Posted on 25 February 2009.
Jason Schmidt feels good. That’s what he said, a day after pitching the 1st inning of Monday’s Intersquad Game. This is a 12-Step Program and he has now completed STEP TWO.
DODGER NOTES:
- Troy from West Virginia has a video that would seem to provide proof positive that Joe Beimel will not re-sign with the Dodgers.
- Tony Jackson says that Torre is a joker: As today’s abbreviated workout was finishing up, Joe Torre called the entire team together on one of the back fields and announced that everyone was going sprint from home plate to first base and then second base, one at a time, before heading back to the clubhouse. He told speedy newcomer Orlando Hudson, the veteran 2B who was signed last weekend to a one-year, $3.38 million contract, to “show everyone how it’s done.” Hudson obliged, burning his way up the line, making a tight turn and then pulling into second as teammates cheered him on in the background. As Hudson arrived at second, he stopped and turned around, whereupon he saw the rest of the team walking off the field. And a good laugh was had by all. `He got me,” Hudson said a few minutes later in the clubhouse. “That is the first time I had a joke played on me by a coach since I have been in the game. But it’s good if it keeps everybody loose, because if you play this game tight, you won’t have any success at all. I didn’t expect that from Mr. Torre. The first voice I heard was Russell Martin saying, `That-a-boy O-Dawg!.’ I turned around, and everybody was walking away. It was just a fun thing. It’s all good.” I DO LIKE IT – IT”S REALLY GOOD! This is loose Dodger team…
- Diamond Leung says that Dodgers pitcher Victor Garate informed Venezuelan officials last night that he would withdraw from the World Baseball Classic after a talk with Dodgers officials that led him to believe he had a legitimate shot at making the team. Garate threw a perfect inning yesterday in the intrasquad game and is bowing out even after going through a photo shoot wearing his Venezuela jersey. “They said I have a big chance to make the team, and if I go, they won’t get to see me,” Garate said, adding the decision was left up to him. Garate, a 24-year-old left-hander, can come out of the bullpen or start, and he went a combined 9-3 at Class A Great Lakes and Inland Empire last year. If you remember, I had him in my TOP 10 prospects.
About Mark Timmons
When you see the invisible, you can do the impossible!
Good for Joe. O Dog must feel right at home already.
I watched the Troy show. Beimel sent him a load of goodies. Troy was just like one of the kids in the clip.
You did include Garate. It does seem strange for the team to tell him that unless there is a good chance. However, he pitched at A level last year. The WBC is poorly timed anyway. Although I like Russell playing for Canada, I actually wish he would have stayed at ST with the rest of the team.
GO DODGERS!!
Last year, as a 23 year old, Garate had a 4.7 ERA and a 1.51 WHIP in A+ ball, and a few months later he has a shot at a Major League roster spot? I suppose stranger things have happened, but I would recommend a blood test and a urine sample.
Plaschke has some of it right. It is Mannywood, but I do not believe the Dodgers are Manny’s last choice. I think he liked playing here and is looking forward to playing here again. It’s not Manny that’s stretching this thing out, it’s Fred and Scat and the pissing contest they have been in for weeks. It’ll happen and the Dodgers will go into this year confident.
I would too if our pitching looked better. Maybe I will be surprised. Hope so.
I watched the 88 final game last night and was reminded that great pitching, timely hitting and a lot of luck can win even if you have a team of below average position players.
Our current group of position players, even without Manny, is much better than the 88 team but the current pitching staff will not match their sub 3.00 ERA.
We need another starting pitcher, preferrably an ace. Peavy may be the only true ace available before the trade deadline. Has anyone heard about him as a team mate. He appears to be a very strange bird.
Based upon last year I presume that McCourt will only trade for Peavy if Schmidt is part of the trade.
I too am concerned about the starting pitching.
Ken – Roy Halladay will be avilable. The Blue Jays are in no man’s land now and will have to head in a different direction somehow. Although they say Halladay will not be traded, there is little doubt he will as the Jays start to build all over again. They would want quite a bundle but we might have it.
GO DODGERS!!
Schmidt sore after 11 pitches. I think I could throw twice that many without soreness, and I am 60. Work it out Jason. We are going to need you to start 30 and pitch 186 innings.
Anybody know the over/under sor Schmidt starts?
sor Schmidt starts? I guess I meant sore Schmidt starts and I found this on the subject:
“Who the heck knows? Seriously. A 36-year-old pitcher with a long history of injury problems, including labrum surgery in mid-2007 that cost him all of last year, is a complete and total wild card. The Dodgers aren’t planning on getting anything from Schmidt in the last year of his contract, and anything they do receive is just a bonus. Set the over/under at five starts. If it looks like he might be able to pitch effectively again he’ll be on the waiver wire to grab.”
