Well, I guess he's not a candidate to replace Erickson in the rotation yet. I hope young Edwin figures things out soon.

It must be really, really hard to get two-hit in Salt Lake. This is, after all, the place where Tony Lazzeri had 60 HR and 222 RBI one year.

"Well, I guess he's not a candidate to replace Erickson in the rotation yet."

Yeah, Erickson got one more out.

What is EJack's problem? Did he change his mechanics after his 2003 start? Did he just get lucky? Was he quickly figured out? Is he still hurt from that forearm injury?

What's the deal?

I still contend he needs to be sent to Double A. Get his confidencee/mechanics right and get the heck out of Vegas. What pitcher is going to have confidence pitching there?

confidence

The problem is, getting sent to AA would probably also be a blow to his confidence.

I think any or all of the suggestions in #3 could be true. He's really been an enigma for the last calendar year.

Does anyone have information on Hanrahan? Is he in the LV rotation, pitching relief, hurt?

Pitchers can be successfull in the PCL. Wilson Alveraz was awesome when we signed him as a free agent and had him pitch in Vegas before he proved he had come back from his arm problems. Tanyon Sturtze was doing great in Vegas when we flipped him last year to the Yankee's.
Matt Cain and Jesse Foppert of the Giants are thriving so far. Jackson needs to step up before he's passed up. Plenty of past Dodger pitchers have been successfull in the PCL which has always been the greatest hitting league even when we were the Dukes.

Gio was also very successful in LV last year, if I recall.

"Plenty of past Dodger pitchers have been successfull in the PCL which has always been the greatest hitting league even when we were the Dukes."

Albuquerque is a hitter's paradise... it's a mile high in dry air. The ball carries a bunch (unless the wind is blowing in from the east.)

I always thought Albuquerque was the reason everyone was so high on Brock, Stubbs, Garcia, all those prospects who didn't amount to much. I got so I didn't trust any hitter coming out of there.

And then you have the mystery that is Raul Mondesi, who IIRC actually hit worse as a Duke than as a Dodger.

Did he really? Wow. I seem to remember he was a head case even in the minors. Is that right?

Mondesi 1993, ABQ: .280/.309/.449
Mondesi 1994, LA: .291/.322/.488

He did hit better at ABQ in 1992, however.

Not too off-topic: David Ross is 1-3 for the Pirates today. He's hitting .357 w/ a HR and 2 2Bs. Unbelievable.

It is only 14 at bats, but it just seems like he matched the production from last year already.

(Ross' teammate and co-ex-failed-dodger Daryl Ward's hitting .105)

Long Gammons piece today on the Dodgers and DePo:
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/gammons/story?id=2036219

"Then there are the Dodgers, who in many corners were dismissed as the trash-barrel residue of a statistical general manager who dehumanized players and sent the character people like Paul Lo Duca and Alex Cora out to pasture, replacing them with numbers. 'It's not like I broke up a dynasty,' said Paul DePodesta, who is in the media ridicule line behind only Kobe Bryant and Frank McCourt in Los Angeles. 'We did finish first last season (and won a postseason game, the first since the Reagan administration). What some people fail to realize is that when we took over, we were an older team that hadn't won.

'We're trying to rebuild and contend at the same time, which is a complicated, tricky process. Look, did we do everything we wanted last winter? No, some things didn't go right, because when the starting pitching market got so inflated it prevented us from doing everything we wanted to do. We had to begin with pitching. But even without doing everything we wanted, what we are opening the season with is a team that is significantly younger and $10 million cheaper.'"

It goes on from there. Pete is on our side.

I've been sitting on this one waiting for clarification. I don't want anyone to jump off the deep end on this, but Gammons' sidebar on Milton Bradley uses the same quotes that appeared in Steve Henson's feature, without crediting Henson or the Times.

http://www.latimes.com/sports/baseball/mlb/dodgers/la-sp-dodgers12apr12,1,4525750.story?coll=la-headlines-sports-mlb-dodger

I'm trying to determine if Bradley said these quotes in a crowd, which would obviously mean no credit was needed, or whether credit needs to be given.

I just noticed that Izturis has one more hit this season than Ichiro. Be still, my beating heart!

I believe Milton made his comments to Mitch Albom as he was preparing to go to St. Louis to watch the Final Four.

#19 -- good one. King Kaufman's piece on that issue was terrific.

