"Old Friend" Jose Valentin isn't called Jose in Puerto Rican papers. He's called Tony. Probably because his brother, Javier as we call him in the U.S., also has the name Jose.

It's Jose Antonio Valentin and Jose Javier Valentin.

How much will the book cost in relation to a cup of coffee?

A cup of coffee for Kurt Ainsworth will cost the Dodgers around $60,000, if he stays with the team for a month or so. If a cup of coffee is 8 ounces, The Best of Dodger Thoughts costs the equivalent of .00005 ounces of coffee. Yet it will last you for many cups of coffee. That's how much of a bargain it is.

12 - You win the Sam DC award for nicest unsolicited promotion of the day. Everyone, take heed!

It was written by Flounder!

Directed by Flounder.

My Tony Valentin
Third baseman Valentin
You made me cringe when you start
Your hitting's laughable
Fielding, so gaffe-able
I smiled when you did depart

Is your footwork really weak?
Your endurance past its peak?
Were the sabermetric geeks
All that smart?

By the way, I like being able to call him "kid" as he is the first player younger than me to play for either the Dodgers or the Lakers

Jon, I'm waiting for my birthday to get your book, in March.

Hi Icaros. Welcome back.

Hi Bruin - e-mail me and let's see what we can find out. Anyone else having delivery problems, let me know.

http://www.baseballmusings.com/archives/012863.php

If Martinez is gonna play at Vegas, thats fine.

However, bringing in Meadows and Ainsworth will only take innings away from Kuo, Broxton, and Billingsley.

Also reading your July 4, 2005 comments on the Drew wrist debacle was fascinating. There's one that fits Steve's "not necessarily right but talking about the right things" observation pretty well. (Though you were darn right that some would react to the injury by blaming DePodesta for signing an injury-prone player.)

Nomar Article.

from nationals.com (http://tinyurl.com/7b89o).

Defensively, Desmond plays the game like Derek Jeter...

The article goes on to explain that he can't hit either. Dave Littlefield is on Line 2, Mr. Bowden.

Jon, thank you for this site. This is my first post after being a regular reader for almost two years now. I'm ordering a copy of your book today. Also, thank you to the regular contributors...you've made me a better "fan."

But what if I'm out of dollars and cents?

Also, BoDT, is great for those times when you want your youngens (kids) to see you actually reading as opposed to watching television or surfing on your laptop.

Players signing this late usually sign a discount one-year contract, but Molina's agent, Alan Nero, says, "Bengie is going to be fine," because three teams are working trades or restructuring their budget to sign him.

Then it speculates that the Dodgers could be one of those teams...

http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/unfounded_rumors/index.html

-the Wonder Years

I guess some teams just dont like 3TO hitters. We signed Truby to a minor league deal. Russell Branyon seems like a player with more upside at 3rd base.

The knock on Branyan is that he's a strikeout machine and always has been. He has gaping holes. Against certain pitchers, he has no chance.

So you'd better have the right roster mix that precludes over-exposure. A not uncommon Catch-22 also hurts him: He's got a high-maintenance swing that requires playing time -- but he's an absolute lineup killer against certain type of pitchers. An erratic defendeer as well.

I'm looking forward to the upcoming season of "Who Else Looks Like Briana Banks?"

By and large, criticism over Depo's signing of Drew wasn't that Depo signed him, but that he signed him for $55 million guaranteed. That's too many eggs in a leaky basket, and if you're going to allow for an opt-out, make it mutual.

If you look at true value, Drew, Lowe, and Kent were 3 of the best signings of last off-season.

I wouldn't be concerned that bringing in the likes of Meadows will take away innings from Kuo, Billingsley and Broxton.

There's usually ample innings for pitchers and if need be you can schedule B games against other Grapefruit clubs or even intrasquad game.

There's so much mediocrity impersonating major league pitching that if you're worth you're salt as a pitcher, opportunity will be the least of your problems. The more likely concern would be harmful increases in stress loads. Witness Jackson, Edwin, 2003.

I also like the idea of stockpiling 4A starting pitchers. Sometimes a Lima will pan out for you. Sometimes one or two of them give you a nice backup option in Triple-A. Surprisingly, Depo failed to develop good 4A depth in the Vegas rotation last year. The best veteran SP was Maholms, and obviously the LAD didn't trust him. For all the praise it gets, the farm system wasn't able to pick up the slack, either, when the LAD needed to plug their rotation. D. Thompson was decent at times, but his ticking bomb of an elbow caught up with him.

The only Dodger or Angel on the preliminary roster for the U.S. is ... Scot Shields.

Drew returned poor value simply because he was on the field far too seldom. Given his salary and his No. 3 spot in the lineup, he has to be a lot more reliable than he was in 2005.

Beltran and Beltre weren't great, but they were in the lineup and played well at premium positions (although Beltran's defense, by some measures, wasn't that good). Even at non-peak years offensively, they were better values than Drew simply because they played.

I see Drew coming back with a good year, the best of the five years (two too many) guaranteed. All of the time off likely helped his chronic knee problem. The best thing for patellar tendinitis is rest, and he got plenty of it. The November opt-out might also be of some incentive. If Drew is finding that LA isn't his favorite place, a strong year could create enough value that another club entices him next winter.

http://www.baseballmusings.com/archives/012910.php

Every single question that was directed to him was met with a long, rambling answer that involved him talking about how great he was. By the time he finished, not one answer resembled the original question in any way, shape, or form. The man is a complete moron and I would be terrified to even cross the street with him, let alone have him manage my baseball team

Priceless.

http://whereisvanslyke.blogspot.com/

Strikes me as specious use of WARP to say Drew had more value at 72 games than Beltre at 150 games. Look at the team context:

What is the ripple effect of replacing Drew for 90 games? Hard to measure statistically, but to my eyes it weakened the LAD lineup and bench considerably for more than half a season.

