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Ned Colletti Should Be Time Magazine's Person Of The Millennium
I know it's early, but I don't think it's too early to make that call. After all, the Dodgers have a winning percentage of .517. Think about it. 51.7% of the time, the boys in blue have vanquished their opponents and bathed in their blood. If you ask Bruce Jenkins, for this Colletti deserves nothing less than the Executive of the Year Award. If you ask me, we should stop kidding ourselves and just give Colletti the MVP, the Cy Young, the Rolaids Relief Man of the Year Award and the Latin Grammy for Record of the Year.
General manager Ned Colletti, belittled all season for the signings of Jones, Pierre, Jason Schmidt, Rafael Furcal (who may yet return to play shortstop), Hideki [sic] Kuroda and Nomar Garciaparra, is now a candidate for Executive of the Year after picking up Ramirez, Casey Blake and Greg Maddux for a pittance.
1. Hiroki Kuroda is a pitcher for the Dodgers. Hideki Kuroda is the associate producer of Eko eko azaraku: B-page and Eko eko azaraku: R-page as well as the one of the directors of Inu no eiga (All About My Dog), the delightful 2005 comedy feature. (According to IMDb user chrischew2: "It loosely follows Kentaro Yamada (Shidou Nakamura), a timid media planner whose latest campaign for dog food is so stifling—not to mention utterly side-splitting—that it brings back memories of his childhood Shiba dog, Pochi. And weaved between this heart-warming tale are bursts of zaniness, from a spontaneous musical or a mockumetary to a dog's-eye-view of infatuation.")
Totally understand the mix-up, though. They get it a lot.
2. Here is a list of teams with winning percentages greater than that of the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball organization:
Tampa Bay Rays Boston Red Sox Toronto Blue Jays New York Yankees Chicago White Sox Minnesota Twins Los Angeles Angels New York Mets Philadelphia Phillies Chicago Cubs Milwaukee Brewers Houston Astros St. Louis Cardinals
Yes, the Los Angeles Collettis are tied for the 14th-best record in baseball. The Florida Marlins also sit at 77-72, but keep in mind that Marlins GM Michael Hill had the luxury of a $22,650,000 payroll, whereas Ned had to make to with just $118,188,536. Juggling the egos of guys who make more than the entire Marlins pitching staff isn't easy!
The great thing about the Dodgers is that their biggest problem - the oppressive weight of clubhouse discord - seemed to disappear overnight.
In Bruce Jenkins' world, there exists one Universal Baseball Law:
The significance of the oppressive weight of clubhouse discord >> The significance of hitting
Jenkins' sentence is actually spot-on, if you'll allow me to adjust the wording slightly.
The great thing about the Dodgers is that their biggest problem - their complete inability to hit for power - seemed to disappear overnight when they got a guy who could hit for power.
There. It's the best sentence Jenkins and I have ever co-written!
Of course Colletti gambled on Manny -- you're getting fired if you do nothing, so you might as well pay the price in talent (no one the greater Los Angeles area seemed to place any value on the next six or whatever years of Andy LaRoche) to acquire a rent-a-player in a desperate Hail Mary attempt to save your job. And hey. Look. It worked. That was easy.
Jeff Kent, forever disapproving of the club's petulant youth, was lost to a knee injury (it has to be more than coincidental that the Dodgers won 10 of their first 11 games in his absence).
It has to be more than coincidence -- we thus have conclusive evidence that Jeff Kent was poisoning his teammates just like that mom in the Sixth Sense did to the little kid version of Mischa Barton.
Jeff Kent -- tragic sufferer of Munchausen syndrome by proxy.
Torre put financial issues aside, benched Juan Pierre and Andruw Jones, and stabilized the outfield - for now and years to come - with Ethier and Matt Kemp.
Somehow, the fact of the existence of Juan Pierre and Andruw Jones on the payroll and the fact that it required one hundred-some-odd games and the addition of a Hall of Fame outfielder to compel Torre to bench Messrs. Pierre and Jones are now points in Colletti's and Torre's favor? This is the equivalent of two gardeners driving to your house, digging a twenty-foot hole in your front yard with a backhoe, buying two bags of sand, pouring the bags into the hole, and then getting lavished with praise for the sand part of the whole operation.
Arizona's problem isn't so much the standings. That deficit could disappear in a week.
Well, actually, the standings are a huge problem for Arizona. They're 4.5 back with 14 to play. That's an enormous deficit. Of course it could "disappear in a week," but that's incredibly unlikely. BP has them at 2.05397% to win the division. That sounds like a problem to me.
It's the club's desultory reaction to a crisis. Virtually all of the fire and inspiration from last year's team - Eric Byrnes, Jose Valverde, Orlando Hudson, Carlos Quentin when healthy - has vanished.
You heard it here first: the reason Brandon Webb and Dan Haren pitched four shockingly, horrifyingly grotesque abominations of games against the Dodgers was the absence of Eric Byrnes and Eric Byrnes' Motivational Hair™.
Eric Byrnes' Motivational Hair™, winning division races since 2007.
In Ramirez's first 40 games, the Dodgers had a run differential of plus-22 and averaged 4.55 runs per game, as opposed to 4.43 through July 31....It's hard to talk about the MVP Award for Manny when the team that paid the Dodgers to take Ramirez is 27-13 without him through Sunday and have seen their runs per game increase from 4.94 at the time of the deal to 6.22 since.
The tone and content are so over-the-top fawning that I initially thought it was satirical. After all, Simers has been critical of the Dodgers' front office -- and in this same wry manner -- before. So, read and enjoy with this warning: the joke may be on you. Yes, you, not me. I am infallible. Plus, as is always our preference here at FJM, we like to take everything at face value, because then we have more ways to avoid working at our real jobs.
One way or the other, you have to love the headline:
It's a no-brainer, Dodgers' Ned Colletti is baseball's best general manager
...
No. No, he is not.
And furthermore, hypothetically serious-and-not-satirical L.A. Times: you think it's a "no-brainer?!" You not only think that Ned Coletti is baseball's best general manager, you think the fact that Ned Coletti is baseball's best manager is a no-fucking-brainer?!!?!?!?!?1/1/11/
(Man, I hope this isn't a parody. Because I am already borderline-hysterical, and we're only at the headline.)
