Month: April 2012 (Page 6 of 6)
Tony Gwynn Jr., LF
Justin Sellers, SS
Andre Ethier, RF
Juan Rivera, 1B
Adam Kennedy, 3B
Tim Federowicz, C
Luis Cruz, 2B
Matt Angle, CF
Nathan Eovaldi, P
Good comments in Tuesday’s thread taking the pulse of your feelings toward the Dodgers this year. Even if you don’t normally venture into the comments, I recommend you make an exception for these.
Some early pregame tidbits for the final day of Spring Training.
- Jill Painter of the Daily News has a feature on lefthanded pitcher Scott Rice, whose dream of a major-league debut has been delayed once again.
- Sam Miller of Baseball Prospectus puts the dilution of baseball’s traditional Opening Day in perspective.
- Friend of Dodger Thoughts Neal Pollack has a new book, Jewball. Here’s the description:
1937. The gears of world war have begun to grind, but Inky Lautman, star point guard for the South Philadelphia Hebrew Association, America’s greatest basketball team, is dealing with his own problems.
His coach has unwittingly incurred a massive gambling debt to the Bund, a group of American Nazis. His main basketball rival is self-righteously leading public protests against homegrown American fascism. And his girlfriend wants him to join a Jewish student organization that’s all talk and no action. It’s more than Inky can deliver. He just wants to play ball and occasionally beat people up for money.
When the Bund comes calling for what it’s owed, Inky has to make a stand for his ragtag bunch of teammates and the coach that got them into this mess. With the Bund closing in, Inky’s game isn’t just basketball anymore. It becomes a battle that pits Jewish pride against Nazi fascism.
The tides of history are flowing against a guy like Inky. Can he make his free throws and still make it through the season alive? Get ready. This…is Jewball.
The Dodger beat writers have reported that Josh Lindblom and Justin Sellers will fill the final spots on the team’s Opening Day roster. So barring any mishaps between now and Thursday at 4:05 p.m., here are the jockeys at the starting line.
Starting pitchers (4): Clayton Kershaw, Chad Billingsley, Chris Capuano, Aaron Harang.
Relief pitchers (8): Kenley Jansen, Javy Guerra, Todd Coffey, Scott Elbert, Mike MacDougal, Matt Guerrier, Jamey Wright, Josh Lindblom
Starting lineup (8): Dee Gordon, Mark Ellis, Matt Kemp, Andre Ethier, Juan Rivera, James Loney, Juan Uribe, A.J. Ellis
Bench (5): Matt Treanor, Adam Kennedy, Jerry Hairston Jr., Tony Gwynn Jr., Justin Sellers
Gentlemen, start your horses!
Dodger fans, by and large, spent 2011 in the kind of pre-apocalyptic nightmare depicted in the fine 2011 film Take Shelter, starring Michael Shannon.
The deepest, darkest hours of the McCourt ownership bled into the Bryan Stow tragedy. The Dodgers’ shaky start bled into nearly their worst first-half performance ever in Los Angeles. The sky over Chavez Ravine ripped apart.
Fans ran and hid, dragging in-game attendance and team goodwill down to its lowest level in decades.
And then the Dodgers ended up playing .600 ball over the final two months of the season.
It’s a new April. The McCourt fog is mostly clearing. But the team’s near-term future on the field is mixed, the stadium security and renovation issues awaiting further action, and there are even lingering questions about whether the new ownership will be good for the franchise.
Last season was painful in so many ways. Has that better prepared you to handle any challenges during the 2012 season? Will you be happier this year, even if the Dodgers lose more games than last year, if the team’s problems are confined to what’s happening on the field? As you emerge from your storm shelter, what color is your sky?
An episode of NPR’s Car Talk never fails to bring smiles to my face, not because I have any interest in or understanding of cars, but because the hosts (“Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers”) are just so much fun. The first time I ever listened to it was the hot August 1993 morning I drove away from Washington D.C. for good to move back to Los Angeles, in a sad state of mind over the girl I was leaving behind. Those guys were just the right medicine for the road.
Anyway, each week they have a puzzler for listeners to solve, and just in time for Opening Day, they have a baseball-themed riddle. I imagine you baseball experts out there can figure out the answer.
Congrats to local heroes Jamaal Wilkes and Reggie Miller for their selection to the Basketball Hall of Fame. We used to have fun imitating Wilkes’ signature shooting style.
Congrats also to Blue Velvet Jonez for winning the Dodger Thoughts March Madness challenge. BVJ not only had the final game correct, but the exact margin of victory – eight points – as well as three of the final four.
The big news of the day for Dodger fans involves two non-Dodgers, Matt Cain and Joey Votto, who each signed contract extensions that remove them as acquisition targets for Los Angeles. Bob Nightengale of USA Today has details.
On the bright side, at least the Dodgers locked up Matt Kemp for what might be a relative bargain compared to the 28-year-old Votto’s 10-year, $225 million deal. More money to invest in the farm system!
Elsewhere …
- Magic Johnson will be a guest on Tavis Smiley’s PBS talk show tonight. In Los Angeles, that’s scheduled for 11:30 p.m. on KOCE 50.
- Dee Gordon is the subject of a lengthy profile by Jon Heyman at CBSSports.com.
