Dodgers, Yesterday and Today

No Harper, Kluber, Realmuto, Grandal, Wood, Puig, or Kemp

Phil Gurnee ♦ January 10, 2019 ♦ 1 Comment

Which means that right now, Alex Verdugo is your starting right fielder, and Austin Barnes is your starting catcher. I don’t think Dodger fans were expecting that when news broke that the Dodgers had traded solid rotation piece Alex Wood, fan favorite Yasiel Puig and prodigal son Matt Kemp for prospects and flexibility but a month later time is running out for deals and this is the Dodger positional roster.

At first blush,  for a team who has represented the NL in the last two World Series, this iteration as it stands has so many question marks in a much-improved NL that it is hard for me to imagine this team going to the 2019 World Series.  Alex Verdugo would have to win the 2019 ROY award to match what Puig has done in RF. The only player without any questions would seem to be Justin Turner.

Can Joc sustain the skill gains of 2018 or will 2017 rear its ugly head again?

Can Bellinger bounce back and crush (or even hit ) hit left-handers once again?

Muncy was one of a kind in 2018, now he has to prove that everything before 2018 was just getting him ready for 2018 and that he’s the real deal.

Will surgery rob Corey Seager of his MVP skills? Without Corey Seager putting up a top ten MVP season, this team just doesn’t seem right. So much of the Dodger success hinges on a player who only played twenty-six crappy games in 2018.

Hernandez was just starting to look like a productive everyday player when Oct came by and crapped all over his season.  Can his glove work make up for his offensive deficiencies when facing RHP, or should Chris Taylor be the everyday 2nd baseman?

Austin Barnes starting catcher. That scares most Dodger fans. It doesn’t scare me, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have lots of his own questions. Can he hit like 2017? Can he even physically handle catching 100 plus games?

Does David Freeze have at least one year left of smacking around left-hand pitchers?

Every team has questions but this just seems like a lot of uncertainty for a team in the Dodgers position.  A year from now Alex Verdugo could be considered one of the best RF in the game, and Gavin Lux along with Keibert Ruiz might the starting 2nd baseman and catcher but until they are ready, Dodgers look to be leaning heavily on players who have failed more often than they have succeeded in Hernandez and Barnes.

On the plus side, the rotation still looks loaded, and Kenley was given some help with Joe Kelly.

I did have confidence in the front office but they have had an immense brain drain in the past two years so the new group centered around President Andrew Friedman will have to prove they can build another World Series capable team. Trading Puig one year early to open a spot for Verdugo was a bold move but that doesn’t mean it was the right move. Puig is young enough and skilled enough that he might have a top ten MVP season in his Adonis body.  If he puts it together while Verdugo struggles, that won’t look good to a fan base that has really taken to Puig. Signing Harper would have quieted the skeptics but who wants to give anyone a ten-year deal? Not the Dodger front office. If you aren’t going to give Harper or Machado a ten-year deal, the odds are high you will never give anyone a ten-year deal.  The asking price for the best catcher in the NL was evidently too high for the Dodgers to match. They are in a tough spot with the best catching prospect in baseball just a year away. Maybe they don’t think Keibert is really that far away? Maybe just maybe they expect Keibert to be ready by August of 2019. There had to be a reason they were so aggressive in their promotions of the kid who only turned 20 this past summer. More on that next.

Fangraphs Crowdsource HOF Ballot

Phil Gurnee ♦ December 31, 2018 ♦ Leave a comment

Can I have a do-over? Jay Jaffe reminded fangraphs members that today was the last day to submit their 2019 HOF vote in their HOF Crowdsource ballot. I used to be a big HOF debate person as I watched solid HOF candidates get zero traction and disappear off the ballot before a groundswell of support could get them in like Bert Blyleven but my passion for that debate has waned.

I had stayed so far out  I didn’t’ even know who was on the ballot until I decided to put in my two cents. I probably should have stayed out of the discussion. I voted with my gut and sent it in. Only after I voted did I read the awesome breakdown by Jay Jaffe on the 2019 HOF ballot. 

This is my HOF ballot.

Rick Ankiel – no

Because so many of the PED-tainted group were still on the ballot it was easy to use all ten of my votes. I would have used more but I decided to use my votes on the guys who should have been in a long time ago.  Did the election of Harold Baines change my mind? Yes, I can’t leave out Edgar Martinez if Harold Baines is in the HOF. I did think that Scott Rolen, Lance Berkman, Mike Mussina, Curt Schilling, and Andy Pettitte had legit cases but they didn’t make my cut.

This wasn’t a fun exercise, I had to hold my nose to vote for players who at one time cheated or who I actually loathed. Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens were players I couldn’t stand from day one, long before their PED days. They were also the two of the best players of their era and my easy first two picks. Mariano Rivera was my 3rd pick. Roy Halladay was my 4th pick. Edgar Martinez was my 5th pick.

