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

The Baseball Winter Meetings are being held in Indianapolis beginning on Monday, December 7th thru Thursday, December 10th.  While MLB would not issue me a credential, I will be there and hopefully get lucky.   The only thing that credentials really do is get you inside the interview room when there are news conferences. I can [...]

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Answer:  One is a bottom-dwelling garbage-eater and the other is a fish! Get used to it.  The Dodgers are now officially bottom-dwelling, garbage-eaters.  They love to eat up cheap, journeyman-like players who may not have much upside but are cheap, cheap, cheap.  Warm bodies to stock AAA… and maybe, if a Randy Wolf or Adrian [...]

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Just in case you haven’t figured it out, attendance at Dodger Stadium is not the only source of income for the Dodgers.  While their have attendance has been stellar,  most other teams  have seen substantial declines in attendance, which means that the Dodgers get a smaller cut of the gate and concessions.  It is not clear [...]

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If you have a home which is worth $400,000 or $400,000,000 and you are served divorce papers by your spouse,  what do you do?  It’s obvious that a great part of the parties’ net worth is that asset.  Some people are idiots about this – some have even burned-down the house rather than split the [...]

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The Dodgers have improved over 2008.   They won more games, but they still couldn’t get past the Phillies, and the Phillies will still be good next year.  I suspect that Raul Ibanez had his career year and will slip back to reality next year and the Phillies will have some holes to fill, just like [...]

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 This team is far from needing rebuilding, but any good team needs to ”retool” every year.  Last year, the Phillies won the World Series with Pat Burrell in LF.  They evidently decided  that he wasn’t the answer this year, so they signed a guy even older who ended up having his career year.   The Phillies may yet be [...]

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Blame it all on Joe Torre if you want, but when we score ZERO runs, the likelihood of losing is pretty high.  Blame it on Kuroda if you want.  Blame it on Billingsley or the fact that  we left Jon Garland and Jeff Weaver off the playoff roster.  But, the reality of the situation is [...]

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Never send Honeycutt to the mound without taking out the pitcher.  I felt it coming both times – Kershaw was breezing and midway  through the fifth inning, he lost it.  Flat out lost it!  I mean, even Ray Charles could see it!  He went from being very good to just downright awful.  To me, it [...]

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I’m talking baseball – not football.  The Dodgers have one win down and ten more to go to win the World Series.  You have to play them one at a time, but we need ten more wins in order to call this season a complete success.  Again, conventional wisdom was wrong – we beat Carpenter [...]

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Some people have said that you have to get Carpenter early or you don’t get him.  Not true – for the past three years, the league is hitting .305 against Carpenter after 61 pitches. The Dodgers need to be patient… and then NAIL Carpenter.  POUND him!  HAMMER him!  SAW him off!  SCREW him!  If that doesn’t [...]

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This is it!  These last three games determine home-field advantage as well as the division championship.  I say “Captain Insano Shows No Mercy!”  We have beat the Rockies like rented mules all year.  No reason to show mercy now.  Just beat them down!  Ubaldo Jimenez is 0-3 with a 7.77 earned-run average in four starts [...]

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Now that we have clinched a playoff spot and are within two games of  clinching the NL West Championship, I think it is time to shift the emphasis from our starters, namely Russell Martin, James Loney, Orlando Hudson, Rafael Furcal, Casey Blake, Manny Ramirez, Matt Kemp and Andre Ethier, and recognize the Stuntmen.  Actually, this [...]

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I think some of you may misunderstand why I said Chad Billingsley “has deep-seated psychological problems.”  First, you need to know that I have been a Chad Billingsley fan way back to the beginning of his career.  I am still a big proponent of Chad Billingsley and… I’ll say it:  I think he should be in [...]

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If there was any doubt, it is painfully apparent that Chad Billingsly has deep-seated psychological problems.  Fear of success can be just as paralyzing as fear of failure. Many people fear success because it tests their limits and makes them vulnerable to new situations. Even worse, success can expose weaknesses and force people to deal with [...]

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It’s all in the perspective, unless you want to look at it some other way. “Chad Billingsley is a bum, because he has been horrible and has a 4.05 ERA!”  Did you know that Cole Hamels has a 4.07 ERA and the guy who some want to take Bills place in the roattaion has a 4.02 [...]

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It turns out that Chad Billingsley’s pitching problems are the fault of the guys who work on his car.  Mr. GoodWrench is at fault!  Boy, that really makes me mad and I know that he’s bent  out of shape about it as well.   Joe Torre informed us of the situation and Ken Gurnick of Dodgers.com [...]

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Do the Dodgers already have a ticket to the dance with Destiny this October?  After flirting with mediocrity for a couple of months, theDodgers are starting to peak late in the season.  It’s too early to anoint them Champs of anything, but they do have a magic number that we will post that until they clench.   The [...]

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The Great Lakes Loons were the last Dodger team to be eliminated from the playoffs, losing to the Ft. Wayne Tin Caps last night 4-3 in 10 innings.  Dee Gordon was 1-5 with a stolen base, Kyle Russell was 1-2 with a BB and an RBI, Silverio hit a HR and Aaron Miller pitched a [...]

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“We know we are a good team.”- Andre Ethier “The one thing I found out about them, is every time they’ve been tested they’ve done all right.” – Joe Torre “We’re just going through a bad stretch right now.”  – Russell Martin “We’re all right.  We’ll come back tomorrow and have a better game.” – [...]

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Of course they do.  I know and you know it.  How else do you explain the following: Earlier in the season, I trashed Andre Ethier and call him Mr. Softee – presto, he’s an MVP Candidate. In the middle of August, I said we couldn’t win with Broxton as our closer after some blown games – [...]

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