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Also ...
A Season in Savannah (Stanford Magazine)
Five Questions: Los Angeles Dodgers (2005) (Hardball Times)
Rick Monday (Baseball Analysts)
Baseball's Odd Couple (Baseball Prospectus)
Five Questions: Los Angeles Dodgers (2006) (Hardball Times)
Five Questions: Los Angeles Dodgers (2007) (Hardball Times)
Dodger home record: 50-35 (.588)
When Jon attended: 9-5 (.643)
When Jon didn't: 41-30 (.577)
Dodgers at home: 795-635 (.556)
Jon attended: 302-238 (.559)*
Jon didn't: 498-404 (.552)
* includes road games attended
Current Roster with Estimated 2009 Salaries
(updated November 14)
Most figures are estimates (some are wild estimates) but will be updated as information comes in. Corrections welcome.
More contract details here.
Starting Pitchers (5)
$10,000,000 Hiroki Kuroda
*$475,000 Chad Billingsley
*$415,000 Clayton Kershaw
*$405,000 Eric Stults
*$400,000 James McDonald
*Total: $11,695,000
Bullpen (7)
*$2,500,000 Takashi Saito
*$1,300,000 Scott Proctor
*$1,500,000 Jonathan Broxton
*$425,000 Hong-Chih Kuo
*$420,000 Cory Wade
*$410,000 Ramon Troncoso
*$400,000 Scott Elbert
Total: $6,955,000
Also on 40-man roster
Mario Alvarez
Yhency Brazoban
Greg Miller
Justin Orenduff
Starting Lineup (8)
$17,100,000 Andruw Jones
*$3,000,000 Russell Martin
*$2,500,000 Andre Ethier
*$600,000 Matt Kemp
*$600,000 James Loney
*$500,000 Angel Berroa
*$410,000 Blake DeWitt
*$400,000 Tony Abreu
Total: $25,110,000
Bench (5)
$10,000,000 Juan Pierre
*$600,000 Jason Repko
*$410,000 Delwyn Young
*$400,000 Danny Ardoin
*$400,000 Chin-Lung Hu
Total: $11,810,000
Note: Team can buy out Ozuna's 2009 option for $200,000
Also on 40-man roster
A.J. Ellis
Lucas May
Xavier Paul
Disabled List
$12,000,000 Jason Schmidt
Also Paying ...
$2,000,000 Brad Penny (buyout of $9,000,000 option)
$50,000 Gary Bennett (buyout of $900,000 option)
Note: Kansas City is responsible for $500,000 buyout of Angel Berroa's $5,500,000 option for 2009.
Working total: *$68,020,000
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Baseball Toaster runs on some experimental software called Fairpole. It's still under development.
For more information, please visit the Fairpole blog, or read the FAQ.
"You always try to better yourself and keep progressing. You hope that you don't peak at your talent level."
Let's have some fun ...
Ethier is closing in on 1,500 plate appearances in his major-league career. Here are his numbers:
1,463 plate appearances
.356 on-base percentage
.480 slugging percentage
112 adjusted OPS
From Mike Scioscia's Tragic Illness:
I don't know if this can be overstated, so I'm going to say it again. Andre Ethier has a higher slugging percentage (in 2008) than Vladimir Guerrero, Aramis Ramirez, Ryan Howard, Jason Giambi, and Carlos Beltran. His OPS of .843 is currently good for 26th in baseball - that is to say, there's more than one team that doesn't even have one outfielder as good as Andre Ethier. ...
Here is a month-by-month breakdown for Ethier - his OPS matched with his batting average on balls in play, the latter at least a partial indicator of his luck:
| Month | OPS | BABIP |
| May 2006 | .973 | .345 |
| June 2006 | .821 | .429 |
| July 2006 | 1.024 | .403 |
| August 2006 | .804 | .368 |
| Sept./Oct. 2006 | .454 | .163 |
| April 2007 | .740 | .242 |
| May 2007 | .711 | .316 |
| June 2007 | .848 | .300 |
| July 2007 | 1.021 | .404 |
| August 2007 | .803 | .294 |
| Sept./Oct. 2007 | .742 | .283 |
| April 2008 | .861 | .333 |
| May 2008 | .746 | .333 |
| June 2008 | .643 | .185 |
| July 2008 | .835 | .329 |
| August 2008 | .961 | .292 |
| September 2008 | 2.244 | .750 |
| Total | .837 | .322 |
Ethier's OPS isn't always rising and falling with his BABIP (see June 2006 and May 2007), but it seems to most of the time. And his truly bad months definitely seem related to poor BABIP. But for the most part, those have been rare - and it's certainly been proven by now that it's worth waiting for Ethier to rebound. A .322 BABIP is higher than you'd expect a player to sustain, but as more time passes, you can't help but wonder how much of it might be a repeatable skill.
