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

I want you to consider a few questions and how you would have answered them on January 20, 2010: If I had told you that James Loney would hit more home runs than Andre Ethier in 2010,  would you have probably felt pretty good about the 2010 season? If I had told you that RDLR [...]

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Shoot!  Shouldn’t all of Major League Baseball learn from the Cardinals?   Last years Hot Stove signings included Carl Crawford and Jason Werth who both were gigantic (and expensive) boat anchors for their teams.  The Cardinals, on the other hand, didn’t make any big waves.  Hey, they already had one of the Top 5 players [...]

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A few years ago, I was repeatedly berated for calling Andre Ethier “soft.”  I backed off for a while when he had some clutch hits, but let’s face the truth:  He is soft.  He’s a singles hitter who can’t hit lefties.  It is what it is.  You can’t pay a soft player what he is [...]

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I felt compelled to post two days in a row, because I believe that the next ten days will be critical in the History of the Dodgers.  A lot can happen in the next ten days.  It might not all happen, but most of it has a good chance of occurring.  Here’s what I see [...]

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No other word comes to mind when trying to describe the current state of the Dodgers.  The only good thing is that Frank McCourt got his loan so that he could meet payroll.  Maybe that will make the boys in blue more relaxed.  It was a “back-door loan” in that Bud would not approve  a [...]

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The Dodgers lost to the lowly Royals 11-5, but let’s not forget that the Royals are rated #1 by Baseball America with the most prospects.  In fact, they are loaded – that’s what averaging 96 losses over the past ten years does for you.   They have a bunch of arms and MOST of the [...]

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Assuming is not always good, but right here, right now, that’s all we can do. Let’s assume that the Dodgers are done trading or signing free agents (I have no opinion either way).  They might be wise to wait until June or July to make a trade out of strength, not weakness, but be that [...]

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Most Rants – Few Raves… First the Raves: Clayton Kershaw, Chad Billingsley, Hiroki Kuroda, Ted Lilly – that would be a nice rotation 1-4, but the last two are most likely out of the picture.  Raves to Kershaw and Billingley.  Clayton has shown that he can be the Ace and Bills has righted his ship [...]

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It looked for a while that the Dodgers might have squandered a 3-0 lead through 4 innings in Cincinnati last night, so after a 2-1/2 hour rain delay, the Dodgers took batting practice and tacked on 9 more runs to spank the Reds 12-0.  That score in itself, doesn’t mean much.  What means the most [...]

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The Knucklehead:  Getting shot in the leg is enough to cause you to get branded as a knucklehead, but there’s a lot more to it than that.  Vicente Padilla arguably has some one thebest stuff you will ever see, but it’s his “knuckle-headedness”  which has kept him from achieving his potential.  Obviously, something happened in [...]

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Many of you had the Dodgers dead and buried a couple of weeks ago (no, I am not going to just let it go – you need to learn a lesson) and now they are red-hot-on-fire-the-hottest- team-in-baseball! Like it or not, here is what you are seeing: You are seeing the maturation of some young [...]

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The Dodgers took a lot a flack for signing Jamey Carroll and I was on record as saying that he could not play SS.  Well, he showed the naysayers that he has value.  He is hitting .280 with a .382 OB% and played a very solid, if not spectacular SS while Raffy was out, and [...]

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I think James McDonald and Josh Lindblom will both play a big role with the 2010 Dodgers. If Hiroki Kuroda can continue to hit 95 MPH on his fastball and mix up his pitches like he has, he will be an All-Star this year. The Kiddie Corps of Chad and Clayton are starting to hit [...]

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I have a busy day today, but here are a few observations: That’s the Padilla the Dodgers need.  If he can pitch like that, they will be just fine. The Dodgers offense is among the most potent in baseball, with Ethier, Kemp, Loney and Martin coming into their own, Blake improving at 36, Manny being [...]

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REALITY CHECK Reality Baseball:  Blake DeWitt has won the second base job – Hands Down! Fantasy Baseball:  Are the Dodgers stupid enough to send him down to solve “roster issues?” Reality Baseball: Charlie Haeger is the best Option for the Fifth Starter and absolutely proved it yesterday. Fantasy Baseball:  Does anyone really believe that Russ [...]

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Arguments can be made who should hit where, but I do think Joe Torre has a definite plan of hitting Kemp right behind Furcal (who has looked re-juvenated this Spring) and ahead of Ethier with Manny at Cleanup.  This is all subject to change, but that lineup followed by Loney and Blake would give excellent [...]

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Just a laundry list of a few things I expect to see this year (actually my wish list along with predictions): A healthy Rafael Furcal who is 100% physically and (most importantly) mentally (it takes a while to recover mentally from a surgery) regains his form and is again one of the elite short stops [...]

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… because my old buddy, Tony Jackson hit this one out of the park:  Billingsley Learning To Let Go. Whatever needs to be said about Chad has now been said by Tony, and it justneeds to play out.  In a nutshell, Tony summarizes Chad’s struggles like this: “Billingsley’s biggest problem, the one that has plagued [...]

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I can see only three of those pitchers making the team, maybe just two. There will be some tough battles this Spring. What do you think?

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It turns out that Ronnie Belisario and I have a lot in common – No I don’t have a DUI, but we both have Visa problems that prevented us from reporting yesterday.  He hasn’t been able to obtain his, and I have to work to pay mine off!  So there you go.  Joe Torre isn’t [...]

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