Also, given Loney's great spring 2007, what will LaRoche have to hit to win the 3B job?

I am thinking Ethier for Benoit + a prospect

Assuming Nomar & Pierre start, this could be a good and versatile Dodger bench:

OF - Ethier (L)
3B - LaRoche (R)
IF - Abreu (S)
2B/OF - Young (S)
OF - Repko (R)
C - John Q. Backup (Lieberthal/Miller/Bennett)

Starting Pitchers (5): Billingsley, Lowe, Penny, Schmidt, Loaiza

Bullpen (6): Saito, Broxton, Beimel, Proctor, Brazoban, Kuo/Houlton

Starting lineup (8): Martin, Loney, Kent, Furcal, Garciaparra, Pierre, Jones, Kemp

Bench (6): Abreu, LaRoche, May, Ethier, Young, Valdez/Hu

18 - Maybe we can quickly offer Hendrickson a contract and trade him for Navarro.

One of the posters added a request to Sabean saying how say that the Giants needed another OF because they clearly don't have enough, and he was their man. He played CF in 77' with a Jr baseball team and XeiFrank Boras was his agent. Funny stuff

However, those are not metaphorical bookends.

Ned Colletti really has a way with words. Apparently just not English words.

Water the seed. Lets make it grow!

a) This Pierre-to-left thing has been going on longer than a month, hasn't it? Or does the thought process only date back to the Jones signing itself.

b) If Pierre had known about this possibility two months ago, what difference would it make?

Gives him more time to put his house up for sale?

What I read: (a) no one would take JP, and (b) he may end up being Jones's caddy.

Left fielders are supposed to have pop.

Being serious, knowing Pierre he will probably go practice everyday now reading flyballs from left-field and where he has to throw. Not that a month would really help that. So maybe, he meant he would try to get himself traded.

http://tinyurl.com/2nl7uu

Asked if he would be more willing to move if he was making room for a Gold Glove center fielder like Andruw Jones, he said:

"We'll see. He's probably the best center fielder in the game. I'm not to his caliber."

He's getting his playing time reduced, that's the only thing I can take from this. And I want to hug Ned Colletti for it!

ZIPS on Kuroda and if he goes to the Dodgers.

The jist....

2008: 180IP 115 ERA+
2009: 176IP 112 ERA+
2010: 172IP 105 ERA+

"Me so happy. Me want to cry."

If you know that you are going to non-tender Hendrickson, why not just release him/DFA him prior to setting the 40 man roster so you could keep someone like Wright around?

On Repko, I agree with Jon, its part of a depth thing plus I believe Repko has options left so you can still keep Young when the times comes.

2008 15% optimistic: 194IP 3.33ERA 136 ERA+

Excellent point.

Maybe (and just maybe) they are closer to signing Kuroda than we thought, and his signing is/was the final nail in the coffin for Hendrickson, and that wasn't known/suspected 3 weeks ago when the 40s were finalized.

George Mitchell's report on drugs in baseball will finger MVPs and All-Stars, The Associated Press learned Wednesday.
-- rotoworld

Sadly, Pierre has never been an all-star and was only 10th in MVP voting in 2003 and 16th in '04.

"yhoptions" -- smile.

And new commenters abound!

Based off of ZIPS, Kuroda will be better than Billingsley and Lowe next year.

Matsuzaka: 3.44 ERA 131 K/34 BB

Actual: 6.25 ERA, 37/53 BB/K in 67.2 IP

4.77 era
http://tinyurl.com/yg4frl

Carousel is a fraud!

"He said he just wished he knew a month ago. I didn't know. Who knew?"
This is where Colletti admits he doesn't have a plan.

I don't see any reason to try to read what Juan Pierre was thinking. As for the possibility of shifting to left, I thought that was just the press asking him.

"The Los Angeles Angels declined Wednesday to offer infielder Dallas McPherson a contract for next season, making him a free agent. The decision was announced hours before Wednesday's midnight deadline for unsigned players on the 40-man roster. The 27-year-old McPherson missed the entire 2007 season while recovering from back surgery."

That is kind of shocking.

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/teams/laa

Reports out of Japan, however, say Kuroda informed his former manager with the Hiroshima Carp that he had decided to sign with the Dodgers. He gave three reasons: The Dodgers are playing their 50th year in L.A., Joe Torre is the manager and the Dodgers have a better chance of reaching the playoffs than the Mariners, who were his second choice

The thing that he kept repeating that stuck out with me is his converations with Ned and Frank in which he said they showed him how much they wanted him and how badly they expect and want to win here.

Badly enough not to play Pierre in left field, I hope.

"People can think what they want about Juan and the position change, but he's a great guy," said Mark Pieper, Pierre's agent

Can someone translate agent speak for me please.

Now, if he had said, ""People can think what they want about Juan and the position change, and he's a great guy," that would have been funny.

