Spring Training has lost some luster
This will be an old man rumbling. One of the beauties of spring training for me was getting the first look at a prospect you may have read about but had no way of ever seeing them play unless you watched their minor league games. There was no Baseball America telling how good they were, there were no youtube video’s up the wazoo showing you the skill set. No MLB pipeline.
There was only the sporting news or sometimes the local beat writer who gave out nuggets about the prospects. Back then I don’t think beat writer paid any attention to the minor league system. It sure didn’t feel like it.
For most fans when Candido Maldonado made his first appearance in major league camp in spring training of 1981 it was the first time anyone had glimpsed him. I was already 23 years old and yet getting a glimpse of Candido made my day back in the spring of 1981. That is why I watched spring training for those moments, getting the first look at the future.
I don’t miss that.
I like having all the information about the prospects from the time they are drafted or signed, but it has taken away a big part of why spring training was an exciting part of my journey as a Dodger fan.
Sometimes a prospect will still make spring training worthwhile such as the 2013 Puig version who blew minds after a pedestrian start to his professional career in 2012.
Those stories are few these days for anyone who pays attention to the prospects.
Can someone blow our minds this spring who isn’t exactly on the radar? Chris Taylor did it last spring.
Does this come back to Wilmer Font again?
Big moments for players equals blah for fans
The first few spring training games are big moments for a number of players in camp who will never sniff the majors with the Dodgers in 2018 but it is hard not be bored as a fan when viewing these games. The Dodgers have a bazillion players in camp and thus they all need a moment to show off their skills in game situations but it is hard to imagine any of them having an impact on the season.
It is easy for me to get excited about watching the prospects play but as die-hard as I am I can muster no interest in seeing the likes of
Daniel Corcino, Andrew Robinson, Brian Moran, Ryan Mosely, Justin DeFratus, Brian Schlitter, Guillermo Moscoso, Jordan Jankowski, Tony Gonsolin, Malcom Culver, Parker Curry, Cesar Ramos, CC Lee.
I wish all of them good luck but none of these guys are pitching for a spot on the major league roster. They are pitching to make the organization and while that is cool for them, it isn’t much fun for the fans who make the trek to see the Dodgers play in spring training. Which is why I’d never go to Arizona for the 1st week of spring training games.
When I go, I would target the exact time the minor league games open. The pitchers are more stretched out and management is now only looking at pitchers that will either break camp or who have a shot at breaking camp or at the good arms in the system they want to get a look at. Plus you have the advantage of watching the major league game and the minor league games.
Kevin Smith almost died today
and I was already writing this column when I read about it on twitter. On Sunday I met a parent of one of my wives students and he was why I was writing an article about heart attacks and luck.
We were at a youth Hockey game Sunday to watch one of my wives students play. We met his dad and started talking. He was between 30 – 40 and seemed in great health but it turned out he had escaped death by a matter of luck. Several years ago after his own hockey game he felt light headed when he got home. He laid down on the couch and noticed that he couldn’t see out of the bottom of his left eye. His wife didn’t ignore the symptom and took him to the emergency room. At first they treated it like a stroke but luckily for him the emergency room doctor went further and ordered some tests. Those tests required more tests and before he left the hospital after several days of tests he had learned he had the same heart condition that had killed John Ritter and Allan Thicke.
Thicke had also been playing adult hockey when he had his attack. They had actually played in the same Burbank adult hockey league.
Eventually he flew to Cleveland where they performed open heart surgery to fix his Aorta and is now ready to live a longer life. Why does the best surgeon for Aortic dissection work out of Cleveland? I have no idea but I’d love to ask him this question. Rumor has it that he does 500 of these surgeries a year with each surgery taking an average of five hours. Luckily he has a team who does all the prep work and he swoops in and performs his magic. Not everyone is going to survive. It is after all open heart surgery.
