Does this count I wonder?

.309/.399/.589/.988 The Penguin part 2

(a) I'm not sure 50 games is enough to tell whether a young player is ready for the major leagues, especially since Colletti will only call him up if has dominated the minors.

(b) I don't agree that they can't afford to make a mistake. They don't have an unlimited budget, so they need to see if the young guys can play, particularly those that have spectacular minor league careers. Young players are worth a lot in today's market.

I think it's the opposite -- the Dodgers are in a position right now that they can afford to have a young player struggle (e.g. at third base) because they will have tons of fans coming anyway.

I don't see any reason why a large market team should have less patience with a young player.

In addition, Colletti is failing to consider the cost of a veteran player who is a known average or below-average player, taking at-bats away from someone who could be a lot better.

It's time for Colletti to understand that we, the fans, want to see the young players now. They have tons of talent and it is exciting to see them play and grow and to wonder if they will fulfill our hopes and drems. We expect to see young players, not veterans, when the young players are better. We expect the team to make wise decisions. The size of the market is irrelevant.

But ultimately, fans in any market, big or small, want to win. And if the younger player is the right player, it's up to the organizational leadership to support him publicly and privately, rather than sandbagging him. Have some collective backbone.

It's discouraging to think that there's all this fear that a young player, if he goes 0 for 20 or 5 for 50 or has an 8.00 ERA after 20 innings, is in career-threatening danger.

That and the fifty-game comment leads me to believe that we are in for more of the same--the kids will be on a short leash and if they falter, we'll see the proven vets, whoever they may be.

I take solace in the fact I've been wrong many times before. I hope I am again.

I don't think he really believes that Luis Gonzalez gets the turnstiles spinnin'. I take this to mean that Dodger fans expect to win 85+ games a year. If your Pittsburgh or KC you can send out 6-7 projects with a Reggie Sanders sprinkled in.

Course the problem with the veteran safety net comes when the young player proves he was ready. Ned would prefer the logjam problem than the 50 game nightmare he fears.

But I could be wrong. Jon's interpretation seems more likely.

The distinction that I believe that some are missing re big and small market teams is simply that the big market team has the money to spend outside the organization that the small market team does not, and so the small market team can fairly say to its fans that it has a greater need to build from within and focus on youth than does the big market team that has the money not only to develop its own but also to poach the players who cannot be re-signed by the small market teams that don't have the money to re-sign them. In other words, the small market team can and should say that we have small revenue and so we have no choice but to build from within and focus on youth, as we even lose some of our own to the bidding war when the time comes, and so, for the love of baseball, be patient as development takes time and some who can't miss, miss.

On the other hand, the Dodgers ought not ever be heard saying that their revenue stream is such that they must build from within and focus on youth and forget about signing not only our own older souls but also the older souls of others who have proved themselves worthy. Ned speaks the correct analysis but apparently believes that Juan Pierre was the outside-the-organization, big-money poaching that I had in mind when it comes to supplementing the gaps in the team's talent development.

And, Daniel, for cruel irony, you uttered Ned's justification for Nomar. You come to see the youth. A whole host come to see Nomar. You'd apparently be "patient" with losing while awaiting player development while they'd apparently be "patient" losing with Nomar. You'd like to think that there's more of you than them, but I'm not so sure.

Lastly, why the problem with LuGo? He was signed for one year, so if he was in the way, it was only going to be for 1 year. The other relevant item is the numbers:

LuGo: .278/.359/.433
Ethier: .284/.350/.452

I'd call that a wash. Since someone mentioned the end there, well, going into the August 1 game, after the August 31 game, and after the September 30 game:

LuGo:

.285/.365/.447
.278/.358/.429
.278/.358/.433

Ethier:
.298/.369/.449
.291/.357/.457
.284/.350/.452

As to what we had a right to expect, LuGo's prior year was .271/.352/.441. As for what LuGo had a right to expect, he did sign that one year deal on the premise of "win now" and so he presumably expected to be called upon to do some of the winning. Juan Pierre speaks for himself, but some of the criticism here of LuGo has simply been unfair. With those numbers, team management would have been entirely justified in going with LuGo down the stretch on the premise that he's been there and done that, and so less of the unknown when it comes to wilting under any perceived pressure of a pennant race as was the circumstance with Ethier [who in this respect is still a relative unknown].

