Loaiza was a QS machine in 2005... tied for 6th in the majors (24 of 34). Granted he had the worst ERA of the group and benefited from pitching at RFK. Last year he only had 10 QS in 26 outings.

With a depleted staff for the sretch run and a weak free agent class. This pickup looks fairly good.

On the other hand, I feel like this team has been grasping at straws of late.

Perhaps there's more to the Kyle Blair story than just the money.

Swapping Wolf for Loaiza seems like a very, very bad idea.

Strike throwers don't work too well with a bad defense behind them and a home run friendly park.

Loaiza might be decent, but I'd rather throw $21M at a player who's actually good rather than 3 mediocre guys at $7M. It just feels like the same old song from Ned.

I agree that Loaiza is a good pickup for September, but I really hope Stults is given a chance to win the job of fifth starter next spring.

4 - Perhaps.

5 - Dodger defense might be better next year.

I expected to add Loaiza when I heard we'd claimed him but I thought it would cost us Orenduff to tick off Joey and Carlos Santana to tick me off.
I did a post on Carlos about 3 weeks ago after his hot July. I don't think he's gotten a hit since then.

Josh Rawitch did offer that the Wells - and presumably Loaiza - money comes from a different budget than the potential Blair money. Of course, this doesn't address the concept of a management reserve, where Colletti/McCourt can add to a budget under special circumstances, such as drafting a 1st/2nd round talent in the 5th round.

Eric had it right in the previous thread:

The bad part is you have to have Esteban Loaiza on your team.

Thats the downside. Its another veteran-move, another road block for a youngster like Kershaw, Orenduff, McDonald getting into the rotation next year.

Adding Loaiza for Sept 2007.
Ok, good move.

Counting on him for 2008, not smart.

It goes back to Andrew's post yesterday. There's not much ventured here, and not much gained.

My healthy support for Ned Colletti has turned into neutral(hope it makes sense) support, just wanted to throw it out there.

5 Maybe, but I wouldn't hold my breath. The only change will be Kemp instead of Gonzalez.

4
I was floating the idea with BH yesterday that since the Blair thing went down so strangely that maybe it was a case of Winthrow's agent getting an oral agreement that his bonus would be the largest given by the Dodgers. When Blair's agent wouldn't agree to a bonus < then Winthrows they couldn't make a deal. I'm just reaching for straws but it would be embarrassing for Winthrow's agent if the Dodgers threw more money at Blair who was drafted in the 5th then what his guy got. Anyway, just a feeble theory.

"At this time of the year, we're looking for any way to improve the team and Esteban is a talented veteran who we hope can contribute down the stretch and next season," Colletti said. "He has a history of winning games and right now that's what's most important to our team."

--

add it to the quote list that includes the word veteran from the other day

Rotoworld reporting that Repko was moved to the 60-day DL:

http://www.rotoworld.com/content/playerpages/player_main.aspx?sport=MLB&id=67

4 - I think it's got potential to become baseball urban legend. The Blair Pitch Project, if you will.

yeah, i'm with you, jon. i don't buy the "different budgets" explanation about why blair wasn't signed. it's not as if colletti couldn't have just taken some money from column A and put it into column B if he were serious about keeping blair. distributing resources in the most efficient way possible the very description of what a manager does.

Another member of the Dodgers Drinking Team, they're gonna be unbeatable this year!

Loaiza might be decent, but I'd rather throw $21M at a player who's actually good rather than 3 mediocre guys at $7M.

Exactly.

Gonzo, Loaiza, Wolf, Nomar---just not smart moves financially.

If Ned wants depth, add it through the minor leagues with the guys that make nothing.

Adding depth by paying premium for it really isnt smart, especially when that money could be used on A-Rod or extending Brad Penny, or buying out Russ Martin's arb years.

In theory:

Loiaza has a decent September.

NedCo Trades Loaiza for three prospects in the offseason

Kershaw or McDonald get promoted or at least money is saved for a potential A-Rod signing

that could happen, but won't because that assumes NedCo is not making predictable moves... its like those ghosts in Pac Man, you fake them out and you own the whole game.

