Hoops, even for the loneliest number
Basketball celebrates it’s 125th anniversary this month and is as popular as ever. They say 300 Million Chinese play the sport, and the above photo shows that even in the poorest places, they can be found shooting hoops.
It is not surprising to me that the sport has become a hit around the world. It has one thing going for it that almost no other sport can boast. You can play basketball by yourself. You can’t do that with baseball, nor football, nor soccer. And it only takes two, to play a competitive game.
It is also an inexpensive game, the cost being simply a basketball. You can find hoops everywhere at parks or schools. My backyard hoop was installed 25 years ago, and is still going strong.
I’ve been playing basketball for fifty years, I was never good enough to play on any high school teams, but throughout my life I’ve played the game constantly. At one point I could play in my backyard on a regulation 10-foot net, or next door on a 9-foot net. When I wanted to pretend I was Wilt Chamberlain I went next door and dominated the boards on my own misses. I was Wilt/West/Goodrich(had to shoot left handed), McMillan, and Happy Hairston.
Considering that Dr. James Naismith created the sports simply to keep athletes vigorous through the winter, you’d have to think he would look at his creation today and marvel.
Even today, I’ll try to shoot about 50 free throws a day, shoot around the world, and continue to try to look smooth on the reverse layup even though I never did. My days of playing an actual game of basketball are over, but shooting hoops can continue just about forever.
Narrative busting day
With Kenley Jansen re-signing with the Dodgers for 5/80 today, two different narratives were busted.
First Narrative – MLB players always sign for the most money. I had laid out reasons why it would be a bad idea for Kenley Jansen to sign with the Marlins even if the Marlins made the best offer. I didn’t however, count on the Nationals to also outbid the Dodgers, and for Kenley to turn down as loaded and successful a franchise as the Nationals for the Dodgers, is really saying something. Kenley must have really wanted to stay in Los Angeles. I’m not a big fan of locking up a closer for 5/80 but because it is Kenley Jansen, I’m as all in as he is.
Team sources say that Kenley Jansen had a better financial offer from the Nationals; decided to “go with his heart”https://t.co/stGhSpYROd
— Marly Rivera (@MarlyRiveraESPN) December 12, 2016
Second Narrative – This Los Angeles Dodger front office would never pay to keep their best players. They just gave the second highest contract to any closer in baseball history.
Boom
Later today we might find out that Justin Turner is also coming back which would complete the key parts of the band. If Blanton is replaced by Greg Holland, so much the better.
Bradbury Building, Boston Camerata, Eggslut, and Aliens
We took in a Christmas show at the infamous Bradbury building today. It wasn’t your typical Christmas show. The Boston Camerata does this:
Take a Christmas journey through Mediaeval France, Italy, England and Provence with “America’s foremost early music ensemble” (Le Monde, Paris). Their “jubilant and inspiring” (The Boston Globe) seasonal music program of festive carols, songs and processionals is “beautifully honed simplicity
while wandering around the iconic Bradbury Building. Concert goers were strewn around the five floors, and the singers walked up and down between the 1st – 3rd floors singing all the while. The voices were angelic and I understood not a word. The acoustic were great, the singing was great, but I couldn’t help but think I was in church. And when I’m in church I daydream
So………………..
I started thinking about how cool it would be if we were invaded by Aliens and it turns out that the human voice at a certain pitch is what would destroy them. The Aliens couldn’t have normal ears because you couldn’t simply have them tune them out with earplugs, these would need to be aliens with a different kind of sensory organs, organs that would be susceptible to a certain octave.
In this way, Jackie Evancho would save the world.
This is how you kill an hour of mid-century Christmas singing.
The day was complete with a meal at the Grand Central Market right across the street. The line for Eggslut was too long so we settled for Bombos and it was delicious.
Pondering left field
2017 LF is going to be interesting.
From the Left Side:
Toles – keeps showing skills, looks like he could be a promising leadoff hitter. Has the speed, showed good OBP skills, had some pop. His arm plays well in LF. I’d think he’d rank very high defensively over a full season in LF. We have to see more but right now Toles ranks as a steal by the LAD FO.
