Got LAT'ed, so I'll repost this.

Colletti was just on WFAN in NY. The podcast isn't up yet, so to sum it up Ned said he's looking for pitching, said there aren't really any good starters available, and that he's comfortable with the hitting as it now stands. He was asked about Teixeira, and he basically said why would he want to trade for a first baseman when he already has a future star in James Loney.

Great breakdown on our Chad. I hope your right about the 2nd half.

1 - "he basically said why would he want to trade for a first baseman when he already has a future star in James Loney."

Can you elaborate?

Cesar Izturis traded to the Pittsburgh Tracys.

FYI - When Brett Tomko was 24 he debuted with the Reds and had a 3.43 ERA with a 1.21 WHIP in 126 IP with an ERA+ of 125. It would be his best season. Not all pitchers get better.

4 - http://www.nbcsports.com/mlb/1797767/detail.html

Did you guys see that old friend Izzy has been traded to the Pirates for a player to be named later?

Tracy hates Jack Wilson.

I really want Billingsley to do well and to be a reliable fixture in the rotation. However, I just can't be a party to the future-hall-of-fame anointment that many are partaking in. I just see too many Hendrickson-like tendencies. True, one is at the beginning and one is near the end of his respective career, but purely in the context of a ball game those tendencies are in the same class.

oops. gosh I am just moving slow today.

10 - I got lucky.

Here's my daily (okay not so daily) fun fact on a player's stats after the hitting coach was changed.

Andre Ethier in nearly 200 plate appearences, had 14 walks. Since Mueller put a uniform back on, in Andre's next 81 plate appearences, he has walked 14 times. A breakdown of his strikeouts show that he struck out 25 times before and 4 times after the change.

Just saying.

Dodgers RISP in 2006
.286/.379/.445
In 2007
.291/.377/.416

Slugging is down due to Nomar, Kent, Furcal and Pierre not being able to get much more than a single most times when they do get a hit in those situations.

Who said he's a future HOFer? What is a Hendrickson-like tendency?

Still … in an interview with NBCSports.com this morning, I was asked which Dodger was most likely to have a big stretch run. And I thought, there's Russell Martin, but you'd expect him to taper a bit under his workload by season's end. There's Rafael Furcal, but we don't know whether his ankle will allow it. There's Nomar Garciaparra, who is too due. There's Matt Kemp and James Loney and Andre Ethier, but they're already doing so well that it's almost impossible for them to kick it up a notch.

really enoyed your read Jon speacily that part on top it kind of co-insides with the Daily News article on Andre Ethier hopefully he can "kick it up a notch" cause he is very important to the Dodgers success in the 2nd half.

9 - I would never come close to saying Chad's a guaranteed Hall of Famer. The point is that when you're 22, those Hendrickson tendencies have a much better chance of going away.

So this is what I'm talking about. This very week, the difference between Billingsley and Hendrickson might be negligible. On that I can agree with you. We don't need to argue that point. But you then seem to take offense that people are more excited about Chad than about Hendrickson, and the reason for that is Chad's potential to improve is measurably different. Can you concede that?

hey you guys know what time the Dodgers take batting practice? i'm heading out to Dodger Stadium's upper deck store to buy a few things & was wondering what time they have batting practice?

3 It was right at the end of the interview, so there wasn't a lot more to it than that. He declined to speak about Teixeira specifically, but he said he's not really looking for a first baseman because he already has one in place who's both a good hitter and likely to win a couple of gold gloves.

13 - he might be reacting to my mention of Don Sutton.

17 - So he said why he wouldn't want to trade for a first baseman, then.

Man the Yankees have clicked. Up 2-0 in the first, no outs yet.

He, who shall not be named, is pitching for the Loons tonight so all of those reports that he was being promoted were wrong.

Chad Billingsley is a guaranteed Hall Of Famer. Someone should say it once just so that Bluegold will really have something to reference his comments to since no one else has ever said it. EVER

by the way i'm talking about Chad Billingsley "kicking it up a notch" i re-read my post & it even confused me. :o)

19
I think Ned said "why would he?" not "Why he would." or "Why he wouldn't."

21
When did we sign Voldemort?

Ned said pretty much what you said yesterday.