At this point, Jay Jaffe and I are seeing eye to eye. It gets dicey after that. Larry Walker was my 9th pick, just before Manny Ramirez. He was Jay’s sixth pick.  Gary Sheffield, Manny Ramirez, Jeff Kent all got my vote, but their defensive shortcoming didn’t get them much JAWS support. Each was borderline at best according to Jay. That left Sammy Sosa whose offensive career wasn’t enough and may have been my poorest choice.

This meant that four of my ten would not have passed the JAWS test. They were borderline choices but Jay really likes Rolen who I noted in my notes was someone who I planned on voting for.  The others were Mike Mussina, Todd Helton, and Billy Wagner. I have no plans of supporting Billy Wagner for the HOF. I knew Mussina had a good argument and can easily support that vote. Todd Helton? I’ll have to review the data for that one.

Even if I had a do over I would not include Wagner or Helton. I suppose I would drop Jeff Kent and Sammy Sosa for Scott Rolen and Mike Mussina. I’m good with that.

A simple Christmas Story

Phil Gurnee ♦ December 30, 2018 ♦ 2 Comments

While we wait to see what the Dodgers are able to do with their new found financial flexibility after trading one of the most popular Dodgers, I’ve decided to tell a little Christmas Story inspired by a CBS Sunday Morning episode about Sears. The CBS story isn’t a good story about Sears, it is about the rise and fall of Sears but it reminded me of one particular Christmas that was one of my favorites.

Like many people who are near my age and came from humble middle-class families, the Sears Christmas Catalog was how one turned their Christmas wishes to presents under the tree.  In the winter of 1967, our family was stationed in Frankfurt, Germany and the five boys had gone through the Wish Book and put our initials next to everything we wanted. We knew we wouldn’t get everything we wanted, but we would always get just enough that Christmas was something to look forward too.

I have no idea how my parents decided which gifts to get, and which to ignore while making sure that it was a somewhat equitable distribution of gifts among five boys. Due to circumstance in 1967, my parents faced a stark decision. Sears had informed them that the Christmas order they put in would be late and would not arrive until early January.  They had two choices. An empty Tree on Christmas day with promises of presents to come or biting the bullet and shopping local for immediate boyish gratification on Christmas day. The reason we used the Sears Wish Book wasn’t simply for convenience it was also a budget issue.  We weren’t poor, my father was a Lt Colonel and was the commander at Fort Edwards, but that sounds more impressive on a resume compared to what it meant in actual money so they never spent money needlessly.  I was not privy to the conversations that took place between my mom and Dad and I have no idea if they were in agreement or had a debate about what to do, but what they did do was to turn a normal Christmas into an outstanding Christmas.

They had decided that a tree without presents just wouldn’t do, so unknown to me (the youngest and most vulnerable to an empty tree) they went into Frankfurt and shopped like a local.  If I had known that beforehand I’d been petrified that those bundle of presents would have somehow involved Lederhosen

as my mother had been trying to get me to wear a pair ever since we had arrived in Germany.  What they did get me, a nine-year-old boy was my favorite Christmas present ever. A miniature medieval castle complete with knights, peasants, maidens, catapults, moat, drawbridge, and the animals. If memory serves me correct these weren’t cheap plastic toys. This was a German toy made in 1967 these things were detailed and unfortunately fragile. It just needed my imagination to make it all come to life and imagination was never something I was short on.

Whatever presents Sears finally delivered to us, I don’t remember. I thought it was cool that we got two Christmases even though Christ was only born once, but I haven’t a clue what I or my brothers got from the Sears Wish Book. I only remember my friends and I playing with that castle during the long winter months in Germany.  Sixteen months later we were headed back to the states and I don’t think my castle made the trip. I have no memory of playing with it after coming back to the states, but I know that for a time it was my favorite way to past the time and I was always amazed that my parents had picked that out for me.  I wish I had a photo but photographs of our time in Germany are rare after a flood in Alexandria destroyed most of them and a search of Ebay/Google didn’t find anything that resembled what I remember my castle looking like.

Shame, I would like to look upon that castle again.

My story does give the Sears Wish Book the short end which is not proper. That Sears Wish Book was a large part of my families history, and at one time, most of America.

for many kids, the arrival of the annual Wish Book was nothing less than the unofficial herald of the holiday season. We like to grumble that Christmas comes earlier every year, but the Wish Book would appear in late summer, just as school was returning; which meant, by Thanksgiving, the catalog was dogeared and mangled, its pages circled and scissored out, to act as helpful illustrations for wish lists to Santa

Ours was also dogeared with items circled with our initials. I don’t know when we stopped using the Wish Book, probably when we moved to Glendale and had a real retail Sears right smack in the middle of town but I do remember the palpable excitement when we were allowed to browse the Wish Book and make our choices. It says in the article that the book would arrive in late summer, so I think our parents kept it from us because I don’t think we got a look at it until after Thanksgiving but that could be why they weren’t able to deliver the presents in time for Christmas.

Anyway, I’ll always appreciate how my parents turned disappointment into joy by taking the extra step that they didn’t have to take. I’m a little embarrassed that my favorite Christmas moment involved a toy and not something charitable I’d done for someone in need.  I need to fix that, maybe next year I’ll have a different Christmas Story, one I’m not embarrassed about. That would be cool.