I'm Jealous - Los Angeles Dodgers

Now that Manny Ramirez can stop worrying about filing for unemployment, the Los Angeles Dodgers have to be considered one of the teams to beat in the National League this year. Looking at the Dodgers' roster and some of the moves they made in this winter, I have to admit that Los Angeles is one of the franchises that I'm very jealous of right now.

The Dodgers made a point of upgrading their team this off-season, even though there were already "incumbents" at the position. But by adding Manny and second baseman Orlando Hudson, even though the Dodgers already had major-league options at both positions, LA sent its the message that it will not simply sit back and accept the status quo.

Contrast that with the Mets, who will run Luis Castillo back out at second base again in 2009 and hope for better things, even though there's little reason to believe he will ever be the player he was in his mid-20s. New York has already handed the left-field job to Daniel Murphy on the basis of a two-month hot streak last summer, even though they desperately need a right-handed power bat to balance out their left-leaning lineup.

Instead of trying to improve the everyday lineup, they did nothing, and the Dodgers signed two short-term deals with players that would've been perfect fits in New York.

It's not like the Dodgers didn't have internal options as well. They could have passed on Manny and given the job in left field back to Juan Pierre instead. Dodger fans would've howled, but the front office had a built-in excuse in place - a veteran signed to a long-term deal. (Does that sound familiar to you?)

Pierre is coming off perhaps the worst season of his wildly over-rated career, but is signed for another three seasons at big money and would be very tough to trade away. The Dodgers could've simply put Pierre back in his familiar leadoff spot and claimed that they were going to win with speed and defense, even though a knowledgable fan would've seen right through that charade

Instead, the Dodgers found the money for Manny and essentially told the rest of the league that there is now a speedy fourth outfielder for sale at bargain-basement prices. Pierre will be actively shopped throughout Spring Training, and I'm confident that someone will take a chance on him before too long, as long as the Dodgers are willing to pay three-fourths of his remaining salary. Otherwise, they'll be spending $10 million for a player who ideally would be no more than a pinch-runner and a defensive replacement.

Dodgers GM Ned Colletti made a big mistake signing Pierre - he took steps toward fixing it by signing Manny Ramirez. I only wish the Mets had a general manager who could also admit his mistakes and try to move forward from them.

In some ways, passing on Hudson is an even more egregious error in judgment than not offering a contract to Ramirez. Yes, Manny can be a headache, and the more conservative elements of the fan base will consider it a point of pride that the Mets did not sign a player with Ramirez's "baggage." It is a foolish and short-sighted way of thinking, of course; 35 home runs and a .300 batting average have a way of making a player with even the most checkered past look like a model citizen.

Hudson, meanwhile, is one of the best defensive second basemen in the league and his bat has finally caught up with his glove over the last three years. Hudson is also a switch-hitter who would do very well batting behind Jose Reyes in the Mets' lineup. Reyes and Hudson would've combined to provide terrific defense up the middle, which I believe is a key element to building a successful team. When you have two middle infielders who not only play their position well but can also contribute at the plate, you have a team that can be very successful.

But the Mets passed on Hudson as well, mostly because they've guaranteed $18 million over the next three years to Castillo. The Dodgers had $28.5 million committed to Pierre over the same time frame; it didn't stop them from committing $25 million to Manny this season to play left field.

So Hudson finally signed with the Dodgers for a $3.4 million base salary, with playing time incentives that could increase the value to nearly $8 million. The Dodgers already had options at second base as well; Mark Loretta signed a one-year deal with LA in the off-season and Blake Dewitt turned some heads during his rookie year. Now, Loretta and Dewitt will become two versatile utility men who between them can back at up at all four infield positions.

The end result for the Dodgers is a potentially devastating lineup and a strong, versatile bench, along with veteran trade bait that can be used to try filling other needs. The end result for the Mets is a series of hopes and dreams - maybe Castillo will have a bounceback season, maybe Murphy is ready for the major leagues, maybe having left-handed batters fifth through eighth in the lineup won't make the Mets incredibly vulnerable against left-handed relievers.

Which team would you bet on right now?

First Guessing: 7/2/08

If you don't use your best pitcher in the ninth inning because you're saving him to close the game if you get the lead, you may never get a chance to use him.

Yes, I know I've written something like this before. It was never just a Willie Randolph problem. There isn't a manager in baseball who grasps what would seem to be an elementary concept. The Mets had a choice of using their best reliever in the ninth inning last night (at least their nominally best reliever - isn't that what a closer is supposed to be?) or using a back-of-the-bullpen rookie slated for yet another trip back to New Orleans. Jerry Manuel chose Carlos Muniz. Predictable results followed.

First Guessing: 6/13/08

The Rangers are starting a young lefthander named Scott Feldman tonight. Marlon Anderson is playing left field and batting sixth for the Mets. Brian Schneider is catching and batting seventh. Both are lefthanded batters. Chris Aguila (who tore up Triple-A lefties before being recalled this week) and Ramon Castro (who is a better hitter than Schneider in every conceivable way) are sitting on the bench. They are both right-handed hitters.

Where do I begin? Let's start with each of the four players' numbers against left-handed pitchers this season:

Anderson: .000/.000/.000 (only one plate appearance against a lefty this season!)
Schneider: .224/.269/.224 in 49 at-bats
Aguila: .353/.413/.632 in 68 at-bats (with New Orleans)
Castro: .357/.471/.429 in 14 at-bats

Anderson is the second of four straight left-handed batters in the lineup - generally a bad idea against left-handed starters - even though he has an overall batting line of .153/.180/.237 this season. Oh, and he's a second baseman by trade, even if the Mets seem to delight in running him out there in left field. Schneider is the third of the four straight lefties in the lineup, even though he's currently in a 10 for 61 slump.