I guess when you make a completely unsupportable, borderline-sociopathic claim, your only real move is to launch immediately into an over-the-top support of it. Like when you say that living relatively close to an uninhabited part of Russia not only means something, it makes you good at foreign policy. (One admires the chutzpah, even while one is offended at the notion that someone thought that would work.)
Who says the Dodgers' decision-maker is out of his league?
Me! Me! Over here! I do!
With the acquisitions of Manny Ramirez and Casey Blake, he's fooled the rest of the National League.
I'm going to go ahead and short-circuit this whole line of reasoning right off the top. These were both fine deadline-pick-ups. But the Red Sox were the very definition of desperate. Even when offering to pay the man's entire salary, there were only two teams interested in Manny -- L.A. and Florida, and Florida apparently wanted not the $7m left on his contract, but in fact $9m, the extra $2m ostensibly to sign the draft pick(s) they would get when they offered Manny arbitration at the end of the year, he declined, and they got the compensation pick. Demanding extra cash, on top of the 100% subsidy you are being offered to have one of the greatest RHH in a generation come play for you, seems like the MLB version of extortion to me.
Anyway, the point is, the Dodgers -- on July 31 at like 3:01 PM -- were the only game in town. Now, Coletti deserves credit for being that game, but it's not like he picked up some scrub from the scrap heap because he believed in him, and now that guy is awesome. He traded a few guys for Manny Ramirez. Who's leaving at the end of the year. And yes, it has certainly energized this city, but again...the team is under .500 since the trade.
As for Blake, when he was acquired he had an .830 OPS. He now has an .826 OPS. He had a .303 OBP in August. He's 35.
Sat down with Ned Colletti before Tuesday's Dodgers game to discuss the details of his acceptance speech once he's officially named Major League Baseball's executive of the year."Huh?" said Colletti,
The correct response.
and now you know why he needs a speech writer.
And better Assistant GMs.
It's over, of course, the Dodgers playing minor league outfits now, and a lock to win the division title on the strength of Colletti's wizardry-- Manny Ramirez and Casey Blake suddenly appearing out of nowhere.
The Dodgers are 69-70. A game and a half back of Arizona. They are 15-16 since the trades. They recently lost like 8 in a row. And they're "a lock" to win the division? A fucking "lock?"
"Help me out here, Manny," Colletti shouted, while trying to divert attention from his genius.
Hang on. Is this a satire? I suddenly think this is a satire again. Hang on -- I have to go read it again to see if Simers is punking me.
I don't know. Too close to call. I'm going to keep on keepin' on, becuase I'm in too deep now.
"What do you need?" said Ramirez, later hitting his 10th homer as a Dodger.
"Don't you think Ned is baseball's executive of the year?" I asked.
"Yeah," Ramirez said, "for having me here for free."
Andruw Jones Juan Pierre Nomar Garciaparra Jason Schmidt Chan Ho Park
vs.
2 months of Manny Ramirez.
The team is under .500.
CAN'T REALLY call it the resurrection, because while he's good, he's not that good. But as GMs go, Colletti looked like a goner before Blake and Ramirez arrived.
"I didn't feel it," Colletti said, and as a general rule -- dead men don't feel anything.
The team has been almost exactly as mediocre since the trades. 15-16. 69-70.
Desperate times, desperate measures and Colletti improved the Dodgers without it costing the owner a penny. That makes him the best GM in baseball in the minds of most owners.
The Red Sox are currently starting home-grown players at first, second, third, and CF. Their best pitcher is home-grown, as is their closer who is top-3 in baseball. Their 6th inning guy is home-grown, their 7th-inning guy is home-grown, their spot-starter is home-grown. They've suffered significant injuries to Ortiz, Drew, Schilling, Lowell, and Beckett, and they're going to make the playoffs again, probably, for the fifth time in six years.
Theo Epstein < style="font-weight: bold;">"Do you think there are other teams out there saying, 'Ned's desperate, let's help Ned out?' " Colletti said, while proving the point, I guess, that he's just smarter than all the other GMs in somehow stealing Ramirez and Blake. No doubt, he fooled them all. Oldest trick in the book, too, luring your opponents to sleep, which explains why early on he signed Jason Schmidt, Andruw Jones and Juan Pierre -- everyone figuring the Dodgers were finished with such a cast of misfits.
Okay, so this is obviously sarcastic. I honestly don't know what to think. Is he saying that Colletti is still a bonehead and that we should all remember how many bad choices he made, and that they shouldn't be whitewashed by the recent, more successful additions? Or is he saying that yes, the guy was a bonehead before, but now he is awesome and should be Executive of the Year, for realskies?
Thoughts?
Then the Dodgers passed on David Eckstein, on the recommendation of scouts, Colletti said, even though the Dodgers needed a second baseman. Whatever it takes to make Arizona overconfident.
Again, he's being sarcastic, but I would argue that passing on Eckstein should automatically make someone Executive of the Year, just for having the guts to expose himself to what will surely be intense media hatred.
The Dodgers even allowed Arizona to claim him, another genius move by Colletti, the Diamondbacks probably thinking now they have added just the right missing piece to the puzzle. So how come they got drilled by St. Louis Tuesday night?
I'm so fucking confused.
Now he is saying that Colletti was smart to pass on Eckstein, because AZ...lost...with Eckstein...on Tuesday?
Maybe I'm just not that smart. But that's hard to believe, since I live fairly close to Stanford University, so I must be intelligent.
So many things go into the making of baseball's executive of the year, one day kids everywhere hoping to be just as cunning and famous as the Schmoozer, the former Cubs' PR guy who went on to become the great GM of the Dodgers.
"Stop the madness," Colletti said.
"It's over; Dodgers win the division," I said.
"We just lost eight straight," Colletti said.
WTF is going on? Colletti is the voice of reason? Or Simers is baiting him to his face? Or both?
And the Diamondbacks, who have 14 games remaining against challenging opponents to the Dodgers' six, completely fell for the feint. "Stop it," said Colletti, "it's not over."
Sincere again, somehow. This article is a sincerity Rorschach test.
Like an Academy Award nominee, I'm sure, he doesn't want to think about the baseball award until he actually hears his name called.
