Jake Peavy and the Shortstop Prospects

Now that C.C. Sabathia and A.J. Burnett have signed with the Yankees, it seems like the Dodgers are essentially right back where they started with regards to pitching. They still have three starters with various degrees of experience starting in the majors, and they have James McDonald, who was a starter in the minors and who was brought up in mid-September for a few scoreless innings of relief work (and whom I inexcusably forgot to mention in Dodgers pitching needs this offseason). But they've made some other signings that should give them more flexibility in navigating the free-agent market—namely, with Casey Blake at third base, Rafael Furcal at shortstop, and Mark Loretta available to fill in whenever the need arises, they have an entire infield. These signings likely block the Dodgers' top infield prospects (shortstop Chin-Lung Hu and shortstop/second baseman Ivan DeJesus) from their major league team for at least three years. Here's one way to solve this problem:

The San Diego Padres have Jake Peavy, and they don't really have a shortstop.

The Dodgers have shortstops and they desperately need starting pitching.

I hope I'm not the only one seeing a pattern here. Obviously it would take more than a shortstop prospect to bring Peavy to L.A., so let's look at players that the Padres have lost to free agency: Two relief pitchers, including closer Trevor Hoffman, and two starting pitchers. As I'm sure I've pointed out before, the Dodgers should keep all the pitching they have, and then add some—but of course, pitching only helps you if it's good for the situation you need. Case in point: RP Jonathan Broxton, who was the closer for the Dodgers after Takashi Saito injured his elbow this season. Broxton blew 8 of his 25 save opportunities, but he held right-handed hitters to a paltry .181 batting average, with an astonishing 12:1 strikeout to walk ratio. Lefties hit .270 against him with a 1.27:1 SO to BB ratio. He'd be a wonderful right-handed specialist for a team like the Padres that can afford to have specialized relievers.

Free-agent closers Trevor Hoffman and Brian Fuentes are still unsigned, and if the Dodgers really feel desperate, they can always try to pick up Takashi Saito again on the chance that he'll be fully recovered in time to help them tumble into the postseason. Either way, they have their Major League infield locked up for a while, but they need to make their offer quickly before the Padres sign a new shortstop.

Dodgers pitching needs this offseason

With Greg Maddux's retirement and Derek Lowe and Brad Penny's impending departure, the Dodgers starting rotation is halfway gone. Although Chad Billingsley, Hiroki Kuroda, and Clayton Kershaw are a strong starting core, I have yet to see a team make it through a season with only three starters (based on his 1.3+ WHIP and .434 WL% this season, I don't consider Eric Stults to be a viable fourth starter). This means that the Dodgers need at least two starting pitchers this offseason - and if they want to make it to October again, they're going to need two good starters.

C.C. Sabathia, Jake Peavy, and A.J. Burnett have all been discussed half to death, so let's take a look at some of the pitchers whom the columnists haven't already obsessed over for hours and days on end. At the beginning of November, I firmly believed that the Dodgers should sign Ryan Dempster and trade for, well, someone. Obviously, Dempster is out of the equation, but in the recent weeks, I've had time to think about that 'someone' they should get in a trade, and I've come to the somewhat tentative conclusion that Ricky Nolasco fits the team's needs very well. He's young (he'll be 26 next week), he pitches well on the road (3.82 career ERA away vs. 4.12 career ERA at home), and he has already improved substantially since his last full season (2006: 11-11, 4.82 vs. 2008: 15-8, 3.52) - plus, he had the second lowest WHIP in the National League (1.102 - behind only Cole Hamels's 1.082), and a strikeout-to-walk ratio of 4.43:1. He has never made more than $400,000 in a season, which means he probably wouldn't make too much of an impact on the Dodgers payroll.

