Jeff Kent Would Be a Great DH
He really would. He’s 40 and playing the field is taking a toll on his performance. Also, he most certainly doesn’t have the range he once had. If he were a DH, he might play another 2 years! Who would want him and who would he want to play for? Well, the N.L. is obviously eliminated and there’s no way he’d want to go to a team that didn’t have a chance to win it all. So, lets’ consider the options:
- Yankees - Matsui and Giambi have it covered - no option here
- Red Sox - Some guy named Ortiz has it sewed up
- Angels - This may be the best fit and all he’d have to do is move across town
- Rays - This could also be a great fit, if the Kids didn’t drive him nuts
- Twins - I doubt they’d pay
- Indians - Remote chance
So, I’d give the Angels Kent if they’d give us Sean Rodriguez. Hey, I’m serious. I think Bowa could give LaRoche or DeWitt a crash course in playing 2B.
Then I’d send Pierre to the Cubs (hey, they are so despirate they are considering Jim Edmunds) for Jeff Samardzija. I like Pierre, but he’s the odd man out here. Jones is untradable and all we can hope is that he snaps out of his funk, and he is showing signs of it.
Hu needs to go back to AAA and play every day. He’s up a year too early! LaRoche needs to be up here.
Blake DeWitt continues to make the best of his situation. How can we justify taking him out? We can’t! His fielding has been exceptional and last night he made a throw, I didn’t think he could make! I’d like to see the following lineup this Weekend:
- Ethier LF
- Martin C
- Kemp RF
- Loney 1B
- Nomar SS
- DeWitt 2B
- LaRoche 3B
- Jones CF
Change is good.
Don Mattingly has allegedly spotted what Andruw Jones problems are and results are apparent. Maybe he should work with Preston…
Garciaparra at short? Great.
I give him 3 weeks before something else is scroinged.
Our lineup, in early May, already going through several changes due to injuries. I realize this is part of the game, but doesn’t it seem like the Dodgers go through it more than anybody else?
That will give Raffy plenty of time to heal before Nomar’s left leg falls off.
Part of the reason I am fearful of signing Raffy is his body type and the fact that his game is to play flat-out all the time. I think his body is certain to break down with regularity.
Then there is Kent - 40 years old!
Nomar - Potato chip!
Schmidt - Why didn’t they require a physical when he signed?
Our broken-down players were predictable.
Juan Pierre has a body that won’t break down. Maybe that’s why we haven’t traded him. A healthy Furcal is a better leadoff hitter, but how many games a year will he miss? You can write Pierre’s name at the top of the lineup for 162 games. All the stats in the world don’t account for games missed.
That means a lot!
Bear with me on this one, you’ll like the outcome.
I have 4 kids, two girls, two boys and 9 grandkids; they are all die hard Dodger fans, with the exception of one son-in-law who is a big Cubs fan. You raise your kids hoping they turn out ok, marry someone that will love them as much as you do, and raise a family so you can enjoy the grandkids and have a little payback for all the times your kids turned your hair gray.
On May 8th my youngest daughter and her husband presented the world a bright eyed baby boy, their first child. Now this is the same daughter that at age 8 promised me she would name her first boy after my all time favorite Dodger player. True to her word, we are now the proud grandparents of “Sanford Koufax Cunningham”! How great is that? I can only hope that he turns out to be just as fine a human being as the original Sandy Koufax.
PS: If you have any way to forward this to Mr. Koufax, it would be appreciated. I have read every book written about him and have yet to find a negative word spoken or printed about him.
Thanks
Mark
Good story Mark. Sandy Cunningham. I like it. Make sure the kid has a ball put in his left hand right away.
So what’s with Maza? We have a AAA All Star SS already on the team, do we really need another one?
I still say the reason Raffy is broken is because he is worn out by playing winter ball so many years in a row. He was coming off an injury last year, why not just re-hab it and work out all winter? What, he needs the extra dough?
This could be a long year injury wise. Kent will go down again, Broxton could a blow-out waiting to happen, Saito is wearing bandaids, Nomar, Schmidt (I am not holding my breath) LaRoche - we got some china in our cabinet.
If you think DeWitty’s arm is suspect at third, I thought you’d cringe at the mere idea of Nomah back at short. There’s no question that he’s aged prematurely and is not even a shadow of the player he once was. He can still play with little range, a mediocre bat, but his throwing arm? As a third baseman he throws as hard as Juan Pierre. Every toss has a loop to it like a big slow hanging curve ball.
Furcal is probably the best shortstop in the national league, but if he has a chronic back problem, we’ve got to look somewhere else long term. Every time he goes out of the lineup we miss his hitting, base stealing and glove. Notice how we can’t seem to turn double plays when he’s out of the lineup?
I like the idea of moving DeWitt to second and bringing LaRoche in to play third. We don’t have a solution for short when Furcal goes down. Bad backs don’t get better with age. This is a problem we’ll need to address sooner than later.
Hu can’t hit.
Maza can’t throw.
We need the second coming of Jeter if Furcal must go…
I hope Jones can repeat the play of the last couple of days. The way he got around on the high heater looked like the Jones of old. If his bat speed is back and he keeps looking to hit the ball up the middle maybe there is still some hope for him. But what do we do with Ethier? He’s already shown that he can play every day and you can’t keep him on the bench. If we trade him I assure you we will live to regret it.