"I'm done winning awards," said Colletti, and you can just imagine how cluttered his office and home must be with all the awards won over the years.
The final blow to my sanity. This reads like a slam, but a quick glance assures us that Colletti has, indeed, won many awards.
I give up. I can't analyze baseball journalism anymore. I need to change careers. Oh -- I know: I live close to the Pacific Ocean, so that means I am a World Class marine biologist. I'll just focus on that, then.
It's T.J. Simers, he makes a living off of satirically making fun of people. His nickname for the McCourts are "The Parking Lot Attendant" and "The Screaming Meanie". The article was 100% making fun of Colletti to his face.
Big ups to Simers.
I think this is how I feel, too, now...though it's so weirdly presented.
There's a steady hand at the helm of your ship. A hand that wears a cowboy hat. A hand that also wears snakeskin boots. Ned's hand.
What's that? You just traded a 22-year-old catcher with a .994 OPS in 2008 and a pitcher with 335 strikeouts in 262.2 minor league innings for a defensively challenged third baseman with a career 106 OPS+ who turns 35 in a month?
And he's a two-month rental?
Relax -- there are good reasons for this. Excellent reasons. Reasons like -- Ned, you want to take this one?
"Casey Blake is a gamer," said Dodgers general manager Ned Colletti.
See? Don't you feel better now? What, you need more? Ned's got more.
"I think we improved the club," Colletti said. "Blake's a grinder with great character, a passionate player."
That's not all, Dodger fans. In addition to the privilege of trading away two talented prospects, you'll get the added benefit of continuing to block the progress of Andy LaRoche, who's racked up an .898 OPS in 1796 minor league at bats, has been heralded as a top prospect for what seems like hundreds of years now, was projected by PECOTA to OPS something like .850, and yet can't seem to ever be good enough to play in more than a handful of games in a row for the Dodgers. Ever. (LaRoche, by the way, has awful numbers in the majors this year, but he's been incredibly hit-unlucky (BABIP of .200) and he's walked more than he's struck out. Plus -- dude. The guy has gotten all of 59 at bats. Angel Berroa has gotten 89 at bats for Joe Torre's TerribleVetSquad already.)
It's not like Carlos Santana and Jonathan Meloan are sure things. Santana is kind of old to be in High A (and he's in the hitter-friendly Cal League), and Meloan has been terrible as a starter (though he should be a reliever anyway). But we're talking about giving them away for two hundred-some-odd at bats of Casey Blake. .336 career OBP Casey Blake. Bad defender in an already defensively suspect Dodger infield Casey Blake. Gamer Casey Blake. Grinder Casey Blake. Beardy Casey Blake. Casey Beard.
So yeah, I guess if I had to give this trade a grade, I would give it an A-. The only reason there's a minus is: there now appears to be a gamer surplus in the Dodger clubhouse. What happens when a team attains such a dangerously high gaminess quotient? Will Juan Pierre grow a thick, Baron Davis-style beard to prove that he's more of a gamer than Blake? What if Jeff Kent shoots himself in the foot with a crossbow just so he can play through the pain of a crossbow wound and be hailed as the gamiest Dodger of all? What if Nomar turns himself into a 5'6" white guy, and then Broxton transforms himself into Brett Favre in retaliation, and then Hong-Chih Kuo tops them all by becoming the ultimate gamer: a 5'6" Brett Favre?
I think the answer to all of these questions is: the Dodgers and their fans win, that's what happens. Casey Blake is the key to the World Series. Ned, you're a genius.
I've had a couple of people send me none-too-enthusiastic defenses of the Blake trade. This is what I wrote to one guy:
As with almost all trades, of course there's a pretty significant chance that Blake rakes for two months and the two prospies amount to nothing. Blake does, however, have a BABIP of .343 that seems pretty unsustainable. Take that away, his average drops back down to .265, and you're looking at a very average piece.
There's the argument, I suppose, that Torre simply was never going to play LaRoche every day. But to me that seems like allowing lower-level decision-making craziness to dictate further craziness on the upper levels.
Mike Scioscia Exhales Carbon Dioxide and Gaseous-Form Winning
It's tough being Bill Plaschke these days. His man Ol' Snakeskin Boots Colletti is running the underperforming Dodgers, Pencilneck DePodesta having long been run out of town on a Plaschke-sharpened rail. Can Bill bring himself to admit that some of Bootsy's moves have been questionable at best? Well, no, not yet. You see, losing isn't about the players. It's about the air in the clubhouse.
Dodgers need to play the Angels' brand of ball
Scioscia, the former Dodgers catcher, is the model manager who has created an atmosphere of winning.
It's that simple. Mike Scioscia brings a Glade Plug-In labeled "Winning™" into the clubhouse and everyone who breathes it in gains 15 points in average. I love baseball.
Does anything seem familiar, here, your honor? Let me distill these two articles:
August 2006:
Around the hotel...
In the corner...
Around the hotel table...
In the corner...
Around the hotel room table...
In the corner...
Aaaaaaand...January, 2007:
Down below...
Up above...
Down below...
Up above...
Down below...
It was a tough code, Plaschke's writing style, but I think I've broken it:
A = (physical location) B = (different physical location)
A B A B A B A B
Fast-forward to present day. The first sentence in Plaschke's column reads as follows:
In one dugout, they were fuming....
Guesses as to the follow-up?
If you guessed
In the other dugout, they were thankful.
you guessed correctly! You win a glamour shot of Ned Colletti holding a blazer over his shoulder. The photo is autographed by Juan Pierre.
The Angels consistently win, but it's not enough.
The Dodgers lose but, hey, well, everybody else in the division stinks, so whoopee!
Remember:
A B A B A B A B The Angels expect to win.
The Dodgers don't know what to expect.
The Angels live by a standard of excellence.
The Dodgers live by the seat of their pants.
Still got it, Plaschke! Reading a Plaschke column is like being in one of those cartoons where a dog watches a tennis match and its head bobs back and forth as the ball caroms left and right. It's exactly like that, except you get a lot more misinformation.
Scioscia speaks from the strongest seat of any major league manager -- unchallenged, unquestioned, and undeniably the boss.
