Typical blogger explanation.

Real baseball fans need look no further than Joe Torre, who's winning ways are finally being bought into by his players.

In all seriousness, it can't be much longer before Plaschke-types start praising Torre for the magical turn-around in the team's performance.

LF: .250/.345/.290/.635
CF: .173/.289/.255/.545
RF: .352/.392/.593/.984

Of course I'm talking late in the season here. If Torre is at all willing to bench Jones, I'm guessing it wouldn't be until sometime late in July.

There were two reasons why the Dodgers signed Jones, one was for his power, 1 home run a month, not quite what they wanted, the other was for his defense.

The best defensive outfield the Dodgers have right now is Ethier, Jones and Kemp.

"We didn't waste $81,000,000, we spent $81,000,000 as insurance."

Which way would you go today to get to Farmers Market from South Pasadena?

A) South on the 110, west on the 10, north on Fairfax

B) South on the 110, north on the 101, south on Western

Post your answers here standard text message rates apply.

In that scenario, DeWitt got his month and LaRoche would get a month, and then the Dodgers would have to decide which finishes the season at third.

I'm thinking a couple of MLB bombs from LaRoche will cause Torre to find him playing time. Could he be a better back-up 1B than Sweeney? IF Nomar is traded or released (or accepts a role as a rover/pinch hitter), I would think Torre can find LaRoche 3 starts a week.

Well, I guess everyone needs a day off here and there

And Ned is already on thin ice anyway. If Jones continues OPSing under .600 and the Dodgers miss the playoffs, he's probably axed. If benching Jones results in the Dodgers reaching the playoffs, it might buy Ned another year of breathing room, so why not?

Does anyone know if there is a standard design for where the odd and even addresses are located on a given street?

For example, are the odds always on the West/North side?

I just thought this is something I should know if there is a standard way to numbering a street.

It's hard enough to fathom thinking Pierre should bat 2nd with Ethier batting 6th.

Torre set himself up for initial failure followed by subsequent success. No doubt the MSM will fall for his ploy.

he is steady and improving at third, he is steady and improving at the plate, and he has gone a whole month without an injury giving us some stability...

Usually most cities have established their numbering system for buildings long before most of us have moved there. The person or persons laying out the city could use models like:
1) the town where they grew up
2) New York City
3) making City Hall building #1 and moving on from there.

There are streets in Los Angeles where many of the numbers start from much of the city like 1st Street and Main Street. But there's a different numbering system in places like the Valley, the Northeast, San Pedro, and Venice.

South Pasadena, since it's a little city, doesn't use directionals on its streets. Pasadena does and uses Colorado and Fair Oaks as its zero points.

All of the streets in the unincorporated parts of L.A. County are supposed to have a directional attached to them even if there isn't a corresponding street for the other side.

Somebody here once got to sit down with a guy who worked for the County who was in charge of giving out numbers and names and found the discussion fascinating.

The first 20 days of the season were a kind of extended spring training, to make up for time lost to China, Arizona and just him being new to these players.

Day in day out, the value of Torre seems to be in his ability to get the younger players past their anxieties about their spot in the lineup so that when they're in the lineup, they're more likely to produce.

But maybe my starting premise is different from yours. The "regression to the mean" idea suggests that no manager makes a difference, and that the manager's role is, itself, superfluous.

I think that over the course of a long season with a team comprised of such a range of player types, a manager can influence individual performance. Not dramatically, but perhaps decisively, seeing as how "baseball is a game of inches."

There's no proving it, but I don't think things would look as bright if Little were still the manager.

(Which is not say batting Sweeney fourth makes any sense at all.)

There's always the brute force solution of uninstalling and reinstalling Firefox.

With Schmidt, Loiaza, Park, Kuo, Kershaw and McDonald already in-house along with the first 4 starters, there are posibilities to move one or more of those 10 along with Pierre and Young and possibly LaRoche and DeWitt to tweak the team.

1. What does this mean?
2. What is this conclusion based on?

(Okay, we already know how I feel about Delwyn Young getting a start - I would like to see that. One of these days, I guess.)

Sorry, I don't mean to sound grumpy here but I was kind of hoping that if the Dodgers could, you know, play a lot better, win 5 in a row, we could at least get a day off from harping on the line-up and comments like 1 .

