ST reports from Tinseltown

[gyb13]

Cesar Izturis will be the SS and bat leadoff, winning the job over Alex Cora. Ugh...Izturis might be as bad as Womack from the top of the lineup with his terrible OBP track record.

Dave Roberts will be the CF, with Marquis Grissom seeing some PT there as well. Tom Goodwin and McKay Christensen are on the block.

Omar Daal wants to be traded now that it's clear he won't make the rotation.

[Fritz Buelow]

Omar has been taking Carlos Perez lessons.

[gyb13]

Originally posted by Fritz Buelow
Omar has been taking Carlos Perez lessons.
Nah, his contract size isn't comparable...Omar has a lot to learn from his guru.....
Perez made $7.8 million last year, for pitching 0 innings of major league ball. Daal made a 'meager' $2.8 mill for his 32 starts.

[gyb13]

Fox power hasn't turned Dodgers into powerhouse
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Rob Neyer
ESPN.com

Sometime soon, if things go according to plan, once a week you'll be "treated" to an old column of mine that I've deemed either competent or relevant. However, one of the many columns that won't qualify on either count is the one I wrote when Rupert Murdoch and Fox bought the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Because that day I was -- and I'm embarrassed to admit this -- hysterical. So hysterical that I probably should have typed the entire column in capital letters with lots of exclamation points.

I can't quote myself because at this moment I don't have access to that column, but essentially I predicted that if Murdoch gained entry into Major League Baseball, he'd buy every good or great ballplayer available, the Dodgers would win every World Series, cats and dogs would start living together, etc.

And of course, very little of that happened. True, the Dodgers did give Kevin Brown what looked like a crazy deal, and they did give Darren Dreifort what actually was a crazy deal. But the Dodgers have won exactly zero National League West titles since Murdoch forked over $311 million, and today it occurred to me that they're still very, very far from dominating anything other than the greater Los Angeles area.

What happened? Still away from home and using a borrowed computer to search for column topics, I ran across this link on our baseball page: Camp roundup: Dodgers name Izturis starter at short.

"Well, that's not really so bad," I thought. "After all, Cesar Izturis may not be much of a hitter, but the young man can catch the ball and he's young. It's nice to see the kid get a chance."

But then I clicked on that link, and as I read the headline -– "Izturis wins shortstop job, could bat leadoff" –- and then got into the story, my eyebrows kept arching higher and higher until they ran into my hairline, where a truce was declared. Because in that story we learned that the Dodgers plan to employ the following combination of players, in some fashion or another, in the top two spots in their batting order:

Career OBP
Cesar Izturis .279
M. Grudzielanek .328
Marquis Grissom .318
Dave Roberts .292

Granted, Izturis is only 22 and that .279 career on-base percentage was compiled in only 46 games. But the fact is that Izturis has done nothing in his minor-league career to make us think that he's capable of doing much better than .279, at least not now. When Izturis was 20 years old, he posted a .253 OBP in Triple-A. When Izturis was 21 years old, he posted a .310 OBP in Triple-A (and that .279 OBP in the majors, with Toronto).

There's little reason to think that Izturis is ready to play in the majors, and there's absolutely no reason at all to think he's ready to be remotely productive with the bat in the majors ... and yet Dodgers manager Jim Tracy is actually thinking about putting Izturis at the top of the batting order.

Failing that, Izturis is slated to bat second, leaving the leadoff slot for ... Marquis Grissom and Dave Roberts, both of whom are horrible miscast as leadoff men because both of them are unlikely to reach base even 30 percent of the time. Well, OK, if strictly platooned they'll do better than that. But not better enough to justify their jobs.

Oh, and it's said that if Izturis doesn't win the leadoff job he'll slide all the way down to the No. 2 slot, where of course he'll do almost exactly as much damage to the Dodgers as if he were batting leadoff.

I've written more than a few times that batting order doesn't matter, and I'm not changing my tune today. Still, all this does say a couple of things about the Dodgers, and neither of them are positive.

First, while it really doesn't matter so much who bats where, you'll still find that organizations with a working knowledge of on-base percentage do tend to put high-OBP guys at the top of the order. It may be a small edge, but why not take the small edges where you can?

And second, the real problem isn't that Izturis and/or Grissom/Roberts and/or Grudzielanek are going to be listed at the top of the lineup. The real problem is that they're all going to be in the lineup. Reading the story and seeing those names -– along with others like Alex Cora and Jeff Reboulet –- and I'm thinking, "Wait, these are the Dodgers, right? Pete Reiser and Jackie Robinson and Junior Gilliam and Maury Wills and Davey Lopes and Steve Sax ... the team that essentially invented "On-Base Percentage."

I suppose that it's too early to pass judgment on Dan Evans, the Dodgers' new GM. However, we can safely say that he's not a miracle worker. Evans was presented with an overpaid, undertalented roster when he signed on with the Dodgers, and that's still essentially what he's got. Worse, there's very little help in the minor leagues, and there won't be for at least a few years.

All that said, the Dodgers could win the West because there's no obviously outstanding team in the division. If Brown and Andy Ashby somehow stay healthy all season and Kazuhisa Ishii is as good as advertised, the Dodgers could actually win 88 games. And that's going to be enough for first place.

[gyb13]

And today LA's lineup was announced:

Player (2001 OBP, OPS+)
CF Roberts .292 53 (career: 182pa)
SS Izturis .279 69 (140pa)
C LoDuca .374 144
RF Green .372 157
LF Jordan .334 110
3B Beltre .310 93
1B Karros .303 85
2B Grudzielanek .317 91

[Fritz Buelow]

At least they got Karros batting 8th right - that's kinda smart.

[gyb13]

Originally posted by Fritz Buelow
At least they got Karros batting 8th right - that's kinda smart.
7th...you forget this is the NL, Fritz? :rolleyes: