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1) using profanity or any euphemisms for profanity
2) personally attacking other commenters
3) baiting other commenters
4) arguing for the sake of arguing
5) discussing politics
6) using hyperbole when something less will suffice
7) using sarcasm in a way that can be misinterpreted negatively
8) making the same point over and over again
9) typing "no-hitter" or "perfect game" to describe either in progress
10) being annoyed by the existence of this list
11) commenting under the obvious influence
12) claiming your opinion isn't allowed when it's just being disagreed with
If I had a chance to interview Garciaparra today, I'd ask him whether he is willing to play any position besides first base anymore, and whether any amount of money could convince him to be a super-utilitarian – something at which he might really thrive.- Dodger Thoughts, October 25
Well, I still haven't talked to Nomar Garciaparra directly, but I can give you some third-hand news (from Bill Shaikin of the Times.
(Dodger general manger Ned) Colletti said Arn Tellem, the agent for Garciaparra, told the Dodgers his client would be "open-minded" about "playing first base, third base, maybe the outfield." If Garciaparra returns, Colletti said he envisions him playing one or two positions but not moving around the field on a regular basis.
While Garciaparra's second-half struggles (interrupted occasionally by some of the most dramatic hits of the season) force one to question the wisdom of committing to him long-term at any single position, his willingness to play two positions entices. The irony is that not being forced to play Garciaparra every day almost makes me feel better about being generous to him, since there would be less chance of him wearing down. His presence would facilitate the Dodgers starting the season with James Loney at first base and Wilson Betemit at third, because Garciaparra would be around should either falter.
Of course, Shaikin's article doesn't mention anything about Garciaparra's contract demands and whether they would be the best use of the Dodgers' resources, however limited they are. All I can say is that the more flexible Garciaparra promises to be, the more valuable he becomes.
* * *
Presumably because Garciaparra can't be counted to play five positions for under a million dollars, the Dodgers guaranteed infield reserve Ramon Martinez $850,000 - $800,000 for 2007 and a potential $50,000 buyout on a million-dollar club option for 2008. In this era, six-figure guarantees are of little moment; Martinez will make approximately $500,000 over the major-league minimum.
Still, there's something peculiar about locking up Martinez before any other team can get to him, because 1) he's Ramon Martinez and 2) Colletti showed he lacked confidence in Martinez by acquiring Julio Lugo last summer.
At the time Lugo arrived - the day Cesar Izturis was sent to Chicago for Greg Maddux - Garciaparra and Jeff Kent were nursing injuries, and the Dodgers needed an infielder until one of them returned. Saying that Martinez couldn't hold down the position for just a week or three is like putting a flyer at the local market that says Missing: Major League Ability. It says that Martinez is really just meant to be no more than the 25th man on a roster - which actually is true, but flies in the face of Colletti's faith in Martinez last offseason and this one.
Lugo won the 2006 Daryle (A)Ward for stinking with the Dodgers, but if you put aside arguments about whether Colletti gave up too much to get Lugo, Colletti wasn't crazy to think he could do better than Martinez. But now, 3 1/2 months later, 4 1/2 months before the 2007 season opener, with Betemit, Rafael Furcal, Kent, Loney, Olmedo Saenz, Andy LaRoche, Delwyn Young and maybe even Garciaparra or Aramis Ramirez to play the infield next year, Colletti is placing Martinez in a lockbox.
Looking at that list of players, I conclude that Martinez is around primarily to be a backup shortstop - it's the one position none of the above really qualifies for. Betemit doesn't look to have the glove for it, and Garciaparra hasn't mentioned it as a position he's ready to return to. And yet, if Furcal went down with an injury, evidence from the past is that Colletti wouldn't want Martinez playing every day at short for very long.
I don't know. I'm sure I'm overthinking it. And I'm going to stop here, because the signing doesn't deserve this much attention. While I can't say I understand why Colletti wants to commit nearly a million bucks to a player he may well be afraid to play, I'll just shrug and let it go.
* * *
The Dodgers made several front-office promotions Tuesday, the most important involving the scouting department. Tony Jackson of the Daily News has a quote from the big-name promotee explaining how his role will and will not change.
