Re 125 , here's Kahrl in the BP chat today:

>>Otto (Halifax): Do the Dodgers now have the most expensive 4th Outfielder ever? or does Juan play?

Christina Kahrl: Them, or the Angels; the Los Angeles de los Angeles owe more to Little Sarge than the Dodgers do to Pierre, and it's now clear that the Angels plan on putting Torii Hunter in center and moving Matthews to a corner, which is similarly unwise. In both cases, neither guy should be starting in a major league corner, and either one of them would make a nice solution (funded by the people who made the mistake to sign them) for teams that don't have a ready-now center fielder.<<

Christina Kahrl: I think Nate's leaked projection of .258/.345/.488 sounds about right as a mid-point, although I like the odds of his doing better than that.<<

The Dodgers' decision is different. Do you part with other players of value to plug in a perceived "hole?" There no incumbent to think about.

XXXVII Baseball World Cup Taipei 2007

Andy Laroche: 33 AB, 3 2B, 3 HR, 5 BB, 5 K, 10 RBI

Of course, that has nothing to do with whether LaRoche is as injury-prone as McPherson.

The other thing is that Pierre does have value. A lot of times I get the sense that the regular commentators think that Pierre shouldn't even be in the league. His numbers aren't terrible, we can just do better. And he's not worthless, he's just not worth 9mil a year. Maybe 5mil in today's market.

That said, Pierre (picking up half his salary) to the O's makes a lot of sense for both teams?

Well, they are, actually. And that's not to say he shouldn't be in the league. He'd be an acceptable platoon starter for a second-division team, or an acceptable backup for a good team. That's about it. But yes, he should be in the league.

Speaking of which, I gathered from comments earlier in the day that we could form a DT urban planning caucus, including me, D4P, Vishal, and deburns (I think). Perhaps their are others. I'll volunteer the group to discuss the Jones signing in the form of a mitigated negative declaration.

I posted a lot that day.

I was really tired.

Sam in SC
Sam DC
Sam NYC

any other ones?

Pierre, Laroche and Prospect for Rolen?

Swap bad contracts, allows Ethier and Kemp to play every day and dramatically improves the defense while getting rid of the Pierre albatross.

Benching Pierre is perfectly acceptable, if he can't be traded without also losing a good player.

Does Samuel count in your list?

If Ned trades Pierre for Rolen, he'd probably throw in LaRoche as well to make room at third base.

I call for a moratorium on moving good young players out of position to accommodate bad old players.

Bad contract, scmad contract. Laroche alone right now is more valuable than Rolen. Laroche with a bad disc ,pleuresy, the plague and shingles could out-homer Rolen.

Pierre and Rolen being of equal value is, I think, one of those statements that's slightly hyperbolic, but also not all that far off from being true.

Pierre and something of slight value, like Orenduff, might balance the deal out.

What is a guaranteed and the two keys to the trade, are removing Pierre from the ledger and improving the defense. Rolen/Ethier is a massive upgrade on d over Pierre/Laroche. We would have 7 positions with very good gloves to go along with Kent and 7 guys who can hit 20 homeruns to go along with Furcal.

Well, we did have a statue there last year.

I was reading a yahoo article on the jones signing http://tinyurl.com/2y7fws
which had this very interesting statement.

'A Dodgers source said that if the season began today, Pierre would compete with Andre Ethier for playing time in left field. Matt Kemp and Ethier would be penciled into right field.'

Competiveness is good right?

You talk about a competition that's over before it started...!

The top 10 plus LAD 3B, former LAD 3B, and some potential LAD 3B. Nomar was listed as a 1B so I put him at the end of the list. This does not factor in Defense.

1 Alex Rodriguez NYA 96.6
2 David Wright NYN 81.1
3 Chipper Jones ATL 76.0
4 Miguel Cabrera FLO 71.4
5 Ryan Braun MIL 57.2
6 Mike Lowell BOS 46.5
7 Aramis Ramirez CHN 43.9
8 Chone Figgins ANA 36.2
9 Garrett Atkins COL 34.8
10 Adrian Beltre SEA 28.6

25 Wilson Betemit LAN 7.9
29 Eric Chavez OAK 4.7
30 Scott Rolen SLN 4.1
35 Tony Abreu LAN 1.3
36 Travis Metcalf TEX 0.8
39 Joel Guzman TBA -0.6
42 Andy LaRoche LAN -0.8
49 Brandon Inge DET -3.3
63 Joe Crede CHA -10.8

43 Nomar Garciaparra LAN 0.8

IMHO: Rolen, Chavez and Inge are not significant upgrades over a LaRoche / Nomar tandem.