We we talked about luck. What if he had fallen asleep and had missed the eye symptom and never went to the emergency room? What if his emergency doctor had simply treated him as a minor stroke victim and hadn’t pressed for more tests? I thought of the people where these tests simply aren’t an option in our health care system.
Many people will never get those tests and will die of their unknown Aortic dissection. Supposedly 15,000 people die of Aortic dissection every year. Because of luck, our new friend will not be one of them.
This column doesn’t really have a point, but I continue to marvel at how luck plays such an important part in our lives.
Maybe one of you reading this has the condition but you’d never know until you die from it because a normal physical would never uncover it.
Some would say it wasn’t luck but that God played a part in this but that won’t play with me because…………Nah, I don’t want to go there today.
Anyway, I’m glad they fixed his condition. He’s a great parent, is raising a great kid, and the world will be a better place with him still in it.
J.T. Chargois could be a diamond in the rough
I don’t know what the Twin front office was thinking or the 28 teams that passed on J.T. Chargois but I do like that the Dodgers scooped him on waivers from the Twins. The Twins took a chance on putting Chargois on waivers and it almost paid off as 28 other teams passed on him but ultimately they lost the gamble and an arm that you would normally want to keep within your organization even if it has been through the ringer.
The once highly regarded Chargois may never pitch for the Dodgers but this is the right kind of arm to take a chance on. It was just July of 2016 that he represented the Twins in the Futures game after being their 2nd round pick in 2012. The Twins had three first round picks in 2012 and two second-round picks. The first two picks were Byron Buxton and Jose Berrios who are expected to be part of the core of this year’s Twin roster.
Chargois was made available because of his arm problems including a bizarre stint last summer but if he can healthy (can any Rice pitcher get healthy?) he could be exactly what every team is looking for these days, a hard-throwing setup man who can dominate a lineup one time through. The Dodgers could take the chance because he still has an option left, I’m just shocked the Padres or Marines or Angels weren’t able to figure out a way to do the same.
One year ago Fangraphs felt Chargois had a shot at being the best relief pitcher in the Twin system.
The final damage for Chargois in September was a 2.84 ERA and 13-3 K/BB ratio in 12.2 innings. Opposing batters hit just .205/.255/.273 against Chargois, while his swinging strike rate jumped to a much more stomachable 12 percent. In fact, if we lop off Chargois’ brutal first outing of September, he closed the season by allowing one earned run over his final 11.1 innings (0.79 ERA) with a 10-2 K/BB ratio and a .421 OPS against. He told me in September that it basically boiled down to him getting his legs underneath him and finally feeling comfortable on the big-league mound.
Course they were talking about 2016 and 2017 was a lost year for Chargois. Sometimes that lost year becomes someone else’s lost treasure.
Bill Plunkett has a nice story up about Chargois.
“This place is crazy, man. This is awesome. It’s like Disney World or something,” he said, sitting at his locker Monday morning in the clubhouse at Camelback Ranch.
“Look at this place – it’s so bright and merry. Even when I was playing catch yesterday I was like, ‘The ball is so light. Why is everything so light and fluffy here?’”
The Bison is back
I won’t be doing a breakdown of every spring game but game one had plenty to talk about, including the return of the Bison to Dodger blue.
Wilmer Font is a huge man and buzzed right through the six hitters he faced. He was the best pitcher on this day for either team though Edward Paredes gave him a run for his money by striking out the side in the 8th. At least Orel got it right when he said that Font was out of options and the team would have to find a way to keep him on the roster. Ned Colletti did not as he said during the pregame that they could use Font up and down this year. The only way that happens is if the Dodgers don’t put Font on the 25 man roster and every team takes a pass on him. I don’t see that happening.
The Bison is back. Matt Kemp hit a hard single up the middle in his first at-bat, slugged a home run in his second at-bat but more importantly the man looks great. We can finally remove those horrible images of Matt in the Padre and Brave uniforms looking very much like an over-the-hill designated hitter instead of the Bison we remember so fondly. During his multiple interviews with Alanna, he appeared to be very comfortable and even with blinders on, it didn’t take much imagination to see the Matt Kemp of old. The smile, the eyes, the hat on backward. It can’t be what it was, but for one day it sure felt like it.