It’s 5. Anybody going to bet on this number?
I’ll take the over.
Remember that he pitched in a buppen session two days before and probably threw 50-60 pitches in the game, including warmups.
If you want injury history, then you have to consider that he came back before. I think Schmidt will get over 20 starts this year.
Where he is bodes well for us, because last year, everytime he threw any significant amounts of pitches, he had to be shut down. The surgeons simply “missed” what was causing the pain. Yes, they fix his labrum, but it was the AC joint that was the source of the pain. As soon as they fixed that (minor procedure) the pain ceased. A pitcher is always better the 2nd year back from surgery and this is really the 2nd year for Schmidt. The Dodgers may publically say that they don’t expect much from him, but down deep they are hping he continues.
All indications are that he will.
The question should be, why the hell haven’t we signed Manny? We’re contenders if we do. If we don’t, we’re not. That simple.
I heard he got a feeler from the Tiajuana Toadwhackers–but they wanted a 6 year deal. He’d only give them 4.
I saw a 2006 Dodger game against the Pods the other night on MLB network. We had some big kid get 5 hits including one of the 4 consecutive homers that night. I think his name was Anderson. Darnyel Anderson maybe?
Anybody know who I’m talking about, or better yet, why we ever let him go? He looked like young Manny caliber that night.
If Schmidt can command his pitches and hit in the mid 90s on the gun–with movement–for 200 innings–he’ll win 17 games for us. That’s one helluva big “if”.
Hey lawdog, the player you are talking about is Marlon Anderson. Even though he looked really good that game, hes only a pinch hitter type of player or a player that comes of the bench. Hes been around for a while now,Phillies,Rays,Dodgers,and now the Mets.Nothing special.
TDF
Somedays you will find sarcasm within these posts. Unfortunately you may also find scarcasm.
I believe that the Dodger / Cub game today will be on radio via MLB.com — radio or audio site.
I have the Pitt & Phillies game on now.
Sarcasm is a Free Service Provided At No Additional Charge.
Scarcasm is cutting,,,
Buster Olney on ManRam:
Whenever there are words here or elsewhere about the ugliness and the impact of Manny Ramirez’s departure from Boston, there is uniform reaction from Ramirez defenders along these lines:
1. The suggestion that Ramirez did something wrong in his time with the Red Sox is vastly overblown, and undercut by his remarkable offensive production. Anybody who sees wrongdoing in his exit from the Red Sox must also be into UFOs, because, after all, Ramirez had an OPS of 1.060 in his last month with Boston.
2. There is a vendetta here and elsewhere against Ramirez, fueled by the Red Sox front office.
Well, it’s now late February. There are 29 teams other than the Boston Red Sox, 29 other teams that all want to win, 29 teams with 29 different operating philosophies. The Giants once signed Barry Zito to a seven-year deal, and more recently, they signed Edgar Renteria to a two-year deal, and it’s difficult to find folks on other teams who like those moves.
The Twins usually don’t make a lot of midseason trades, and executives with other teams find this confusing. The Cubs gave an eight-year deal to Alfonso Soriano and a two-year deal to Milton Bradley, and few executives with other teams agreed with those decisions.
The Nationals will pay about $25 million to three first basemen this year and, of course, just one is going to play. The Royals traded for Mike Jacobs, a guy who hits a lot of homers and doesn’t walk much, and many rival talent evaluators would not have made the same move. The Mariners’ highest-paid player is a singles hitter, at a time when teams generally pay the biggest bucks for power. The Yankees paid about $300 million for Alex Rodriguez when they probably could have had him for $200 million, and nobody could figure out why when it happened.
So they are not all working from the same script. There is a lot of independent thought going on in the game.
And yet just two teams have shown an interest in Ramirez, who hit .388 after the All-Star break last season — the Dodgers have serious interest, but only on a deal of one or two years, apparently, and the Giants have limited interest. Ramirez is one of the greatest hitters we have ever seen, a unique talent who put on one of the most extraordinary performances of our generation in his 10 weeks with the Dodgers, and he’s probably going to have to take about half of what Jim Thome got from the Phillies six years ago.
The primary reason for this, unquestionably, is the sportwide perception that he did not honor his contract in Boston and went to extraordinary depths to get himself out of that contract. These are not the on-background musings of a couple of rogue scouts, or the chortlings of conspiracy-theorist sports writers. This is the cemented belief of many executives with many teams, reinforced by Ramirez’s sudden transformation into a high-energy player as soon as he moved from the Red Sox to the Dodgers. The same guy who was clocked at 5.8 seconds going from home to first base in his last week with Boston suddenly was running full-speed for L.A., his hat flying off.