16 Even worse he pulls a Joe Morgan by citing the Win stat.

14 And Gonzalez's zone rating is actually pretty good this year.

14
From the start of 2006 we had:
Nomar/Kent/Furcal/Betemit/Ethier/Pierre/Gonzo
the start of 2007 should be:
Loney/Kent/Furcal/LaRoche/Kemp/Pierre/Ethier

That looks like a huge upgrade to me.

6

I echo Fanerman.

*is the very description

25 I refuse to believe that Nomar won't be the starter next year.

21 The problem is there is nothing on the pitching shelves this winter to throw big dollars at. So you add a #5 starter instead of a 1 or a 2. This move does not preclude a big-splash move on offense such as but not limited to finding a taker for Pierre and overpaying for Jones/Hunter/Rowand.

Back to Logan White/Houston for a moment, from today's Houston Chronicle:

Astros president of baseball operations and interim general manager Tal Smith said the club hasn't yet put a list together of possible candidates to replace fired general manager Tim Purpura.

"We've had very little time to discuss anything since the events of (Monday)," Smith said.

Smith said the ideal candidate will be player personnel-oriented, and he didn't envision getting permission to interview any current general managers. Smith had gotten e-mails from some interested candidates.

14 - And Loney for a full season. And we'll see what happens at third base.

I'll stop writing about Blair now. Though I hear but don't accept the separate budgets thing, I'm beating a dead horse, and it's true that I don't know what went on behind the scenes.

[ 20 ] lol, dodger drinking team... let's see, we've got d-lowe, raffy, esteban, beimel... i'm sure brad penny can toss back a good number of beers... who else?

Interesting headline choice at SI.com:

Dodgers claim Loaiza, save A's $8M

Can't hurt to add more pitching depth, and as it didn't cost us any talent in return, what the heck. Beats having Tomko an option for the rotation this year or next, and Wells won't be an option, and, as you said Jon, if he falters next year I don't think they'd hesitate to replace him with a young pitcher then, maybe Stults again or another youngster. The problem this year has been that the Dodgers don't have an Ian Kennedy or Hughes like the Yankees do, tearing up AAA and clearly ready for a shot. After Billingsley, their next best young pitchers are really young (and Elbert got hurt) so the timing will be better next year for having more of a well to draw from.

Anyway, more depth this time of year isn't a bad thing. Now if only we could play the Blue Jays.

[29 ] we need a big bat more than we need pitching anyway. that's where the big bucks should go.

Loaiza is a lot like Schmidt in a way: there's a lot of fluctuation in his velocity from start to start, and a big correlation between his velocity and his effectiveness.

He can dominate if he can run that Madduxian cutter in the low 90s; if it's in the upper 80s, he's average. If it's in the lower 80s, he's in trouble.

This move does not preclude a big-splash move on offense

This move alone doesnt.
But the total accumulation of high priced average riff raff--> Gonzo, Nomar, Pierre, Loaiza, Tomko, Wolf etc....does. Unless McCourt is prepared to put his budget into NY Yankees territory.

If McCourt can still sign Andruw Jones, or A-Rod, and then make Pierre a 4th/5th OF'er, and make Loaiza a insurance policy fine--.

Its just I dont see that happening.

I don't see how this move has anything to do with Andrew's point yesterday.

We have a rotation with D Wells and E Stults in it and were in a pennant race. At this moment we have no help in the minors. I don't want a tired McDonald blowing out his arm trying to help the team win a pennant. This guy is not your normal 22 year old. He has only pitched for 1 1/2 years after taking 2 years off. Do you want to risk his future for a few starts in Sept?

The upside is he helps us into the playoffs where a rotation of Penny/Lowe/Billingsley could do some damage.

The downside is that we have him next year and he sucks and is replaced.

I fail to see any problem with this deal unless he sucks next year and gives us 30 plus games of an ERA over 4.75 and is never replaced.

10 "Josh Rawitch did offer that the Wells - and presumably Loaiza - money comes from a different budget than the potential Blair money."