You also really can't help but sit back and enjoy it when he's as blue-hot as he is now.
With my Bob Carpenter Fan Scorebook.
The correlation between his OPS and BABIP is .93, which is very very strong.
Put another way, his BABIP explains 86% of the variation in his OPS, which is a lot.
Put yet another way, his OPS is heavily dependent upon his BABIP.
I would guess he's not unusual in that respect.
Dave Hansen had a ton of them, as did Billy Ashley, which I guess isn't too surprising. Eric Gagne had one also.
http://www.bb-ref.com/pi/shareit/7G7S
(It would, of course, have to be a backwards Small Straight, since AB is greater than or equal to H).
Someone in the last thread [now 2 threads ago] suggested that we hold a ceremony to officially bury the "3.5" nickname.
I object. The nickname was originally intended to be ironic, and Ethier's recent emergence only makes the irony sweeter.
Besides, it beats my wife's nickname for him, which is "Pretty Boy."
Is he 26th among outfielders or all hitters? Either way one part of the statement should be changed. Though I guess if it is all hitters the statement is factually true.
http://www.bb-ref.com/pi/shareit/c5YM
The last was Matt Kemp, in Pittsburgh this April.
http://www.bb-ref.com/pi/shareit/2NGR
I prefer to call them "Major Tom" games. "4,3,2,1..."
Did you call is "Small Straight Games", or is that an actual BB-ref phrase...?
You can title the searches as they are saved.
I thought it was AB, H, R, RBI in which case the last Dodger small straight was Nomar Sept. 14, 2007
But we aren't talking poker; we're talking Yahtzee. A small straight is a run of 4 numbers, and a large is a run of 5.
...except that Jon's original "Yahtzee" concept in the previous thread really centered on 4 "cards".
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/SLN/SLN195904260.shtml
I do believe the transition from a Kent-controlled clubhouse to a Manny-centric one has been great for this team. But I tend to put more stock in "chemistry" than many folks here do.
4 seconds!!!
Also, I believe Kent was only gone for the 2 remaining days in AZ. He has been reported to be in the clubhouse most if not all of this week, so it's not like he's not around to spread his love.
I once won $905 playing 3-card poker at a casino, thanks to a straight flush of 6-7-8 of spades.
.326/.445/.584/1.029
I know he's injury prone and that Texas inflates offensive numbers, but still: it's pretty amazing that he's OPSing over 1.000
I'll be happy but very surprised if Roger beats Djokovic and Murray/Nadal.
Murray won the first set over Nadal, BTW.
Wasn't really planning on going today as I have a gazillion chores to do but I just announced to my wife that I'm headed for DS.
I'm sure she was relieved as that gives her old movie time instead of Fox Dodger Baseball time.
Hope to come home in 1st place.
Ohio 7
Ohio State 6
http://www.baseball-reference.com/m/matsuda01.shtml
So much for OSU leapfrogging Georgia to make next week a 1-2 matchup!
That's a good one.
They played again in 1999, which was the first time that the Bobcats ever scored against the Buckeyes.
In other great intrastate battles, Illinois leads Eastern Illinois 26-7 and Michigan State leads Eastern Michigan 21-7.
anyway roger about to close
http://losangeles.dodgers.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20080906&content_id=3427937&vkey=news_mlb&fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb
Ethier's last three months are also encouraging for the Dodgers in a wider sense. The other young Dodgers will likely make a similar production leap, by simply having less periods of times where they are lost at the plate, as they reach their prime age years.
Ethier has begun the prime of his career. It will be a lot of fun when Russ, Loney, and Kemp do as well. And when Bills reaches his prime, it might just end up being something historic.
LOS ANGELES — Arizona's Randy Johnson, six wins shy of 300 career victories, was scratched from Sunday's start against the Los Angeles Dodgers because of a sore left shoulder.
Johnson, who turns 45 next week, will be replaced by right-hander Max Scherzer.
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