And that's why the Angels win. I believe the Dodgers are being managed by a sixth grade class from Terre Haute, Indiana as a class project, correct?
Torre sits on a throne of cardboard, deserving of instant respect but admittedly receiving little from a crowd much more amateur than those professional New York Yankees.
Oh right. They've got Joe Torre, widely believed to be one of the better managers in the game. Where's the atmosphere of winning (AtmoWin, for short), then?
His young players still don't listen. When they should be looking at the scoreboard, they are looking in the mirror. When they should be moving the runner from first, they are often only interested in advancing themselves.
When they should be throwing to the cutoff man, they are reading Men's Health for ab workout tips. When they should be sacrifice bunting, they are buying effeminate designer jeans. When they should be fouling off pitches, they are masturbating. Always, they are masturbating.
The Angels are all about winning in October.
([sigh] All together now,) THE DODGERS --
The Dodgers are all about surviving tonight.
When Frank McCourt examines the admirable amounts of money he has spent to revive the Dodgers franchise, he needs to look at those two dugouts, and ask himself two questions:
Is all this money changing the culture?
Is he rebuilding the championship belief system that Scioscia took with him to the Angels?
Stop. Read back all that Bill Plaschke has written. Is there one thing -- one thing -- about actual baseball?
I think it's possible that Plaschke believes "baseball" is the name for a leadership camp you go to that teaches you about "brands," "cultures," "atmospheres," and "belief systems."
McCourt finally has the right manager, but all the losing is turning Torre into just another museum piece. Hired for his gravity, Torre's surroundings have rendered him weightless.
So Torre is the right manager. But he's not really the right manager because he's losing. Or is it that the losing is turning him into the wrong manager? Oh, fuck it, I'll just shit out another cute metaphor. How about one about gravity? Yeah, gravity, that's it. [lights a cigar, leans back, and falls asleep for fourteen hours]
McCourt may have some of the right kids but not all of the right kids. They all might eventually be All-Stars, but it's clearly not going to happen for all of them here.
While waiting for some of these players to figure it out, McCourt needs to figure them out.
Who is a ballplayer? Who is not? Who can continue to grow here? Who will not?
Blake DeWitt, he's a ballplayer.
Perfect. PERFECT. Of course Bill Plaschke loves Blake DeWitt. Blake DeWitt, a corner infielder, is OPSing .695. He had a .472 OPS in the month of June after a hot start. I repeat: .472. That is very nearly Jason Varitek June-bad.
How do they find a bunch of other guys who play the game the right way like he does?
I will tell you where: literally anywhere. Of the 30 men listed as "3B" on Yahoo!'s sortable stats page, only two have OPSes lower than Blake DeWitt's: Marco Scutaro (who really plays shortstop) and Jack Hannahan (who is Jack Hannahan). So Blake DeWitt, despite being "a ballplayer" (whatever you want that to mean) and "play[ing] the game the right way" (also borderline meaningless) is probably, objectively speaking, the worst or second-worst offensive third baseman in the major leagues.
WHERE WILL WE EVER FIND A BUNCH MORE BLAKE DEWITTS?
Some of their other youngsters have much more talent, but, having been coddled since double A, they might never become ballplayers here.
It may be time to trade some of that flashy talent for somebody who understands the fundamentals. And, yes, once again, Matt Kemp's name is being whispered through Dodgers offices.
This is a classic and well-worn Plaschke truism: the problem is always, always talent. You don't want too much of it, that is. Talent kills. Talent gets you in trouble. If Bill Plaschke were assembling a professional cello team, he would blackball Yo-Yo Ma right off the bat. Players such as Kemp and Andre Ethier and James Loney have been more highly touted than guys such as Casey Kotchman, Maicer Izturis and Erick Aybar.
But it is those Angels who have a better understanding of winning.
Sure, sure. Kemp, Ethier, and Loney have nothing going for them except better OPSes, ceilings, and ages than Kotchman, Izturis, and Aybar.
Izturis and Aybar are middle infielders, but man: those are sub-DeWitt numbers.
Before Thursday, the Dodgers had a better team batting average and on-base percentage than the Angels, while scoring only 10 fewer runs.
Yet the Angels had won 11 more games.
Why?
Luck. Not only luck, perhaps, but luck is a huge part of it. The Angels are currently overperforming their Pythagorean record by a league-leading 6.6 games. Second place is the Brewers, who are only outperforming their Pyth by 3.9. In other words, the Angels have been really, really lucky. Sometimes that luck lasts over the course of the season. Sometimes it doesn't (see 2005 Washington Nationals). The Dodgers, meanwhile, are marooned two games below .500 in part because they're two games below their Pythagorean. They've been a little unlucky. The Angels have a culture that believes in winning over statistics, winning over awards, winning over everything.
Or it's the culture. Right. I forgot. All you have to do is value winning and then the Pythagorean is meaningless. You can take your Pythagorean and shove it up your Pythagor-ass, eggheads. Of course: Takashi Saito is so caught up in winning the Rolaids award he could give a shit about winning a game. It's a culture where the Angels have committed seven fewer errors, grounded into eight fewer double plays, and do all the little things that are hidden beneath the numbers.
The Angels' winning culture is so strong that they have allowed a mere 3.99 runs a game (5th in baseball) compared to the Dodgers' ridiculous 4.05 runs a game (6th in baseball)! What a bunch of losers! These are the things you can't judge by numbers. (Ignore the fact that within a sentence in which he complains about numbers, Plaschke cites number of errors and number of GIDPs.)
Then there's the statistic that shows a team's ability to win close games while manufacturing runs.
The Dodgers are 1-31 when they score two runs or fewer, while the Angels are 8-13.
This is not "the" statistic that shows a team's ability to win close games. It's not even "a" statistic that shows that. This is nonsense. The Angels are 8-13 when scoring two or fewer runs. You know what that is? That's insanely lucky. Probably unsustainably lucky. Of the 2212 teams that have played full or partial seasons since 1901, six have had better winning percentages than the 2008 Angels when scoring two or fewer runs.
The Angels are going to start losing a few more of these games.