He did say that, and that makes the blunder even worse if you ask me. It draws a picture of an organization rigid enough that certain monies are earmarked for certain things come hell or high water -- no matter where the money might be most needed or most useful, it has to be spent in the area predetermined months ago. That rigidity strikes me as an extraordinarily inefficient way to run a business, particularly a baseball team.

It's the sort of mindset that results in big mistakes. I can just imagine the meeting where they said, "Well, we've got $9 million left in the major league payroll budget that we have to spend no matter what. We can't save it for next year, because according to the budget we have to spend it this year. So, what the hell, let's give Pierre's agent a call."

Also, if Rawitch is being truthful regarding the draft having a finite budget, then that finite budget has fluctuated wildly from year to year:

2003 $3.4 million
2004 $5.6 million
2005 $2.2 million
2006 $5.5 million
2007 $3.4 million

(While the average bonuses have been going steadily up, we spent $2 million less this year than in 2004.)

And I do agree with 6 , too. I think a lot will be up in the air this off season - it's a a real make or break one, because so much money (and dead weight) could conceivably come off the books. I'm sure they'll resign a few of the guys, but hopefully will cut loose most of them and have some money to spend elsewhere. On who is the question.

35 Where would said big bat go?

I was having this conversation with my friend yesterday, and we came to the conclusion that the Dodgers really can't make any improvements in 2008 without a bold move. There's already about 100 million on the payroll coming into the season and no free spots in either the rotation or the lineup. The best thing I could really think of was signing Francisco Cordero to make the most absurd bullpen in the history of man.

35
Where would you add a big bat?
You have to start with the assumption that Juan Pierre will not be replaced. If so who do you want to replace?
Loney
Kent
Furcal
La Roche
Martin
Kemp
Ethier

I see no need for a bat for our 2007 lineup. None.

Still, with the way the Dodgers have been flinging money around the past two weeks, I still don't understand why draft pick Kyle Blair could not be signed.

I think it's pure politics. They could have easily afforded Kyle Blair, but Bud Selig convinced McCourt that paying the money would earn him a year of stink-eyes from the league. McCourt probably has some bigger fish to fry with Selig -- nothing that any of us care about, but crucial to him.

P.S. I like the idea of Loiaza as trade bait. If he continues '07 as he's been, he could be a "sell-high" proposition.

Is there a consensus here that among McDonald, Kershaw, Orenduff and Stults, we have one full-season starting pitcher for all of 2008 who would be better than a healthy Loiaza? Watching Billingsley develop over the past season and a half has made me wary of pushing the envelope with pitching prospects. Watching Kuo makes me even warier. Loiaza might be another "bridge" player that allows us to bring the prospects into the mix more gradually, as was done with Chad.

31 I have followed the Kyle Blair story as closely as anyone and by examining Logan White's drafts, his pick stands out because in the past, White has made flyers at "unsignable" talent in much later rounds, he only had two other unsigned picks in the top 5, one being Hochevar.

In the end, my best guess is that, along with ToyCannon's theory of not giving a higher bonus to someone they felt was slightly less talented (or they would have drafted Blair instead Withrow), White did not feel that Blair was worth going to bat for in terms of giving a record (5th round) bonus. Again, that doesn't explain the pick and there is probably something more to it but from everything I have seen, they knew how much he wanted, they certainly had a value attached to him and for whatever the case, those two thoughts never resulted in a signing.

35 I'm holding out hope that Ned repeats the Furcal move... signing a top FA hitter to an presently occupied position. There's only a $29M difference between Pierre and Izturis. I've said it many times... Pierre and Ozzie Guillen were made for each other.

Was that a true blue moment?

From 2004-2006, [Loaiza] was average to below-average

And before 2003, Loaiza was slightly above-average to below-average. (Even the "win" comment of Ned's doesn't hold much water; Loaiza is a .500 pitcher with one weirdly aberrant 2003 season [21-9] thrown in.)

15 "I was floating the idea with BH yesterday that since the Blair thing went down so strangely that maybe it was a case of Winthrow's agent getting an oral agreement that his bonus would be the largest given by the Dodgers. When Blair's agent wouldn't agree to a bonus < then Winthrows they couldn't make a deal."