I also agree with your interpretation of what Ned was saying about big markets. For what it's worth, I heard Ben Cherington, assistant GM for the Red Sox, say something very similar a couple of years ago, about how hard it is to give minor leaguers a shot in Boston, because expectations are so high.

The fact that Nomar wasn't given any time at third during the 07 spring training indicates a decision was already make about Nomar over Loney and regardless of what Loney did wasn't going to change a predetermined plan.

Colletti cannot explain away his huge mistake regarding Loney. If Colletti can make that big of a mistake once, he is capable of making it again.

MINOTAUR!

Yes he can. He says it wasn't his fault: "Those off-season decisions are really based on what was witnessed during the last full season by our staff, the player development staff and our scouts."

I'm sure it was White and Watson who decided to give Nomar a 2 years extension after he had a horrible decline at the end of the 2006 season.

I still think Ned is overly fearful about what will happen if a kid doesn't hit .400 right off the bat. Colletti's principal worry should be what is going to make the Dodgers the best by October, not what is going to make the fans less nervous in March.

Certainly, some Dodger fans would have been angry if the Dodgers had entered last season with an outfield of, say, Ethier-Repko-Kemp. And I think many people here tolerated the Gonzalez signing as a concession to the notion that the Dodgers have money to pick up a player that, at least, is insurance. The fact is, Gonzalez overachieved in the first half last season.

But I don't think most Dodger fans of any stripe think the team has an endless supply of money, or that it should be tossed away haphazardly just for the sake of saying you did something. And it's not as if the Dodgers had a shortage of name players. Generally, Colletti is too paranoid about young players and too sanguine about older ones.

I just wish he had realized they were toast before he got them in the first place.

I think Ned thinks he has made mistakes - I just don't think he interprets them the same way I would. I think he thinks they're more like aberrations.

From last thread, great point from Canuck & I do feel he has a smooth enough arm delivery, I guess I was just nit picking. Also, when you try & correct little things like that the ball player ends up getting hurt (I guess there body's are just use to that type of delivery cause they been doing it for so long) Edwin Jackson comes to mind when Colborn tried to correct what he saw as a flaw in his delivery, Edwin Jackson ended up on the DL, yeah, nice point by Canuck.

I'd add that baseball isn't the only business that holds youth to an unfairly higher standard. In my business, young scholars are tested constantly from grad school to dissertation, and from getting a job in an overcrowded job market to the exhausting push for tenure. I much prefer being a PVL ;-)

But requiring youngsters to dominate AAA is a much higher standard than veterans are held to. There's no way Lucille II or Hillenbrand (or even Juan Pierre) dominate AAA.

You know what? I'm reading my post and I've lost track of how JP doing well in Vegas means anything at all. Never mind. :)

If a player cannot dominate AAA, he is necessarily worse than any and all players currently in the major leagues.

I do not wish to subscribe to his newsletter.

I have spoken. Now I will sit.

(Scattered applause, much nodding of heads...)

Sure, and it'd be great if he hit 20+ HRs.

In fact, it'd be great if he were a completely different (and better) player.

But he's not. He is what he is, and it was easy to see what he is before he was signed. For five years.

I'm going to Denver for a business trip, and I'm thinking that maybe I could arrange to stay an extra day to see the sights. I travel a bit around the country and after the conversation about places we'd like to visit, I feel like I'm wasting free tickets to various cities.

Kershaw will not hit Triple-A this year. He'll likely stay at Double-A Jacksonville all year and could be a September call-up.

Colletti brought in this "complementary" player, who, instead of being a bridge to a good player, is Mr. Burns's giant sun-blocking device, driving up the price of light and killing all the flowers.

