OFFICIAL 2009 DODGERS SEASON THREAD : Season Over. Congratulations Phillies.

[Los Angeles]

this is crazyyy

 

[Los Angeles]

FIRST PITCH JAMES

 

[sinser13]

A's were giving this game away, and we couldn't take advantage.

 

[eyegiantjackpot]

ROAD TRIP TIME!!

whos in?

[h2]Dodgers deciding Manny's schedule[/h2]

Comment Email Print ESPN.com news services

Ramirez

LOS ANGELES -- Manny Ramirez appears to be a week away from beginning a minor league assignment as he nears the end of his 50-game suspension for violating Major League Baseball's substance abuse policy.

Manager Joe Torre said Wednesday that it was possible that Ramirez would start out playing for Class A Inland Empire next Thursday. The 66ers begin a three-game series at Lake Elsinore that day before playing their next three at home against Rancho Cucamonga, making it convenient for Ramirez to drive from his home in Pasadena.

"That's what we're thinking about. Just for the convenience of the whole thing," Torre said, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Ramirez is eligible to begin his assignment next Tuesday, but there are no games in the California League until Thursday because of their All-Star break. He is eligible to be reinstated on July 3, when the Dodgers are in San Diego.

"That's still conversational right now. There's nothing been scheduled," Torre said, according to the newspaper. "We've got to get him back on the field first."

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.

From the West:
10 Freeway East to 215 Freeway North, Exit 2nd Street,
turn right onto "G" Street, follow "G" Street North to Stadium (we are located on the left).

210 Freeway East to State Street Exit, then exit immediately on the 215 South, Exit 2nd Street, turn right onto "G" Street, follow "G" Street North to Stadium (we are located on the left).

Photo Courtesy of Aerial Images​

Executive Box Tickets	$10.00
Field Box Tickets	$9.00
Upper Box Tickets	$8.00
Bullpen Box Tickets	$6.00

dude.. we can be executives!

 

[eagle 0n]

Damn, Raj Davis w/ a HR.

(I'm an A's fan, can't believe we won

)

 

[jpap348]

just got home a little while ago...soooo many wasted opportunities, A's were practically begging us to win this game

 

[cincoseisdos]

TOO many wasteed chances. That's baseball though

Thanks Eyegiant, i'm thinking of ditching the loge and reserve altogether and if financials permit i'll be top deck next year. I dig your seats

I'm SO down for a mini summit to IE

(IE though

)

 

[eyegiantjackpot]

Originally Posted by CincoSeisDos

TOO many wasteed chances. That's baseball though

Thanks Eyegiant, i'm thinking of ditching the loge and reserve altogether and if financials permit i'll be top deck next year. I dig your seats

I'm SO down for a mini summit to IE

(IE though

)

werd! glad you liked them.. people underestimate the greatness of top deck.. especially when you sit behind homeplate. you see everythingperfectly. plus you get a nice view. and for 650 bucks for the WHOLE season for two seats.. you cant beat it.


Im waiting on official word. I KNOW those tickets are gonna sell quick once word is out.. have to jump on it quick. scaplers gonna rob us.

 

[mr jordan04]

Originally Posted by CincoSeisDos

I'm SO down for a mini summit to IE

(IE though

)

word. but id hate to drive way out there to see 1 at bat

im thinking about just copping a couple of those $10 seats now b4 they go up

 

[in yo nostril]

keep waking up because i burned my finger cooking dinner tonight and it hurts like hell. was at the game today in loge 161 and will be back tomorrow as well.taking advantage of the free parking

i try to avoid san bernardino at all costs but i would be down for a game out there

 

[Los Angeles]

inland empire 66ers I knew it!@#$%^& I wonder when it'll be set in stone.

I'm there, I hate san berdo to the fullest though. I had to go to school out there and that place is a DUMP.

I think they have .50c nachos and like .50c hot dog nights.

Manny is gonna hate that mission from the IE back home to Pasdena

Originally Posted by CincoSeisDos

I'm SO down for a mini summit to IE

(IE though

)

what's the problem

jp

 

[Los Angeles]

[h2]So What Are We Going To Do About Russell Martin?[/h2]
By Mike Scioscia's tragic illness | June 18, 2009 at 7:00 AM | In Russell Martin | 7 Comments

I realize that, with the Dodgers flying along with the best record in baseball, this is just going to sound like I'm looking for something to complain about. But it's not that at all; this is a serious problem facing the team that's not really getting a lot of play because of how well the team is doing. Because believe me, if Russell Martin was hitting .236 and the team was below .500, he'd be getting a lot more heat. While Martin being productive might not be a requirement to win the division, you can't have him being a black hole in the playoffs - and worse, this is hardly something that just started on Opening Day this year. Though he had a quietly effective May, he was bad in April - and has been hideous in June (just 4 hits this month), after yet another 0-fer last night.