Ethier – I’m hopeful a winter of workouts should get him back to where he was before he got hurt as long as we remember he’s a year older and on the wrong side of 30.
Do you go with the young man with promise or the veteran who missed most of the year? I expect Andre to be the starting LF against RHP unless his health is an issue or the Dodgers move him between now and opening day. Toles will get his chance.
From the Right Side:
Trayce Thompson – showed some interesting skills, his defense certainly plays in LF, power plays, kind of a right handed Joc to me. Because of injuries, he got most of his at-bats against RHP and actually hit them better than the few at-bats he got against LHP. In 2015 he tore up LHP. He could be a Randall Grichuk type of player if things go right but I do expect him to be playing CF against LHP so maybe I should not include him here.
Scott Van Slyke – Roberts showed no faith in SVS when he came back from injuries so hard for me to imagine a scenario where he gets much burn in 2017. I don’t expect him to be on the team come opening day if Darin Ruf makes the team.
Darin Ruf – was acquired in the Howie Kendrick deal and like SVS can play 1st or LF. He would be the most defensive challenged of the outfield options. Like SVS, it was not long ago that Ruf was hitting left handing pitching at a good clip. Ruf had a sore shoulder to start 2016 and never got in a groove at the major league level. He did tear up AAA and came back in Sept. In 2015, Ruf crushed LHP to the tune of a 1.107 OPS. He had a walk rate about 10% and a K rate of 15%. He did this damage in limited at bats so still a huge question mark as to how productive he can be against LHP. I like Ruf, and I hope the FO acquired him for a reason. Others think he will be DFA’d and was simply a player in the Howie trade, not someone the FO actually coveted.
Kiké Hernandez – in everyone’s dog house and certainly not someone I’d want in LF. If Hernandez is not an infielder I don’t see the point. I’m sure he’s not as good as he was in 2015 nor as bad as he was in 2016. Can you carry someone like Hernandez who can only hit LHP and that is up in the air?
Dark Horse:
Cody Bellinger or Willie Calhoun – If Howie Kendrick can learn to play LF in an emergency in the major leagues, I’m sure WIllie Calhoun could do it an emergency. That emergency would be that no one is hitting and they want his bat in the lineup. We know Bellinger can play the corner outfield spots. Both these guys are left handed so I’d think the only way they get a shot is if both Toles/Andre go down via injury or poor production. Both these players could be gone in big trades by opening day. If the Dodgers do trade for Dozier it certainly makes sense to move Calhoun.
Even though there had been talk of Ryan Braun that seems to have cooled, so I’m expecting Puig in RF and with Toles/Andre/Thompson/SVS or Ruf they seemed to have left field covered against both sides of the plate. Course Thompson is probably going to be covering for Joc in center field against LHP. Unless it is Enrique Hernandez.
1958 – 58
For some reason, I was looking forward to turning 58 this year having been born in 1958. On Turkey Day it became official. All year I’ve thought of myself as 58 years old so turning 58 was just an after thought.
The LAD were 58 years old this year. It is strange comfort to know I’ll always be as old as the LAD are. I started this blog because I wanted to write again without any constraints about what I could write about. Most of the time I’ve been true to the name of the blog but I have tended to go off script and I enjoy doing that.
Since I started writing again in May I feel I’ve been fairly consistent putting out Dodger content that is a tad different from the other Dodger blogs, or at least with a different mindset. Still, with so many Dodger blogs it is hard to differentiate yourself and I’ve failed to do that.
I appreciate Gary popping over and leaving his comments, I wish I had a boatload of Gary’s but I have only the one. It would have been fun to build a little group of readers but that hasn’t happened. I think my target audience doesn’t use twitter, or it could simply be that my writing simply isn’t interesting enough for people when they already have so many other excellent options. Either way, I have no more consistent readers today than I did back in May.
Which is a catch -22 for me. Not having many readers allows me to indulge myself in writing whatever I want, but I’ll admit that when I feel I’ve written something good, it does bother me that few will read it. Ego’s are annoying.
The LAD 58th birthday had a good run, hopefully, I will also.