Furcal's stats can be found by googling "liga dominicana de beisbol" or at:
http://www.lidom.com/stats.htm

The site is in Spanish but stats are set up identical to the structure of box scores and traditional stat lines in English.
He has 50 at bats, 9 hits, (8 singles and 1 triple for avg. .180) He's walked 9 times, scored 8 runs.

People are hoping against hope that JP becomes a different player than what he has always been. It ain't gonna happen and I take no joy in saying so.

Good guy? Sure. So am I. I still can't get on base.

Mike Richards of my Flyers is who picked up a 12 yr deal a month or two ago, and dollar-wise it looks like it's reasonably balanced, which hockey teams can do now that they've had a couple of seasons to grow into the new cap system.

DiPietro, in theory, is another game-changing talent that locking up to a long term deal would be akin to, say, the DRays extending Scott Kazmir. In theory he is good enough for the deal to work out long term, but there is much less certainty that he'll live up to it over time, just due to the nature of his position, than there is for Ovechkin and Richards's deals.

We now return to your regularly scheduled Juan Pierre Thoughts.

" If you provide a young player with the position prematurely and the speed of the game and the pressures of the big leagues exceed where that player is at, at that point in his career, then we have done an injustice to the team and to the young player. And finding out that we've overestimated a young player 50 games into the season is a very difficult point of the season to make an adjustment."

...are a product of received wisdom, rather than Colletti's own philosophy, if he even has one. Someone is saying this to Colletti and he's buying it. Who?

The Pierre signing was awful. But you can run off a list of signings over the past 2-3 years by every GM that was terrible to begin with. At least in the Dodgers case, the mistake is affordable... not excusable, but affordable.

My whole point is.. other than Pierre, Schmidt and Nomah, I'm pretty pleased with the Dodgers roster. Colletti has somehow come up with a team that I am happy with and I'm not sure what I would have wanted DePo to do differently. Sure there was a huge part of me three years ago who wanted Guzman, Navarro, Miller, etc. to be huge stars with the Dodgers, but I'm just as happy with Kemp, Martin, Kershaw, etc. too.

well that isn't good, but I've heard he's a notorious slow starter.

What I disagree with is that the high expectations and lack of patience -- that we need a winner now -- is a natural product of a big market. Any team, in any market, should develop and play the best players. With no alternative but average, and in fact mostly below average, veterans, there is no excuse not to play the younger players with stellar minor league track records. Winning demands it, and the market is irrelevant.

I expect to see the young players, not because I have a 'thing' for young players, while most fans have a 'thing' for name players. I expect to see the young players because quite frankly they have the track record to indicate they are better than the alternative. In short, I want my team to play the players that give them the best chance to win, and right now that is the young guys.

Well, that depends on whether you're dead or not.

But as Sagehen suggested, Rocky Mountain National Park is a can't-miss. It's about an hour north.

If you have a desire to see money get manufactured, you could take a tour of the U.S. Mint in downtown Denver. If you have a desire to see beer get manufactured, you could take a tour of the Coors plant in the suburb of Golden. There is also the Tattered Cover, which bills itself as the largest used bookstore in the world.

What 35 years of being a Dodger fan has taught me is, in reality, no team, not even a wealthy team, can contend and rebuild at the same time. Claire's bleak decade as GM was all about con-building and re-tending. Malone, Evans, DePodesta and Colletti have all tried it, and I'm convinced that path leads to what the Dodgers have given us since '88: A team that occasionally wins a division or the wild card, a team that usually is a contender but far from the best team and is dependent on luck to stay in contention past the first week of September, a team that is always a couple of injuries or slumps away from disaster. Is Colletti steering us away from that strategy? Hard to feel real confident, but it seems to be the case. Regardless of what he says in this interview.

As far as Colletti and the way he has handled our youth. All I can say to myself is to look at the long term picture and be patient.

As far as Denver, how about a ski trip?

vr, Xei

78
Atlanta may only have the one title but the team has rebuilt itself on the fly and those consecutive division championships were earned.

Tattered Cover isn't a used bookstore, though it is awfully big.