Apoligies if this was already addressed, but it would had to have been a written agreement, not oral, because Withrow was already signed and pitching for the Dodgers by the time the team began negotiating with Blair. Also, I don't think teams are generally in the habit of making such promises to draftees, though I could be wrong.

Last evening on the A's Nation blog, Nico had a blog entry where they were hoping and almost expecting to get LaRoche or Hu for Loaiza. I thought it was nuts. Only time will tell if this is a good move by the Dodgers. How serious was his injury this year? vr, Xei

Today's off-topic amusing story:
I had put together the FedEx address printout and the tickets to the UCLA-Oregon game that I was going to sell through StubHub.

As I walked out the door, I looked in the papers and the tickets, which I had placed there, were no longer there. I looked everywhere. My ride for work was arriving and she helped me look.

Eventually, we gave up the search. I muttered to myself about how something could disappear into thin air in the matter of about five minutes.

On the ride in, I took off my baseball cap and mopped my brow as I had built up a sweat during my frantic search.

As I did that, the tickets fell off the top of my head and onto my lap.

46 We're in the zone.

Has anyone mentioned what injuries Loaiza succumbed to in the past?

33
That is how the AP slugged the story on the wire.

50 Meanwhile, how's that Flubber project going?

Re: "with Hong-Chih Kuo waiting in the wings" - I'm operating under the sad assumption that Kuo's wings break down too consistently for us to count on him (even if I'm mixing up two wing metaphors).

Let's say Loiaza becomes so good he becomes a top tier pitcher: that will make two moves in three years that we raked the A's for talent, the first being Ethier for Bradley.

That would be an amusing turn of events

42--There's a few places for a big bat to go.

1b--There are sluggers out there that produce more than Loney. Namely, Adam Dunn.

SS--If A-Rod is signed, you trade Furcal whom should be easy to trade since he's in the last year of his deal.

3b--If Glaus is signed, then say you move LaRoche to 2nd base or trade him+extras for a top end pitcher (Ian Snell).

CF--Andruw Jones---simple, you tell Pierre he's a 4th OF'er if he cant be traded.

There are ways to improve this team. I dont really think they are that bold either, but you cant be spending money on veteran riff raff and still improve the team via FA without upping the budget a ton. Something I doubt Frank does.

Dodgers are stuck in a Ned Colletti-dom.

35- Exactly....With a core of Penny, Lowe, and Bills, I don't mind some patchwork...still wish Ned would give guys like Stults and Houlton a shot, but Loaiza is crafty, and will be productive.....I just really, really hope one of the centerfielders get's picked up.....Although A-Rod would be ideal...but it's hard for me to see that happening....

but this is quite a dream for me....

1-Furcal SS
2-Martin C
3-Kemp-CF
4-A-Rod 3B
5-Ethier RF
6-Kent/Abreau 2B
7-Loney 1B
8-Young lF

Pierre get's moved with LaRoche for a young arm....

As likely as impeachment, I know....

57 There's no way we have the budget for A-Rod unless we want to crank the payroll into the 130s.

This looks like a low risk deal to me. The notion that Loaiza will be blocking Elbert (no way he'll be ready coming off of TJ) or Kershaw (no way he's ready in April either, with his current BB rate) is silly. If McDonald is ready, he'll pitch. If we get through 2008 with all of the veteran pitchers healthy and effective all season long and hence blocking some very young prospects, that's the kind of problem I like.

60
Elbert did not have TJ, he should be ready to go by ST but he still has those pesky command issues to work out.

budget with A-Rod: 130m

increase in revenue from having A-Rod on the team: way more

I've said it before, I'll say it again -- I'm a big proponent of the sign A-Rod as a SS, move Furcal to CF gambit. Furcal might be a little peeved, but he'll get over it if you give him a two-year extension. He's fast and he's got a howitzer, so he's got the crude tools for becoming an excellent center fielder. Hey, it worked for Robin Yount.

Esteban Loaiza is making 1 million dollars less than Brad Penny.

Wasn't Elbert's injury the same or a similar nerve problem as Brad Penny's? I like the way Penny emerged from it.

I thought Glaus' skills had been significantly diminished. I venture that LaRoche will be a more productive 3B.

So the rotation next year will have five righties and no lefties? Penny, Lowe, Billingsley, Schmidt, and Loaiza? I doubt that will happen, and with the way things are going, I'm afraid we'll sign David Wells and throw Billingsley back in the bullpen.

I'm afraid we'll sign David Wells and throw Billingsley back in the bullpen

If that happens, the new domain name of this blog will be:

DiamondbackThoughts

63- I've never thought of that.....it is a great idea....too creative for this Dodger organization.....

Also, A-Rod has gotten Huge...not sure if he's still a gold glove SS...but that's my own speculation...

63 And best of all, no more JP!

52 Most recently a meniscus tear while rehabbing a bulging disc in his neck. Also spasm in his right trapezius muscle.

There is no chance that Billz will go to the Bullpen. We'd trade Lowe or Penny before that happens.

69 A-Rod seems slimmer than he was in previous years at 3B. He's always been a big guy, for an SS.

63 Furcal would make an excellent CF, but again the problem is the incumbent who is not going anywhere.

67
Wells will not be back. He won't even last until the end of this year. We may not start a year with a LHP but we will end the year with one.

Is there any speculation that this move was block to prevent Philadelphia or Arizona (or somebody) from getting him?

57 If Glaus is signed

Glaus is not a FA-to-be for 2008; he has a contract in place.

Elbert was actually a shoulder problem, so I was wrong on that.

74 Is that a bold mythological prediction?

67 Even with the pro-vet management I would be shocked if they re-signed David Wells for next season. Or if not shocked, flabbergasted at least. For lefties: Be nice if Elbert could contribute some time next season, that would help, or, give Stults another shot. Or, I guess re-sign Wolf, though I also think that's unlikely.

Meloan with another dominant outing last night. I feel like we're wasting valuable innings from him by leaving him in Vegas.

Let's say the pitcher who does not exist has a lights-out spring training, 1.00 ERA or something like that. Do you put him on the 25-man as a reliever, to save wear and tear on his arm, a la Billingsley? Or do you send him to cool his heels in Vegas?

There is no possibility LA would sign Wells for next season. Maybe invite him to ST, maybe, if he excels in 07. But I think he's going to retire, which is one reason I kind of like having him around. He's motivated to go out with a bang. Hopefully the right kind of bang.

80 Seriously. There's nothing to lose and a whole lot to gain by replacing Hernandez with Meloan. Mind bottling.

80- That's one that has been really aggrivating....I can't think of a reason for keeping him down....

2007 Dodgers=Feudalism....Veterans are the warrior class....

39 I theorized a few weeks ago that Logan White sets a value to players and picks them accordingly to fit the round they are drafted.

In 2007 - The Dodgers had no extra picks, aside from one supplemental and paid out slot money bonuses across the board.

2006, the Dodgers had two first round picks, including the 7th pick plus the first supplemental pick, they did not pick again until the 4th round when they gave Kyle Orr an above slot money bonus $435,000 vs. $290,000. Their first four picks were given 5 million out of the 5.6 million.

2005 - Did not have a first round pick and did not sign Hochevar.

2004 - Two first round picks and the 3rd supplemental picks, signed picks from first 10 rounds.

2003 - Did not sign 3rd round pick, 3.4 million bonus does not include Andy LaRoche's bonus since those figures are only for the 10 rounds.

Also, while the first round bonus money average went up from 2006, there were 4 teams that gave out more that last year's high of 3.55 million, including a record 6 million to Matt Wiethers and if you go past the first round, aside from a few instances, most teams adhered to slot money recommendations and the total amounts reflect that.

Total bonus amounts are always skewed by whatever that team pays out for their first round picks, when you have more than one first round pick, you are probably going to allocate more resources.

The only reason the Dodgers would ever allocate more money for the draft was if they decided to do what the Yankees, Red Sox and Tigers have done in very recent times and try to grab players who have fallen due to signability reasons. They have not shown any inclination to do that outside of Andy LaRoche. Most believe that is a directive from ownership but no one really knows that to be the case.

i'm with joeyp w/r/t a bat. especially if that bat is a-rod. you make room for a-rod.