Dodgers scouting director Logan White, the man whose staff has been primarily responsible for stacking the club's minor-league system with so many prized prospects over the past five years, was promoted to assistant general manager in charge of scouting. Tim Hallgren, who had served as White's national crosschecker, is the new scouting director, but White still will have input into the annual two-day amateur draft.
"I'll still oversee it, but I'm still going to give Timmy the opportunity to run the scouting department," White said. "He needs to have that opportunity like I did. The reason I think I have done a decent job is because I had good scouts and good people who made it possible for me to do well. I will still see 40-50 players throughout the year, the top-end guys. Timmy and I work well together, and our philosophies won't change any."
White also will oversee the club's international scouting operations.
Meanwhile, professional scout Vance Lovelace was promoted to special assistant to the GM less than a year after he was ready to accept an offer to join Tampa Bay's scouting staff. That ended when Colletti, who was attending a college hockey game in Oxford, Ohio, and talking to Lovelace by cell phone, talked him into staying with the Dodgers.
Toney Howell, formerly a pro scout for Milwaukee, also was hired as a special assistant to Colletti. And Chris Haydock was promoted to assistant player development director.
Looking at the promotions in the scouting department, jogged my memory a bit. During the Hochevar saga, Boras made some accusations about White that he quickly withdrew. White is too intelligent to cut off an option just like that, but in any case where there is no clear cut upside over other options, I doubt we deal with a Boras client.
All right, post-election political humor. :)
He had a solid season, is a solid bench guy, not too costly and has a decent glove.
I think he can be a ninth inning replacement for a Garciappara or Kent or Betemit who might be slower to cover the ground Martinez can. No superstar here, just a solid #25 guy.
I like the move. I also think signing Garciaparra to an affordable contract makes sense. I heard in the past $18 million for three years would get it done. That would be worth the risk to me, he can flat out hit and he talks like a team player, someone who just wants to win. He is a hometown boy too, might take less to stay home with Mia.
but in the back of you're mind you be thinking, he's injury prone
While it's not a huge money issue, making a commitment to a guy who will put up a .700 OPS in a good season isn't the best idea.
OPS by month for Ramon Martinez from April to July 2006: .511, 1.141, .767, .572. (He hardly played after August 1 - he had three hits, one of them that 16th-inning HR.)
Royce Clayton
Alex Cora
Craig Counsell
Damion Easley
Alex Gonzalez
Jose Hernandez
Julio Lugo
Tomas Perez
Jose Vizcaino
Slim pickens. I'd like to have seen Cora come back, but he's getting 2-years guaranteed from Boston anyday now.
Garciaparra?
Alex Cora brings show much to the table, that if i were a G.M. i'd sign him no question's asked.
Counsell is a double-edged sword. I'd like to see him over Ramon Martinez, but couldn't you see Little fall in love with him and give him 100 starts batting 2nd at the expense of Betemit and/or Loney?
If that didn't happen last year, why would it happen this year. Little basically rode Martinez's one hot streak, then when Martinez reverted to normal, hardly played him.
Still, same idea.
http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/6149242
(after the Jennings section)
Free-agent left fielder Luis Gonzalez wants to stay in the NL West to take vengeance on the Diamondbacks, and it looks like he's going to get his chance. Both the Dodgers and Giants are showing significant interest in Gonzalez, who finished second in the NL with 52 doubles last season at age 39 ...
He's not an impact guy, he's not a Zito or Aramis signing.
Many have mentioned ability to play shortstop, I think he's also taken a few balls in the outfield, right? Colletti and Little showed they like to make moves late in a game, something Lugo didn't do well or like, but it shows the Colletti/Little philosophy and Martinez fits that mind set.
He's also a relatively cheap upgrade of proven major league bench ability(less than 700K difference with new MLB contract minimum for major leaguers increasing) compared to the minor leaguers who could be role/bench players in lieu of Martinez.
Martinez also accepts his role, but is ready to play everyday in an injury situation as we saw a little bit of last year. He's small potatoes in the big plan, but he's a piece that comes rather cheaply and what we don't know is how he's accepted in the clubhouse. If he's a good teammate, that helps too.