I also believe WARP undersells Beltre's defensive value at a premium position. When valuing defense, I'm more inclined to go with major league personnel than stats (although I also study the stats). A strong body of opinion is that Beltre is a good 3B. His defensive value at a premium position is pretty strong over 150 games.

Offensively, he was mediocre in 2005. But if you were to DL him for 90 games, what does that do to your 3B defense, the middle of your order and your bench? I don't think WARP addresses such ripple effects to the team.

Fan, I hope you are right but there is the issue of the "repaired" shoulder that keeps him from throwing the little round white thing very far.

Oh yes, the shoulder. And the wrist. Certainly of concern. But maybe they apply enough glue to his balsa-wood frame to get him ready by May.

How's that for a dazzling analysis?

The Mariners were so awful, Beltre could've been as good as he was in 2005 and it wouldn't have put any champagne bottles near their clubhouse.

As for 76, if the 2004 Beltre showed up in Seattle, he certainly would have been more valuable than the 2005 Drew (of course, the same thing can be said for Drew).

I meant to say 2004, not 2005, on Beltre.

As for the great Drew/Beltre debate, I think WARP doesn't address the teamwide ripple effect of having to replace Drew for 90 games.

Again, it needs to be repeated that according to WARP (and VORP, though VORP is positional right?), Drew was more valuable to the Dodgers in the limited ABs than a whole season of Beltre.

Danny (Poway, CA: Do you think we'll see Chad Billingsley in the LA rotation by the all-star break?

rob neyer: I would say it's 50/50 (give or take 10 either way). Billingsley's a fantastic prospect, but a) he hasn't pitched an inning in triple-A yet, and b) it wasn't that long ago that Edwin Jackson was a fantastic prospect, and look how that turned out.

Beltre:
1 time with OPS+ over 100
(93, 98, 89, 163, 90)

Drew: 5 times.
(122 ,162, 110, 133, 158, 148)

You can plan for games Drew will miss. In fact I think we still need to do that. The OFers we have are way to injury prone still.

Aw the heck with it, the whole team is.

Also I wouldn't consider an OPS+ of 90 to be decent offense. His OPS was 8th among the 9 third basemen in the AL that qualified for the batting title.

I will say that I'm not sure the Dodgers suffered that much defensively in right field during 2005 when Drew was hurt. Offensively ... eight men played RF for L.A. in 2005. (Remember, Drew played some CF - so this is actually going to hurt the Dodgers in this comparison.) The team OPS in RF was .808.

http://tinyurl.com/8vd7x

The team OPS for Seattle 3B was .705.

Did Beltre's defense, at a more important position, make up this difference? Maybe. But it's definitely a lot to make up - and again, I'm not even including Drew's games in CF.

Beltre supplied nowhere near "decent offense." Beltre wasn't even in the same zip code as "decent offense." Antonio Perez supplied decent offense. If Beltre was a blimp, he would have been the Hindenberg. If he was an ocean liner, he would have been the Titanic. If he had run for President, he would have been Michael Dukakis (or Bob Dole). The argument about JD Drew does not require a rehabilitation of one of the worst 13 million dollar years in the history of mankind. Babe Ruth once said that he had a better year than the President. Beltre barely beat out Jack Abramoff.

I didn't take your counterargument as definitive. I took it as thought provoking.

Nor did I wish to set my observation on Beltre/Drew's 2005 work in concrete.

Wish there was a better way to measure the effect of Drew missing 90 games. Seems reasonable that he greatly weakened both the lineup and the bench. Again, I do believe that 156 games of good defense at a premium spot (3B) gets underplayed by WARP.

I probably value durability more than the norm and find unreliability, as expressed by a player's inability to stay in the lineup, as more harmful than many would say.

The Drew/Beltre comparison wasn't on their careers, just 2005.

No question, hard to defend Beltre's offensive work in 2005. His assets were defensive work at 3B, perhaps SP relative to all hitters (not 3B). And durability.

Hard to quantify how much LAD suffered defensively when Drew wasn't in RF, Pinto's numbers, as I recall, showed Drew a good RF. Major leaguer personnel regard him as a VG right fielder and a good CF -- I would think his RF range is excellent (when he's in the lineup and his knee isn't aching, etc.)

Ryan Klesko
Brandon Inge
Pedro Feliz
Sean Casey
Brady Clark
Ray Durham
Bill Mueller
Rafael Furcal
Eric Hinske
Jimmy Rollins
Carl Everett
Jeromy Burnitz
Gary Matthews Jr.
Jacque Jones
Casey Blake
David DeJesus
Craig Monroe
Ronnie Belliard
The Estimable Joe Randa, Esq.
Emil Brown
Kevin Mench

He was giving Neifi a run for his money, but a hot August put an end to that pursuit. In the end, he settled into a comfortable banjo hitting middle infielder median, right between Ray Durham and David Eckstein.

Quick, everybody drop a Phillies hat on the ground, point to it, and say "Look, it's Jimmy Rollins!!"

And now a real comment so I don't get yelled at by Jon: Which is there more likely an easy replacement for on the market, a 3B capable of putting up (going off of "normal" seasons and ignoring the ridiculous 2004-05s as outliers) Beltre 2003 numbers or a RF who will give you Drew 2003 ones?