25 I heard Voldemort (his teammates like to call him Voldy) has a wicked splitter.

o.k. i'm out i'm gotta exercise for a bit & then head out. late.

I know that Voldemort has a sweet name.

1924 Correct, but it wasn't actually a quote. I was paraphrasing Ned's response as "why would he?", and I guess I could've been clearer. The point is that he's pretty happy with Loney.

Amazon just informed me my book was shipping. I wonder if I'll get in time to bring to the DT game?

13,18,22 He might have been referring to Eric Enders who mentioned yesterday, in response to bluegold:

"Billingsley has been putting up outstanding numbers in the majors for over a year, at an age when most players are still in Class A ball. He's done better than many if not most Hall of Fame pitchers did at the same age."

9 He's 22 years old. Can we, maybe, give him a few years? He's still better than most starting pitchers, right now. The eyes don't see that, but he is. Eyes are stupid.

He's not great right now, but would you like to trade him? Send him down? Get him out of the rotation?

15. Yes, I definitely concede that. Perhaps my problem is that my patience level is not what it used to be (due to a lack of Dodgers WS for 19 years). It's just that -- again, purely from a game perspective and disregarding the pitchers involved -- I am tired of seeing one Hendrickson performance followed by another one.

30 Gotta remember to put a space between the numbers. It should've been 19 24.

34 - I hear you.

How does Chad compare to Cole Hamels? Hamels is 23 1/2 years old. Strikeout rate the same as Chad's. Averages 6.5 innings per start this year. Only walks a batter every four innings. But he has a worse ERA and ERA+, gives up more home runs. And he was an All-Star.

I have learned from you guys that subjective views are not that accepted. I get it. But how can anyone watch Bills pitch and not see the potential. The guy battles and has the demeanor of a winner.

37 I don't think that is the case however if someone's opinion is not backed up by stats, it will get challenged by someone.

And then there are stats like Saito's strikeout to walk ratio which go beyond any analysis.

34
Growing pains blow. It would be nice if we could get a Doc Gooden type of debut but we won't so we need to be patient. He can't get better if he doesn't pitch.

Emmy nomination chat at Screen Jam, by the way.

39 The guy doing the Spanish commentary for the Dodgers didn't have that bad of a debut either.

Ned Colletti review at Baseball Prospectus:

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=6474

Billingsley nibbles, which really bothers me. Dude, you sit 92 with a hammer curveball. Mix in a plus changeup, and you can go at guys.

But he nibbles. There, I criticized him.

41
How sad that I went outside of the organization and missed the greatest and most fun debut of all. Time for a data dump.

Craig are you going to the game tonight?

43 - He definitely looks like he's trying to be too fine when starting. His walks are up, strikeouts down as a starter, though not as bad as last year. He's showing improvement, but maybe he needs to bring a bit of that go-get-em attitude he started to develop in the pen.

For the record, Hendrickson-like tendencies are very similar to

Ashby-like
Erickson-like
Tomko-like

Where each inning is a breathless adventure into the unknown, where pitch count accumulates faster than the national debt, and the likelihood of a 7+ inning victory is as likely as the Iraqi government restoring civil order.

45 I will be sitting in BH's palacial seats this evening with my Mets fan buddy.

How low has Izturis' stock sunk, that now he rates being worth a mere "player to be named later" in a trade? That's pretty brutal.

Watch out for friendly fire.

Colletti has a lot of the same strengths and weaknesses as the Cubs' Jim Hendry.

Okay

*He's reasonably good at evaluating talent in a baseball sense, particularly when it comes
to evaluating players out of his own system.*

I would say that's Ng and White, but okay.

However, he's not so good at evaluating talent in a financial sense, what you might call 'valuation' as opposed to 'evaluation.'