On paper Lugo should have been better, but IIRC he didn't do a single thing as a Dodger offensively which Martinez couldn't have done as well if not better....
9 RE shortstops in the Dodger organization...what about Wilson Valdez and Eric Riggs of Vegas? Are they considered potential ML material?
http://www.baseballamerica.com/today/minors/news/262709.html
he wants a 3 yr deal and he wont get that from LA
27 How is Martinez proven ability? He had a good year last year, and it was worth a .702 OPS. Does someone become proven just because they have expirence, no matter how bad they are during that time?
Good chance he'd be awarded way more than they'd like to pay him.
Generally the threat of arbitration is enough to get a contract put together.
Thoughts about the NBA thus far....
Andrew Bynum: The Prince of Juvenation
My friend Matt "Money" Smith (a radio host for the Lakers) summed things up last week after I sent him the obligatory "thanks for warning me about Bynum" e-mail: "I watched him play every minute of every game last season and Summer League this year, so I can say with great certainty ... this came out of nowhere. NOBODY, I mean NOBODY thought he was capable of this. There's no reason to think it will fall off either. His moves are legit, and who's 7-1/290 to slow him down?"
That's the thing: Maybe he'll be up and down this season, but when he's up, is there another center in the league quite like him? He protects the rim, passes out of double teams, has great hands around the basket, up-fakes on his jump-hooks, rebounds in traffic, even has a motor that keeps going and going (unlike a stiff like Eddy Curry). I'm not sure what's missing here. This is stunning. This is startling. There's almost no precedent for it. Just what the Lakers needed: More obscenely good luck. Meanwhile, I have to watch Al Jefferson whip jump-hooks off the front of the rim for the third straight season. I will now pour scalding hot water down my pants.
Ahh, the rants of a Celtics' fan...
Okay, back to baseball.
I like it, he is bringing guys in who have a track record while keeping two of the key Dodger people (Ng and White) whose judgement he really trusts. (Ng was the one who made the deal for Anderson (which also makes the Ramon deal premature) and we don't have to go on about White.
For Nate, I think that Logan's promotion could be more training for an ultimate move to GM, I would hazard to guess that Ned may believe that Kim Ng is going to get an GM opportunity soon so he wanted someone he could work with in place.
So what do the padres do to fill the 2b void now? Is a marcus giles trade imminent?
he's always been a come of the bench guy no?
http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/index.php?sty=78519
dbacks expect to bid for matsuzaka.
and also this little teaser from newsday:
&The talk on the field before tonight's Game 5 at the Yahoo! Dome is that the posting price for Daisuke Matsuzaka will be significantly below the early projections of $20-$30 million. Teams have until 5 p.m. Wednesday EST to submit their blind bids, with the anonymous winner to be turned over to the Seibu Lions, and it sounds like the number will be much closer to the Mariners' bid that won Ichiro Suzuki's negotiating rights -- $11 million -- back in 2000.*
I will be really mad if somehow the dbacks land him.
http://tinyurl.com/y56r36
However, this makes me question the logic that was used when Wilson Valdez was placed on the 40-man roster. We're going to pay Valdez a little extra money and guarantee he stays a Dodgers just so we can use him if Furcal, Martinez, Robles, and presumably Hu are injured? The fact that Jarrod Plummer had a nice year for High Desert doesn't help much either. About the only redeeming quality about Valdez is that he'd be the starting shortstop on my all-birthday team.
Also, can anyone verify the report that Ketchner has been signed by the Padres? Scout.com reported it a few days ago, but when the Padres finally announced the 9 guys they signed to minor league contracts today, he wasn't included.
Im not saying we have to commit to all the young hitters for 2007, although I do advocate it, why would committing to a minimum 4 years (and probably more) at a corner spot be a good idea? It sounds like a Kevin Malone kind of move, ie "lets spend as much money as possible on the biggest possible name regardless of how much it actually helps the team"
& to think Vlad could have & wanted to be a Dodger but McCourt......