This is a fine mess you’ve gotten us into Stanley…
Josh Rawitch of the Dodgers e-maikled me back 2 MINUTES after I sent him the story about Sanford Koufax Cunningham and I hooked the other Mark up with him. You should read about it tomorrow.
What do we do? Well, sluggers sometimes have these problems. David Howard still sucks and Big Poppy is not doing great. Jeff Kent will also come around. I would think that from June to the End of the season, Kent and Jones will be making the pitchers pay.
Nomar? He moves like I used to move at 50. In fact, at 54, I’m not that worse. I just can’t believe how his body has betrayed him! He can still hit in the clutch, however. Of anyone on the team, if there’s 2 outs in the bottom of the 9th and the bases are loaded, I want Nomar at bat! Fielding? That’s a totally different matter!
I say, that if we get Furcal healthy, we trade him, Ethier and another prospect or two for a top flight starter. Then, we either have to live with Hu (I think he’ll hit .250 and play great D tghis year) or see who we can trade for.
We are trying to balnace the old verses young thing. There is no balance - get young or get old. Do one or the other! I would be happy with this lineup for the rest of the year:
1. Pierre LF
2. Martin C
3. Kemp RF
4. Loney 1B
5. Jones CF
6. DeWitt 2B
7. LaRoche 3B
8. Hu SS
Trade all the players you can for as many SS prospects as you can… Hope 1 pans out!
Badger,
It’s actually just the opposite. Raffy used to play winter ball every year, but stopped once he came to the Dodgers. He now says he used to be in much better shape because of it. After the injury last year, he went to the Dominican for the last 1/2 of the season, laid on the beach for two weeks and trained lightly. The Dodgers medical staff then came and cleared him to play to get back into shape, and he played the last month of the season. It’s the first Winter Ball he has played in 3 years!
I think Hu will eventually hit. He has everywhere else hasn’t he? And he is gold in the field. I could live with him at short if we had power in at least three other positions. I think we have it in Loney and in Ethier. Maybe not 40 home run power but when they develop they both can hit 30+. LaRoche could hit 25, and Kemp could be the best of all of them. That’s 4 guys plus Martin. That’s a pretty solid core if you ask me.
I don’t mind the balance of young and old, but there is a huge gap in our age groups. Kent is old school, Nomar plays like a 40 year old and Jones? Not sure what to make of him now. He seems so much older than his 31 years and my outfield doesn’t have him in it. And as for our staff, Lowe and Schmidt both seem ready to fall over and Penny is starting to worry me. 5+ ERA? Where did that come from?
Looking at how this team is constructed, I just don’t think we are there yet. Maybe in a year, but not this year.
Now I hope I am wrong, but I don’t think I am.
I know he used to play every year, and I know he played last year, I guess I didn’t know he hadn’t played the previous two years. I assumed he did because he said it was so important to him while he was with the Braves.
My bad.
I still say he should have taken the winter off of baseball and focused on healing and conditioning. Maybe when you are first starting out, playing winter league would be good for you, but not after signing a huge contract and certainly not after you missed so many games with an injury.
I could be wrong about all of this. I know there are many Caribbean players that go down there every year.
We’re getting squeezed by the random aquisition of of free agent mega buck players who either can’t play every day, shouldn’t play every day or play the same position we already have a young player groomed to step into right now.
Defensively, we need Ethier, Kemp and Jones in the outfield. But Pierre must lead off if Furcal can’t play. But Pierre can’t throw and he costs us every time there’s a base hit to left and a runner on second.
We have three guys to play third, but Nomah can’t seem to stay healthy for more than a week before hitting the 60 day disabled list. DeWitty can’t throw, but he’s aces with the glove and the bat. LaRoche is an unknown quantity and can’t play unless DeWitt falters…
Furcal is the best in the game but can’t keep from tweaking his back and he’ll be gone when his contract is up. When he plays you can sit Pierre and play Ethier, Jones and Kemp. But should you play a guy who hits .170 just because he’s earning 18 million per in place of a speed merchant hitting close to .300? How can you play them both and send a budding superstar to the bench? Should you keep playing the guy hitting .170 in the hopes he’ll break out of a year and one half slump and hit 50 homers again?
How can you trade the budding superstar to keep an outfielder who can’t throw and one who can’t hit anymore but are untradable because you’re paying them way too much?
This is just nuts.
It might be nutso, but it’s Dodger baseball.
If Ethier rides pine this year, he’ll have to be traded or he’ll opt for free agency as soon as he’s eligible–or demand a trade and become a problem in the clubhouse.
Do you smell a blockbuster?
I don’t get the complaints about DeWitt’s arm. It seems fine to me.
His arm is okay. I felt the same way until Mover made the observation that his arm was not comparable to Beltre’s and a few others who had real cannons. DeWitt can make most plays and make it look easy but watch his throwing carefully and compare it to Rolen’s or Beltrte’s or even Furcal’s and it just doesn’t have the same 95 mph velocity and accuracy you see in the exceptional infielders.
The way he manages the glove and his throwing accuracy make him easy to live with–particularly when you see how he handles the bat and hustles like Charely Hustle himself.
Maybe we should trade for Isturis???