The Dodgers came to terms on contracts with both A.J. Ellis (1-year, $2 million) and Ronald Belisario (1-year, $1.45 million) on Friday. Both players avoided arbitration by signing, as Chad covered.

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Austin Gallagher was released by the Dodgers. On Friday, he received a 50-game suspension from baseball for testing positive for methylhexaneamine, a banned substance. The team also released Edwin Contreras.

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Sandy Koufax will return to the Dodgers organization as a special advisor to Mark Walter, and while the PR part of this is great and all, stuff like the following passage is far more interesting:

“For our young players and our veterans to be able to tap Sandy’s expertise and counsel during Spring Training and throughout the season will provide yet another tremendous resource in our efforts to strengthen our club,” said general manager Ned Colletti.

Former Dodgers pitcher Josh Lindblom illustrated Koufax’s teaching talents last spring while relating a bullpen session he had in 2010. With the usual pitching coaches offering tips from behind the mound, one noticed Lindblom struggling with his breaking ball release and offered some tips. Lindblom, focused on the plate and not turning around to face the coaches, tried to implement each suggestion.

“One of them says, ‘Imagine a bucket on home plate and throw the curveball into the bucket,’” Lindblom recalled. “It made sense at the time. So I spun the ball into the bucket. It worked. I turned around to see who it was, and I was like, ‘Holy smoke, it’s Sandy Koufax.’

“My focus intensified when I realized it was a guy who had one of the best curveballs in history. I locked in and focused. And when I struggle, I still think about that and another thing he said — ‘See how many times the ball spins before it gets to the plate. That makes you really focus on snapping it off.’

“You hear stories about hitters saying they could hear the laces spinning on Koufax’s fastball. He sees two pitches and makes a suggestion and you make an adjustment that quickly. He’s great at simplifying things. He doesn’t make it rocket science.”

Here’s hoping that some of his lessons rub off on the pitching staff.

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Greg Zakwin is the founder of the site Plaschke Thy Sweater Is Argyle. Follow him on Twitter @ArgyledPlaschke.

MLB.com: The Dodgers are making extensive upgrades to Dodger Stadium, and I have to say that it all sounds awesome.

The most obvious upgrade — and the one senior vice president of planning and development Janet Marie Smith mentioned first — is the replacement of the scoreboards located above the right- and left-field pavilions with larger, 1080 high-definition LED boards, as well as replacement of message boards, including ribbon boards at the Loge level and outfield wall.

The rectangular one that has been in left field since the last All-Star Game is being returned to the hexagon shape of the original. The boards will be 22 percent larger with an active viewing area 66 percent larger, allowing for more video and statistical information to be displayed.

A new, sharper sound system comes with it, designed to direct sound to each seating section and minimize echoes.

Worried that it’ll look too modernized and lose its charm? Don’t. The changes are actually quite subtle and they aren’t gaudy or ridiculous.

Responding to complaints from fans, a state-of-the-art Wi-Fi and cellular antenna system will go live to support cellphone and Internet connectivity.

There also is major work being done to widen concourses, expand and renovate restrooms, enhance food service, build new entry plazas and create bullpen overlooks for standing-room views of the game. Restrooms will be installed under the outfield pavilions and more wheelchair locations will be created.

The Wi-Fi has long been a complaint among people covering/attending Dodger games, so I’m guessing this will be a welcome fix.

For the players, a new clubhouse is being installed, along with an expanded weight room and underground batting cages.

“That was a hot-button issue for Mark [Walter, chairman],” said Kasten. “He wants the finest training center in all of sports.”

For the on-the-field product, this is the one improvement that could actually have an impact, so at least it isn’t all superficial.

Playground areas will be created for children in the pavilion and Reserve Level that will include life-size bobbleheads.

Smith said the franchise’s history will be celebrated by displaying retired uniform numbers at the Top of the Park, giant World Series rings representing the six World Series championships and a display of Gold Glove, MVP and Cy Young Awards at the Dugout Club as “an inspiration to fans and players.”

Like most things the new owners have done so far, it all sounds great, so hopefully the honeymoon ends up lasting.

Los Angeles Times: Bill Shaikin has an update on the ongoing Dodgers television contract negotiations.

Whether the Dodgers keep their television broadcasts on Fox Sports or move them to Time Warner Cable appears to be a “50-50″ proposition, according to a person familiar with the team’s TV negotiations but not authorized to discuss them.

The Dodgers’ discussions with MLB center on whether all of their guaranteed television revenue should be subject to baseball’s revenue-sharing program. At issue in a $6-billion deal: whether the team’s contribution to the program would be about $1 billion or about $2 billion.

The league believes — and there are indications the court might agree — that the Dodgers must take some element of risk with any money not subject to revenue sharing.

The Dodgers must contribute 34% of the annual rights fee to baseball’s revenue-sharing program. The team plans to launch its own regional sports network, in part to avoid the prospect of Fox or TWC paying a much higher rights fee.

However, in order to get dividends from a regional sports network, the league believes the team should be required to take the accompanying risk of ownership. The Dodgers are looking at other ways to structure a deal that would shield that money from revenue sharing and satisfy MLB as well.

I feel more uncomfortable now than before, when it was basically reported as a done deal with FOX, but it does appear that the team will be getting their due windfall at some point, regardless.