Not going to pull out the old, "You're my boy, blue"?
Anybody have any thoughts on the Pad's hiring of Bud Black? Pitching coaches usually don't work out well (so goes the cliche), but Black's been a wanted commodity for a while.
seriously do you know bro?
i hope he goes there that's a pitchers nightmare
I daresay the Rangers "news" is rank speculation at this point.
Which time zone for 6:18 pm? Or will it be a case where the world will end time zone by time zone at 6:18 pm?
Ramirez has a reputation as good defensive 3rd baseman.
Great clubhouse guy, but no thank you. If you thought K. Lofton's routes to a fly ball were bad you ain't seen nothing yet. Gonzalez's routes make a Jackson Pollock painting look like a straight line.
Also if you think Lofton's arm was bad you aint' seen nothing yet.
First, if you say optimistically that you can get a good 13o games out of Nomar, I say that is great and start from there. I make the assumption immediately that a player of his age and history will have at least 1 15 day trip to the DL. Assuming we can get the same production. Here is where the 130 games comes from: All 18 games as DH in the AL games, and then the platoon at 3rd with Wilson B and periodic rest for Loney and also the platoon-Loney deserves the chance to start but I question if he is ready to be given the position full time. As far as blocking La Roche, I think the injury and the need for a solid season at Triple A is imperative for him...As far as Martinez goes while the Dodgers were happy with Ramon's production, I think there was a real question if both Kent and Garciapara broke down, and they were unsure of how successful Loney's second call-up would be, I believe they did feel they need a potentially stronger and more powerful hitter. Also I believe that Ramon's new born had some initial physical problems, I don't know if anyone knew in advance of these issues. As jon says a contract under a million these days is almost meaningless.
I'm glad I'm not a GM.
I just graduated.
That was a total guess...
By the way, 102 was in reference to 74
anyways, I completely miscalculated (probably has to do with the 5 hours of sleep a night I've been getting for the past two weeks). I expect Soriano to get $15-17 million a year over five years, so that comes out to $75-85 million.
101- complete instinct I guess. I knew it had to be SDSU, UCSB, or ASU
why don't you just recorded on you're webcam so we can puke in the confort of our on home?
Maybe he just wants to see what's out there, and he'll come back to that. Maybe LA (either one) comes in with a matching 5/$75M deal and he splits.
NEVER! The 49ers are evil, even though they currently suck.
I'm at a conference right now in Fort Worth, TX. I went on a bus tour of Dallas, and on the way back we drove by a construction site where a construction worker was wearing a Dodger jersey t-shirt. I wondered who was on the back. When he turned around, I saw the following:
Brown
27
was it Kevin Brown's old #?
The rest of the argument, I like. We should get it done.
Well, I grew up in Eugene, so it's kinda hard to separate my feelings about the school from the city itself. At the time, wasn't aware of the school's shortcomings, but having studied for 3+ years at a different school now, I can see that it lacked resources (public school funding in Oregon is a big problem, primarily because of property tax limitations).
That being said, I had a positive experience there. I was able to find some very good professors, and learned a lot. The city is nice, and affordable to live in. It's a pretty campus. I'm sure you'll find plenty of folks to drink with on the weekends, and probably some skaters as well...
If you're used to warm, sunny weather, you might get tired of the gray, rainy days that last pretty much from November through March or so. But it doesn't get too cold (mostly in the 40s, with some days in the 20s and 30s mixed in). Among other things, this means that you won't get to ogle all the skimpily-clad ladies that, say, Nate gets to ogle in Arizona. By the time the weather warms up, school is getting out.
I really don't know anything about the business school, other than that I think they built a new building a few years ago, so you would have that going for you.
(PS: Daniel Zappala taught there for a number of years, so maybe he can advise you as well)
http://abclocal.go.com/wjrt/story?section=local&id=4738161
http://marriottschool.byu.edu/mba/mbaranking.cfm
Once the team is disclosed (post-approval) Boras takes over and does his thing. He can then negotiate a contract or push for a trade.