The players competing for the LF job were all over the lineup today. Kemp was the starting LF, Hernandez was starting at SS while Seager rests his arm, Thompson was starting in RF, and Alex Verdugo came off the bench. They combined to hit two home runs (Kemp, Hernandez), one double (Verdugo), three singles (2 by Thompson, 1 by Kemp), and one stolen base by Thompson.
They said Cody Bellinger had added muscle and I believe it. He was on 2nd when Kemp hit his home run and the view from TV of Cody leading off of second showed off his massive shoulders.
DJ Peters looks just like wild man Jayson Werth. More similarities, both right-handed, both tall and lanky, both with power, both have long mountain man like hair. Has to just be a matter of time that Peters grows a beard or breaks his wrist.
Pat Venditte is the guy who pitches with either arm and in getting his five outs today he used both his arms to excellent effect. Pat came into the game with two on and one out. He struck out the first hitter, then got out of a bases-loaded jam after Cody Bellinger made an error on a simple ground ball to 1st base. He retired the side in order the next inning.
Noted above, Edward Paredes struck out the side in the 8th.
Dodgers kick off Cactus League play today
In a few hours, the Dodgers will start their Cactus league play as they try to defend their National League title.
Wilmer Font the forgotten man, when rotation depth is discussed, will start the game and probably embarrass me given how much faith I’ve put in a guy I’ve never seen pitch.
Much more interesting is that Matt Kemp will be protecting Cody Bellinger in the lineup.
My twitter feed has been fascinating as each day Matt Kemp is a Dodger more and more Dodger fans are coming out as being excited about Kemp being a Dodger again. This is a bold move as Kemp has old-school counting numbers but sabermetrically was one of the worst players in baseball last year. Matt has come into camp in great shape and appears to have a great attitude. Dave Roberts has said they feel they can mitigate his defensive weakness with proper positioning. The last time Matt Kemp was a Dodger was in the 2014 NLDS series against the Cardinals. postseason. Kemp went out with a bang posting a .882 OPS in that series.
Since being a Dodger Matt Kemp has had hot and cold spells but has yet to put together a full season of above-average offensive production. When he was traded to the Braves in the summer of 2016 he ended the season on a high note as a Brave posting a .855 OPS in 214 plate appearances. He followed that by starting 2017 on fire with an April OPS of 1.077 and a May OPS of .962. So for 380 plate appearances as a Brave, he was a great hitting left fielder. But………..baseball is 162 games and Matt Kemp from June 1st – Oct 1st was horrible.
His non-Dodger stats look like this:
Year Tm PA 2B HR RBI BA OBP SLG OPS OPS+ 2015 SDP 648 31 23 100 .265 .312 .443 .755 109 2016 TOT 672 39 35 108 .268 .304 .499 .803 113 2016 SDP 431 24 23 69 .262 .285 .489 .774 106 2016 ATL 241 15 12 39 .280 .336 .519 .855 126 2017 ATL 467 23 19 64 .276 .318 .463 .781 103 12 Y 12 Y 6283 308 259 920 .285 .338 .488 .826 123 LAD LAD 4496 215 182 648 .292 .349 .495 .845 128 SDP SDP 1079 55 46 169 .264 .301 .462 .763 108 ATL ATL 708 38 31 103 .278 .324 .482 .805 110
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 2/23/2018.
How bizarre is it that Andre Ethier is gone and Matt Kemp is a Dodger?
If Kemp was to somehow win the full time left field job it would have huge ramifications on the 2018 roster as the team is full of players trying to gain part-time work in LF with Joc, Toles, Hernandez, Verdugo, and Thompson. Though I hope Matt Kemp makes the Kemp haters eat some crow, baseball being baseball I expect Matt Kemp to have a great spring and just as he has given Kemp fans new hope, he will come up lame and we will be right back where we were on Jan 1st.