So if he's what the Dodgers need, then what would they have to give up to get him? Marlins free agent outfielder Luis Gonzalez played in 136 games this year, and will likely return to the Diamondbacks (where he was a one-time Silver Slugger and a five-time All-Star) for '09 - and with only one player (Hanley Ramirez) stealing more than 10 bases this past season (Ramirez was 35-for-47 in stolen bases), the Marlins need speed. Dodgers outfielder Juan Pierre seems like an obvious choice here (he stole 40 bases in 52 attempts this year), but he has 3 years and $28.5M remaining on his contract, and he is signed with limited no-trade protection. Matt Kemp is also an option; he doesn't have a big contract like Pierre's and he batted .290 with 35 stolen bases in 46 attempts this season. There's also catcher A.J. Ellis, who batted .321 and fielded .996 with an OBP of .436 for Dodgers Triple-A Las Vegas this year, and although he doesn't have the speed which the Marlins might need (he's a career 5-for-15 in stolen base attempts), he could still be a valuable addition to the Marlins roster, especially with Matt Treanor's fielding and hitting on the decline (he made 8 errors this year and only batted .238, a dropoff from last year's .267 with only 3 errors that, while not a smoking gun, could be indicative of a continuing decline in performance on the part of the 32 year old catcher).

Of course, even if they did trade for Nolasco, the Dodgers would still be one pitcher short of a complete regular-season rotation, and considering that they need to keep all the infielders they currently have, it would probably be best for them to acquire that pitcher through free agency. At this hypothetical point, they would have a rotation consisting almost entirely of righties (out of the current Dodgers rotation plus Nolasco, Clayton Kershaw is the only left-hander). Two-time All-Star southpaw Andy Pettitte is the first choice here - he spent 9 of his 14 major league seasons with Joe Torre's Yankees, he holds the all-time record for most starts and innings pitched in the postseason (218.2 innings in 35 games - essentially, a full regular season's worth of pitching), and he has never had a losing season - but he's expensive. Very expensive. His $16M salary this year ranked 7th highest in the American League, and the only reason he doesn't have a new contract yet is because even the Yankees think that's too high a price.

The other potentially affordable good lefties on the market are Randy Wolf (a Canoga Park native who has already spent the 2007 season with the Dodgers, going 9-6 with a 4.73 ERA in 18 starts), Tom Glavine (who, despite 10 All-Star games and two Cy Young awards, hasn't been doing particularly well recently), Randy Johnson (also a 10-time All-Star and a five-time Cy Young winner), Jamie Moyer (who has actually been getting better over the last few seasons - last year he was 14-12 with an ERA of 5.01 and this year he was 16-7, leading the Phillies in wins and keeping his ERA down to 3.71, and pitching just under 200 innings and recording 123 strikeouts), Odalis Perez (who had his one All-Star season - 15-10, 3.00 ERA, 0.990 WHIP, 222.1 IP - with the Dodgers in 2002, and might not be looking for too big a salary after his statistically mediocre, $0.85M one-year stint with the Nationals), and Oliver Perez (who was a reasonable 10-7 this year but had a 422 ERA and led the league with 105 walks allowed, and might be asking for more than the $6.5M he made this year). My favorites from these are Moyer and Wolf - why? Because they tend to go somewhat deep into games (Moyer pitches an average of 6.2 innings per game started and Wolf goes an average of 6.1 innings), which sometimes takes a little bit of pressure off the bullpen.

This is a Dodgers bullpen that currently has exactly one competent lefty reliever; a closer whose recovery is dubious at best; and a backup closer who blew 8 of his 22 save opportunities this year. FOX Sports is reporting that the Dodgers may be looking to sign all-time saves leader Trevor Hoffman, but is this really a good idea? Maybe, maybe not. Unlike many in the media, I've assigned the phrase 'Barry Zito principle' not to salary-induced collapses, but instead to change-of-scenery-induced collapses, and Hoffman's 15-and-a-half season career with the Padres makes him a prime candidate for one of those nasty little failures. This could just be my automatic cynicism about anything having to do with the Dodgers bullpen, though, so I guess we'll have to wait and see - and of course there are plenty of players who have made a successful switch from one team to another…

…Which finally brings me back to my original point about the Dodgers starters - that they need more good ones. My favorite set of starters for the Dodgers in 2009 would be Billingsley, Kuroda, Kershaw, Nolasco, and Moyer (see the above point about staying successful no matter where your contracts and trades take you), but really, when was the last time something ideal happened in baseball-land (besides Brad Lidge's 48-for-48)? The Marlins probably wouldn't be willing to trade their best starter, at least not for anything the Dodgers would be willing to give them; but of course, it wouldn't be too bad to sign Moyer (who is currently rather unhappy with the offers the Phillies have been making) and Wolf , which would give the Dodgers a primarily left-handed rotation to contrast with their almost completely right-handed bullpen.