So what happens when Pierre doesn't start in one random game in April...Then again the next day...and day after that...

Or maybe he'll go all Latrell Sprewell on Torre. I'd pay to see that. :-)

Bochy envisions Randy Winn batting third, Bengie Molina fourth and Rowand fifth

http://tinyurl.com/2fa297

Also, not so good news: Sabean declared he wouldn't trade Cain or Lincecum. I'd like to think he declared it in the same fashion as Michael Scott declared bankruptcy.

Way beyond.

A bit harsh, I'd say. I don't wish any harm on Joe Torre.

What I'd pay to see would be Bobby Knight coaching Latrell Sprewell.

Declaring anything will never be the same anymore after seeing that. At least for me it won't be.

Gary Bennett has a career OPS+ of 64.

Agents are salespeople, and he's selling JP's best point: he's a good clubhouse guy and won't raise a stink about his position change. And with those poor statistics, too-large contract, and one too many "starting" outfielders on the team, he doesn't have any leverage to make a stink anyway.

http://tinyurl.com/22f3my

I'm willing to work for a lot less than $9 million a year. $2 million would be just dandy. That's how great a guy I am.

For 60-80 names.

60-80 players is what I like to call a single unit of water in a much larger container.

This is a fascinating, and pretty disturbing look at the process used by Mitchell's team. Very worth reading if you are interested in the subject.

http://tinyurl.com/yw3do4

A somewhat lengthy excerpt of a much longer piece:

"Expecting their interviews with the investigators to be solution-oriented, at least in part, many strength coaches said they discovered instead that only one thing seemed to matter to the questioners: the names of players that the coaches thought were using steroids.

"One coach said he recalled an investigator asking him outright to guess. "The problem was, what did they want us to say?" said a team trainer who was interviewed by Mitchell's investigators in 2006. "They wanted us to speculate. And I wouldn't do that. They wanted me to say who I thought was using steroids. And when I said, 'I don't know,' they would say, 'Well, you work most closely with these guys. You work on their bodies every day. You weren't the least bit suspicious when you saw their bodies change?'

"This was the kind of stuff I was most afraid of, because they didn't ask me about specific people with specific information that they had. They asked me to guess. I said my guess was no guess at all, because what would happen to me if I said a guy was using steroids who wasn't? What if I guessed wrong? Then my name is out there, I get fired, and I'm easily replaceable."

"As the investigation unfolded, the interviews took on a consistent shape. Those present, in addition to the interviewee, included one to three of Mitchell's investigators, a team attorney and, according to some sources, a representative from Major League Baseball. Interviewees were told they could have a private attorney present. According to sources, the interviewers read from a prepared script, and investigators offered little in terms of follow-up questions. It is unclear if any of the interviews were taped.

"As ESPN.com spoke with baseball people interviewed during the investigation, a common theme emerged: Investigators, while generally cordial, often revealed an alarming lack of knowledge regarding the day-to-day workings of baseball. Instead of focusing on the elements of the game that might make drug use appealing, investigators asked surface-level questions such as which players suffer from back acne and who underwent the most dramatic body changes. One interviewer, for example, read off a list of players and asked the interviewee to say if he believed the player could have used steroids. No questions were asked, the source said, about the root causes of steroid use.

"They didn't ask us those things because they didn't have the level of sophistication about what we do," said a National League strength coach. "They didn't know the right questions to ask. At no point in my interview did anyone say to me, 'What can we recommend to make sure this never happens again?'"

"According to one manager's account of his interview, the questions were pedestrian, almost naïve. Sometimes, he said, the exchanges were heated. "I didn't go in there with a lawyer because I didn't have anything to hide," the manager said. "They asked me if I'd ever seen anyone do steroids. I said no. They asked me how I thought the players' bodies got so big, and I said the players were in the weight room day and night, so it made sense to me. Then he said to me, 'Well, don't you know that steroids combined with weightlifting can make you even bigger?' He said it to me like I was dumb, so I said, 'No, I didn't know that.'"

123
$448,500

Why, let's just string 'em up from the nearest tree. Who's with me?

The scribes also used the MS Word spell check program.

I predict Andruw Jones will hit between 25 and 60 HR in 2008.

Wouldn't the material be made of vellum, then? :)

WWSH

Anyone care to speculate where Torre would bat Pierre in the order?

Bochy was frustrated last season with older players who reported for work with aches and pains and declared they could not play. They view Rowand as the complete opposite, and Rowand said he told Bochy during their meeting in Las Vegas, "One thing I can promise you, I'm going to show up every day and play. I'm not going to take days off. I'm going to play whether I'm bruised up or not."

I was wondering too my self, were is underdog. probably busy ah?

1st - 4:1
2nd - 3:2
3rd - 1,000:1
4th - 5,000:1
5th - 1,000:1
6th - 150:1
7th - 10:1
8th - 3:1
9th - 150,000:1

e.g., following a trade to the Chicago White Sox.