Of course, none of this will likely affect 2013 anyway, but if the team is asked to take on extensive risk or if there’s a $1 billion difference in revenue from what the owners thought they would get out of the deal, I would have to think it would affect payroll somewhat.

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Mike Scioscia’s Tragic Illness: Somebody has to hit leadoff … right?

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FanGraphs: HGH testing in baseball? Public relations.

So what we see here appears — to my admittedly skeptical self, at least — less MLB and MLBPA joining hands to do what is right and rid the game of a great evil and more an appeal to doping fears and the court of public opinion. Personally, I just hope its intrusion into the game is minimal.

The public thinks HGH is a big deal, so why wouldn’t the MLB do testing and appear concerned as well? That way the MLB can beat their chest about being serious on PEDs, even though it makes basically no impact at all.

It’s an idiot test to me anyway, as I’m not sure why an athlete would waste their time with it. Placebo effect, I guess.

FanGraphs: David Laurila with the quotes of the year that he’s gathered. An interesting read.

Former Dodger closer Eric Gagne released a biography in French recently, called “Game Over: The Story Of Eric Gagne“, and within that book he estimates that 80% of his Dodger teammates used PEDs, though the story is more than a bit light on specifics.

Gagne, who set a major league record while converting 84 consecutive save chances, admits that he used human growth hormone over five cycles in a three-year period toward the end of his career.

“It was sufficient to ruin my health, tarnish my reputation and throw a shadow over the extraordinary performances of my career,” Gagne says in the French-language book, titled “Game Over: The Story of Eric Gagne.”

In the book, Gagne does not provide any names of players he says used PEDs. Baseball began stricter testing in the spring of 2006. Players are subject to HGH testing during spring training and in the offseason, but not during the season.

“I was intimately aware of the clubhouse in which I lived. I would say that 80 percent of the Dodgers players were consuming them,” Gagne says in the book.

Just reading Gagne’s words from the book excerpts, it appears as though he’s talking solely about HGH. And while I would like to trust the way that sports journalists have written the story and assume that Gagne referred to all PEDs at some point, when it comes to PED-related coverage, they generally tend to lump everything together into one gigantic PED ball like they’re all the same thing.

Case in point, in the article titles, MLB.com just says “PED”, Los Angeles Times says “performance-enhancing drugs”, HardballTalk says “steroids”, and on Twitter, ESPN Los Angeles says “HGH”. Just an example of what I mean by my confusion as to what exactly the book excerpts were alluding to.

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Now why does this matter to me? Certainly not because it would help or hurt my case to moralize over it (I have never particularly cared if athletes use), like others have been using the allegations to do. Rather, I primarily want to know the specifics so that I can make intelligence judgments on the Dodger teams in question and performance judgments in regards to HGH.

I care because if it was just HGH use, as it seems Gagne’s saying, then that makes the Dodger players who allegedly used complete idiots for risking their health for minimal benefits beyond the placebo effect.

Human growth hormone doesn’t work when it comes to enhancing athletic performance, according to an extensive review of studies by a team of 11 Stanford University researchers, Stanford announced Monday afternoon.

The use of human growth hormone (HGH) by professional athletes to enhance performance has been the subject of a national investigation and Congressional hearings for baseball players.

But the Stanford researchers say HGH doesn’t improve athletic performance and may in fact reduce an athlete’s stamina.

“Growth hormone is reported to be extensively used for illicit enhancement of athletic performance, both for its anabolic and endurance effects,” the authors wrote.

“However, our review of the published literature suggests that while growth hormone may alter body composition it has minimal effect on key athletic performance outcomes and may, in fact, be associated with worsened exercise capacity.”

The study concluded that HGH, popular with body builders, does alter body mass but “it did not result in gains in biceps and quadriceps strength.”

There’s lots more documentation here and here, but they all basically come to the same conclusion: that growth hormone does increase muscle size (hence the “growth” part), but it does so by making everything else bigger, and the athletes don’t get a strength benefit to go along with that size.

In other words, HGH might be useful for bodybuilding, but athletics? Not so much.

Therefore, if Gagne’s simply saying that 80% of his teammates were using HGH like him, nobody should care about this story because HGH doesn’t work. It’s the PED equivalent of calling Eugenio Velez a “hitter”. Hell, maybe the whole problem to begin with was that those Dodger teams were using HGH by the gallons while everybody else was using designer steroids. Wouldn’t that just be a perfectly fitting revelation for this franchise and that era?

Heck, even if he’s just talking about general PEDs, the team must have been doing it wrong. Gagne’s Dodger career lasted from 1999 to 2006. In that time span, one of the marquee franchises in baseball averaged
84.75 wins and 77.25 losses. They made the playoffs twice, winning the NL West once and the NL Wild Card once. That’s it.

So much for enhancing performance.

Things Also Heard Outside A Gangbang For $2000, Alex

If you’re going to get busted for performance enhancing drugs, you might as well make it worth your while, right?

Former Red Sox reliever Dustin Richardson was suspended 50 games by Major League Baseball after testing positive for performance-enhancing substances. Richardson tested positive for an amphetamine, Letrozole and metabolite, Methandienone metabolite, Methenelone and metabolite and Trenbolone and metabolite.

Richardson, a fifth round pick by the Sox out of Texas Tech in 2006, appeared in 26 games for Boston in 2010, working 13 innings as left-handed reliever. He was traded to Florida after the season for Andrew Miller. He pitched for the Triple-A affiliates for Florida and Atlanta last season.

What a champ.