In 2007, the Toronto Blue Jays led the league in the vaunted "Record When Scoring Two Runs or Fewer" category, going 15-32. They won 83 games. The Colorado Rockies, who won 90 games and went to the World Series, went 3-36 in such games, which sounds pretty fucking awful until you realize what the fuck you're even talking about. You know what all of this means? Absolutely fucking nothing. It's a junk stat, or at the very least, something with so much noise in it that it's really, really hard to be drawing conclusions about cultures or atmospheres or belief systems.
The above three paragraphs (I'm counting the middle, one-sentence Plaschke-graph) were a complete waste of time. I'm worked up.
The Angels lose John Lackey and Kelvim Escobar, and they just get better.
The Dodgers lose Andrew Jones and Rafael Furcal, and they fall apart.
It's Andruw. You should know this. He was signed by your best friend Ned for the fifth-highest annual salary in MLB and he's OPSing .521. I haven't heard you talk about this much, really.
Scioscia's current team isn't as glitzy as his former team. But on a daily basis, they make a far stronger commitment to obtain the only piece of baseball jewelry that matters.
What does that mean, in baseball terms? So far, you have mentioned the following:
atmosphere of winning not looking in mirrors not being only interested in advancing themselves championship belief system more players like Blake DeWitt less talent more fundamentals winning over statistics winning over awards winning over everything fewer errors fewer double plays
So: make fewer errors? Don't hit into double plays? That's what I've retained. "What the Angels have, they've got ballplayers," said Dodgers General Manager Ned Colletti. "They refuse to have anything else. That was the Dodgers three decades ago. That's where we're trying to go now."
Ohhhhh. Ballplayers. I'm really starting to see why Plaschke and Colletti (Plolletti? Claschke. Definitely Claschke) get along so well. And so this discussion leads to the same place it leads seemingly every night in the bleachers and on Dodger Talk.
What about Ned?
He has had the flexibility. He has had the money. He has had his chance.
But some nights, it seems as if every Dodger he acquired in his three years here is either too old, too bruised or too boneheaded to figure out how to win.
From Ned Colletti's Wikipedia page:
"Colletti's notable player transactions, as GM, include signing Takashi Saito, Jason Schmidt, Juan Pierre, and Andruw Jones, and trading César Izturis for Greg Maddux."
Yikes. Schmidt, Pierre, Jones...you want to bash Colletti a little, Bill? Not even a little?
Some nights, many nights, the Dodgers are the worst possible embodiment in a town that understands baseball.
They are the anti-Angels.
Nope. It's all about the mystical powers of Mike Scioscia.
Part of the reason that Paul DePodesta was fired from his job as the previous Dodgers general manager was because, during his final aborted managerial search, he did not even inquire about the availability of Scioscia.
If the same fate befalls Colletti this winter, it will be because he could not create the sort of culture embraced by the likes of Scioscia.
According to Baseball Prospectus' Third-Order Wins, the Angels are actually a 44.9-43.0 team and the Dodgers are a 44.5-43.5 team. That 0.4-win difference? 100% Scioscia.
Lest you think that Mike Scioscia actually has the magical managerial ability to will his teams to victories in close games through atmosphere and branding and calm, baseball-faced, steely-jawed resolve, I present to you the following: during his tenure as Angels manager, Scioscia's teams have won 54.0% of their one-run games. Which is very good. Sixth in baseball, in fact. Makes sense: they have the sixth-best record in baseball over that span (2000-2008).
The Dodgers, with their culture of losing, their miserable, all-talent-no-fundamentals rapscallions, their carousel of managers, have only the tenth-best overall record from 2000-2008. But their winning percentage in one-run games is .559, .019 higher than Scioscia's Stalwarts and good for third in baseball. Those close ones -- that's where you really see the mettle of a team! That's where manufacturing and bunting and sacrificing and striking out if necessary if it's for the good of the team truly comes into play.
The team that won the highest percentage of one-run games from 2000 to 2008 is the Oakland Athletics, who have a culture of insidious numbers and are run by the chess computer Deep Blue.
The second I finished reading this article, Blake DeWitt saved Hiroki Kuroda's perfect game by bare-handing a 7th inning bunt attempt and flinging it to first to get Gregor Blanco by a step.
KT said it already, and here's the link. It seems that rational thought has somehow insinuated itself back into Le Ravine Chavez (pronounced sha-vay). But wait -- here's Snakeskin Boots Colletti's quote on the matter:
"Is he [Pierre] a bench player or is he not starting tomorrow?" Colletti asked. "It's a long season. You've got to compete, you've got to play. I understand the build-up to Opening Day. But you look at a lot of Opening Day rosters and there are players you can't even recognize. It changes day by day."
Reading between the lines, I'd say it's fifty-fifty that Bootsy's going to DFA Ethier by the end of the week so Torre's forced to play a real man in left field. A man who can bunt. A man who can swunt. A man whose skills range from bunting okay to swunting acceptably well. A man who is constantly hailed as the consummate professional but was already complaining before the decision was made to replace him with a better player ("If they want to go a different route," Pierre said, "I can live with it and I have to understand it but it's something I don't get.")
Snakeskin has spoken. This story is far from over.
SI.com's Jon Heyman has a list of trades that "should happen." Here's #1: 1. Scott Rolen to the Dodgers
Los Angeles is desperately seeking additional power, and Rolen fits the bill.
In that he's slugging .318 in 129 AB this year, has an EqA of .230, is 32 and expensive, and is always injured? Is that the "bill" he fits?
Ned Colletti, one of the game's more aggressive GMs, has looked just about everywhere for power, which is the glaring weakness on an otherwise well-balanced team. Colletti recently said he wasn't going after Blue Jays third baseman Troy Glaus. But he hasn't denied interest in Rolen.
Troy Glaus: 30 years old, slugging .614 with a .346 EqA. This = better. (Edit: I am getting slammed on e-mail, so I will hereby add what I thought, on May 20, was an implied: Small Sample Size Alert!!!The original point was: Glaus is younger and equally injured and hitting better.)
The Cardinals have not yet signaled they're ready to throw in the towel, but if things continue to go south, it would make sense to trade Rolen, who has an uneasy relationship with manager Tony La Russa and would have some market value despite his awful start (.215). (Rolen has three years and $36 million remaining on his contract after this season.) The Dodgers have prospects to trade, including a third baseman, Andy LaRoche, plus young pitchers.
