager. The Yankees are heading in a positive direction because of Cashman’s plan. Are there mistakes, like Igawa? Sure. But it didn’t throw them off course. The Yankees are a good team to bring up with comparison to the Dodgers because of their similarly massive revenues. Obviously, the Yanks have more to spend, but blank checks don’t build organizations [they help of course], especially these days, considering how the pitching market has dried up.
What is, prey tell, Ned’s plan?
The front office is obviously mounting a press campaign against it’s OWN young players, in order to ensure the fan base remains on board for what is looking like a nonsensical off-season. The backlash against the young guys has been way too uniform across the board not to be at least suspicious.
D'oh. I am stupid. I will refrain from making fun of Ned for one month as punishment. (If he can snag Johan Santana, I'll actually give him some praise, even. FWIW, snagging Ethier from Oakland was an excellent trade.)
My guess? Renowned baseball ambassador Tommy Lasorda.
IIRC, there were rumours around the trade deedline that certain parts of the organisation disagreed with the trade ideas of other parts of the organisation. A portent of organisational infighting perhaps?
Then again, I think Tommy Lasorda is basically the Devil incarnate, so take it with a grain of salt.
He's hitting .331 right now. Is he really a .331 hitter? Look at those strikeouts. The highest batting average any hitter has had in Chavez Ravine while striking out more than 100 times in a season was Raul Mondesi's .310 in 1997, and his K rate was much lower than Kemp's right now (15.7% vs. 20.7%). I don't see him play hardly ever, but when I have, he's demonstrated little ability to hit breaking balls. Has he improved upon this?
Of course, I do realize he is very young, and has a lot of time to grow. He's a good prospect. I'm just raising the idea of what we might expect from him in the future.
He's slow to accelerate but has decent enough speed (for a catcher) once he gets going. It's not really a speed issue anyway, the problem is that while he was having that horrible first half he kept hitting flyball after flyball to the short outfield or weak ground balls off the end of his bat. He was terrible at handling pitches on the outside part of the plate, he'd usually make contact but it was always weak contact, either those ground balls or flyballs with little power behind them.
His BABIP has always been around league average 290-300
except for the first half this year when it was a stupeyfying .208
He hit .177/.238/.254 with 1 HR in 229 PAs- that's simply amazing his BABIP was .208
For his career he has 18 HR in 926 PAs
Something was wrong with him the first half, I have no idea whether it was physical or mental, but that was no ordinary slump- Kouzmanoff and Gordon slumped tremendously in their first few months- because they were struggling to adjust and adapt to the MLB- Dioneer has been up a while...
I think that long-term problem is called "playing for the Twins". His WHIP, however, did jump from 1.03 to 1.11, so, yeah, I think he's pretty much done. ;)
(Apologies to It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, the best sitcom on television to guest-star Stephen Collins in 2007)
If you're going to sour on your young stars and trade them, you could do a lot worse than Santana. I assume LA could go to a $150 mil payroll if they wanted to, so getting Santana should be nowhere near a disaster.
I know that, but haven't his LD% always been around 20 or higher?
I stopped reading Plaschke around four years ago after he wrote a disgusting hit piece on Troy Glaus. I will occasionally scan his column when it's more of a news-reporting piece that includes quotes from principals not found in the main news article.
What, if anything, in Colletti's resume makes you believe he is capable of pulling off a competent trade?
I'll call that and raise you a Mark Hendrickson, a Lance Carter, and a Danys Baez.
Bill, like many of the neo-con persuasion, is a selective racist, meaning that he is careful to create random but loud whispering campaigns regarding "uppity" types (Gary Sheffield was the template). He has been Lasorda's lapdog ever since the Times made the fatal error of hiring his sorry, pock-marked ass (and don't ask me how I know, you are all too young for such a tale...)
Note all that careful wording about "insiders" and the oblique references to dubious, unquantified marginalia ("baserunning errors" and "silly at-bats"). Does anyone care to attempt a definition of a "silly at-bat"? Hey, Gary Huck, maybe there's still a chance to save "baseball analysis" from a death worse than fate!!
But we can actually do some quantification of "baserunning errors" (heaven forfend that Plaschke should add anything up, of course). We can look at the number of "outs on the basepaths" from the 2007 game logs.
