Jon that is an AWESOME "They Might Be Giants" reference. Because, you know even Old New York was once New Amsterdam...

D'oh! I forgot about that.

Does that mean the "Puttin' On the Ritz" song wasn't by Taco either?

Of course, "Chavez Ravine" became attached to the whole area, but you can see how the area along Stadium Way is lower than the surrounding area.

Sort of like a ravine.

Also, found out there was a Me-n-Ed's up here so took the wife there on recommendation from some other pizza thread - and it may be the worst pizza I've had. I can only assume that these things are franchised and there is a high variability between one and another.

Yeah, I think the feeling that he's weak or dumb is entirely stupid. On the other hand, the worry that he may be injury-prone is not unfounded, alas.

Subhead: Some of his teammates wonder about his toughness.

But this is the only quote: "Abreu seems to be more hurt than I am. I've never seen this before," said Kent, who has been sidelined for a week himself with a tweaked hamstring. "He's missing a grand opportunity to show his wares."

Penny
Billingsley
Lowe
Kuroda
Loaiza
Kuo
Broxton
Saito
Proctor
Beimel
Park
12th Spot Between: Brazoban, Koplove, Myers

I see Park making it because they'll need at the very least a long mop up guy.

Too bad Unclie Miltie doesnt post anymore. He was the #1 Jeff Kent hater and apparently he was right.

Put me squarely in the camp that gives Abreu the benefit of the doubt and would ask Mr. Kent, politely, to keep it to himself.

Like everything with Kent, I think it's open to interpretation. My interpretation is that Kent is doubting the injury.

Just a suspicion. Y'know, old-school play and all that.

I would assume that if you're going to negate the value of having a flavorful crust, then you better go hog wild with the delicious sauce - but not so! The guy in front of me ordered his with extra sauce and maybe that's what you have to do to get up to the requisite appropriate amount of sauce, but it was definitely "under-sauced."

The toppings not so special either. Pepperoni was run of the mill. The cheese nothing special.

I'm getting fired up about this all over again thinking about it.

And 14 fair 'nuf, Jon. The past is not always indicative of the future. Especially when, as with Andy LaRoche, at least one of the injuries, the most serious one, was a complete freak accident. Still, is there something about Abreu's physique that is prone to not recovering very fast or to getting strained/wounded more easily than normal? I only agree with Kent that it's a shame he can't play more right now because it's a golden opportunity. I'm sure he's as bummed about it as anyone.

23. Perhaps we are just too willing to give people the benefit of the doubt and naive. Who knows, you'd probably have to hear his tone to have a better understanding of what he meant.

I've never seen this specific injury before?
I've never seen a recurrence of an injury that was supposed to have been surgically repaired?
I've never seen a guy fake an injury?
I've never seen a guy so unwilling to play through pain when he's got a clear chance to win a job?
I've never seen two guys who play the same position on the same team get hurt simultanously, and now it's happened to the Dodgers twice in a week?

I'm surprised people are surprised by this. I mean, I don't even live in L.A., and yet it was obvious even to me that Dodger Stadium is located on top of a hill and not in a ravine.

I wonder if mgmt will truly have their opinion of the heir apparent (abreu) shaped by the injuries he's dealing with. Will he get the "injury-prone" tag? Or worse, like Malingerer or Soft? It wouldn't surprise me terribly if Furcal's contract drive actually got Ned to extend him and maybe Hu ends up at 2nd Base. This would not be my preference, but you could see it going that way.

(I love that joke)

And like Jon said above and I'll add to it, Blake Dewitt isn't Evan Longoria, Dewitt wasn't even supposed to be in major league camp this spring so the idea that he could step in for the Dodgers (and grab a 40-man spot) seems somewhat misplaced.

Now, if the Dodgers have doubts about Nomar altogether, that is an entirely different subject but only the item in Peter Gammon's column seems to indicate that there was a hint of possibly eating his salary. But that was before LaRoche's injury.

Chavez Arroyo, on the other hand...

Tony Jackson "real reactionary"

Who goofed, I've got to know.

http://tinyurl.com/3bqhux

So, he comes up to bat in AT&T Park in San Francisco, and the fans, many years removed from his years in a Jint uni, boo him mercilessly.

For those who will be happy enough to see him go, how do you react to the Jint fans who boo him?

I'm curious.

That is the short version...

http://tinyurl.com/3848vy

All teams realize they may have let a good player get away when a player is taken in the Rule 5 Draft.

At the Winter Meetings of 1970, the Red Sox lost a young outfielder in the Draft to the St. Louis Cardinals.