Dozier and Dodger infield dingers
If the Dodgers do trade for Dozier, and re-sign Justin Turner they will have a good shot at hitting 100 home runs as an infield.
The last Dodger infield to hit 100 home runs was in 2004. That was mostly due to Adrian Beltre who belted 48 home runs. Shawn Green hit 22 home runs as a 1st baseman (28 total), Jose Hernandez hit 11 as an infielder (14 total), Alex Cora hit all 10 of his as a 2nd baseman, Saenz hit 4 as a 1st baseman(8 total), Ventura hit 2 (5 Total), Izturis hit 4 and thus the total was 101 dingers.
Those four by Izturis were a career high. The 48 by Beltre was also a career high. But the difference between Izzy’s 4 and his next best was two. For Beltre, his next best was 36 in 2012.
The 1979 infield was something else. Garvey, Lopes, and Cey all hit 28 home runs. They all hit them only as infielders. Lopes hit his career high with those 28, his next best was 17. Bill Russell chipped in 7 giving them a season total of 91. Mickey Hatcher is listed as an infielder and hit one home run, but it was as a right fielder so no go for Mickey.
The 2016 infield would appear to be the 3rd best. Justin Turner hit 26 as a 3rd baseman (one as a pinch hitter). That was of course, his career high, with 16 being his previous best. Cory Seager hit all 26 of his home runs as a shortstop. Also his career high:). Adrian Gonzalez hit all 18 of his home runs as a 1st baseman. Not a career high. That 18 tied him for the lowest home run total since becoming a full-time 1st baseman in 2006. Chase Utley hit 14 home runs all as a second baseman. Howie hit one home run as 2nd baseman and one home run as 3rd baseman. Enrique Hernandez hit one home run as a 2nd baseman. Rob Segedin hit one HR as a 3rd baseman. Charlie Culberson, of course, hit his infamous home run as a second baseman, and Chris Taylor almost cycled with his lone home run as a second baseman. I think that gets them to 90
So to make it pretty
2004 – 101
1979 – 91
2016 – 90
Of course, neither Dozier or Turner is part of the 2017 LAD infield but if they were it wouldn’t take too much imagination to see
Adrian – 22
Dozier – 30
Seager – 28
Turner – 20
Giving the starters 100 home runs, and maybe a handful from the bench.
It won’t be Rizzo / Baez / Russell / Bryant but it will do.
Allen Craig / Justin Turner – My oh My
I always wondered what kind of contract Allen Craig would have gotten had he hit free agency after his three-year run from 2011 – 2013 as Justin Turner has done instead of signing that 5/31 deal in the spring of 2013. 5/80 maybe?
I remembered Craig having a nice run for the Cardinals after coming out of nowhere at age 25. He was never a ranked prospect because he was usually considered old for his minor league levels.
So when he showed up and kicked ass at age 26 for the Cardinals you can say the baseball world was a little surprised. He kept it up for three years and then simply fell off the planet.
But he did have one hell of a three-year run. And damn if wasn’t almost like Justin Turners recent three-year run. I’ll be honest, when I started putting the numbers in the spreadsheet I was pretty surprised at just how close they were.
| Player | OPS+ | PA | Runs | HR | RBI | Walks | K’s | TSL |
| Craig | 136 | 1296 | 180 | 46 | 229 | 92 | 229 | .312 / .364 / .500 |
| Turner | 136 | 1393 | 180 | 50 | 193 | 112 | 236 | .296 / .364 / 492 |
They even had a declining OPS+ from year one through year three. Plus they started year one as a part time player building into year two.
110 IP gets you 3/48
By many accounts, Rich Hill is a great guy, great competitor, fun to watch pitch, and now very wealthy.
Perseverance paid off for Rich Hill when he inked a 3/48 deal with the Dodgers today. For the time being, Hill slots into the number two behind Clayton Kershaw in the Dodger 2017 rotation.
As noted earlier today, Rich Hill is all sorts of an enigma. It might be fair to say that no one has taken the route that Rich Hill did to success. Even if that success was 110 innings. When he pitched in 2016, he was one of the best pitchers in baseball. Problem being, he only threw 110 innings. And that was after pitching all of 54 professional innings in 2015.