Couldn't agree more

Finally, scouting and development appears to be a strength, at least based on the progress of guys like Martin, Loney, Jonathan Broxton, and Kershaw.

He brought in exactly zero of those guys. White runs the draft.

The trade for Andre Ethier is also the sort of move on which reputations can be made.

Whoa, I like Ethier, but..umm...what?

The guys over at Where Have You Gone Andy Van Slyke are angry.

From Nate Silver:
Los Angeles is a pre-millennial dream trapped in a post-millennial universe,

Ummm.... OK....

ToyCannon is going to shoot me in the parking lot tonight. You heard it here first.

My summation of that BP review: while Ned's bad trades/signings get all the press (and are really, really bad), overall he's been somewhat above average.

On the one hand, Dodger Stadium, with its understated elegance and Euclidean dimensions, is just the same ballpark as it's always been, tucked ever-so-perfectly into Chavez Ravine.

Dodger Stadium's dimensions are "Euclidean?" You say that word, but I do not think it means what you think.

53 I didn't get that either. I think he was going for this kind of vibe:

Come to Los Angeles! The sun shines bright, the beaches are wide and inviting, and the orange groves stretch as far as the eye can see. There are jobs aplenty, and land is cheap. Every working man can have his own house, and inside every house, a happy, all-American family. You can have all this, and who knows... you could even be discovered, become a movie star... or at least see one. Life is good in Los Angeles... it's paradise on Earth." Ha ha ha ha. That's what they tell you, anyway.

Anyway, I didn't get it.

I'm getting a link to AdAge about Fox's new fall season instead of BP.

8/8/06. Acquired Ricky Ledee on waivers. The Dodgers paid about $500,000 for 53 at-bats of Ledee, and he proved to be somewhat less effective than Jose Cruz, whom they had just released. Grade: C.

Actually, Ned released Ledee, who was then picked up by the Mets.

58 - That was weird. Fixed.

Dodger Stadium's dimensions are "Euclidean?"

Better than non-Euclidean.

Cthulhu F'htagn!

On the other hand, it features $12 beers and bilingual ads in the urinals, and an information orgy on the scoreboard, where you can find lots of useful things like the current hitter's OBP and the taxon of the last pitch ("Fast Ball" and "Slider" seeming to be the most common).

So Nate Silver doesn't like Bilingual ads in the urinals. Oookay.

60 Any new sitcom will have to be very very funny to be compared to "Murphy Brown" and "NewsRadio."

62 Yeah, Nate Silver took a shot at the Mexicans.

Who knew?

64
The majority of BP writers have issues with Southern California. Not the baseball teams. Just the whole idea of Southern California.

At si.com/games, Sports Illustrated writers present the best games they've ever seen. Unfortunately, a Cal grad writes about "The Play."

62
And why does he focus on "bilingual ads in the urinals" when there are bilingual ads all over the park and times when the scoreboard implores the fans, "Hagan ruido!"

67 - I think that might indicate that he was focusing on the idea of just there being ads in the urinals, and the bilingual thing wasn't meant to pick on a race.

68
Regardless, it's a poorly-worded phrase.

68 I don't think you can throw out disgust for bilingual ads and have it be about disdain for advertisements.

Because then you wouldn't need to say bilingual. You would just say "ads" instead.

It was a shot.

69 - agreed.

70 - Or, it was careless.

I don't really want to defend it - because in the end, it has to stand on its own. I'm just saying, throughout this article, we have found nonsensical word usage. There's evidence to think that this was just another piece of nonsense rather than a calculated shot at people who speak Spanish.

Then I will continue nit-picking:

This is a team that was once associated with highly-identifiable players who spent long tenures with the club, but now Brad Penny is the most senior Dodger, having joined the team on July 30, 2004.

Poor, forgotten Olmedo!

71 - Even if it wasn't an overt and intentional shot it reveals an unfortunate frame of mind.

I think the upshot of this is that we don't like Silver's article on several different levels.