Who would be dumb enough to trade for Scott Rolen? Who is dumb enough to think that Scott Rolen will provide "power" for a team, especially one that plays in a cavernous stadium? And who would be dumb enough to trade Andy LaRoche, who is 23, cost-controlled, and 7-for-his-first-27 with 2 2B, for Scott Rolen, who will be paid $12m a year until 2009?
While the point that Rolen is hardly an answer to offensive woes, your implication that Dodger Stadium is cavernous was off-base. Dodger Stadium actually increases home runs for hitters, rating just below Coors Field in that category. While it's overall Index is below average for runs (at 95), it is a HR park.
Mea culpa. I looked at the wrong stat row on ESPN's Park Factor's page. And you'll see why, if you follow this link soon, before it all changes, and you notice that Coors Field is .877 for HR. What the hell?!?!
Ned Colletti is cornering the market on leadoff hitters. One year after signing Rafael Furcal to a surprising three-year, $39 million contract, the Dodgers GM landed Juan Pierre for five years, $45 million.
They apparently will bat Pierre in the No. 2 spot, using his high-contact, low-impact approach in a traditional, Nellie Fox fashion. It's amazing that a guy the Cubs were ambivalent about re-signing could land a five-year contract, but Pierre has a good reputation within the game and led the National League with 204 hits.
"This man gets on base an awful lot," Colletti said. "He gets 200 hits or more, is a great guy on a club and, like Nomar (Garciaparra), has great qualities as a human being."
.260 is league average. And it takes SB into account, so don't start yelling about his SBs.
At least Pierre averages 12 HR. Per 4110 AB.
Can Juan Pierre's great qualities as a human being reach base? Because if they can, he might be worth the forty-five million dollars they are going to pay him until he is 34 years old. Hitting him second is going to murder this offense.
And as the linked blurb goes onto say:
Pierre also led the league with 20 caught-stealings, the fifth time in six years he has been at the top of that category. The most troubling stat was just 32 walks in 740 plate appearances. Pitchers have realized there's no reason not to challenge him.
And:
The Dodgers would have been better to re-sign Kenny Lofton and wait another year on 22-year-old Matt Kemp, who has shown he can become a dynamic force in center.
Ned Colletti is so much better than Paul Computeresta, isn't he?
I honestly don't. Bill Plaschke has absolutely outdone himself. I mean, for God's sake, the article is called
There's Trust in His Eyes
And it is pure (read: terrible) poetry.
Around the hotel table sat Dodgers executives discussing trades.
In the corner sat the old scout watching television.
Around the hotel table they were talking about dumping Milton Bradley and wondering whom they should demand from the Oakland A's in return.
In the corner sat the old scout who has never worked with radar gun, computer or even stopwatch.
Just like good scouts do. Good scouts never use scouting tools. They trust their goddamn eyes, and their guts, and their spleens. Why?
Because Old Hoss Radbourn was not discovered with a computer, dargbloomit! He was discovered because 130 year-old Petey "Garbageface" Krunkston, who had been a rookie league manager for 142 years and had seen a goddamn ballgame or two in his day, woke up one morning with a wart shaped like a flame on his left arm, and he turned to his wife of 186 years Edna Mae and he said, "The flame mole's back, darlin.' I's a gone and what been done and moseyed to the ballpark -- there's sure to be a great future prospect a-lurkin' about, iffin' the flame mole done appeared-a-mafied on m'arm!" And he did go down there t' ol' Brasston Park, and sure 'nuff, a 4 year-old Hoss Radbourn was thar, an' he was a-throwin' and a-hittin somethin' fierce! And bloogburrmit if Garbageface didn't sign that 4 year-old right then and there! And he became a Hall-of-Famer!!!!!
Around the hotel room table, someone mentioned an unknown double-A outfielder named Andre Ethier.
In the corner, the old scout jumped.
Is Plaschke the most overblown prose artiste in the business, or what? In the corner...around the hotel table...in the corner... I swear, I think Plaschke believes he is the walking embodiment of James Earl Jones's character in "Field of Dreams." People will come, Bill. People will read. People will vomit.
"Wait a minute!" shouted Al LaMacchia. "I know Andre Ethier!"
In a gait slowed by years of climbing bleachers, LaMacchia walked over from the television to the table.
With Dodgers executives staring at him in amazement, the old scout began to sell.
Were they really staring at him "in amazement?" Were you there, Plaschke? I find it hard to believe that in an organizational meeting to discuss prospects the team might want to acquire, that when a scout started talking about a AA prospect, the rest of the organization "stared at him in amazement."
GM: We need some good minor leaguers.
Scout: Hey! I know some minor leaguers!
GM: (falls off chair in dismay) Ga-ga-ga-ga-ga goink!!! This is our lucky day!!!!!!!
He was on the phone, and it sounded as if he was crying.
"You're writing something about an old fella like me?" said Al LaMacchia.
He's 85, and he's been scouting for 51 years, and he can't believe anybody still cares.
I tell him I am writing the story because the Dodgers still care.
For the first time since Fred Claire was their last world championship general manager, the Dodgers are listening to their older scouts again.
They are reading reports scrawled in aging penmanship. They are evaluating players based on dusted-off instincts.
Ned Colletti's new administration is still using computers, but they also value guys who have no idea how to turn one on.
"I trust my eyes," LaMacchia said. "Been good enough so far."
Colletti trusted LaMacchia's recommendation at last year's winter meetings in Dallas, and the Dodgers are in first place in August, and that is no coincidence.
I'm sorry. I can't stop snortling derisively. Hang on. ... Okay. There.
The Dodgers are 64-57. They have the worst record of any first-place team. Let's not go bragging about any aspect of their brilliant system just yet. A month ago they lost like 40 games in a row, and in most other divisions they'd be basically nowheresville.
"You cannot microwave experience," Colletti said. "The only way to get it is to live it. I want guys who have lived it."
Colletti has hired two scouts/advisors since joining the Dodgers last winter in moves typical of him but totally uncharacteristic of any other CEO anywhere.
Both of the new guys were over 70.
Get ready. Here's my favorite part.
The scout, Phil Rizzo, lives in Chicago and does nothing but attend Cubs and White Sox games.