His history is so checkered with red flags he could be working the Daytona 500, but you can’t discount how far he has come in the last fifteen months. In July of 2015 he was still pitching Independent baseball but refused to give up. His story was barely a flicker, but when he wakes up tomorrow it will be a full blown flame fueled by almost $50,000,000 buckaroos.
The Dodgers decided that they will only look at his recent history and that 2016 was an indicator of what he could bring to the team from 2017 – 2019.
This will be the fourth time in three years the Dodgers sign a health risk to a contract. Brett Anderson, Brandon McCarthy, and Scott Kazmir have not worked out so well though they did get one good year from Anderson before doubling down with a QO last winter.
Hopefully, the fourth time pays off for the LAD front office.
Hill has made the curveball cool again, and until he hung one against Jose Lobatron he was looking like Don Sutton in game two of the NLDS. His home run rate in 2016 is why he had such sparkling numbers. To keep those numbers sparkling he’ll need to make sure that hanging curveball is a rarity, and I’m just not one of those who think you can throw it as often as he does (42%) without hanging them just enough to offset all that great stuff he can do.
Time will tell if this curveballer is the real deal. The LAD front office is betting on it, I’m hoping they are right, but I’m not betting they are right.
Hill/Turner/Jansen – what a bizzare trio
The LAD have three big free agents this season and all three of them are as unlikely as they come. At some point, all three of them had to think their major league careers were either over, never going to happen, or be satisfied with making a team every spring. By the end of this week, this trio may be close to scoring a combined quarter million in earnings.
Kenley Jansen is now the all-time Dodger save leader, but at age 21, he was still a horrible hitting catcher in A ball. If not for the switch to pitcher, it is doubtful that Jansen would still be in professional baseball. And what a switch it was, quite possibly the greatest switch in history from full-time position player to pitcher. Jansen should be looking at something like a 5/80 deal this winter, possibly more, doubtfully less.
Rich Hill has only made nine million dollars in his long but sketchy career that started in 2005. He might double that in 2017 based on 110 innings in 2016. He is 36, has made all of 94 starts since 2005, has pitched only 610 major league innings. How unique is it for someone to have their best season at age 36? I don’t know, but I don’t remember it happening in the pre and post-testing era of MLB and I’ve been around a damn long time. Just 15 months ago, it seemed his career was over, now he looks to be scoring a 3/40 deal, possibly more, doubtfully less.
Justin Turner was a solid utility player for the Mets from 2011 – 2013. Inexplicably released by the Mets, Ned Colletti scooped him up in Feb of 2014. Turner was 29 years old at the time. He has done nothing but hit rockets since being a Dodger. He has been so good I even did a little story to see if he has had the best three years stretch of any LAD 3rd baseman in history. His comp would be Casey Blake, except Casey Blake could only dream of having the run that Justin Turner has been on. Strangely enough, it was only this past May when Justin Turner was struggling mightily and many fans felt they needed to upgrade at 3rd base, and quite a few Longoria trades were being floated. Also as good as Turner was this year, it was the 3rd straight year he actually saw his OPS+ or wRC+ decline. His OPS+ as a Dodger has been 155, 134, and 123. Yet his glove has gotten better and better. Rarely do you see a utility player at age 29 become a star. Even rarer do you see a 3rd baseman have their career season at age 31 in at bats. Justin Turner looks ready to score at least 5/85 this winter.
Baseball is all about the curve, and for Jansen, Hill, and Turner, this was a great curve.
Who will stay, who will go
The hot stove is heating up and by the end of the week, it appears very likely that the Dodgers will be adding some new blood while saying good-bye to old friends, or never were friends. This is an exciting time for fans but a strange week for players as they wait to see where they will be playing in the future.
The Dodger 40 man roster currently sits at 39. The Dodgers are expected to sign Rich Hill but they may be delaying that action as they work to clear more space on the 40-man roster.
Veteran Dodgers likely to get moved this week include either Scott Kazmir or Brandon McCarthy or both. Yasiel Puig’s name keeps getting mentioned. Along with the veterans if the Dodgers do make little or big trades you can expect some prospects to get moved.
