ESPN-BREAKING NEWS

Green Bay team officials met with Brett Favre at his Wisconsin home today.

So, the Dodgers changed the message of trading some of the disappointing kids for a veteran by trading some of the disappointing kids for a veteran?

I would hope that worked.

When I think of what Manny means to the Dodgers lineup I don't think of Ethier or Pierre at all. I think of what it means to have Manny in and Jones out. The difference is huge. Remove Manny from this past weekend's lineup and insert Jones and we probably lose all four games (like getting swept by the Rockies last year) and now trail the D-Backs by five. And I don't lose much sleep of the loss of LaRoche. I can live with any Dodgers trade that doesn't involve Matt Kemp, Clayton Kershaw or Chad Billingsley.

1 So there was no faxing today?

Man, if I was Aaron Rodgers, I would be so much less classy about handling all this than he seems to be so far.

Sausages!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiGRpm6Tf3I

reposting from previous thread:

184 Yeah, that works for me. It seems obvious Hu's eye problems are better. Whether he can suddenly hit ML level pitching much better than he did at the beginning of the season remains to be seen, but he seems readier this time around. Berroa's been just fine with the glove, but I still trust Hu more there, too.

2 - You're leaving out the part where the story of the organization became front office dysfunction and shooting themselves in the foot. The new storyline is, "We know what we're doing."

I don't agree that these stories are relevant, but I do agree that nationally, the Dodgers have gotten the media to quit carping at them for a while.

5

I can't watch it at work. Is it the Kids in the Hall skit?

From the last thread:

Marty.
115. GoBears, there is someone posting on Chowhound under the name gobears. Is that you?

Not I. But it's an awesome handle, so I can't begrudge the individual in question. I hope he/she does not besmirch it over there.

Cycle alert canceled in Chicago.

Stand down.

8
Yep.

7 Good point. It does reinforce the McCourt stereotype of doing things in order to placate the media though.

Is there any particular reason Ethier is playing over Pierre today? Or are we just lucky?

I am psyched for the lineup today against Carpenter with Andre playing RF. As for the Manny for LaRoche/Morris trade, it sure seems that LaRoche is injury prone. He will probably never reach his true potential (much like Dallas McPherson) due to injuries. And we got Manny for him! I don't know which poster in one of the previous threads put forward a 3 yr/$63m offer for Manny, but I had that same thought too. Use it as a starting point, don't offer a fourth year, and if Manny decides to go somewhere else because of that fourth year, tell him thanks for the memories and pocket the draft picks. Giving White six or eight top picks is not a bad fallback option. I also like the idea of promoting White and Ng to a co-GM position, or promoting Ng to team president and White to GM.

11-HA! What has happened to that show?

13
Torre likes to Stick It To™ Juan.

15
Out on DVD. They actually went on tour recently, but I did not know about it till it was too late.

This is like when JD Drew got hit on the hand by a pitch and somehow that is his fault and he must be injury prone.

We would all be injured if fastballs kept hitting us in the hands.

17 The "Neu" era begins in about half an hour. (So Spring football doesn't count I guess).

I'll see for myself probably on Friday and Sunday but its hard to see how advanced they could be the fall scrimmage a week from Saturday.

3 Ops! I forgot Russell Martin.

19
Haha, I was actually expecting to not see you for a few hours today.

I hope Craft or Prince take the QB job. Olson is just too slow in his reads. Why coach Chow immediately went with Cowan.

I would like to see how the young group of WRs perform.

19
BTW, if we somehow get Michael Snaer now, that would be quite the turn around.

18 I know he has a recent shoulder injury in his past as well. The Dodger brass (including Logan White) is also said to believe he's injury prone. Yes, he should have been playing steadily since early June...but he wasn't. He was necessary to get Manny, and today's lineup plus Furcal/Nomar at SS is pretty potent, and capable of making it to the World Series.

21
I, for one, would never think of criticizing Ben Olson for his slow reads.

Nope. Never.

The 51's were beaten by an old friend:

51s' offense comes up short in road loss to Zephyrs

>> But New Orleans (57-60) countered with three runs in the bottom of the fourth to complete the scoring. Michel Abreu and Raul Casanova had RBI singles, and Ramon Martinez added a sacrifice fly. <<

51s' offense comes up short in road loss to Zephyrs

Haren is about to get a mega extension from AZ.

24
Is it reeds?

25 51s' offense comes up short in road loss to Zephyrs

That was supposed to be a link:

http://www.lvrj.com/sports/26274644.html

25 51s' offense comes up short in road loss to Zephyrs

That was supposed to be a link:

http://www.lvrj.com/sports/26274644.html

27 Bob was actually being sarcastic. Usually he goes with his standby response whenever Ben Olson is mentioned by saying that his memory of him will always be stumble, stumble, stumble, hit, fumble or throwing the ball to no one in particular.