You might think that Manny is getting picked on. You might think there’s no real evidence that he stopped playing hard for the Red Sox.
But apparently, there is an army of decision-makers across the game’s landscape who would disagree with you. It’s Feb. 25 and one of the best hitters of all-time, fresh off one of the best performances ever, is still in need of offers.
This question gets asked all the time now: Did agent Scott Boras miscalculate during this offseason in assessing the Manny Ramirez market?
Personally, I don’t think he did. I think that after Manny’s ugly exit from Boston — and there will always be an unsolved mystery about what role Boras played in that — there was simply no chance that his market would ever develop. Ramirez made his own decisions, and they have come back to hurt him.
Marlon Anderson. Yep! That was his name all right. Thanks TDF! I’m also glad to hear that he wasn’t “all that” because he sure looked good that night! And couldn’t ever remember hearing about him. Oh the humanity! How could I call myself a Dodger fan if we had this young slugger on the squad and I couldn’t remember him???
I was relieved to hear he was never “anything special”.
DODGERS: Endless Manny saga leaves outfield picture a murky mess
By Tony Jackson, Staff Writer
Posted: 02/24/2009 08:11:48 PM PST
GLENDALE, Ariz. – The ongoing and seemingly endless Manny Ramirez saga can look dramatically different depending on the vantage point from which it is viewed.
If you’re Ramirez or agent Scott Boras, you believe the Dodgers are being unfair. If you’re the Dodgers, you believe the other side is being greedy.
If you’re Jason Repko or Xavier Paul, you have a unique perspective on the whole thing.
In an organization that is overflowing with everyday outfielders, backup outfielders and outfield prospects, Repko and Paul are the two players who figure to be impacted the most by whether Ramirez does or doesn’t re-sign with the club.
If he doesn’t re-sign, Repko almost certainly will make the club as a fifth outfielder, with Paul returning to Triple-A as the most likely callup if somebody gets hurt. If Ramirez does return, both players are sure to begin the season in Albuquerque and maybe be stuck there all summer.
“More than anything, I came in prepared and ready to play ball,” Repko said. “I try to better myself every offseason, and all that other stuff has a way of taking care of itself. I just try not to focus on it at all.”
Repko is more diplomatic than Dan Lozano, his agent with the Beverly Hills Sports Council, who last month blasted the Dodgers for keeping Repko buried in the organization despite what Lozano said were repeated trade requests both by Repko and Lozano. His comments came Jan. 19, the day Repko avoided arbitration by agreeing to terms on a one-year contract. Repko received a modest $12,500 raise above his salary from 2008, when he spent most of the season in the minors.
At least Repko, a first-round draft pick a decade ago, is guaranteed a minimum of $500,000 this year, even if he never plays in the majors. Paul, who turns 25 today and has yet to spend a day in the majors, is guaranteed nothing despite having hit .316 with a .378 on-base percentage at the Triple-A level last season. That performance didn’t even earn him a September callup despite the fact he was on the 40-man roster.
Even if Ramirez doesn’t return, the outfield will be set with Juan Pierre in left, Matt Kemp in center and Andre Ethier in right. Delwyn Young, out of minor-league options, and Repko, who has the experience and the contract, would then be the backups, leaving no clear path to the majors for Paul.
I have been listening on and off to the game today. Observations:
1. Abreu playing SS so far is 1-2 with 2 RBI
2. Kemp with a hit and 2 runs scored and a SB
3. Loney is 2-3
4. DeWitt is 1-3 playing 2B
5. Dodgers with 9 hits to the Cubs 7, but are behind 5-3 due to GRAND SALAMI by Ramon Tronocoso.
6. LH specialist Carmen Cali – 1 scoreless inning
DODGERS LOSE 5-3.
Based upon todays game, here’s our lineup:
1. Abreu SS
2. Ausmus C
3. Ethier RF
4. Loney 1B
5. DeWitt 2B
6. Blake 3B
7. Kemp CF
8. Young RF
9. Anyone but Tronocoso P
Ned should consider signing Beimel just to keep Troy as a fan. I wonder if that was really Joe that sent the package? If it was, Joe is a stand up guy. Still waiting for ManRam.
Mark
Do you like the deal Tony Jackson is reporting? It opens the door for Lambo in not more than two years.
Ken,
Yes, I like it.
We’ll see if it will happen.
Boras overplayed his hand.
No way that would fly in this economy.
Manny will be here two years – IF WE WANT!
Lambo might be ready in a year.
He’s not Manny…
But he’ll be good!