In the Cardinals' final cut of the spring of 1971, that young outfielder was returned to the Red Sox. He went on to six seasons with the Red Sox and another 11 seasons with Milwaukee in a career that produced 241 home runs, 1,125 RBIs and five All-Star appearances.

That player is Cecil Cooper, now the manager of the Houston Astros.

In Houston's camp this spring, Cooper is keeping a close eye on a young pitcher by the name of Wesley Wright, a Rule 5 Draft selection from the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Cooper is fully aware of the ramifications of letting a good young player get away.

Can I be the wacky commentator? I could hop in a canoe in McCovey cove with my dog...oh, wait.

Ned Colletti, obviously, is not. Either that, or his definition of a good young player is "Mark Sweeney."

Would Eric Chavez play in Chavez Ravine?

I really don't think the Dodgers think Nomar is a viable solution and they are wise to think so. The real question is do they go for the short term solution Nomar, Hu, Abreu while Andy heals in hope that when he comes back he can stay healthy enough to help or do they bring in a long term solution(one year).

Or will it be the Vero games that will be pool reported? I can't imagine that they'd fork over the dough to have reporters covering games in both places.

Or maybe they'll just run AP stories.

Wright 5 games 5.0 IP 3 hits, 2 runs 1 ER 1 HBP 5 BB 2 K.

The same way I react to all Giants' fans. With extreme prejudice!

It's debatable whether Mark Sweeney is worth even ONE of those players, but he cost us both of them.

Tony Jackson has already happily said that he begged off the trip (with the latest cuts at their paper, I don't think they would have sent him anyway.)

Now if you are reporter covering the Red Sox or the A's, since they are playing games that count, I have to think they are sending their beat writers (and in Boston's case, probably the sportswriting staff from both newspapers)

And here I go again, when it comes to the guys in the minors, you have to think that Watson, White and the minor league folks had more than a say on who to keep and who to let go. To put this all on Ned is just wrong.

Here is an example of everything that's wrong with television news. "Nightline," which used to be hosted by Ted Koppel, tries to get to the bottom of the Eliot Spitzer mess by interviewing Heidi Fleiss.

http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=4427996&affil=ktrk

"He could go to Nevada, go to the Bunny Ranch, probably have finer-looking girls, and they would protect his privacy!"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Pizza

Dodgers name squad for China

http://tinyurl.com/2xbr96

If Nomar could play 4 games out of 6 for the first 8 weeks of the season, we are only looking to this backup to be 1/9th of the team for 1/10th of the season until LaRoche comes back.

Surely Young (plus maybe Hu) can cover that.
Surely Esteban German / Ronnie Belliard could do even better, at a pretty low cost. Realistically, Abreu can only hope to become as good as German/Belliard. Young may not amount to much more.
Hu is the only real prospect in there, and then only because he plays SS. Will Hu's development be stalled by playing twice a week at third vs. major leaguers instead of 6 times a week at short vs. minor leaguers for two months? No, I doubt it. The team has nothing to lose by going with Hu for this 1/90th of the team's seasonal contribution and then taking it from there with LaRoche while Hu "develops" in the PCL.
(If developing in the PCL is possible...you have to hit about .450 there before anyone believes you can handle major league pitching)

Not unless "spotty" is a synonym for "excellent." I mean, he won a batting title one year and hit .360 another year, and that despite always being young for his league. His PECOTA comps include people like Rod Carew and Howie Kendrick.

There are legitimate concerns about his lack of power, walks, or steals. But there's reason to believe he'll be a .300 hitter with good doubles totals and excellent second base defense. That's not a superstar, but it's nice enough.

And then they stopped letting him play there. The badness of the first two years is where his reputation comes from. .971 is not too bad anyway. Better than Tony Abreu's career.

For a middle infielder, he projects to be above average. His defense is excellent and his offensive track record basically states he will be around a .300 hitter that is a doubles machine.

There is value in that type of player. I don't really see and commentators proclaiming he is going to be a star in the Utley mold. But he projects to be a solid major leaguer at a position where stability for the Dodgers is unknown beyond this year.

For prospects, its hard to look at metrics and measure how good they are defensively. Unfortunately, due to the lack of record keeping and other variables, scouting is essentially the best way to go for minor leaguers.

However, the Beavers have a much tougher opponent in the unnamed ones. But if the Beavers were to win, it would be really sweet.

And likely make Jon happy too.

I guess that question was rhetorical, but I'll answer it anyway. His performance in Vegas translates to .302/.348/.447 at the major league level according to BP.

