http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-spw-angels7feb07,1,2615721.story

Haven't we already crossed this bridge, doused it with gasoline and burned it to the ground so it can never be crossed again?

Nate, in a fight to the death with cargill06, falls over on the plunger for the dynamite and yells, "Madness! Madness! Madness!"

If you have questions as a journalist, their email address listed in the solicitation is: LASportsSurvey@luntz.com

I took the survey and it was intriguing. It appears that among the things they are considering on weekday games is allowing fans to shag fly balls on the warning track. Sign me up!

Whether we like it or not, one day, our beloved Dodger Stadium will be demolished, and they will build a new park. Perhaps it will be named Coca-Coca Field or Microhoo! Park. But I really hope it will be beautiful, so we don't have to live with an ugly monstrosity for the next 30-50 years.

*i.e. most strongly: best seems like the wrong word in this context

It's a prediction of Furcal's 2008 season.

I'd always heard that story attributed to Dave Stewart.

Public TV just had on a great John Fogerthy concert that I hadn't seen. Here on the EC.)

USC has much better looking road uniforms than home uniforms. The cardinal jerseys with the gold block letters are quite sharp. At home they either have the white ones with "Trojans" on them in script or gold ones with "Southern California" on them.

USC is on a 19-0 run.

When is there no three-second-lane violation?
Offensive players may position themselves in the free throw lane and move out before the ref counts to three seconds. As soon as the offensive team moves the ball into the offensive end of the court, the referee will be able to call a three second violation. When a shot is taken, the three second count for someone in the lane stops. During a shot, during the rebounding of a shot, and during an immediate put back off of the rebound, no three-second violation can be called.

http://weblogs.variety.com/season_pass/2008/02/lost-episode-2.html

nice win for UCSB over Fullerton tonight in a huge Big West game. 83-80 final. The UCSB-UCI game is on Fox Saturday night.

http://tinyurl.com/ywas5v

"The Dodgers hold the best hand in the division. Their biggest handicap is the man playing it."

I met Nomar today. He was working out with his brother and father at his alma mater St. John Bosco HS. Nice guy. Smaller than I would have thought. Told him to have a good year, we are excited about Torre, and a lot of Dodger fans think this is the year. Then told him to have fun with the twins. LOL he laughed.

As he walked away I said I'm also sorry Loney stole your job!!

J/k about the last part, but thought you guys might be interested in this story. It was pretty cool watching his dad hit grounders to him and his bro. Good people.

Go Dodgers...Go Lakers...and Go Bruins!

If you read their coverage, chats, analysis, you would have thought everything he has done has been proven wrong or he got lucky.

I get it, they wanted to someone step into a situation with a different take but also have the luxury of being a large market team and have a good young players in the pipeline. And that was taken away before we could see how it would work out.

But to say that they have given Ned a fair shake would be ignoring their writings for the past 2 1/2 years.

So good, that the WGA strike could potentially be over by next week.

yaay!

UCLA: +4 (9-1; RPI rank 10)
Stanford: +3 (8-2; 18)
USC: +2 (6-4; 41)
Arizona: +1 (5-4; 7 - really? 7th???)
Wash St: 0 (5-5; 23) - has lost 3 straight home games
Oregon: -1 (4-6; 52)
Cal: -1 (5-5; 65)
ASU: -1 (4-5; 93)
Washington: -3 (3-7)
Oregon St: -4 (0-10)

Some of the early season talk of the Pac 10 getting as many as 7 teams in the NCAA tournament seems unlikely now. The winner of Cal/Oregon on Saturday will seemingly take the inside track for spot #6, although there is still a lot of basketball to be played.

USC needs another quality win, and a slumping WSU might be just what the doctor ordered. Should be a good game at noon thirty Saturday.

I've read all the BP articles over the last couple years about Colletti too, and I can't remember ever disagreeing with their assessment of his decisions. That they use colorful metaphors is merely style. That they "predict" even dumber moves is gallows humor. Do you think they've been incorrect about any of their judgments of his actual moves?

I think he has been a terrible GM. That doesn't mean that every single decision he has made has been terrible. Nor does it mean that he can't learn, and I'm hopeful that this off-season is evidence that he has learned. But if McCourt were to fire him tomorrow, my only concern would be that he'd hire a Colletti clone who would need 2 more years to learn the same lessons (the hard way).

I want you to know that I really do respect you for the energy, enthusiasm, and terrific research you bring to the comments here (I'm a free rider by comparison), but I don't think you're a Dodger apologist. I think you have a strong inclination to be an everything apologist. Sort of the anti-D4P, but contrarian nonetheless. But not every criticism is unjust. Not every cloud has a silver lining.

Again, I'm not asking anyone to change, as if it would be my place to do so. You, sir, are one of the brightest lights here, and one of the reasons I never miss a comment (although I usually read them well after the fact).

I'll make a gentleman's wager with you on that one. USC is in for one heck of a beating.