If someone gives you 150,000:1 odds on ANYTHING, you take it. If John Mellencamp wins an Oscar, I'm going to be very rich.

And by "right circumstances" I mean a small plane fell on Andruw Jones who was batting 4th on a day that Pierre was not starting.

I am shocked, shocked to discover that Congress is only interested in naming names and pointing figures rather than actually understand and solve a problem.

131 But will it be available on the Amazon Kindle?

Congrats on Lo Duca Sam DC...

We did NOT sign Rowand for 5yrs/mucho dolares. I swear the Giants are going to play a game with four outfielders.

Anyone think it's a good idea to sign Prior to a deal? $3.5 million with club options for 2009 & 2010?

Does the reward outweigh the risk?

Way to answer that question there Ned.

That means Prior may not be ready until the All-Star break, and that's the risk the Cubs didn't want to take. <<

http://tinyurl.com/2cygc2

I just sponsored Jason Schmidt's B-R page.

All I am asking, is $3.5 million that poiint?

ps the sales people drink that stuff all day long smoking too, ugh!!

Ludicrious.

That's not me.

I don't know how people ever got that idea.

If you were really Plaschke, you'd blame some black guy for it.

With those skills at the top of the order?

Have you gone mad?

He did the pitcher's job at the plate better than any pitcher last year.

But then, I would have signed Blair too!

JP's goals for '08:

1. Hit 3 homers.
2. 40 bunt singles.
3. 5 bunt doubles.
4. Gun a runner down at the plate.

Tony Jackson:

The Dodgers might have severed ties with left-handed reliever Mark Hendrickson, declining to offer him a contract before the deadline and thus rendering him a free agent. But the club still can re-sign him, and the move was made simply to avoid going through the arbitration process with Hendrickson, who went 4-8 with a 5.21 ERA this season while making $2.925 million.

As a five-plus player, Hendrickson stood to make between $3.5 million and $4 million through arbitration.

``We discussed with his agent (Joe Urbon) bringing him back at a different rate of pay, and he declined,'' Colletti said. ``We can still bring him back if the situation lends itself to both of us.''

Outfielder Assists, 2007
Andruw - 3
Pierre - 4

http://www.insidesocal.com/dodgers/archives/2007/12/tomorrows_notes_7.html

I have no doubt that Prior has impeccable knowledge on how to approach batters, so I'm willing to take a chance on his physical recovery. This sentiment actually mirrors my optimism for Jason Schmidt's recovery.

If Kuroda, Billingsley, Penny, Schmidt, Loaiza are doing really well at the end of May and Kershaw, Elbert, and MacDonald are dominating and showing command, would the Dodgers trade Lowe?

And really, long term, where are the Dodgers trouble? Center field? Second base? Maybe Shortstop, if Hu doesn't work out?

Probably not.

The only compensation we are going to get is in the form of 2 draft picks most likely.

http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/files/oracle/discussion/dodgers_reportedly_signed_kuroda/

"Why do the Dodgers even give serious consideration to having Repko on the team? Because he can sort of play CF? He isn't a very good player, hasn't played in a year, and is dangerous to the other players around him. Yes, birds too!"

209 , I can catch up on DT much faster now that I just skip any comment as soon as I see one magic word. 2005's was Ch-i, '06s was the now-departed Hendrickson, and guess what 07s word was/is?

You don't have to be so negative. :)

Colletti gives Torre the players but Torre gives the players the PT.

we have NO idea what Torre's view on a player like JP is. he may LOVE him or he may be itching to bench him.

The beatings will continue until moral improves.

Williams silent as options dwindle

>> Through all the carnage, the Sox still don't have a proven center fielder or left fielder, have two third basemen, and no veteran leadoff hitter.

The hope now is that Boston does not trade Coco Crisp to Minnesota for Johan Santana, and the Sox can make a deal for the speedy center fielder. Angels speedster Chone Figgins could also be on the radar, but Williams won't make a deal just to make one. <<

http://tinyurl.com/ypeeov

i wish he would have learned how when he started playing baseball. or at least when he got to the dodgers.

Do you mean, he who must not be named?

Bob will have a week worth of Griddle posts with Hendrickson and Chris Young on the same team.

and no we wont trade lowe.

Boss to subordinate: I just gave you a $40M+ Gizmo and you decide all by yourself to not use it. I know what I am going to tell my boss, but I am curious what you want to tell your boss. Oh, one more thing, I sorta promised Gizmo that it would be used everyday.

LOL, I do the same thing, 217 .
I'm of the "accentuate the positive" school, myself. What I'd like to stress this December is how full-of-potential the 2008 Dodgers are looking. I can't wait for Spring Training.

hey, that might actually be a good metaphor.

hey, that might actually be a good metaphor.