Once again, we just have to wait and see.

Phillies cash in on 3-1 NLCS lead

Only a couple days late, I present my much-anticipated, theoretically epic Phillies-are-going-to-the-World-Series post! Of course, I wouldn't want you to hear my opinions before I gave you a summary, so here we are with the mandatory paragraph (or two).

Normally, the 4-run gap in the 6th inning between the Dodgers and the Phils could've been taken care of easily by the powerful Dodgers lineup - but not against the Phillies' Game 5 pitching staff. Their relief pitching is rock solid (right-handed closer Brad Lidge is a perfect 41-for-41 in save opportunities this regular season), and with a 1.88 postseason ERA and the 2008 NLCS MVP title, LHP Cole Hamels can hardly be taken lightly. (Chase Utley didn't really do anything, but I feel that as a Pasadena native and UCLA graduate, his traitorous qualities deserve a mention.) And so, despite Ramirez's solo shot to deep right field, the Fightin' Phils are going to the 2008 World Series and the Blue Crew isn't.

Cheer up, though (unless you're a Phillies fan, in which case I don't know why you're reading this blog, or how you even found it) - this is sports, after all, and there's always next year! And in the spirit of my NY-raised family, I will present the also theoretically-much-anticipated Rays-aren't-going-to-the-World-Series...yet post. It'll probably be slightly more emotional than this post, which is basically just a fact reel (case in point - you really needed to know what Hamels' postseason ERA is).

Also, I'd like to present the Arkham's Child Other Team NL MVP award to RHP Hiroki Kuroda, who had a perfect 2-0 record and an ERA of only 1.46 this postseason. No one knows about this award, it is not officially recognized, and it does not officially exist - therefore, if the Rays make it to the World Series, I have no obligation whatsoever to present this to any member of the Red Sox, no matter how valuable people think they may have been.

10/13/08 - *sigh*

I'm not really sure what to say about last night's game, except that it was definitely the wrong time for Wade, DeWitt, and Ethier to start having problems. So, I'm just going to tell you what I'm going to do, depending on which teams get into the World Series:

1. Phillies vs. Rays: Against all common sense, I'll root for the Phillies. After all, they've got Utley and Hamels, and it isn't like they're bad. Neither are the Rays, though - so it'd be interesting. Actually, any WS pairing would be interesting at this point.
   
2. Phillies vs. Red Sox: DEFINITELY go with the Phillies. Hell, I'd be Howard's biggest fan if it meant beating the Red Sox!
   
3. Dodgers vs. Rays: The Dodgers, obviously. I'd be worried, though, with the way these two teams are playing right now - but of course, if the Dodgers did in fact come back and beat the Phillies, I might not be so worried.
   
4. Dodgers vs. Red Sox: The ultimate justice would be for the Dodgers to beat the Red Sox in the WS while the Sox are still paying 100% of Ramirez's salary. Wouldn't it have a sort of poetic brilliance? On the other hand, I'd rather the Red Sox not get to the WS at all.
   

10/10/08 - What Happened to Chad?

I speak, of course, of Chad Billingsley (#58, RHP), of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Seriously - did any of you watch last night's game (NLCS game 2 vs. the Phillies)? I was shocked, but most of all, I was depressed. (Feel free to leave comments!)

However, I hope we will not forget his NLDS game against the Cubs! The nearest word I have to describe that is "gorgeous" - so, don't even think about claiming he isn't good. Papelbon isn't even close to deserving to wear the same number that Billingsley does.

On a semi-different note, the Rays' win tonight (this morning?) was really quite incredible - I found myself shaking my couchmate to keep her awake even as I booed JD Drew into clumsy misery and cheered BJ Upton on to the most spectacular piece of situational hitting I'd seen all day. I'm really rather happy, and in an ideal world, that would motivate me to do my homework.