30
Here I was thinking it was a librarian joke.

30
I was greatly traumatized by last year's Notre Dame game.

I keep having these recurring dreams of Ben Olson getting sacked, some guy with five names throwing interceptions, and Charlie Weis cackling maniacally in the background while eating a footlong meatball sandwich from Subway.

At least Jimmy Clausen is being investigated for under-age drinking. Send him to AA!

It's funny when Ned tries to save face by saying he could've been "selfish" traded away all the youngsters - yeah, like Logan and McCourt have no say.

I just heard that Lisa Bonet will be a recurring guest on the "Life on Mars" adapdation. Worlds are colliding.

http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/entertainment_tv/2008/08/american-life-o.html

35

Trying to create a little spousal jealousy, huh? Well played, sir.

35
They got a good cast for a show with so many issues.

36 - I haven't kissed Lisa since 1979, so I don't think it's going to have much effect.
But I do like to brag about it.

37 - That cast is their ace in the hole, but I still don't know if it will be enough.

I have an idea for a show, its called Marooned and its a story about a cruise ship that goes down and only (we believe) one life boat makes to a Pacific isle that is not "Gilligan's Island."

Trouble soon arises when the cruise mates realize that they are not alone.

They also realize that cocunut shells cannot be used to conduct scientific experiments but that's during Season 2.

Keith Law last week on his chat said something along the lines of, "OPS+ isn't a great measuring tool becuase it weights OBP and SLUG the same."

Isn't this not true?

If you look at any teams LgOBP and LgSLUG and apply 2 "imaginary players" that have the same OPS, with the exception being one has a higher OBP than the other, the guy with the higher OBP always has the higher OPS+.

38

I know. I still cling to my Doug Davis and Jermaine Dye memories, though neither involved kissing.

39
I don't want to spoil things, but the first episode of Fringe has a connection to Lost that is pretty funny.

40 - I just flipped through the chat, and I believe the problem was that he thought OBP was undervalued, i.e., not weighted as heavily as it should be. Here's the quote:

Joe (Santa Cruz): Keith, not to appeal to your intellectual side, but you should understand that OPS+ is a silly stat given that the distribution of batter's OPS and ERA is NOT LINEAR. It's silly to assume such a relationship without actually trying to match it up to a better one. My guess is it's probably Gaussian. Then we might be able to better compare hitters from different leagues and times. Just a simple plot of the top and bottom hitter's show its definitely crowded at the middle as you would expect.

Keith Law: OPS and OPS+ also underweight OBP significantly. If forced to stick to one stat, I prefer VORP and its rate-stat counterpart.

I must have forgotten the Bonet-Weisman tryst.

However, Lisa Bonet is involved in the greatest palindrome ever, courtesy of Weird Al Yankovic:

"Lisa Bonet ate no basil."

43 ahh thats right, he said underweights.

i'm not really sure what OPS (or OPS+, for that matter) really adds to the conversation when evaluating a player. I would think that OBP and SLG, independently and in relation to each other, would be more valuable.

this is strange to me: LeBron James would consider an offer to play in Europe when his contract is up if the salary was $50m per year.

Anyone believe it? Would a Euro team offer $50m?

43 That is an interesting comment. I wonder what he means by "significantly." Colloquially or statistically? He is certainly correct that OPS weighs OBP too little when using OPS to model runs based on team OPS. That is, you can get a closer fit to actual runs if you use OBP(1.1) + SLG than you can using OBP + SLG. Either way, however, it is very close and in the context he is using it (evaluating individual players rather than as a predictor for runs for an entire team) I don't think there is any evidence that could support that the difference he alludes to is "significant."

38 44
I have been reading this site consistently for 3 years and have heard nothing about said kiss...How can this be???

What else have I missed? Did Eric secretly idolize Dusty Baker in his formative years? Was Bob the head of the Knights Templar?

I feel so cheated...

49
You're going to be visited by an albino monk who looks a lot like Paul Bettany.

49 - Was Bob the head of the Knights Templar?

What do you mean "was"?

48 The guys who own Olympiakos are billionaires. Not only could they afford it, they are cray enough to make that offer. I just can't see Lebron accepting it though. NBA titles still mean a lot in all-time legacy case scenarios. I'm guessing the US marketing dollars also mean something and his US PR hit would be significant too. But yeah, expect to see some good players (better than Childress) going to Europe in the near future.

50 , 51 - one second? Oh c'mon!

38 At Stanford I remember taking a date to a screening of a movie starring Lisa Bonet in which there was substantial nudity. We walked out because it was so bad.

52 - he says it would only be for a year or two. and the speculation is that it would fall in line with his plans on becoming a billionaire and "global icon".

5 no, this is a youtube video about sausage

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geQ5bSA3A1I

54 Was Robert DeNiro involved in said movie?

54 - I went to that screening. That was "Angel Heart," or as I remember it, "My blood runs cold. My memory has just been sold."