Admittedly, this is <u>not</u> definitive, but it's a reasonable start. When we look at "OOBs" in '07 for the Dodgers (not counting CS here...), we get the following:
Kent 9, Martin 9, Pierre 8, Furcal 5, Loney 4, Kemp 4, Gonzalez 3, Garciaparra 2, Ethier 1 (seven others tied at 1).
The other question we can answer is what the Dodgers' won-loss record in games with OOBs. It turns out that they've had 44 games with one or more OOBs; the Dodgers W-L record in those games is 28-16.
Now we'd have to gather this data for the entire NL to see if this W-L record is above/below average, but off the top of one's head it seems unlikely that OOBs are <u>that</u> highly "correlated" to winning.
Oh, and tell Plaschke that the Dodgers won all four games in which Kemp made an OOB. By way of contrast, the Dodgers' record in games where Kent made an OOB is 3-6.
Not quite what we were looking for, but sufficient unto the day in its implication that Plaschke is a lower life form--and that you would be far more entertaining to read on page 2 than the Times' other orangutan, T.J. Simers. (Of course, a root canal is more entertaining than Simers.)
The only possible "serious" def of that term that I can think of--and even this is just absurdly artificial--is a plate appearance where the player strikes out on a pitch that is nowhere near the strike zone.
Now I suppose that might be worth quantifying just for fun, but the problem is that it's essentially meaningless. Since there is no player (not even Ryan Howard or Adam Dunn) who's going to do that more than 5-7% of the time, it just can't have any systematic impact on performance.
Ross Newhan did a wonderful job this AM of rebutting Plaschke (and all without mentioning his name), but as is the wont of the Times and weak-kneed sports editor Randy Harvey, Newhan's eminently sensible essay was buried on page 8.
well heavens to goodness gracious betsey
thought you had vanished along with eric enders into the ethier
I'm a switch-hitter, but <u>not</u> in the sense that you imply.
Can't speak for the "immoral" one, though...
DA,
Some self-prosecution might well be in order. There are any number of lawyers here who can take your case, and defend you from yourself.
Ignoratio,
You really should issue a warning with a link like that. People with health issues may have adverse reactions if not properly cautioned.
Funny thing about Neifi and the '03 Giants: when they had him in the starting lineup, they were 37-33; when they didn't, they were 63-28.
So he's kind of the post-modern analogue to Charles "Victory" Faust.
Someone really oughtta remind Ned that Neifi is, once again, "available." Nothing like repeating the same mistake to prompt a Faustian bargain.
Shouldn't that say "JenLo"? :-)
This too was a clever little punch, bbc.
Of course, you need to adjust those for times on base (H-HR+BB+HBP, as a rough estimate), to get it into the context of opportunities to screw up :)
Kent 9/191: .047
Martin 9/213: .042
Kemp 4/99: .040
Pierre 8/230: .035
Loney 4/126: .032
Furcal 5/207: .024
Kent's still leading the pack, but the kids move up the charts a bit.
-- MWE
All true, but the point was (as I know you know) to show that Kemp is not some moron-on-wheels out there on the basepaths who should be singled out for SUBTCOD (you remember this acronym from BBBA, surely: "screw ups beyond the call of duty", pronounced "sub-tee-cod").
What appears to have happened, by examining the logs a bit more closely, is that Kemp had three OOBs within a 10-day period from late August to early September. This appears to have stuck in the "mind" of Plaschke, even though--as already noted--the Dodgers went on to win all three games in which Kemp was retired on the paths.
I'd be careful to "refine" a measure that has already been "outed" as less-than-definitive, especially in these dark days (now that baseball analysis is "officially" dead).
It's probably more useful for us to focus on the fact that the Dodgers' ERA is 6.92 in the past 11 games (1-10). No team--young, old, blue, borrowed, or bowlegged--is going to win with a staff infection that virulent.
I seem to recall an important game in there in which a number of people of the general ilk of Hendrickson got pounded in middle relief, but the offense scored enough runs that they were still in it in the 9th - until Roberto Hernandez gave up several runs. (Roberto Hernandez? In a key spot in a game?)
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