LADodgerTalk.com – Matt Kemp, Clayton Kershaw, Vin Scully, Andre Ethier and the Dodgers

The season started yesterday as Mark pointed out and so far we are 1-0.  The bats are back! If Cliff Lee were to join this team, would he be our #3 behind the rejuvenated Chad Billingsley?  Fear the beard has an entirely new meaning. You can make the argument that Cliff Lee is one of [...]

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The Dodgers have played 106 games and have won exactly 56 of those games.  That means there are exactly 56 more games in the season.  If the Dodgers go .500 the rest of the way, they will win 84 games.  That’s not enough.  They need to win at least 5 or 6 more than that [...]

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The Good As the trade deadline has come to a close, I think that we are all in agreement that our offensive line-up has been significantly upgraded with the additions of Hanley Ramirez and Shane Victorino.  Some think we paid to steep of a price for Victorino and we might have; only time will tell.  [...]

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Special Trade Deadline Edition Ned has already made a deadline deal (Hanley Ramirez) and he did it on the quick.  Quick Ned, make another or the Dodgers might be dead! It’s just my opinion, but I think the Dodgers will get Ryan Dempster AND Alfonzo Soriano.  Look, it’s no secret that Ryan Dempster wants to [...]

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It was in 2004, that I first really noticed Andy LaRoche.  He was a 20 year-old third baseman who ended up with 23 HR and 76 RBI in A ball.  The next season, he hit 30 HR with 94 RBI and had a slash line of .305/.374/.553.  He had amazing opposite-field power – I said [...]

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The Dodgers have a penchant for trading for guys with bad attitudes named Ramirez and parlaying that into some sort of “mania.”   Is LA ready for “HanleyMania?”  On May 5, 2102, I wrote this: I know the Dodgers would love to have David Wright.  He may never hit over 20 HR again, but he’s [...]

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Clayton’s WHIP is higher than it was last year at the All-Star Break, but his ERA is lower than it was at the same juncture last year.  However, if you have been watching Clayton Kershaw as long as I have been watching him, you know that something is wrong and I am going to give [...]

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Kevin Youkilis is hitting third for the White Sox and has raised his batting average to .249.  He hit the game winning homerun last night and scored two runs, but the Dodgers weren’t interested.  They were stupid then and they are stupider now.  Here’s the deal:  my son-in-law is a Red Sox fan and he [...]

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I’m sure some of you will disagree with what I am about to say, but all you need to know about James Loney took place during the play at the plate in the 7th inning when he scored the go-ahead run.  It turns out that he made the right play in trying to go around [...]

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Sometimes, you just need to get lucky and that is exactly what the Dodgers did last night. On-the-job-training is tough.  We went through it with Matt Kemp.  We  we’re tantalized in the beginning by Andre Ethier and watched his softness and moodiness and then watched him mature.  We have seen it with Clayton and many [...]

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The Dodger implosion has been nothing short of legendary as they have plummeted from the Penthouse to the Outhouse in less than two weeks.  What a fall by a bunch of marginal major leaguers who have no business of being on a major league field!  Adam Kennedy, take your wheelchair and AARP card and go [...]

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Yoenis Cespedes and Jorge Soler were both rated as better players than Yasiel Puig, but they got a lot less money than the Dodgers are giving Puig.  Is he worth it?  Do the Dodgers know something others don’t?  I certainly don’t know.  There’s not a lot of information and scouting reports on him.  Ben Badler [...]

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Honestly, this is no time to panic, but I do feel that Kevin Youkilis could have give the Dodgers a shot in the arm.  He’s younger than Pujols and is finally healthy after two unhealthy years.  Just like Pujols hitting .190 was not going to last, Youk is not going to keep hitting .225. (actually [...]

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It appears to me that some of you have no clue how to buy something… and get a good deal.  Most of you want to be able to trade an obscure player for Ryan Braun – it doesn’t work that way! When you say that “this player’s stats are not as good as Loney’s or [...]

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The game was blacked out on MLB.com last night (Indy is too close to ChiTown I guess) so I was relegated to watching the highlights on MLB.com.  Drat! Junkyard dogs never say die.  You gotta’ kill ‘em or they will kill you in the end.  What a motley crew!  They just keep on winning.  They [...]

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For the record, I like Kenley Jansen – I especially like his demeanor on the mound.  I like that he glares at the hitter and is ready to throw the ball as soon as he gets it back from the catcher.  The Dodgers had a previous closer, also a rather large man, who sometimes looked [...]

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That’s Rule #1 in JunkYard Dogology.  You had better kill a junkyard dog, because, if you don’t, it will come back and bite you.   And, bite Dodgers did last night, led by the biggest junkyard dog of them all, Jerry Hairston, Jr.  – Five (count ‘em 5) freaking RBI’s by a lifetime journeyman utility player [...]

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With scrubbs, duds, wanna-be’s, never were’s, career minor leaguers, castoff pitchers, raw rookies and junkyard dogs, the Dodgers keep pulling wins out of their butts, and I like it.  I like it a lot!  These guys have a never-say-die attitude and simply believe they are going to win.  A lot of the credit has to [...]

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James Loney is now a late-inning defensive specialist as a result of failure to perform with a foreign object (baseball bat) in his hand.  It’s a sad story and the chapter needs to be closed with a trade or a DFA… or maybe this is a wake-up call? The long and the short of it [...]

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The last time Logan White took a position player with the first pick in the draft was in 2002 on a pitcher named Loney.   Wait!  Loney was a pitcher too – he was just converted to 1B. Oh, maybe he’s going to convert Seager to become a pitcher.  You will read all over the blogosphere [...]

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