In a Google news search, Bradley's comments only show up in the Henson piece.

http://tinyurl.com/48fs8

Not suggesting a return to Albuquerque at all. The PCL is fine but why not put a home stadium somewhere neutral or approximate to Dodger Stadium. Seems like the whole team has an ERA of 5.00 minimum. That can get to young pitchers. Alvarez and Sturtze were major league pitchers before their Vegas stops and they aren't Jackson type pitchers. Plus fastball type of guys.

I'm not familiar with the the Giants AAA home so I'll reserve comment on that.

To stray a little bit it seems a lot of other teams bring up their prospects straight from Double A and the Dodgers rarely do. Could be my lying eyes but it seems that way to me. Maybe they almost always have veteran teams but why not let the prospects kill Double A before moving to triple and then stagnating.

I have no evidence to back up what I say so I could be totally wrong(and willing to admit it). Just seems like "common sense" to me that you wouldn't want such extremes if you could help it(which they can)

"Time will tell if the Dodgers pitchers will not miss one of the best leaders in the game behind the plate."

Yawn. But at least Gammo added with this:

"what DePodesta is trying to do deserves to be judged by the team's performance, not what baseball folks and we in the media think will unfurl"

Gammons plays favorites with the Beane crew, but considering all the venom spewed at the Dodgers, I'll take it.

The most likely places to put a PCL franchise in California that are at sea level or close to it are already taken.
The Giants have a AAA team in Fresno and the Athletics have theirs in Sacramento.

The other good places in California have Cal League teams.

San Diego uses Portland. Seattle uses Tacoma.

Las Vegas has the advantage of being convenient if you need to bring a player up quickly.

Albuquerque is now a Florida affiliate. The Angels use Salt Lake City and the Rockies use Colorado Springs.

Perhaps Washington's pitchers will benefit from seasoning at their AAA affiliate: New Orleans, which is BELOW sea level.

The Jackson story is troubling but Chuck Tiffany had another good outing. 5 innings - 1 run - 8 strike outs. 19 strike outs in 10 innings of work so far this season.

Penny played today at Vero Beach (went up against Matt Morris of the Cards). He ended up throwing 5 innings and only allowed 2 hits.
http://www.vbdodgers.com/index.cfm?Method=MainArticle.Home&ID=606

Does this mean we can circle April 24 on our calendars?

Re #17:
Not only does Gammons use the same quotes from Bradley in the sidebar, the rest of the text is nearly identical to Henson's.

Noticed that too, Im So Blue. I just posted a new entry on the Henson-Gammons thing. Again, I don't have background on this, so for now I'm just pointing out similarities.

The Penny outing is the best news I've heard all day. (Not that that's saying much - I am at work.)

If we can look ahead to a situation where Dessens, Alvarez, Erickson, Jackson, and Hanrahan are all candidates for the fifth spot, that's a pretty happy thought.

My enthusiasm is starting to wane. Sure, it's only his first start, but it sounds like Jackson is having the problems from last year. Control problems, getting hit hard,...

He seems like a 'stuff' guy more than a proven performer since he left AA in 2003.

Is there a physical ailment or flaw in mechanics that is preventing him from getting back on track?

Regarding the Gammons article and issues raised therein, if fans and press require teams to make decisions based on sentiment when players clearly don't, it's a major disadvantage to your team.

Depo is going to be on espn radio(710) at 2;20 pst. The Big Show with John Ireland and Dave somebody.

Possible AAA sites: Barstow, Palm Springs, Truckee.

Hey, I just like the names.

Truckee? Have you ever been to Truckee? Do you want to prepare someone for playing in snow?

Would the team there be called the Truckee DonnerParty?

If so, I'm not eating a hot dog there.

Grins. Yeah, I have been there, in an October 20 years ago. It was cool, but not snowy yet.

You could call them the Pilgrims (Cannibals would be SO non-PC).

Book plug: George Stewart's "Ordeal by Hunger," about the Donner Expedition. (Full disclosure: he was the instructor for one of my Mom's AmLit courses at Berkeley way back when).

Truckee in Spring might be slightly more pleasant than Palm Springs or Barstow in Summmer. That is, unless the build the Morongo Dome.

I think Riverside could sustain a AAA team. They've got the Lake Elsinore Storm and the IE 66ers nearby, but I don't think it would be a problem. It could pull from all of the Inland Empire, which is bigger than the Kansas City area. People would be stoked that a Dodger farm was so close by. It was great when their high-A team was the Stampede. People ate it up.

Spage -

Riverside had a hard time supporting the two single A teams that were here in recent years. The Red Wave moved to Adelanto of all places. The Pilots moved to Lancaster.