8 Rolen 36.6
20 Chavez 12.9
22-T Inge 9.4

14 Joe Crede CHA 20.2
20 Eric Chavez OAK 12.9
23 Brandon Inge DET 9.4
34 Bill Mueller LAN 1.4
35 Wilson Betemit LAN 0.5
41 Joel Guzman LAN -1.2

http://tinyurl.com/yop9us

Okay, I'm done for the day. I put the open letter back on the top of the site - seemed appropriate, at least in the moment. Chat on ...

http://vivaelbirdos.com/story/2007/12/6/9556/51471

He starts with this:

suppose the cards were to offer rolen plus $18 mill to the giants, who have expressed interest in scott and possess a surplus of young arms (from which they reportedly are willing to deal). mozeliak asks for matt cain in return.

And then continues with this:

approach the dodgers and offer rolen + $18m for andy la roche or chad billingsley; approach the angels and offer the same for jered weaver, or for ervin santana plus a prospect.

"Scott Boras spent the day meeting with clubs about Andruw Jones, Kyle Lohse and his other free agents... [Boras said:]"But those one- and two-year deals people are talking about are not what we're looking for."

And we learn from the Steve Henson article on Yahoo that Colletti got a change to openness to the 2 year deal from Boras on Monday.

Of course, Jones was signed to a two year on Wednesday... maybe Boras was just driving up the price ;-)

We'd have to throw in about a TON of 100 Grands, but I'd be Satisfied.

Jones' agent, Scott Boras, reached his agreement with Los Angeles late Wednesday night. The Dodgers had 379 putouts in center field this year, the fewest in the NL, and their 129 homers ranked 15th among the 16 NL teams. Not exactly what new manager Joe Torre is looking for in his first season with the Dodgers.

"The owner, Frank McCourt, had a lot to do with Andruw's decision,'' Boras said. "Frank McCourt did a great job of illustrating to Andruw that if he repeated his performance and played to the levels he played to in the past, they had the wherewithal to keep him.''

If we did not have Furcal JP would be slotted into the leadoff role and his lack of power would be relatively unimportant, although his defense would still be problematic. A team without a leadoff hitter might look upon JP as a useful commodity.

If he was truly interested Ned should not have that much difficulty trading JP to a team like the WhiteSox or Rangers provided he kept his return expectations to a minimum. With the escalation of CF salaries JP might seem reasonable at $9M for a leadoff hitter.

Why Ned ever thought we required TWO leadoff hitters is beyond me.

I completely agree with your assessment of him. Great hitter, great fielder, especially a few years ago. Crucial to the Angels' success and badly missed after he left. The team's assessment that he was too expensive was predicated on their over-valuing of McPherson, I think. They saw K-Rod and Lackey become immediate stars and figured McPherson and Kotchman would do the same thing.

I guess the circle would be completed if Ned traded for Glaus, blocking LaRoche, and then Glaus got hurt and LaRoche stepped in and became a star.

Too many pronouns confuse me.

I recommend this for humor/publicity/icon purposes up next to Fanerman.

i never get complaints

hahahahahahahahahahaha

hehe taking Jon's advice and putting it into practice....

thanks Jon.

Do Dodgers have an ace up their sleeve?

>> The Jones signing was smart and efficient and will help folks -- including owner Frank McCourt -- forgive the terribly large contract and burden that Colletti placed last winter on Juan Pierre.

One mistake down, one to go.

Now it's time to repent for the giant error that was Jason Schmidt. <<

## Colletti is not done. He can't be done. Colletti must now use his kids to find his ace, and there are a couple out there. ##

%% No, no, the Dodgers will not and should not trade the short-armed center fielder. Just because he was overpaid doesn't mean he lacked value. Did everybody somehow miss that he was second in the league in stolen bases and led the league in sacrifice bunts? %%

http://tinyurl.com/2jmmd7

Nahh, most of these amateurs only have the one 'sam' in their names.