Author Archive: Phil Gurnee
MLB Over / Under
Grant Brisbee is holding a poll on the MLB over/under wins for 2018. You can only pick one bet in his poll. The Dodgers are at 96.5 which is a very high bar so I wouldn’t put all my money on that bet. I would instead look a little south and bet on the Angels …
2018 Dodger predictions
I want to get these in before spring training blurs my mind. Biggest Dodger surprise in 2018 will be …. Wilmer Font. We need context here. Wilmer Font will not be the best Dodger but I think he will surprise because so little is expected of him. This is a weak limb as he has a …
Spring training confidence
Why am I confident in the 2018 Dodgers even though they have shed millions of dollars in salary while keeping pretty much the exact same team that played in the 2017 World Series minus the over the hill back up first baseman, the longest tenured Dodger who only managed 64 plate appearances while raking in …
Win Shares be gone
When Bill James came out with Win Shares in 2002 it was a stat I had been waiting for. Baseball Reference didn’t exist yet for me so until then I had no way to normalize the year to year variations of major league baseball statistics. With this book, you could look at trades and see …
Matt Kemp day
It had to be strange for so many writers who predicted that Matt Kemp would never don Dodger Blue after being acquired in the Charlie Culberson trade to be interviewing him on Feb 13th but there he was, still a Dodger as spring training officially opened in Glendale, Arizona. There is BSOYL and then there …
Dodger Goose Eggs
If you want to know just how dominant Kenley Jansen was last year, the best place to look might be the new-fangled relief stat created by Nate Silver called Goose Eggs. We looked at Goose Eggs last April when Nate first wrote about it on fivethirtyeight. I immediately fell in love with the stat, and if …
Dodger odds and ends
We said back in November we expected the Dodgers to have a fairly quiet winter but I didn’t think the team would go into full black bear hibernation mode once the team made the Charlie Culberson deal. As we get ready to head into spring the team that took the field for game seven is …
Dodger NRI for 2018 spring training
You might yawn when you hear about Non-Roster Invitations but when you consider what the Dodgers have gotten out of their veteran NRI over the past few years it beholds us to take a look at the group for 2018. Last year this group included Brandon Morrow. In 2016 Charlie Culberson and Luis Coleman made …
End of an era
With the trade of Blake Griffin yesterday the Clippers ended the most successful era in the history of the franchise. In 2009 the Clippers won the lottery and picked the best player in the draft Blake Griffin. In typical Clipper fashion, Blake would fracture his kneecap in the preseason and miss the entire 2009/2010 season. …
Dodgers, Yesterday and Today 