Of course, one of the reasons that the teams left Riverside was because the stadium didn't have a beer license. The city (or county?) wouldn't permit it because it was too close to UC Riverside. Somehow, it is alright to sell beer at a place that is actually on campus, though.

Jacob -

Palm Springs can't be any worse than Vegas in the summer. I went to a 51s game a few years back and the weather was horrible.

Is Dunn for Jackson still on the table?

There was a Cal League team in Riverside. About 15 years ago the Brett family (George, Ken, etc.) bought it and moved it to Adelanto in the High Desert. Go to hdmavs.com and scroll down to see some pictures of the ballpark in the Mojave under a blanket of snow. I love the Cal but at that level affiliations change often. The Mavericks have had deals with the Marlins, Orioles, Dbacks, Brewers and now Royals. Bakersfield was a Dodger affiliate for years but the Dodgers wanted a new ballpark which Bakersfield wasn't willing to pay for. San Bernardino was, so the Spirit became the Stampede. That only lasted a couple of years. It's a shame. The old park in San Berdoo was nice and the one in Bakersfield is an oddity in that it is one of the few, if not only, that faces west. Parks have always been built so that batters aren't looking into the setting sun. Well, they missed that in Bakersfield. They had to scramble to put up giant pine trees just beyond the outfield fence to block the sun. One more Cal League note and I'll shut up. Modesto has ended a decades long affiliation with Oakland (Reggie Jackson started his pro career in Modesto) and taken a new name. Welcome your Modesto Nuts!
I kid you not. Okay, one more thing. According to dodgers.com Kelly Wunsch proposed to his wife while diguised as the mascot for the Stockton Ports.

I'm sorry, one more thing about Bakersfield. It's the only game I've been to where they don't stop selling beer after the 7th inning. The game I was at went into extra innings and they were still selling beer. I think you could have gotten a beer to go on your way out. They also had given away a lot of tickets to local law inforcement so there were a lot of drunk, off duty cops. And there was a mini-bat give-away. Wooden bats and metal stands is not a good combo. You thought the Dodger Stadium sound system was loud.

Umm, have you been to the new park in San Bernardino?

I'm sorry, but the old ballpark (Fiscallini Field, bad spelling I'm sure) was a junk heap and the area wasn't great. Granted, the new ballpark isn't in a great area either.

Man, great stuff, Langhorne.

The new park, now called Arrowhead Credit Union Park (rolls off the tongue), is one of my favorites of the newer Cal League venues. It's nice without being overdone. There's a lot of grass areas for kids to play on. On Fridays it's pretty crazy. Basically, everthing minor league teams do to attract people goes on in one night on Fridays. Discounted food and drink, live music, clowns, petting zoo, contests. It's wild. My favorite is still Maverick's Stadium in the high desert. Night games are pretty cold this time of year and day games in the summer are blistering but go on a July night and it's beautiful. Clear skies, plenty of stars, joshua trees beyond the outfield basking in the moonlight, and after the game you can stop off at the Cocky Bull Saloon down the road for some line dancing. Or not. I once saw Carl Everett hit an inside the park home run at Maverick's Stadium.

I just wanted to say that I love the new San Bernardino ball park. I used to go to a ton of games at Fiscalini Field when I was a kid. I really wish the Dodgers could have kept the Stampede as their High A affiliate. I got to see Beltre, Konerko, and many players that were making rehab starts.

I could be wrong, but MLB changed their rules a few years ago, and limited the number of farm teams at each minor level for each MLB team.

The Dodgers were forced to choose between Vero Beach of the FSL, and San Bernardino in the Cal League. Obviously they kept Vero.

Too bad, because the Dodgers had been in Bakersfield of the Cal League since Brooklyn (with a couple years in Santa Barbara),until going to San Berdoo. Drysdale played in Bakersfield in the mid 50's.

The Angels use Rancho Cucamonga (formerly a Padres affiliate), and before that, were affiliated with Lake Elsinore. Rancho, and Elsinore have GREAT stadiums.

I got to cover a few games at Arrowhead Park. A couple of games they brought the writers Double-Doubles from In-n-Out. Best press food I ever ate.

I believe you are correct about the MLB's rule for minor league teams. The Dodgers had two High A teams and were forced to pick up a Low A. I think there were many teams that had either two Low A teams or two High A teams so that had to change.

Good idea serving In-n-Out at Arrowhead since they are so close to each other.