This a weird channel. Sometimes the songs are a little warped. It's almost like a scratched record or CD or an old VHS tape. The songs sometimes speed up a little bit or slow down a little bit.

We as a community get up in arms when Will Carrol takes some vague shots at our Chad Billingsley but when BP takes the same vague shots at Ned based on unpublished innuendo only a few get rankled by it.

Timeless

When the Padres face the Dodgers in China next month, Towers wants them to give the Chinese crowds a preview of Dodgers-Padres games this season. "My hope is we can kick their tails over there and give them a little taste of what we're going to give them over the course of the season," said Towers, addressing a luncheon at the Hall of Champions in Balboa Park.

is this an acceptable conversation or am i beating a dead horse?

Saw my brilliant niece off yesterday, when she flew down to Mexico where she will finish out her Junior year in college. She won't be speaking English for 3 months and in her off time will be working in a local orphanage. She may be the whitest person they are likely to see since she hails from a place where the sun is just read about but rarely seen.

That said, I will accept the bet. Whomever loses owes the other Eric a gentleman!

Wait, that didn't sound right.

Also, everyone here should make sure they listen to what the other person is saying. Sometimes we're talking past each other - we're so eager to make our point that we're ignoring what's just been said.

i've never told a blogger what they should or shouldn't be talking about, and 99% of you do the same to me and i apprecaite it but it's annoying when 1 person comes out of the woodworks and tell me basically i'm annoying for bringing up a story i never got to talk about

One of my long time friends is also a Raider fan, and we differ on which team is our most hated. I pick the Chargers because I live here, and he picks the Broncos because he spent time just outside of Denver.

66
I agree with that, but consider the source. It was a local function in San Diego, a banquet. If it was a press conference, I would see the need for condemnation, but Towers was just playing to the audience.

http://tinyurl.com/395y6j

From the article, "If the Padres sign Clark, they could have up to five switch-hitters on their bench, which Towers considers ideal."

Looking at their roster, for them to have five switch hitters on their bench would yield the following lineup:

C - Barrett
1B - Gonzalez
2B - Iguchi
3B - Kouzmanoff
SS - Greene
LF - Hairston
CF - Edmonds
RF - Giles

with a bench of:
C - Bard (S)
1B - Clark (S)
IF - Calix Crabbe (S) -- Rule 5 guy
IF - Luis Rodrigues (S)
3B/OF - Chase Headley (S)
OF - Paul McAnulty (L) -- out of options

The Dodgers's performance is all the more galling when you consider how much playing time they gave to players making virtually nothing (e.g. Kemp, Martin, Loney, Ethier, Broxton, Billingsley, etc.).

Conversely, other people sometimes don't seem to read your posts carefully, either.

When people talk past each other, that's frustrating.

Something about the Padres just gets me fired up. I am grinding my teeth right now. haha.

I think I need to paint a big black X on my office door to keep people out.

This fall at a college football game I saw a punter who was trying to pin the other team deep catch more of the ball than he wanted, and it nearly went thru the goalposts.

If it had, would it have been worth 3 points?
Do accidental field goals count? Do FGs have to be place kicked? When was the last time anyone dropkicked a FG?

Thx for answers to these most monumental OT questions here on Football Thoughts. :)

Yeah, but mediocrity and payroll are not independent. A GM's performance should be largely evaluated based upon what they get for the money they spend. Towers & DePo et al. got a lot: Ned got virtually nothing.

In fact, Ned may have got less than nothing, in that his players may have done more harm than good.

Also, if you went to all 3 games of that season ending series, you can take solace in the fact that you saw the Dodgers clinch a playoff spot on Friday night, one day before the Padres did, rendering Chad Curtis's season-ending strikeout meaningless.

In Nedco's defense, for all his mistakes, he does try and push the Dodgers over the top. I think he has learned and now has the team positioned to be good for a while. I guess I would rather live with that than be a Padres fan.

If it had, would it have been worth 3 points?
Do accidental field goals count? Do FGs have to be place kicked? When was the last time anyone dropkicked a FG?*

No.
No.
No, they can be dropkicked, but a punt is not a dropkick. A dropkick bounces on the ground before it is kicked.
The last dropkicked field goal was probably in the 1940s in the college game, probably in the 1930s in the pro game. It's not easy to do with footballs shaped the way they are now.

In the past, you could dropkick a field goal from anywhere on the field, but now you can only do it from behind the line of scrimmage.

Chad Curtis's career was meaningless. He is high on my list of players I disliked.

Although he's neither on notice nor dead to me.

I think the only way that a team with no budget or farm system can win is just signing a bunch of very injury prone guys for nothing and praying. To the Padres credit, they seem to be going with that this year.

96 it is a beautiful day. I have to write a 5 page paper today for library school. I sure hope there is some kind of prize at the end because looking out my window, I wish I could be driving up to Mount Wilson or something today.

The checks are an advance on next year's refunds, and most, if not all of the money, will be deducted from taxpayers' refunds in 12 months' time. (CNN.com)

So: a president is gonna give people a bunch of money while he's still in office, and then make the next president give it back?

