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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: 39-30 (.565)
When Jon attended: 5-3 (.625)
When Jon didn't: 34-27 (.557)
Dodgers at home: 745-600 (.554)
Jon attended: 293-233 (.557)*
Jon didn't: 457-374 (.550)
* includes road games attended
Current Roster with Estimated 2008 Salaries
(updated March 28)
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)
$12,300,000 Hiroki Kuroda
$10,000,000 Derek Lowe
$9,500,000 Brad Penny
$7,000,000 Esteban Loaiza
*$500,000 Chad Billingsley
Total: $39,300,000
Bullpen (6)
$2,000,000 Takashi Saito
$1,925,000 Joe Beimel
$1,125,000 Scott Proctor
*$500,000 Jonathan Broxton
$500,000 Chan Ho Park
*$400,000 Hong-Chih Kuo
Total: $6,450,000
Starting Lineup (8)
$14,100,000 Andruw Jones
$13,000,000 Rafael Furcal
$9,000,000 Jeff Kent
$8,500,000 Nomar Garciaparra
$8,000,000 Juan Pierre
$500,000 Russell Martin
*$400,000 James Loney
*$400,000 Matt Kemp
Total: $53,900,000
Bench (6)
$875,000 Gary Bennett
$600,000 Mark Sweeney
$424,500 Andre Ethier
$391,000 Delwyn Young
$390,000 Chin-Lung Hu
$390,000 Blake DeWitt
Total: $3,071,000
Disabled List
$12,000,000 Jason Schmidt
*$400,000 Tony Abreu
*$390,000 Andy LaRoche
Total: $12,790,000
Also Paying ...
$1,000,000 Brett Tomko
$750,000 Odalis Perez
$540,000 Yhency Brazoban
$500,000 Randy Wolf
$487,500 Jason Repko
$135,225 Rudy Seanez
$100,000 Mike Lieberthal
$50,000 Ramon Martinez
Total: $3,562,725
Working total: *$113,268,725
*Rough salary estimate
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4) arguing for the sake of arguing
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Like the wind at your back, like air conditioning on a blazing summer's day, like a sneak-attack kiss from your best girl, winning lightens your step, makes you feel like you're walking on a cushion of air. You glide through space like the puck in an air-hockey game - waiting, of course, to hit the wall or be slapped back in the opposite direction - but glide nonetheless.
If the Dodgers are your team, each win they pile up serves two purposes, lifting your spirit in the present and cushioning any blows in the future. You want them to win every game, but a loss is easier to swallow after a 9-3 start.
You know I'm intrigued by the Bill James-developed concept of Win Shares, which has caught on in many sabermetric circles. Since shortly after the Dodgers completed their three-game sweep over the Giants on Sunday afternoon, I've been thinking of the pasbermetric concept of Happy Shares.
There are two aspects to the feeling you get when your team wins - and for that matter, the sadness you feel when your team loses: the sweetness (or bittersweetness) and the duration.
Take Kirk Gibson's "She is gone" home run in '88. The intensity of the euphoria it produced was near the maximum - tempered only by the fact that the Series wasn't on the line. The duration of the good feeling would probably also have been the maximum had it been a Series-winning blast. Coming in Game 1, the home run still gets duration points, but it's reduced by the fact that the Dodgers still had angst and pressure beginning the next day. On the other hand, the fact that the home run is still celebrated today reinvgorates it on the duration scale.
Reserving the right to adjust them, I'm assigning these values (My instinct is to create a Happy Shares scale from -100 to 100.):
In contrast, take Bobby Thomson's "shot heard 'round the world" in 1951. I wasn't around to experience it, but I think it's safe to say that for Dodger fans, the blast packaged maximum desolation and that this desolation remained for months, if not years.
Obviously, I don't need numbers to tell me that Gibson's home run made Dodger fans happy and that Thomson's made them sad. What the Happy Shares system might offer, though, is a way to understand how meaningful the moments in between are - to compare moments between seasons.
Take Sunday's victory. Pretty good on the Happy Share scale, especially for April. A comeback victory with a barrage of home runs. A sweep over the Giants. A 9-3 start to the season. It's tainted by Jeff Weaver's collapse in the sixth inning and the fact that the game was so nearly lost. The duration of the good feeling will last at least 48 hours, until the next time they play - and it might even last beyond that if it buoys me through a loss.
And then, just to take a few moments from the past to compare:
That's right - I'm happier about Ruan's two hits than Encarnacion's home run Sunday, but Beltre's home run Sunday is the greater moment for me.
Don't worry; I'm not going to spend the rest of the season, or even the day, rating every Dodger moment. My desire today is to express the good feeling I have about the team having the best record in baseball, even though it came on the heels of three very narrow victories - the narrowness indicating the thin margin of error the Dodgers have as much or more than any championship mettle.
I'm feeling 15 about the Dodgers. No, it ain't 94, but it's better than -100.
Actually, I feel like 15 doesn't adequately express my feeling - and frankly, Kirk Gibson raises something in me more than a 94.
Let's multiply everything by 5.
I'm feeling 75 about the Dodgers. No, it ain't 470, but it's better than -500.
(Beltre HR: 40, Encarnacion HR: 20, Ross HR: 35, Dodgers tie Astros in 1980: 300, Dodgers lose 1980 Game 163: -250, Ruan's two hits: 30)
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