118- BYU is an outstanding school (they have one of the best undergraduate business schools in the country) and while I have a pretty conservative lifestyle, I'm not nearly as straight-edge as most of the students at BYU. I'd also feel a little uncomfortable being at a school which has a student body that is predominately Mormon.
94 I have been a Niners fan for so many years. Can't quite explain it, although the way Montana-to-Clark dethroned the hated Cowboys might have had something to do with it. Meanwhile, this was the era of the Rams being a boring, underachieving team that moved to Anaheim and always punked out in the playoffs. I stopped caring about them.
That said, the Niners are the most San Franciscan of all the San Francisco teams; it would be a sports tragedy if they moved to LA. Santa Clara is okay, but they've got to retain their connection to that market -- until the cheap, incompetent clown who swiped the team from an admittedly overextended DeBartolo finally sells.
York is this generation's Hugh Culverhouse; an owner who sees an NFL franchise as a license to steal, so why would you surrender any of that booty to become, like, good? As long as you can field a marginally competitive team, one capable of winning, say, three games per season, you're golden. Trying to be any better than that is childish fan-boy nonsense. The Super Bowl? What are you, eight years old? Go play with your Joe Montana dolls.
Well, they're 3-5 right now. Optimistic much about the rest of the season?
Moving to Santa Clara would give the San Jose area one less major pro team than the LA area. Stunning.
As an NFL fan, all I care about is that the Raiders and Cowboys both lose as often as possible, and in the most embarassing way possible. My ultimate evil dream is for both teams to blow 35-point leads in the final 7 minutes of their games on the same day, causing both Jerry Jones and Al Davis to succumb at precisely the same moment.
And I still root for the Jets. They're not as far away from being good as the Niners, but it's close.
Lately, my football day is Saturday, when I can either watch the Golden Bears or one of their conference competitors. The NFL gets interesting in December.
Well my Raiders are pretty much fulfilling your dream.
I've adopted the Chargers as my AFC team though. I used to really dislike them (stemming back to the Super Bowl year, and my association with some particularly annoying SD fans), but that's since waned as they have a pretty likeable team now. Plus, as a Niner fan, I need someone to root for in the post-season.
By the time the 49ers faded out, I had stopped caring about the NFL altogether.
The Rams/Niners rivalry was never really one for the ages (at least in my lifetime) but looking back on it, it was probably out-of-line to root for both teams. Like if I started rooting for the Rockies along with the Dodgers now. It just isn't done.
Might as well wear a shirt that says:
"Hi. I started following sports in the 1980s and decided to cherry pick the teams that pretty much never lost a game the entire decade."
Those very same people were Bulls and Cowboys fans in the early 90s. That was really the last time there were two dynasties in football and basketball at the same time.
Rather people who started following sports in the early 90s were Bulls and Cowboy fans. Not to say that the Niner and Laker fans of the 80s changed allegiances.
Hey, I was born in '75. I learned to suffer (at least in football) at an early age!
Eugene is a good location for outdoor stuff, both in and around the city. The gym is around 6 years old or so, and is very nice. The high ceilings and natural light make a very pleasant and non-foul-smelling environment. There are a lot of club sports, including stuff like crew and ultimate, among others.
120 Uncomfortable around a bunch of Mormons is way below being uncomfortable in certain portions of LA. We won't shoot at you, we don't have gang colors .. about all we might do is offer you some jello or invite you to play paintball in the local hills. :-)
My dad actually wanted me to apply to BYU, but he had the same concern about the girls.
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2655862
I don't think Ned will try very hard to get him back. Don't think he ever really liked Drew's blah approach to things. Well, we've got an extra 11 mil to spend next year. Wonder what we'll spend it on.
"That's all we know for now, but it's safe to say he won't be back in blue in '06. Keep an eye out on the site for more information in the form of an article from Ken Gurnick."
Teams that may go after Drew,
San Diego Padres
San Francisco Giants
Texas Rangers
Chicago Cubs
The $11M per year was probably low considering the current times but the 3 years was probably at the edge of what Ned thought teams were going to offer a player like Drew.
Although it sounds like the front office was shocked by this, I wonder how they really feel about it. I really think they had very mixed feelings about Drew.
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