57 That would be the one.

58 We were bound to have crossed paths at least once there.

51 - perhaps he can shed some light on the drill team.

http://www.knightstemplar.org/drillteam.html

For such a popular team, the Cardinals sure have very few active blogs that are worth their weight in.. feathers. Viva El Birdos is the only decent, very active one that I could find.

40 OPS+ actually weights SLG significantly more than OBP. This is because it's derived by simply adding the two numbers together and slugging percentages are, in general, much greater numerically than OBPs.

It's not a perfect measure. It's probably better than using either OBP or slugging by itself, though.

62 - The Best Fans In Baseball (tm) don't have time for mere blogging. They are too busy leaving work early to go to the stadium early and staying until they turn the lights off at the stadium after the game. And requiring a curtain call for every run scored.

62 Not Viva El Redbirdos? Take note Bob! Unless you're off at a Templars meeting.

62 Redbird Nation used to be a really good blog as I recall, but the guy quit.

The Dark Knight is the #1 movie of all time, according to the users of IMDB.com.

Anyone else have a problem with that?

http://www.imdb.com/chart/top

64 Heh. Pretty much.

But facetiousness aside, that's why I'm kinda surprised. Since they are the "Best Fans in Baseball.™"

For what it's worth, there's a review of the Dodgers trolley in the Times blog:

http://tinyurl.com/itsnoteasybeinggreen

And if you plan to attend this weekend's series up north, you'll be seriously dodging trolleys:

http://tinyurl.com/trolleydodger

60 Fade in, book store in Salt Lake City, man standing in line at book signing with his children.

Child: Dad, when did you meet you first meet Jon Weisman.
Daniel: It was when I was at Stanford.
Child: Was it in a class?
Daniel: Uhh no, it was at a movie and I actually did not meet him there.
Child: What was the film, can we see it?
Daniel: Uhh, no, say how many copies of that book do we need signed.

Cards line-up is:

Skip Whatever
Kennedy
Pujols
Ludwick
Glaus
Molina
Mather
Carpenter, P
Izturis

Even though the LA Times have ignored the obvious, McCourt must be hearing from enough other sources that the kids have kept the team afloat and the vets have been sinking the ship. Now that Manny is here, maybe a lighter and happier tone will ring from Torre.

69 I know, scary, and I was pretty close to waiting for one of those streetcars at about that time yesterday, then ended up taking BART. Whew. Slow down, MUNI drivers!

I'll be walking to the game on Friday.

49 - A gentleman should not kiss and tell, unless he's periodically recalling sixth-grade Truth or Dare.

71
Skip Whatever went to UCSB.

75 I know, I was just feeling spelling-deficient at the moment, and too lazy to look it up. (I stole the line-up from the Cards' blog.)

Proctor/Pee Wee will not be activated soon.
http://www.beloblog.com/Pe_Blogs/prosports/2008/08/dodgers-proctor-suffers-setbac.html

66 - Someday I'll do a sequel to this story:

https://dodgerthoughts.baseballtoaster.com/archives/016360.html

Bryan Morris pitching right now for the Pirates Low A team.

Most likely this was hashed out the other day when there were multi-thousand posts, but what are the views of DT readers as to which batter should follow Manny? It was baffling that Arizona would pitch to Manny with the slumping Jeff Kent following, and I see that Torre has now moved Loney into the post-Manny slot to increase the risk for pitching around Manny. But, is James the best choice? Kemp? Martin? Casey? Ethier? What do you all think?

Young having an "oblique injury" troubles me. wasn't that the muscle that a certain (infamous) class of ballplayers suffered in disproportionate numbers a couple years ago?

Tony Jackson: "Sky has turned totally gray in the past hour. Very good chance of a rain delay tonight. Dodgers were going to have early BP today but they canceled it due to the heat."

http://www.insidesocal.com/dodgers/2008/08/sure-hope-it-wa.html

82 Intense heat, but also rain. God I love Midwestern summers! Not.

78 And I thought you were talking about doing a sequel to this comment back in March of 2006.

113. Jon Weisman
110 - Kissing Lisa Bonet in sixth grade Truth or Dare, before she was Lisa Bonet. That's still my topper.

https://dodgerthoughts.baseballtoaster.com/archives/337817.html

84 - Have I only gone two years without mentioning it? That would be pretty good for me.

Jon, re Manny's bat speed, first we could "cheat":

http://baseballtips.com/swingspeedradar.html

But if we don't have the $99, I have it on presumably good authority that for your power hitter, v = -.42m + 75

where v is the velocity in miles per hour and m is the weight of the bat in ounces.

NPUT

77
Luckily for Delwyn, the salve of the calendar turning to September will cure all wounds.

85 You came close here.

https://dodgerthoughts.baseballtoaster.com/archives/1039861.html

86 - So what's a typical power hitter's bat weight these days? 33? I don't know.

89 - Ah, sweet restraint. And that thread was practically begging for me to dish yet again.