Javy Guerra has been optioned to AAA after a rough spring in which he dealt with injury and had been limited to just a couple of appearances. The Dodgers have a deep pen and, with Guerra’s injuries and struggles, he was going to have to excel during Spring Training to secure a spot on the Opening Day roster. Tony Gwynn ... Read More »
Matt Kemp represented the Dodgers in a commercial for MLB 13: The Show recently, and I … sorry, just got lost in his eyes. —– Use this every time Don Mattingly decides to bunt… …and this every time Matt Kemp does something dreamy. It’s a flawless plan. Read More »
Baseball fans love to talk about clutch plays and clutch players, and Dodgers fans are no exception, but like with a pitcher’s best and worst pitches, there tends to be a lack of evidence presented. As such, I decided to find some basis for clutch plays and clutch players, courtesy of the WPA and Clutch statistics. WPA Most sabermetric statistics ... Read More »
Baseball fans love to talk about clutch plays and clutch players, and Dodgers fans are no exception, but like with a pitcher’s best and worst pitches, there tends to be a lack of evidence presented. As such, I decided to find some basis for clutch plays and clutch players, courtesy of the WPA and Clutch statistics. WPA Most sabermetric statistics ... Read More »
Zack Greinke missed a bullpen session on Sunday due to forearm tightness. Greinke had “a little forearm tightness and thought it best to give it a day to let it rest,” pitching coach Rick Honeycutt said. “It’s nothing to be alarmed about. He’s had it before and he’s still expected to make his next start [Wednesday].” Fortunately, it’s not anything ... Read More »
Carl Crawford took live batting practice against an actual pitcher for the first time since elbow surgery last August. However, yesterday he reported forearm soreness and was held out of batting practice and drills. Crawford, rehabbing from Tommy John surgery on his left elbow last Aug. 23, took batting practice against live pitchers on Monday, but hasn’t been able to ... Read More »
The Dodgers, as a club, have a ton of injuries or guys rehabbing, so I expect this feature to be busy all season. Two of the most important injury cases will start off today, as we get timeline updates on Matt Kemp and Carl Crawford. Manager Don Mattingly said March 1 is a very rough target date for Kemp to ... Read More »
The 2013 projection for the Dodgers from Dan Szymborski‘s ZiPS system was released last week, and given that it’s probably my favorite forecasting tool, it’s worth a look to see how the team fared. Forecasting is not a complete science, obviously, and I’ll address some of the potential pitfalls as we go along, but it’s better to use objective tools ... Read More »
Ken Gurnick reports that Matt Kemp is ahead of schedule in his recovery from offseason shoulder surgery, and that Kemp expects to be ready for Opening Day. Kemp has reported still feeling soreness in the shoulder he injured after crashing into the outfield wall in Colorado on consecutive days: “That’s my goal,” said Kemp. “I’m hitting off the tee, no ... Read More »
Matt Kemp has begun upper-body workouts for the first time since offseason shoulder surgery. Kemp’s agent, Dave Stewart, relays that The Bison is pain-free three months after his surgery. —– Chad Billingsley continues to progress from his elbow injury and has reported no setbacks thus far, according to Ken Gurnick. “Physically, Chad’s doing great, and he’s excited about the year,” ... Read More »
Nowhere to start here but with Andre Ethier rumors, right? Well, last time we left off on this rumbling, I was tackling a scenario where Ethier gets dealt and the Dodgers sign Nick Swisher, but there was one other frequently brought up possibility: Michael Bourn. The Dodgers could pursue free agent center fielder Michael Bourn if they trade Andre Ethier, ... Read More »
Yes, this is the final installment of the 2012 Season Review for the Dodgers, and if you want to catch up on the others, then you can check out this tag here. Otherwise, in the tables listed below, I have calculated the WAR (along with its components), value, and surplus value of every player on the Dodgers payroll in 2012. ... Read More »
Grantland: Part 1 of Jonah Keri ranking the 50 best players in terms of trade value. No Dodgers here yet, but Carlos Santana finds a spot at #43. The other two catcher rankings are the ones likely to elicit the most hate mail. In the first draft of this list, I had Santana considerably higher. Twenty-six-year-old switch-hitting catcher, career .806 ... Read More »
Matt Kemp After an amazingly elite 2011 that saw him finish second in MVP voting — even though he was the best player in the National League last year — Matt Kemp had to spend far too much of 2012 as you see him above. Kemp’s season is really quite easy to break down: when healthy, he was elite, but ... Read More »
Left field has been, is, and will in all likelihood continue to be, a vast wasteland for the Dodgers. That is, unless Carl Crawford returns to his Tampa Bay form in 2013 or the Yasiel Puig era — whenever that actually begins — proves to be worth the wait. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s review 2012, which was ... Read More »
Chad Moriyama Dodgers, Sabermetrics, Scouting