If you expected him to put up outstanding numbers right away, you're holding him to a higher standard than we've held guys like Matt Kemp, Jonathan Broxton, and Andy LaRoche to.

The point you appear to be trying to make is that Abreu's not "super-valuable," and you're correct. He's merely valuable. But I don't see what's wrong with that. He's better than most of the second basemen teams are running out there. You express dismay that he's unlikely to post a .900 OPS. That's true, but since when is a .900 OPS the standard we hold second basemen to?

Your point about D. Young is well taken, but that doesn't make Abreu a bad player.

Is there not irony in Chick Hearn being one of Bill Walton's idols... despite the fact that he's a life-long Celtics fan?

http://www.nba.com/news/walton_hearn_tribute.html

---

89

Took a good look at the China lineup for the ol' Boys in Blue. Hopefully ol' Tommy will go easy on Kershaw back in Vero.

By the way

...next week's goodwill trip to China, headlined by position starters... and veteran utility man Mark Sweeney.

I actually thought it said "and weak utility man Mark Sweeney," when I first read it :)

He sort of sounds like a guy who just hibernates.

Further, in 2009 and beyond, all we can hope for is that he will be average. (We HOPE he becomes as good as average). So that to me is not much reason to care about him. And if he pulls a butt muscle and can't play because of some 8-month old surgery for an undiagnosable condition, well...

For the record, I think the Dodgers treated him badly last year by maneuvering to short him on salary.

At the end of the day, he is not on my radar screen as a Dodger to care about.

Pierre doesn't hit for power yet has usually swung the bat early in counts anyway. But now he is at least concentrating on working his way into hitter's counts so that an on-base percentage that has disappointed him over the past three seasons might rise.*

That second paragraph sounds like speculation, based on Pierre's quote.

If Pierre can walk 20-25 more times this year, pushing his OBP into the .350 range, he will be a valuable player for the team. Since he only walked 33 times last year, I realize that I'm talking about almost doubling his walk rate while keeping everything else the same. I wonder if that's even possible, beyond random chance.

Look, I love to bash Pierre, but I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. It has got to be clear to him that despite his paycheck he's in danger of losing his job due to his pitch recognition skills. It's just possible that he's saying to himself, "Well, fine, if they want me to walk a couple more times, I'll walk a couple more times" -- and figuring out what he needs to do if he's going to do that.

Many of us have asked, facetiously, if he's so dedicated to working on his game, why doesn't he work on recognizing balls from strikes? Diamond Leung reports that he's doing that, and that is a good thing.

Maybe those are low expectations, but if we can get Pierre to the point where we can say "Not a millstone around the neck of the offense, that guy," then it may be time to address other issues on the team.

113 It'd be closer to Nomar-LaRoche level than the current Pierre-Ethier, except Pierre doesn't get injured. I suppose someone could argue that Pierre playing better would hurt the team because he might play more and thus make Ethier play less, even while Ethier remains the better player. But, I also suppose Pierre playing better ought to be good for the Dodgers. Maybe his trade value goes up. This whole Pierre-Ethier competition has turned me into a bit of an Ethier fan. He seems under-appreciated by the club, and I'd be disappointed that he doesn't play as much as he should.

If I were the GM, I'd stick Ethier in LF, figure out when he'd start to get expensive, and mark my calendar to replace him before then.

The Nat's pitchers were all over the place - great velocity but couldn't find the plate. I attribute Pierre's walks more to their wildness than their patience.

DeWitt looked strong in the field and battled nicely in some ABs - that doesn't show in the box score.

Josh Bell made his Big League camp debut and was overmatched in his one AB - however, it was against Chad Cordero so don't read too much into it.

I'm sure that the Angels public relations campaign about that helped create the (urban) legend about the name.

"Rookie Kershaw gets help from legend"
http://tinyurl.com/2bgo3v

I'm leaning towards the team needing to acquire a decent back-up because Abreu's status is so questionable. Whether you believe he's a wimp or really hurt is irrelevant; the fact is we can't count on him for much this season. Hu would likely handle the position fine, but the organization needs to see if he's a MLB shortstop with the Furcal contract situation pending.

It's not like acquiring a back-up would be that costly. However, the problem is finding a good defensive back-up who can hit a little. Most of the names tossed around are good hitters with little defense, which is the opposite of what we need.

I'm the biggest Greg Miller fan in the world, but even I can see that he probably needs a change of scenery. I think Miller gets us the middle infielder we need, giving him a chance to restart his career and getting us the back-up we need.