We should be looking at dealing Antonio Perez and some other parts for pitching help while his value is peaking. The Cubs are almost a lock to be deadline sellers so I wonder what it would take to get Wood or Zambrano?

If the Dodgers did trade Antonio Perez, who should replace him. I have grown rather fond of having a third baseman who can hit AND play defense. I realize that he will not hit this well all season, but he probably will not regress to hitting as poorly as the our previous superhero squad Team Third Base Platoon.

May 29, 1930

About 12,000 fans came to Ebbets Field on a Thursday afternoon to watch the Brooklyn Robins move into a first place tie with St. Louis with a 4-1 win over the New York Giants. Right fielder Babe Herman slugged two home runs to lead the Brooklyn attack.

Herman hit his first home run in the sixth off of losing pitcher Carl Hubbell with Johnny Frederick on base to put Brooklyn up 3-1. Herman hit his second in the 8th inning off of reliever Joe Heving. Catcher Al Lopez, who would later join the Hall of Fame after a distinguished managerial career, singled in Brooklyn's other run. Watty Clark picked up the victory, one of 13 on the year for Clark against 13 losses.

Newspaper reports said that Herman entered the game in a slump, but he heated up the rest of the year. He batted .393 for the year with 35 homers and 130 RBIs in a wild offensive season in the NL. None of those figures were able to give Herman any part of the Triple Crown. His .393 average was second to Bill Terry of New York, who batted .401. And Hack Wilson of Chicago led in home runs with 56 and RBI with a major league record 191. Besides setting a Dodgers single season record for batting average, Herman also holds the Dodgers single season record for SLG (.678), OPS (1.132), hits (241), total bases (416), extra base hits (94), and times on base (311). All of those marks were set in 1930.

The Dodgers as a team batted .304, but 6 of the 8 teams in the NL finished with batting averages over .300. The other two, Boston and Cincinnati, hit "only" .281. The entire National League batted .303 and averaged 5.68 runs per game. Brooklyn's .304 batting average was the team's highest in the 20th Century. Since 1930, no Dodgers team has batted higher than .285 and no Los Angeles team has batted higher than .272.

Despite all this offense, Brooklyn received one of the best pitching performances, under the circumstances, ever from Dazzy Vance. Vance managed a 17-15 record, but also an ERA of 2.61. The next lowest in the NL was 3.87 by Hubbell. Vance also had 173 strikeouts, four behind league leader Bill Hallahan of St. Louis. And Vance accomplished all of this at the tender age of 39. Vance had an adjusted ERA in 1930 (taking into account park effects and the league average) of 189, third best in Dodgers history, behind Sandy Koufax's 190 in 1966 and Vance's 191 in 1928. Vance had an extraordinary career for a player who didn't pitch fulltime in the majors until he was 31. For more information about Vance, go to http://runsupportindex.blogspot.com/2004/06/dazzy-vance.html

Brooklyn's stay in first didn't last. The Robins (so named for manager Wilbert Robinson) finished in fourth place with an 86-68 record, 6 games behind pennant winning St. Louis. The Dodgers did have the second higest attendance in the National League, around 1.1 million fans, an improvement over 400,000 from 1929 despite the onset of the Great Depression. The Dow 30 on May 29 was a whopping 275.07. It closed this past Friday at 10,542.55.

Some good names dropping by in 1930 were Bobo Newsom (his second year in the majors in a career that would last a long time and see him pitch for just about everybody), Sloppy Thurston, Dolf Luque (one of Cuba's first stars in the majors and despite being 39 in 1930 he would pitch until 1935). Lopez, who is 96 years old, is the last surviving member of the 1930 Dodgers.

Thanks to the NY Times, BaseballReference.com and Retrosheet

I don't think he belongs on the "good old days" list. Don't be fooled by the relatively low ERA. He walked a lot of batters (33BB in 60IP in 2003) and usually ended up being bailed out by someone else to preserve his numbers.

"You can't make those types of little mistakes in situation baseball, and it all leads to the fact that Eric Gagne would have been in the game to pitch. When you do not execute, you get beat."

I might have actually bought the reason that he didn't want Gagne to pitch because he had thrown two games in a row, and only came off the DL recently. However, to say that he basically never even considered Gagne is absurd.

5:10 start. Ugh. No one will be able to see. Fortunately for the hitters, neither starter throws hard (Alvarez and Maddux).

Since Prior is out, we will obviously miss him. We would have started Wednesday. The Cubs may start Wellemeyer instead. Zambrano pitches Tuesday.

Paul LoDuca - .283/.349/.379=.729 OPS
salary: $4.6 million

Jason Phillips - .276/.318/.396=.713 OPS
salary: $339,000

Without The Trade (TM), we obviously wouldn't have Penny, and considering Choi's salary vs. Green and Encarnacion's salary, we wouldn't have been able to sign Derek Lowe.

I shudder to think where this team would be without those two starting pitchers.

From-- "The Buzz"

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/bbw/columnist/white/2005-05-25-leading-off_x.htm

In Spring training we had Alvarez, Dessens, Erickson, Ishii, and Edwin Jackson as candidates for the fifth slot. A few injuries and a good spring from Erickson later, he earned a job.

I had no issue with the Bako signing. He fills the prototypical backup catcher role well. Very few teams have a backup catcher that is better than Bako.

Yes, but anyone who is into stats knows that spring training stats mean NOTHING. Absolutely nothing. The worst players play their hardest, and the stars do nothing. Alvarez we knew was injured, Jackson we knew wasn't cutting it, we should have procured another starter.