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 to win more than 84 games. In a very quiet winter, the Angels were the biggest winner by adding Otani. Along with Otani, they added Cosart to give them one of the best defensive left sides in baseball. The biggest hole on the Angels in 2017 was second base and they acquired Ian Kinsler to plug that hole. They also get a full year of Justin Upton, and hopefully, some of their starters will actually stay healthy in 2018. They can’t all get hurt again, can they?
The worst non-catcher position player on the team might be Albert Pujols.
Other bets I would consider.
Staying in the AL West I’d probably bet on Oakland to better 74.5 wins.
Also staying in California even with the horrible rotation, the Padres should better 69.5 wins.
I’m not a big fan of the Diamondback offseason and 85 wins is already a big drop from the 93 they garnered in 2017, I’m still going to take the under.
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 tough case just to make the team and if he doesn’t make the team he won’t even be a Dodger because he has zero options left. I have no idea why I have bizarre faith in him, but my baseball spidey sense is in courier mode.
Best Dodger pitcher not named Kershaw or Jansen will be …. Alex Wood. Wood will build on his 2017 All-Star season. This is a strong limb as he is probably the odds-on favorite for this particular award.
2018 Dodger MVP will not be Cody Bellinger, Kershaw, Turner, Jansen, or Corey Seager. It will be Puig.
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 $35M over the past two years, and a 2017 NRI who had a fantastic injury-free season for the first time this decade?
Probably because they would be 2017 World Champions if not for:
- Their best pitcher giving up two three-run leads in the same game
- Their second best starter giving away two games in a seven game series
- Their clean up hitter striking out 17 times in 28 at-bats
- Their main setup man thinking he had something when he had nothing
- Their right fielder and catcher combining for three extra-base hits in 50 at-bats
- Their best postseason hitter going 3 for 16 over the last five games of the World Series
Even with everything that went wrong in the World Series, they had enough to make it a seven-game series.
We will look at their competition tomorrow. I’m curious to see how the Brewers stack up because on the surface they seemed to have loaded up this winter like no other team in the National League, but they had a long way to go.
I’m definitely not worried about the Giants. Old teams who get older with no depth just don’t worry me over a 162 game season.
The focus tomorrow will be on the Cubs/Nationals/Brewers/Cardinals.
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 the impact of the Claude Osteen/Frank Howard trade. At the time I just assumed Bill knew how to interpret defensive stats as he incorporated them into his Win Shares. I really didn’t question Bill James. I probably should have. Many would.
I went full throttle into Win Shares and manually entered every win share value for every Los Angeles Dodger into my Dodger spreadsheet. Each year the new Bill James Handbook would come out with new Win Shares value for the just concluded baseball system. When I first started writing in 2007 I incorporated my win share spreadsheet into a Win Share series that used Win Shares to show the best LAD at each position for a season and career.
I was already out of date.
WAR had replaced Win Shares and it is possible that someone born in the 21st century who is sabermetrically inclined has never even heard of Win Shares. Stats need to evolve and WAR would win out with Win Shares becoming the Cro-Magnon of stats. This which left my book and my spreadsheet pointless. This came to a head today when I got started on my spring cleaning and took a look at my baseball bookcase. I have a Kindle so I don’t need any hardcopy books and while the Kindle is incredibly useful for reading on the go, an actual book still has a place in my life. Maybe not new books, I’m still sorting that out.
I had every Baseball Prospectus and they are big and bulky. The survived the cut. My Dodger media guides survived the cut. Jon Weisman has two books and they survived the cut. Josh Wilker and Cardboard Gods survived.
Bill James did not. Win Shares didn’t even make the giveaway pile. I put him in the recyclable bin. I thought of how much work Bill James had put into creating Win Shares but I knew I’d never read the book again. Bill James was the reason I got into advanced baseball statistics, he made them come alive in the Baseball Abstracts.
I kept those.
Dodgers, Yesterday and Today 