I probably just need coffee. But I guess my cup is already half full. I'm just gonna enjoy the game quietly today, win or lose.

I had figured it out as combinations instead of permuatations.

If the Dodgers keep the same 13 position players, the total number of different lineup combinations would be 51,891,840.

Unless www.mathisfun.com lied to me.

Thanks, Bob. I figured it was worth asking in case I was missing the "system" this whole time. It is definitely frustrating when you are looking for the odd/even situation for a street, but you can't find any numbers on the buildings.

Seriously: there are 9 spots in the lineup. What kind of thought process leads someone to choose the #4 spot for Sweeney over the other 8 spots? I would just like to understand.

In Los Angeles, evens should be on the east and south. But I can't vouch for Venice. Bunch of effete laidback Westsiders!

Playing Kemp in CF, with Pierre in LF---just intensifies what a dumb decision it was to sign Pierre at all.

Even realizing Kemp could play CF before this season, may have kept the Dodgers from signing Druw as well.

cleanup is a PVL spot, and not even Jim Tracy could put Juan Pierre there

That's a guess. I have no idea.

Exact opposite here.
If there's ever a game that the backup catcher should start, it's today.

61 Yes.

63 I would've liked to have seen that too (and Russell playing 3rd base!) though like other people here I don't have much faith in Bennett and as I pointed out last night I don't think Russell will ever sit, at least not for a great while, when Kuroda is starting. That's just the deal.

--

Where's my darned coffee? Waitress!

*At 137, the Dodgers scored the third most runs in the NL, and the sixth most runs in MLB.
*At 107, the Dodgers tied with Atlanta for having given up the second fewest runs in the NL, and the fourth fewest in MLB.
*Rafael Furcal was first in hits (43), runs (26), and doubles (12) in the NL. He was second in OBP (.462) and batting average (.381) and 4th in steals (7).
*Chad Billingsley struck out 40 in 27.2 innings.
*Russ Martin had an OBP of .439 (good enough for 5th in the NL). Ethier OBP'd .400, and the Dodgers as a team were third in the category at .360.

I know I cherry-picked the good stats. But if you'd told me the above would be true back in March, I would have predicted we'd be in first place right now.

Or he could just really enjoy the PCL like Mitch Jones did.

Did I mention I need coffee?

Back later...

69
Maybe over 1000 simulated games it doesn't but for one game in Florida I'd rather have the slumping single hitting Sweeney batting 7th and either Martin, Ethier, or Kemp hitting cleanup.

What is the probability that Torre believes batting order hardly matter? I would guess "Very close to zero".

I think it's very likely that Torre believes batting order matters a lot, which makes "Why does Torre think Sweeney should bat cleanup?" a legitimate question.

BTW: Do SABR-types believe that setting the lineup is the most important managerial duty and that the lineup doesn't matter...?

Bless you, gourmet instant coffee.

I don't remember seeing such a high rating for a SciFi/Comic Book movie before.

One of those terms should never be with the other two.

Which also means that our cleanup hitter is going to do some damage today.

Cody Ross has been as bad as A Jones this year without the sterling defense. When you lose time to AA your on thin ice.

And I really don't appreciate that you do this just to tick me off.

SABR members are people like Trent McCotter who is a UNC freshman and specializes in finding obscure batting streaks from the 19th Century.

It has guys like Dave Smith, who has developed Retrosheet, and all he just does is organize play-by-play data.

It has people who can't believe the Dodgers left Brooklyn.

It has people who spend all of their time studying the Negro Leagues.

It has members who write books on the U.S. tour of the 1935 Tokyo Giants.

It has people who are specialists on the Pacific Coast League in the 1950s.

So you could ask all those people about lineup order and 95% of them will just shrug their shoulders and say "whatever."

Bless you freshly ground cruz del sol from Intelligencia

Do you mean in spring training? As far as I can tell, Ethier has never played an inning in CF in a major league game.

What's a better way to say "people who are a lot more knowledgeable than I am about baseball stats and stuff" than "SABR-types"...?

Seems like H Ramirez is okay, at least enough to come back out to the field. Maybe he just had hamstring tightness.