Bako's OBP is .362. Phillips has one of only .315.

I think Erickson is only going to hang around until the Dodgers are sure Perez is healthy. Then I think he will be cashiered.

Very true, but, it can be argued that he wasn't expected to hold down a rotation slot for very long. Assuming no injuries, Erickson would have lost his spot once Penny came back.

Erickson was around to make two spot starts, injuries have required that he stay on the team.

I read that Duaner threw a slider to Javier Vazquez. I really wish they would just ignore that they ever knew that he had a slider (a la Gagne) and go from there. It's a horrible pitch, and it's the one that usually gets him in trouble.

.408!

I would have thought Widger would have been selling insurance by now.

Guzman probably isn't ready, and Cesar shores up an average infield defense, will probably end up with around a .305 average once the season is done, and is only paid 3 million dollars this year.

Selling high on Izturis might be a good idea once we can confirm that Guzman is ready, but, as of right now, we lose a lot of offense and defense with out him.

Or maybe he will turn into a tall Jose Offerman.

My conspiracy theory (which I really don't believe) Depo has instructed JT to keep Gagne's numbers low because they are going to trade him and move Yhancy back to closer.

The only issue is having to find an improvement over Carrara in the setup role.

The only way I could envision a Gagne trade is in his walk year, in a hopeless disaster year or in the afterglow of a 100 win season and playoff success. None of those seem to apply to 2005. It is fun to ponder an offer DePo could not refuse and you'd think it would have to start with a bona fide ace a la Zambrano.

Izturis
Werth
Drew
Saenz
Bradley
Perez
Choi
Phillips
Weaver

Them:

Counsell
Tracy
Gonzalez
Cruz
Green
Cintron
Clayton
Snyder
Ortiz

If this goes down, however, it will be with a team in contention who is willing to take on Gagne's salary. A team in contention will probably not want to trade one of their starting pitchers. I would hope that maybe someone like the Tigers would trade Inge and that kid they drafted last year (Jeff Niemman or something like that). He sounds like he could be one of those pitchers like Prior who succeeds in the majors rather quickly.

I do think that Gagne will be traded, but it will not be until next offseason unless the Dodgers are completely out of contention by the trade deadline, which does not seem likely despite the past five weeks.

Niemann is a big-time prospect, but he's not a Prior type. Pitchers like Prior, who can go straight from the NCAA to MLB, are about as common as the Duaner Sanchez play last night.

Also, we don't really need a guy like Inge. First, he's not proven at any position. Second, we've got Phillips, who's been better than I expected, and Antonio Perez is doing OK at third right now. If Inge plays somewhere else, he could be valuable, I guess.

I don't think we need an ace pitcher. We need one or two competent pitchers. Gagne can bring that.

And to me Tracy's biggest malfeasance last night was burning Brazoban after a spotless 10 pitch 8th. He could have put Braz in Phillips spot, pinch-hit Ledee and let Bako catch an inning or two. Bako might not bat until the 12th anyway. The underlying issue might be Tracy not seeing the clear dropoff from Braz/Gagne to Carrara. Nor will he learn from last night's debacle as history shows.

So I assume that's Saenz at 3B, Perez at 2B?

Good thing Weaver gives up fly balls.

Just to make sure that things are clear, I meant Derek Thompson when I mentioned "Derek."

Also, I had thought that Niemann was a Prior-type pitcher. Since I have not followed him closely after the Tigers drafted him, I am not suprised that I am wrong.

Weaver is already in the top 100 alltime in HBP.

My advice when facing Weaver is twofold:
1) Duck
2) Tee off

I may be able to beat them. Of course in doing so, I'm likely to blow out my elbow too.

Man, those two things are so wrong.

34/59 = .576

I don't even think Barry Bonds could help them much now.

But please not let it be the Dodgers!

How about Izturis? This is not the same guy who came over from Toronto.

Why? Why?

Someone tell me before I fall unconscious from pounding my head against the wall.

That last hematoma almost killed me!

116: I think Herges is probably better than a number of guys in our bullpen, although that's not saying much. Still, I'd prefer to have Herges instead of Erickson/Carrara/Houlton/Carlyle.

With Lightenberg pitching.

They BETTER SCORE A LOT!

Thanks

Please score at least a run this inning.

I'm irritated.

I don't think that would help. Weaver would just do the same thing he does when someone hits a HR off him; stand there and say, "Dude, that is so uncool."

SD 8-6, top 9

I would say that you would like to have another pitcher other than Gagne to use in that situation. The Dodgers do not. Better to bring in Gagne to finish it, than let Carrara create the Save Situation(TM!) and bring it down to a single swing, especially since bringing Carrara in guarantees you're going to see Gagne anyway.

Bradley sprained his right ring finger in his final at-bat in the ninth inning. X-rays were negative, but Tracy said he didn't know if the center fielder would start Monday against the Chicago Cubs.

I would love it if we could get something for him in a trade, based on his minor-league performance. Too bad Sabean would never make a trade with us...

4IP 8H 6ER 2BB 2K and an ERA for the season of 6.12

I was only able to get Friday's game. Is there some reason that Ghame Over(TM) was not used instead of Carrara in both/either situation on Saturday and Sunday? Seems to me if it's late and not a save situation, but we want the Dodgers to have the best chance then one brings in Yhency. I've always perceived Gio as a 7th inning guy, may be 8th; to perform as a bridge to the Mota/Gagne or Brazoban/Gagne corps. in the 8th or 9th.

Happy Memorial Day.