You don't need me to specify that Martin's been lousy this year; you watch the games, and you know. But you might be surprised - I know I was - to see just how bad he's been. You might want to take small children out of the room for this, because this is going to be Juan Pierre 2007-level bad.

OPS!
Martin is at: .625
Which puts him: 160th in MLB (of 172 qualifiers)
Behind the likes of: Howie Kendrick (just demoted to AAA), Jhonny Peralta (just benched), and magical pixie elf David Eckstein (is David Eckstein).
And that means... what's worse, that he's hitting worse than guys who are losing their jobs, or that he's less potent than David Eckstein? The truly scary part here is that his .347 OBP is still pretty respectable thanks to the walks he draws, which means that when you look at just his slugging percentage...

SLG!
Martin is at: .278
Which puts him: 169th in MLB (of 172 qualifiers)
Behind the likes of: Just about everyone who's not the 38-year-old corpse of Brian Giles or just-demoted Giant Emmanuel Burriss.
And that means... it means he's the least dangerous hitter in baseball, basically. Let me put it this way; it's about 35 points lower than the worst season Juan Pierre ever had, ever. Think about that for a second. Russell Martin looks at Juan Pierre and says to himself, "man, I wish I had his power."

VORP!
Martin is at: -2.6
Which puts him: 47th among MLB catchers (min. 50 PA)
Behind the likes of: Nick Hundley, Koyie Hill, Chad Moeller, Wil Nieves
And that means... 47th among MLB catchers? 26th for NL only? Remember, there's only 30 MLB teams, 16 in the NL. Right now, Russell Martin isn't worthy of a starting gig.

And as I said, this is hardly a 2009 thing. Over the last calendar year, here's his line - in 145 games, he's got a .250/.359/.334, with 7 homers for a .639 OPS. By comparison, Juan Pierre's career OPS is .721 - nearly a full 100 points better.

I don't know if I can possibly repeat that enough for emphasis: Russell Martin has been worse than Juan Pierre over the last year.

It's not just us stat dorks, either, judging by what an anonymous scout told Baseball Prospectus:

Dodgers catcher Russell Martin: "You talk about a young player growing old before our very eyes. His bat is slowing down, and he's not moving very well behind the plate. I don't know what's wrong with him."


Ugh; is there anything more depressing than hearing the phrase "getting old before our very eyes" about a guy who's just 26?

So, what exactly is his problem?

Is he making less contact?

Yeah, that's part of it. His 19.8 K% is higher than it's ever been, but it's also not an astronomical jump from his usual range of 13-16% - and it's still below the league average of 20%. It's not a good sign, to be sure, but it's also hardly enough to be causing what we're seeing.

Is he hitting fewer line drives?

Surprisingly, no. His line drive percentage is eerily consistent - at 19.4%, it's no different than his career average of 18.9%. Other than a slight dip in 2007, he's been within the 19% range his entire career.

Is he hitting more ground balls?

A few, but not a whole lot more. 52.4% of the time in 2009, not too much different than his career average of 50.1%. When he came up in 2006, it was 50.4%, so it's more, but not hugely more.

Is he just unlucky?

Partially. His batting average on balls in play is .294, which is the lowest of his career. However, the league average is .300, so that's hardly a disaster.

Is he swinging at bad pitches?

We saw earlier that Pierre's resurgence was caused in large part by his becoming more choosy in his at-bats, swinging at fewer balls out of the zone that he couldn't get solid contact on. But none of this applies to Martin; his ratios of swings at balls out of the zone (19.4%), in the zone (60.6%), and overall swings (39.3%) fall right into his career averages.

Okay, you've told us everything it's not. When are you going to tell us what it is?

Well, the fact that he's striking out more and hitting more groundballs certainly contributes, but, there's no one stat that has popped out that really goes to explain what Martin's issue is. Let's go back to what the scout said earlier:

Dodgers catcher Russell Martin: "You talk about a young player growing old before our very eyes. His bat is slowing down, and he's not moving very well behind the plate. I don't know what's wrong with him."

Focus on the part about his bat slowing down, and you're on to a big part of the problem... Martin is getting blown away by fastballs.

Over at FanGraphs, they've been able to assign a run value to the production on each type of pitch a batter sees, and then converted it to a rate. For example, if you look at Albert Pujols against fastballs, he's been pretty consistently at 2-4 runs per 100 fastballs above average over his career, though he's beating even that this year. In 2007, Martin's first full (and best) season, he produced 1.69 runs above average every 100 fastballs. Last year, in which he was still decent but nowhere near as good as in 2007, that fell to 0.59. This year? Down to just 0.14.