I thought it was a poor piece of writing in general but when your used to "DT" and "Soul of Baseball" the standards are high. The complete miss on Byran Morris was just one of a few bits of information missing. The idea of grading drafts that are less then 18 months old and making decisions about HS players seems odd for BP which should know better.

66 - Jon, it is still cool, in my opinion, that people wax nostalgic over the 1982 Big Game final score of Stanford 20, Cal 19.

His knee was down.

"11/28/2006. Signed Matt White to a minor league contract. White became a billionaire this winter and didn't make the Dodgers. He accepted an option to Las Vegas, which makes an awful lot of sense. But then he asked for his release so that he could go play in Japan, and promptly signed with the Yokohama BayStars. Evidently he must really love baseball, Asahi, or Asian women."

What's up with all the racial stuff? When did Archie Bunker start writing for BP?

76 - Right on.

This play likely was not pretty to watch:

A. Ramirez singled to right, D. Ward and R. Theriot scored, A. Ramirez to second on right fielder K. Frandsen's throwing error, A. Ramirez to third on catcher B. Molina's throwing error

Mr. Bonds ends his long O-fer with a homer.

Continued nitpicking: Silver concludes with "All in all, there's a bit more post-millennial tension in the forecast."

What is "post-millennial tension"?

72 The re-signing of Olmedo confused him?

65 Jealously can be such an ugly thing.

Ted Lilly. Anytime. Anywhere.

Everyone has now written off Nomar from esteemed and bright DT posters to Law to Callis to Nate. I will stand firmly in his corner because it is no fun traveling in the same direction as the herd even if it is safer.

81 I'm picturing something like Blade Runner.

Maybe Logan's Run.

I was asked which Dodger was most likely to have a big stretch run.

Both Kent, and Furry seem to be getting around on the ball of late, hopefully that continues.
3rd base...Nomar needs to be played only in those situations where he has demonstrated to be profecient this year, other wise it needs to be BoomBoom.

72 From 2004 season:
1. Olmedo Saenz 1B-3B (off-season)
2. Brad Penny P
From 2005 season:
3. Jeff Kent 2B (off-season)
4. Derek Lowe P (off-season)
From 2006 season:
5. Rafael Furcal SS (off-season)
6. Nomar Garciaparra 3B (off-season)
7. Brett Tomko P (off-season)
8. Ramon Martinez IF (off-season)
9. Joe Beimel P (off-season)
10. Takeshi Saito P (off-season)
11. Russell Martin C
12. Andre Ethier OF
13. Jonathan Broxton P
14. Chad Billingsley P
15. Mark Hendrickson P
16. Wilson Betemit 3B
From 2007 season:
17. Mike Lieberthal C (off-season)
18. Juan Pierre OF (off-season)
19. Luis Gonzalez OF (off-season)
20. Rudy Seanez P (off-season)
21. James Loney 1B
22. Matt Kemp OF
23. Eric Stults P
24. D.J. Houlton P
25. Roberto Hernandez P

Broxton and Houlton debuted in 2005, Loney, Kemp and Stults debuted in 2006.

In the dismal summer of 2005, we were often warned about the dangers of being "in denial". Just pointing out that, many times, it's not healthy to be in denial.

they are playing lowrider on jack fm. i used to love that song. now...

81 - A combination of anxiety and pressure that takes place after the turn of the millennium. Come on, that's not so hard.

Toy Cannon, could you send an E-Mail to andrew@dodgermath.com?

90 - That seems odd though, since this might be the best time in the last 20 years to be a Dodger fan.

If this is "tension", how does one begin to describe the Kevin Malone, Tommy Lasorda or Fred Claire eras?

If this is "tension", how does one begin to describe the Kevin Malone, Tommy Lasorda or Fred Claire eras?

I believe the term for that would be "ague."

81 I thought post-millennial tension was worrying about terrorists instead of the Y2K bug.

I'll be at the game wearing my own custon Hee Seop Choi Tshirt.

Yes, I said it. It doesn't make me any less human.

93 - Yes, I had to look it up. And yes, it's pretty spot-on (as if there would be any doubt).