"The guy who watched a bunch of Maddux starts and filed the reports on him?" Colletti asked. "That was him."
I am going to hit return ten times, leaving a wide open white space on this blog, so we can all reflect on how unbelievably stupid that is. Ready? Begin reflecting. Then read the rest of this post, because Plaschke has a lot more to say.
You are telling me that you needed to hire someone to tell you that Greg Maddux might be a good pitcher? I mean, the guy is old, but...he's Greg Maddux. You play in Dodger Stadium, which is pretty friendly to pitchers, generally. He's Greg Maddux. You needed a 70 year-old scout, with all of his accumulated baseball knowledge, to tell you that Greg Maddux might help your team? He's Greg Maddux.
The advisor is Bill Lajoie, a longtime baseball executive who helped engineer the trade with one of his former employers, Atlanta, for Wilson Betemit.
Everyone in the universe knew Betemit was a good young player. He was a 25 year-old SS with a .784 OPS. What are you saying?
"Scouts are my lifeblood, they see players, they know players, they can tell you things that you can't get anywhere else,"' said Colletti.
LaMacchia knew Ethier.
It required thousands of miles on his old Ford, and pages of scribbling in his little black date book.
It required a brief break for congestive heart failure — "He told me it was just a little thing, he'd be back in a week" said Colletti — and it took him all of last summer.
Okay.
I just typed "Andre Ethier" into Google. The first hit I got was from thebaseballcube.com. I clicked on it, and I learned:
in 2005, for the Midland, TX Oakland A's AA team, Andre Ethier:
I also learned that at ASU, a big-time program, Ethier crushed the ball, putting up a 1.061 OPS with a 52/30 BB/K ratio, and was a 2-time Pac-10 All-Star OF.
I also learned that in 2005 he was the MVP of the Texas League, as well as the Oakland A's Minor League Player of the Fucking Year (emphasis and cussing mine).
You're telling me it took a million miles of driving and a heart attack and 368 years of baseball experience to tell that the 2005 OAKLAND A'S MINOR LEAGUE PLAYER OF THE FUCKING YEAR might be a guy who might interest you? Whatever, man. I learned it in twelve seconds with a computer.
My leg does itch a little though -- I think I have dry skin. Does that medical ailment mean my opinion counts more?
But LaMacchia made it his business to know Ethier.
"I guess that's what I do," he said. "I try to know players."
Most scouts do. Even the ones who use technology.
Working as a national scout from his home in San Antonio, where he lives with his wife of 62 years, Annie, LaMacchia would watch Ethier as he played for Oakland's double-A Midland team.
He saw him play in San Antonio, and Corpus Christi, and Frisco. He saw him taking early batting practice on 100-degree days, and running out ground balls at the end of blowout losses.
He didn't need a stopwatch to judge his hustle. He didn't need a computer to feel his swing. And when LaMacchia ever needs a radar gun reading, well, he just asks one of the scouts sitting next to him.
Luckily, one of the scouts has a radar gun. Because otherwise, LaMacchia would have no idea how fast the guy's throwing.
"The younger fellas look at me like I'm strange," he said. "But it's all in my heart and my head."
In Ethier, he saw so much potential, one day he couldn't help himself.
He walked down to the dugout railing and started giving him instructions.
Said LaMacchia: "I wanted to help the young kid, tell him not to try to pull everything, tell him to take what they gave him."
Said Ethier: "I thought he was just some crazy old man yelling at me from the stands."
I don't blame you, Andre.
A couple of old-timers quickly set the kid straight.
LaMacchia was a right-handed pitcher who won a couple of big-league games for St. Louis and Washington in the mid-1940s then became a legendary talent evaluator.
He played the game! Hey Joe Morgan -- rest easy, man, this guy played the game! You can listen to his opinions. They are valid!
I can't help it anymore. The rest of my comments will be in super-angry all-caps.
...When Ethier's name came up at the winter meetings, LaMacchia perked up as if they were talking about his son.
Logan White, the Dodgers scouting director, also had knowledge of Ethier. But it was LaMacchia's enthusiasm and information that sealed the deal.
"No question, I give Al full credit for this one," said Colletti. "He knew the guy. He loved the guy. We listened to him."
Colletti immediately asked the A's for Ethier. And, initially, he was turned down.
BECAUSE HE WAS THEIR 2005 MINOR LEAGUE PLAYER OF THE YEAR. I DON'T KNOW HOW MANY TIMES I CAN EMPHASIZE THIS.
"But I kept thinking about what Al said, and I kept asking," Colletti said.
DID YOU KEEP THINKING ABOUT HOW HE WAS THEIR 2005 MINOR LEAGUE PLAYER OF THE YEAR?
When the A's wanted the Dodgers to add infielder Antonio Perez to the trade, LaMacchia again pushed Ethier, telling Colletti that the kid had a chance to be better than Bradley or Perez.
"The A's finally gave in, and we got what we wanted," said Colletti.
Did they ever. While the A's received two serviceable players who have probably reached their peak, the Dodgers received a possible rookie of the year.
A PREDICTION ONE MIGHT HAVE ARRIVED AT, KNOWING HIS MINOR LEAGUE STATS, AS WELL AS HIS FIRST-PLACE FINISH IN THE RACE TO BE THE OAKLAND A'S 2005 MINOR LEAGUE PLAYER OF THE YEAR.
Before Tuesday, Ethier led all National League rookies in batting average (.333), on-base percentage (.390) and slugging percentage (.557).
He also has an old buddy who still occasionally calls him on the cellphone and reminds him to take what they give him.
From his San Antonio home this week, LaMacchia sighed.
"I am so grateful somebody still listens to me," he said.
From the Dodgers' clubhouse Tuesday, Ethier smiled.
"Everyone thinks they do all these analyses before they make a trade, but, in the end, I'm a Dodger because of that crazy old man," he said. "I can't thank him enough."
YOU WOULD HAVE BEEN AN OAKLAND A IF HE HADN'T TRADED FOR YOU, AND YOUR TEAM WOULD HAVE A BETTER RECORD.