- Jim Gullo’s new book “Trading Manny: How a Father & Son Learned to Love Baseball Again,” reviewed by Tom Hoffarth of the Daily News, looks like a potentially interesting read in addressing how a father and son try to defuse the effect of baseball’s substance-abuse saga.
* * *
Chad Billingsley gave up a single to the first batter he faced today, Arizona infielder Ryan Roberts. It came on a 1-2 pitch. You never want to see that happen, though it’s easily forgiven if it comes on your pitch. Billingsley, instead, left a fastball over the plate and chest-high. Roberts grounded it to the left of shortstop Dee Gordon into center field. With a little luck, Roberts would have hit it a few feet over, into Gordon’s range. But there was as much luck for Billingsley as there was execution.
“Normally,” said Dodger commentator Rick Monday, “in your last outing in Arizona for Spring Training, you would say, ‘Well, it’s just a final tuneup.’ I really believe that for Chad Billingsley, this is more than just a final tuneup, because he has not been fine-tuned so far. And since this is his last outing, I think it’s imperative to get some batters behind in the count, as he had right here the leadoff hitter Roberts, (and) finish them off.”
“Imperative” would be an exaggeration – nothing’s imperative until at least the regular season starts. But shy of that, Monday’s overall point wasn’t lost. You want to see it done right.
Billingsley did do some things right – after walking Justin Upton with one out, he struck out Jason Kubel to start an inning-ending double play that found Aaron Hill (who had hit into a 9-6 bloop forceout) caught stealing by A.J. Ellis. Billingsley then struck out his first batter of inning two, Chris Young. But mostly, it was a rough outing – insufficiently sharp. The 27-year-old righty gave up four runs and six hits on 70 pitches in three innings, including two arguably wind-aided home runs to left field. He finished his 2012 exhibition season with a 5.91 ERA.
Monday was fairly relentless in his criticism of Billingsley throughout the three innings, and again, I was of two minds. The critique seemed a bit over the top for a practice game, even with the regular season coming later this week. At the same time, unless Billingsley was deliberately trying to hide his good stuff from his division, it was a hard outing to watch, both from individual and team standpoints.
I’m still wondering if the poor performance by Billingsley in the second half of 2011, following a solid first two months, was injury-related. I might never get the answer. But one scenario that certainly is possible is that Billingsley’s 2012 effectively becomes a repeat of Jonathan Broxton’s 2011. Problems from the second half of the previous season are never really solved, and the ensuing campaign becomes a lost one.
Without minimizing what this might mean for Billingsley’s career, it points to the cliff’s edge the Dodgers will be driving along in 2012. They’re counting on improvement from players like Billingsley, Andre Ethier (having the best kind of Spring Training) and James Loney. If those players instead take additional steps back, you’re basically left with asking the farm system (Nathan Eovaldi, Jerry Sands, etc.) to come to the rescue. They might succeed, just as Javy Guerra did for Broxton in 2011, but it’s a risky business.
That Clayton Kershaw had an uneven performance 24 hours before Billingsley, allowing three runs on six hits and a walk in 3 2/3 innings, offers a half-empty, half-full counterpoint. From Tony Jackson of ESPNLosAngeles.com:
… Kershaw said he was missing his spots and that his slider, which he had struggled with in his previous start six days earlier, still wasn’t quite right. But when asked if the slider was a concern now that the regular season is upon him, Kershaw said it isn’t.
“It can’t be,” he said. “April 5 is coming up pretty fast. You have to be ready to go.”
Dodgers pitching coach Rick Honeycutt says he continues to see good sliders from Kershaw intermittently, but that the inconsistency could be the result of Kershaw trying to force the pitch, especially in light desert air where breaking balls tend not to break as much and where simply getting a proper grip on the ball can be tough.
“But he isn’t going to make that excuse, and I’m not going to make it for him,” Honeycutt said. “As long as he is healthy, that is the main thing. [The slider] isn’t something I’m worried about. He is going to continue to work on it until he feels comfortable with it.” …
Whatever the results of March 2012, hoping that Matt Kemp, Kershaw, Billingsley, Ethier and Loney perform to their previous peaks isn’t exactly the longshot of picking a MegaMillions jackpot. It could happen, and if it does, I wouldn’t call it a fluke – just good timing. That, plus new ownership itching to make a first impression, plus my perhaps irrational belief that Gordon is going to excite all expectations (“I’m a Deeliever,” I’ve started singing to myself), plus an awareness that other teams in the NL aren’t blessed with unlimited good fortune, is why I enter this season with the hope that the Dodgers can win at least 90 games and a spot in postseason roulette.
But the lack of Plan Bs makes the Dodgers’ 2012 season a perilous one, with 90 losses anything but a remote possibility. If Billingsley struggles, if Ted Lilly can’t stay healthy, if Juan Uribe is toast, if Kemp and Kershaw take perfectly reasonable steps back from their insane greatness of last year, and so on into the night, the Dodgers quickly run out of escape routes.
At the end, it all comes back to the beginning. You’re on the mound. You have a 1-2 count on the batter. You have talent, experience and an edge.
Can you make your pitch?
Can your defense save you when you don’t?
Can your offense save you when your defense doesn’t?
Can your management save you when your offense and defense can’t?