It's hardly a foolproof method - he's also down on sliders, as well - but it certainly makes sense, doesn't it? You've got a heavily used catcher who's striking out more, grounding out more, is having a hard time catching up to fastballs, has had his "Speed" score drop four years in a row (it's a 1-10 ranking scale that uses several speed-based stats, and Martin's gone from 5.3 to 5.2 to 4.0 to 3.3), and has a scout saying he looks old.

Is it possible that all the vitriol we directed at Grady Little in 2006 and '07, and Joe Torre in 2008 (especially with the ridiculous "third base days off"), for overworking him is coming home to roost much much quicker than we thought it would? To his credit, Torre's been better about resting him this season (though when Brad Ausmus is outproducing him it's probably not a hard decision to make any more) but is that simply too little too late? Did all of the extra work he received the last few seasons sap the energy out of him? You hate to say that at 26, but the evidence is pretty glaring.

The real question is, what to do? I'm not ready to give up on him just yet; he's been too important to this team over the last few years, but also because A) there's no one really worth replacing him with and B) the large division lead allows you some leeway in letting him work things out.

But if this doesn't turn around at some point soon...




Thursday, June 18, Dodger Stadium | 10:10 PM ET

Randy Wolf, LHP (3-2, 3.41)

Vin Mazzaro, RHP (2-1, 1.37)

Scouting Report:
DODGERS: Wolf threw five shutout innings on 67 pitches in Saturday's start against the Rangers. He was on pacefor one of his best outings of the season but was taken out after an hour-and-41-minute delay. Wolf won his only career start against the Athletics, allowingthree earned runs over seven innings. In seven home starts this season, Wolf is 0-1 with a 4.53 ERA.


ATHLETICS: Mazzaro's career-opening scoreless innings streak ended at 17 2/3 innings Friday when the hostGiants scored three runs in the bottom of the fifth inning on the way to a 3-0 victory. Mazzaro, 22, won his first two starts after being called up fromTriple-A Sacramento on June 2, and he scattered six hits and a walk while striking out four over six innings against the Giants for his third consecutivequality start. Armed with a 96-mph two-seam fastball that runs away from right-handed hitters, Mazzaro has allowed 14 hits over 19 2/3 innings as a bigleaguer, walking five while striking out nine.

 

[jrdnkiks213]

Good article about Russ...


He needs to get it going.

 

[Los Angeles]

Yeah the article is spot on, I mean if you're a stat guy those stats are very eye opening.

Another good point about it was russ's D - there's been plenty of times this season where he hasn't effectively blocked the ball.

Call it being tired, lazy - russ needs to get it going.

 

[cincoseisdos]

Russ overall is not his usual self

For the last month as I can remember, i'm seeing more and more and more balls leaving his glove, dropped, and so on. His focus at theplate: Whether behind the dish or to the left of it, is horrendous. I wish we'd give Ausmus more starts, hell lets give Ellis a start. The more I seeMartin the more I see Lo Duca, and that doesn't sit well with me.

 

[Los Angeles]

Perre LF
Furcal SS
Hudson 2B
Blake 3B
Ethier RF
Kemp CF
Loney 1B
Martin C
Wolf P

 

[frenchblue23]

Feel bad for Russ.

Hoping that he gets a start at 3rd sometime soon, see if his bat wakes up without the mental stress of preparing to catch for a particular pitcher.

Hey bright, you're going tonight?

 

[in yo nostril]

ill be sitting in the pavilion tonight. pray for me guys

 

[Los Angeles]

you a fool IYN.

Na FB23 couldn't get a hold of any tickets, I am thinking about heading to that Anaheim series.

You?

 

[frenchblue23]

Originally Posted by bright nikes

you a fool IYN.

Na FB23 couldn't get a hold of any tickets, I am thinking about heading to that Anaheim series.

You?

Oh damn, too bad.
Wish I could go tonight or to the Angels series, but I've been too busy with work.

I'm aiming to make a trip out to the Stadium for the series against Seattle.

If you end up going to Anaheim, take some pics if you can, to share with us.

 

[frenchblue23]

Originally Posted by In Yo Nostril

ill be sitting in the pavilion tonight. pray for me guys

Oh no you didn't!

Damn, good luck to you my friend. Then again, if you went to the parade yesterday, the pavilion will seem like a peaceful place.

 

[Los Angeles]

Game time, rubber match let's take the series.

Gotta get a W for wolf.

 

[Los Angeles]

Damn leadoff walk.

wifey just brought some birria tacos. DP

 

[Los Angeles]

!%+! mazzaro pitches fast and he has some good stuff.

 

[cincoseisdos]

Word, i'm liking him already. He doesn't look like he lets batters settle into the box, just goes at him.

Go at him boys