Once and for all:
I don't think -- NO ONE THINKS -- that scouts are worthless. EVERYONE who watches baseball and knows about baseball knows the value of scouting. It has value. Okay? It has value. It can tell you things about a player's constitution, and hustle, and all that stuff, which is definitely important.
But what has as much, if not more, value -- in nearly every single fucking possible scenario -- is the analysis of statistical information.
If you seek to invalidate the use of statistical analysis...if you denigrate it, mock it, or look down your nose at it...if you write terrible mock-poetry articles declaring the objective superiority of gut instinct and old-fashioned "stare tests" over numbers-based research...then you are a far bigger snob, a far bigger ignoramus, and a far more provincial person than those whom you target with tripe like this.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to drive 1600 miles on a pack mule to St. Louis so I can give Albert Pujols a little look-see. Want to be able to speak up tomorrow when the Boss Man asks me if we should try to trade for 'im.
1. Very special thanks to reader Bryan for the tip. 2. The title of this post, if you're curious, refers to Plaschke's article, and not my feelings about my own writing. 3. My feelings abot my own writing are nearly always: "...eh."
I only highlighted MLVr because that's the biggest disparity (among players with a min. 300 ABs, he ranks 15th in the majors), and there's nothing at which he has equally underperformed that balances it out somewhat. At his current rate, he would end up with a VORP of roughly 39-40. Something else, too, is that his BABIP is .396.
A BABIP of .396 is nuts. The guy is getting a little bit lucky, I'd say. He seems like a good player, but he will probably come back down to earth a bit. That's one point. The other point is that if PECOTA had him projected for a .290 EqA, an .848 OPS, and a 5.0 WARP, how the hell did no one else in the Dodgers' organization know about him?
Finally, our friend the Beautiful Cynic writes:
The entire crux of his argument relies on his statement early on that "Around the hotel room table, someone mentioned an unknown double-A outfielder named Andre Ethier." How "unknown" could Andre Ethier have been if I'd read about him every two weeks in Baseball America?
Want to Copy Someone? Do the Opposite of What They Do!
I have a question for Michael Ventre, who, one would think, has actually watched sports in order to prepare for his job as a sportswriter.
His article is called "Dodgers Hope ‘Red Sox West’ Brings Success" and has the subtitle: "Nomar signing cements move to try and [sic] copy Boston’s winning formula."
You can probably figure out what the article is about: the Dodgers have named Grady Little their manager, and now signed Nomar, and Billy Mueller, and also have Derek Lowe. So, Ventre writes, they are trying to copy the Red Sox' blueprint for success.
Here's my question for Michael Ventre: you are wrong.
Fine. Not really a question. Who cares.
Grady Little was fired because he (a) made one of the worst and most memorable blunders in the history of managing, and (b) did not in any way fit into the Red Sox' modified-Moneyball blueprint for success (RSM-MBFS). So, hiring him is the opposite of copying the RSM-MBFS.
Nomar is a 32 year-old SS with no plate discipline who was traded because his diminishing bat speed and history of injuries made him a bad fit in the RSM-MBFS. Therefore, (see above).
Billy Mueller was a very important part of the RSM-MBFS. But he is 34 and his skills are declining, so the Sox let him go. Don't you think that if he were a viable candidate to continue contributing to the RSM-MBFS he would still be a part of the RSM-MBFS?
Derek Lowe is a head-case who doesn't strike anyone out and the Dodgers gave him a 14-year $214 million contract.
Read the article. It's really dumb and talks about Ned Colletti a lot -- a guy who is so completely the opposite of the kind of dude who would be the architect for the RSM-MBFS it's not even funny.
Bruce Jenkins is paid -- every week, presumably -- to write about things for the San Francisco Chronicle. Here's one example of what they get for their money. The subject is new Dodgers' GM Ned Colletti. (Thanks to reader Tony and others for the link.)
Some people in L.A. have expressed concern that Colletti was never a scout, but take our word for it: He sees the game as well as anybody.
He has excellent vision, and his position as GM means he has great seats to every game.
And that's the key: He sees it. He'll take statistics into account, but Colletti is the kind of guy whose first impression of a prospect might be, "There goes a ballplayer" -- and he'll be right.
The secret behind this amazing ability: He identifies them by their uniforms, and the fact that they are holding mitts and bats.
"To me," he says, "how a player approaches the game, how he approaches life, far outweighs what the stat line looks like." For Dodger fans weary of Paul DePodesta's computer-generated philosophies, there is palpable relief.
Really? This is what you want? A guy who actually says that the way a guy "approaches" the game is not as important as how well he plays the game? Look, DePo made some mistakes, and more importantly, he got absolutely housed by injuries. But why there is this sense of snotty "vindication," or something, by people who frown on actual analysis of players' abilities...I just don't understand it. It has the same flavor as a bunch of 19th century noblemen sipping brandy in a drawing room and laughing about the idea that women would get involved in politics, or something. "Well, of course, the very idea of this new approach is ludicrous. But we'll let them have their little fun, and then get back to the way things ought to be."
Along those lines, such mercurial talents as Juan Pierre and Carl Crawford are reportedly available in trade. The "Moneyball" guys can forget them. Way too fast and disruptive. Too much imagination. Too much of a threat to manufacture runs.
If you're going to snidely dismiss us, please cite players we would actually not want. Carl Crawford can play on my Moneyball team anyday. He's 24 years old. His OPS in the last three years has gone .671/.781/.800. His HR have gone 5-11-15. He is awesome. I might take Pierre as well, though his OPS dropped 100 points from 2004-05, and his .326 OBP last year just killed his team.
Also: "too much imagination?" What the effing eff are you talking about? That doesn't mean anything. These two guys do exactly what all baseball players do: they hit, run, and field. Does "imagination" mean "bunting?" Sometimes these two guys bunt. Or does it mean "steal bases?" Because lots of guys do this -- and these two guys do it well. The reason they are good is because they are good hitters and they are fast and play good defense. The reason Crawford is excellent -- and a potential MVP candidate someday, if you ask me -- is because he also hits for power, which Pierre does not do.
And please, please, please, stop using the phrase "manufacture runs." Please. I beg of you. It's really dumb.
The point is, don't criticize something you don't understand, Bruce Jenkins. Because, as the old saying goes, when you criticize something you don't understand, you make an ass out of you.