Reg, that reminds me, for all the Padres are able to do with their solid GM, how do they not have a better farm system now than they had years ago?

I feel like Towers has been doing the same thing for almost 7 years.

SD: 4 playoff appearances, 1 World Series
Ari: 4 playoff appearances, 1 World Series (in only 10 years)
SF: 4 playoff appearances, 1 World Series
LA: 3 playoff appearances
Col: 1 playoff appearance, 1 World Series

Their big screw up was in 2004, when they used the 1st pick in the draft on a more signable Matt Bush, who bombed as a SS and is now a Class A pitcher out for all of 2008. The passed on Stephen Drew, Justin Verlander, and Jered Weaver because of monetary issues. But looking back, wouldn't those couple million dollars seem like chump change to have any one of those players on the team now?

Blocking prospects with big-name players is not 100% about winning: it's at least somewhat about trying to generate fan interest, gaining the approval of other "Baseball People", showing a willingness to spend a lot of money, and, ultimately, about trying to keep your job.

While that may be true, I think it's also true that there is variation among GMs with respect to the degree to which they consider winning to be the "end" or the "means".

http://tinyurl.com/2khd2l

I too dislike the camouflage uniforms.

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=7117

It seems like you want the BP writers to stop thinking that signing Pierre was monumentally stupid. If the Crown Prince goes a couple more years without being a moron, and BP is still picking on him, that'll be something. But if Pierre is the Dodgers LF this year, why should they back off? If he's the LF next year, too, why should they back off, then?

Because it makes Dontrelle cry.

How does a team apportion money on its budget?

There are many items that could have a very strict operating budget: Facilities maintenance, stadium operations, administrative operations, etc. Sometimes, though, a team like the Padres and even the Dodgers seem to eschew spending $5 million (Hocheaver, White) on a prospect in the draft, but have no problem spending that same money on a replacement level player (Pierre, Loaiza).

I know that Selig has this whole slot level money thing he is pushing, but it makes me think that some teams are willing to spend loads of flashy FA money, but have pitiful scouting and drafts. Do major league teams apportion money for baseball operations as a whole (that would include scouting, player development, Minor and Major League payroll) or do they budget by department? Depending on the way each organization organizes its budget, it could explain the reluctance of teams like the Padres to spend on the draft when teams like the Royals and Diamondbacks who have a comparable Major League payrolls are willing to spend more money on draft prospects.

So my question was, leaving their flippant style, and strong opinions about Colletti's mental acumen aside, and even leaving aside their pessimism about future moves that might or might not actually happen, have you ever disagreed with their analysis of one of his actual moves?

And I'll borrow a bhsportsguy phrase and point out "just to be fair" that the article about the Dodgers in the 2008 Prospectus gives Little a pretty hard time too, saying that he made the least he could out of the roster that Colletti handed him, playing OFers in inverse relation to their productivity, only playing Ethier and Kemp together 26 times, etc, losing control of the clubhouse. They even worry that Torre might fall victim to the same PVL love. So they don't hang Colletti alone.

Yup, Penny Wise, Pound Foolish.

Matt Bush - $3.15m
Jered Weaver - $4m
Stephen Drew - $4m ($5.5m potential total including major league salaries)
Justin Verlander - $3.12m ($5.6m potential total including major league salaries)

So the Padres really saved less than $1m by drafting Matt Bush, and they actually paid a higher bonus than Verlander got, yet got a player regarded -- at the time -- as clearly inferior to the other three.

It also appears that if the writer was going to update his piece with the fact that the winter went by without dealing the kids perhaps that would soften his snarkiness.

PVL is the last refuge of scoundrels and clueless GMs who want to explain why they overpaid for a lousy player whose contributions would have to be away from the field if they exist at all.

Still, if the use of "PVL" seems snarky, that's because it is.

Barring a Spring meltdown Ruggiano should make the Ray's 25 man this year too.

Until the answer to that question is yes, he and others like him will draw negatitive reviews from BP. In fairness to Ned and other GMs, the aptitude of the CEO/president and owner above them will factor into how the job can or will be carried out. If your boss is John Henry rather than Tom Hicks, your chances of succeeding as a GM go up quite a bit. But it's very difficult to know what role owners play in a GM's ability to do his job. My guess is that McCourts are erratic people driven largely by ego. I see no evidence that the McCourts are committed to intelligent process, or capable of it.

I believe David Price felt that he was not ready for pro ball yet, White was a local kid going to his state school.

Again, I am not saying that the Dodgers should not be willing to go beyond slot.

Also, its also appearing that if Hochevar beats Kershaw to the majors, it won't be by much and it cost the Dodgers a lot less for a better player.

This kind of thinking allowed the Tigers to deal for Miggy and the D-Backs to deal for Haren without crippling their organizational depth.

"We didn't hire Joe Torre to finish .500," said general manager Ned Colletti.

- Dodgers.com

http://tinyurl.com/2hvfvb

http://tinyurl.com/3ak3gn