Names being mentioned this hot stove include:
Andrew McCutchen, Brian Dozier, Ian Kinsler, and Yangervis Solarte.
Supposedly Justin Turner and Rich Hill are still very much in the Dodger wide angle lens.
This past July I listed the Dodger prospect list and the prospects I least wanted to get traded. Montas was on that list and he was in the Rich Hill trade. Since that time several prospect sites have upgraded their lists so this is what the top thirty Dodger prospect list currently looks like sorted by MLB ranking.
I’ve sorted by the MLB prospect rank, but have also included the Rotowire and Fangraphs Dodger prospect rankings. As you can see Cody Bellinger is either 1 or 2. Fangraphs is much higher on Yadier Alveraz than they are on Jose De Leon as is Rotowire. Alex Verdugo has the honor of being ranked number three across the board. Rotowire is higher on Starling Heredia than anyone else. DJ Peters pops in on both Fangraphs and Rotowire while being ignored by MLB. Andrew Toles for some reason does not have a fan at MLB but both Rotowire and Fangraphs like him very much. MLB goes 30 deep, Fangraphs goes 21 deep, Rotowire only goes 10 deep.
| Prospect | BirthDate | MLB | Rotowire | Fangraphs | POS |
| Cody Bellinger | 7/13/1995 | 1 | 1 (15) | 2 | 1st/OF |
| Jose De Leon | 8/7/1992 | 2 | 6 (79) | 4 | SP |
| Alex Verdugo* | 5/15/1996 | 3 | 3 (42) | 3 | CF |
| Willie Calhoun* | 11/4/1994 | 4 | 4 (74) | 6 | 2nd |
| Yadier Alvarez | 3/7/1996 | 5 | 2 (25) | 1 | SP |
| Yusniel Diaz | 10/7/1996 | 6 | 5 (81) | 9 | CF |
| Walker Buehler | 7/28/1994 | 7 | 7 (126) | 5 | SP |
| Jordan Sheffield | 6/1/1995 | 8 | 10 | SP | |
| Gavin Lux* | 11/23/1997 | 9 | 12 | SS | |
| Austin Barnes | 12/28/1989 | 10 | 11 | C | |
| Will Smith | 3/28/1995 | 11 | 14 | C | |
| Omar Estevez | 2/25/1998 | 12 | 18 | 2b/SS | |
| Starling Heredia | 2/6/1999 | 13 | 8 (135) | 16 | OF |
| Brock Stewart | 10/3/1991 | 14 | 7 | SP | |
| Josh Sborz | 12/17/1993 | 15 | SP | ||
| Imani Abdullah | 4/20/1997 | 16 | 17 | SP | |
| Chase De Jong | 12/29/1993 | 17 | SP | ||
| Brendon Davis | 7/27/1997 | 18 | SS | ||
| Jacob Rhame | 3/16/1993 | 19 | RP | ||
| Jacob Scavuzzo | 1/15/1994 | 20 | OF | ||
| Micah Johnson* | 12/18/1990 | 21 | 2nd/OF | ||
| Ronny Brito | 3/22/1999 | 22 | SS | ||
| Johan Mieses | 7/13/1995 | 23 | SS | ||
| Kyle Farmer | 8/17/1990 | 24 | C | ||
| Keibert Ruiz | 7/20/1998 | 25 | 13 | C | |
| Edwin Rios* | 4/21/1994 | 26 | 1st/3rd | ||
| Mitch Hansen* | 5/1/1996 | 27 | OF | ||
| Andrew Toles* | 5/24/1992 | 28 | 9 (137) | 8 | RC/CF |
| Mitchell White | 12/28/1994 | 29 | 15 | SP | |
| Trevor Oaks | 3/26/1993 | 30 | SP | ||
| D.J. Peters | 12/12/1995 | 10 (143) | 18 | OF | |
| Dustin May | 9/6/1997 | 19 | SP | ||
| Yaisel Sierra | 6/5/1991 | 19 | RP |
Dodgers, Yesterday and Today 