“If you are what you say you are…”

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Dodgers Now: Bill Shaikin reveals that the Dodgers are no longer exclusively talking with Fox, as they’ve met with Time Warner now.

The Dodgers and Time Warner Cable have met to discuss a potential deal for the team’s television rights, according to two people familiar with the talks but not authorized to comment on them.

The Dodgers are considering at least three options for their next television home: the Prime Ticket cable channel owned by Fox Sports, the SportsNet cable channel owned by TWC or a new channel owned by the team.

Not sure whether this is a positive or a negative in terms of potential television money, but I figure competition rarely generates a lower return.

Baseball Prospectus: Maury Brown had an interview with Stan Kasten at the Winter Meetings.

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Los Angeles Times: Bill Shaikin warns about the perils of long-term big-money contracts.

But…

They do take players to 2017, and beyond. If the Dodgers win in 2013, well, who cares?

…that’s always the rub. If they win, even if the players start to implode in the context of their contracts, it’s justifiable. Flags fly forever, after all.

But they have to win.

FanGraphs: Jeff Sullivan reminds us that even if the Dodgers literally had an unlimited payroll and bought every top player they could on the free agent market, it still wouldn’t have resulted in a division winner in 2012.

Smarts still matter. The limit though becomes roster spots.

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FanGraphs: Dave Cameron questions why people assume prospects are always unknown quantities but are fine assuming that veterans always provide consistent results.

Wil Myers is a risk, but so is James Shields. So is Albert Pujols. So is Justin Verlander. So is everyone.

When we start using labels like “prospect” or “proven veteran” to describe players, we lose that reality. Myers and Shields both have the chance to be good, bad, or anything in between. Let’s not let the terms we use to describe player types obscure that fact. The Royals didn’t trade a lottery ticket for a paycheck; they traded a few lottery tickets for a scratch-off card. They probably did reduce their overall performance risk for 2013, but it didn’t go to zero. Let’s not pretend that we know so much about projecting the future of Major League players that we create an artificial divide where one does not exist.

Prospects come with uncertainty, but so do Major League players. Everyone is a risk. You weigh that risk against the potential rewards, and you figure out which trade-offs are worth making. Once you cross over into treating some players as non-risks, though, you’ve stopped evaluating players properly. And then you make trades like the one the Royals just made.

This is precisely how I’ve thought since I started blogging. Everybody has a percentage of relative success, and things can always go against that, but what you want to try and do is play the odds as best you can and hopefully the cards go your way.

The amount of bidders in the Los Angeles Dodgers ownership saga was recently cut to three, setting up a showdown that is set to be resolved on April 1st.

The three finalists: a group led by hedge-fund billionaire Steven Cohen and Los Angeles billionaire and philanthropist Patrick Soon-Shiong; a group led by Magic Johnson and veteran baseball executive Stan Kasten; and St. Louis Rams owner Stan Kroenke.

The parties eliminated: a partnership between Memphis Grizzlies owner Michael Heisley and Los Angeles investor Tony Ressler; and a bid by Stanley Gold and the family of the late Roy Disney.

Major league owners are set to vote on the three remaining bidders early next week. Final negotiations will then take place with McCourt and Blackstone Advisory Partners, the investment bank brokering the sale.

So what was that? Three days after they were reinstated in the bidding, the two groups were eliminated yet again.

Of course, that news doesn’t change much, as now we’re left with the same trio everybody pegged as favorites long ago, but the owners voting on candidates could reveal a lot about how the potential groups are viewed.

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While the fact that this mess is finally coming to a close is a relief to almost every observer, Major League Baseball, Fox Sports, and Jamie McCourt aren’t so thrilled with the way things are going.

With the sale of the Dodgers in its final stages, three key parties lodged objections Friday with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court.

Major League Baseball, Fox Sports and Jamie McCourt each raised concerns that they asked the court to consider on or before April 13, the day of the scheduled hearing to approve the Dodgers’ sale. The concerns appear unlikely to derail the sale.

Frank McCourt, the Dodgers’ outgoing owner, has agreed to provide the court with a sale agreement by April 6.

In its filing, MLB claimed that the Dodgers used overly broad and legally inconsistent language in phrasing how the league and the team would release each other from future liability.

Fox Sports, which waged a successful legal battle to prevent Frank McCourt from marketing the Dodgers’ television rights as part of the sale, asserted the right to review the sale documents through April 28.

Jamie McCourt, the ex-wife of Frank McCourt, asked for assurances that the $131 million she is owed in a divorce settlement would be promptly disbursed from the sale proceeds. The Dodgers on Thursday asked the court to dismiss Jamie McCourt’s bankruptcy claim, saying she would be paid not by the Dodgers but by Frank McCourt personally.

As long as it doesn’t affect the sale, they could take every penny from Frank McCourt and I couldn’t care less.

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Joe Torre got his job back from Bud Selig after his failed attempt at buying the team.

Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig restored Torre as executive vice president of baseball operations, the position Torre vacated Jan. 4 to join Los Angeles developer Rick Caruso in bidding for the Dodgers.

As long as he’s away from the Dodgers.

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Decided to start this “feature” because sometimes I do unfortunately stumble into the comment sections at mainstream media sports sites and it’s truly amazing what I find there.

You can say it’s picking low hanging fruit, and it is, but I don’t give a shit because it’s hilarious to me.

Anyway, today’s gem, which you can see above, comes to us via Fox Sports in response to a Ken Rosenthal article about Don Mattingly.

Apparently Mattingly is actually an idiot, and Rosenthal is an even bigger idiot for writing about him, because the Arizona Diamondbacks were a far inferior team to the Los Angeles Dodgers, yet Kirk Gibson‘s squad won the NL West in 2011, something that was apparently all Mattingly’s fault.