I have no reason to believe that Randolph checked the splits on Feldman before making out the lineup card tonight, because that's the only way that anyone could make even the slightest logical argument in favor of starting Anderson and Schneider. Feldman seems to have a problem walking left-handed batters this season, so perhaps this was part of Willie's plan to get Anderson and Schneider on base in front of noted run producer Endy Chavez.

Otherwise, tonight's lineup is the latest in a long line of asinine moves that's going to get Willie Randolph fired very soon.

First Guessing: 6/11/08

“Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.” – John Stuart Mill

Willie Randolph had some tough choices to make last night. After Mike Pelfrey completed his seventh inning of work and had crossed the mythical 100-pitch barrier, he could’ve gone to a set-up man to pitch the eighth inning. That would be the conservative decision, a decision influenced by what someone else curiously decided a few years ago was the “proper” approach to take with starting pitchers.

His eyes, though, had to see something different. They had to see how strong Pelfrey still looked and how confidently he was pitching. His heart had to feel something different, too. In a season where so much has gone wrong for the Mets, how could any partisan rooter not desperately want to see a complete game shutout from the young Pelfrey? Even Randolph’s memory had to remember something different – a time when pitchers finished what they started and the word “closer” had not yet entered the lexicon.

Faced with two courses of action – taking the conservative route or taking the bold route – Willie Randolph decided to take the bold route for a change. It generally hasn’t been in Randolph’s nature to do so since he became the Mets’ manager over three years ago. He is an unrepentant pitch counter; only John Maine has crossed the 120-pitch threshold in 2008. Met starters have only finished what they began 15 times in Randolph’s managerial tenure, the same number of complete games that Curt Schilling pitched for the Philadelphia Phillies in 1998.

(Side note: Schilling made 35 starts that season and only failed to broach the 100-pitch mark three times. Schilling threw at least 120 pitches in more than half of his starts. Does the Pitch Count Posse have any explanation for how Schilling has been able to make nearly 250 more major league starts since he was so ‘abused” during the 1998 season?)

Randolph’s bold decision was rewarded. Pelfrey breezed through the eighth inning, quickly dispatching of Jeff Salazar, Justin Upton and Chris Young. The pitcher was scheduled to lead off the bottom of the eighth inning, and Willie was faced with his second tough decision of the evening – to pinch-hit for Pelfrey or to give him a chance to pick up a complete game shutout.

Randolph steeled his nerves again and delighted the crowd by sending Pelfrey up to hit. It would’ve been so easy to just give the ball to the closer Billy Wagner, who was rested and ready to redeem himself after Sunday’s disaster in San Diego. It was the by-the-book move, the conservative move – and it would’ve been the wrong move.

Pelfrey started the ninth, the first time in his major league career that he had earned the right to pitch in the final regulation frame. Stephen Drew lofted a soft single over the head of Luis Castillo to lead off the inning. It was only the fifth hit Pelfrey had allowed all game and was not struck in a way that suggested the big right-hander had reached the end of his rope.

The manager stood on the top step of the dugout and pondered his options. Does he give Pelfrey the chance to finish what he started, or does he finally succumb to the conservative choice and go to the closer? Did Willie Randolph, a veteran of 18 major league baseball seasons, close his eyes, take a deep breath and remember a time when a starter would’ve screamed his manager off the mound for having the temerity to try to take the ball out of his hands at that point in the game?

It was there that Willie Randolph’s spirit finally gave out. In a ballgame where he showed great courage and great foresight by shrugging off the conservative course of action on two separate occasions, the third time was where he lost his nerve.

It was the wrong move even before Wagner served up a game-tying home run to Mark Reynolds. It was the wrong move even after Carlos Beltran drove a pitch deep into the Shea night that landed beneath the giant scoreboard in right-center field and gave the Mets their first win in nearly a week.

It was the wrong move because at the most critical juncture of the game, in the most critical juncture of a season threatening to spiral out of control, Willie Randolph lost sight of what got his team to that point – the right arm of Mike Pelfrey. It was Pelfrey’s right to decide the final outcome of this game; not Randolph, not Wagner, not anyone else but him.

Ace starters are not born – they are made. They are forged in the fire of the final innings, with the game on the line and with the starter given nowhere to look but inside himself. Mike Pelfrey deserved the chance to begin his journey toward becoming an ace starter tonight. Willie Randolph took that away from him when he took the ball out of his hands and gave it to another man.

First Guessing: 6/7/08

If you don't use your best pitcher in extra innings because you're saving him to close the game if you get the lead, you may never get a chance to use him.

First Guessing: 6/2/08

Claudio Vargas is saving the bullpen tonight. He's thrown just 40 pitches in 3.2 innings and hasn't been scored upon. Randolph has to let him go at least five innings, maybe more, and have him save the bullpen as much as humanly possible. Vargas is obviously losing his spot when Pedro returns tomorrow (woo hoo!), so there's no reason not to give him five or six or even seven relief innings. When I wake up in the morning, I'll see if Willie did right by the bullpen.

EDIT: In the time it took me to write one paragraph and copy the link, Vargas picked up a strikeout and two flyouts. And ... that's it. He throws 4.2 innings of relief and just 47 pitches, but Willie has Nick Evans pinch hitting to lead off the top of the sixth. That leaves at least three more innings for the bullpen to cover. Well, it's a debatable move, but not an awful one. I guess you figure that if you're only down four runs and you have four more chances to try and score, you should take one more shot to put runs on the board.

Evans struck out, an entirely unsurprising development. It will become a bad move if Willie doesn't a) double-switch here and b) let Muniz throw multiple innings when he comes on in relief. I'll have a second edit in the morning when I see how this plays out.

DOUBLE EDIT: Well, Muniz was a disaster - eight baserunners in 1.2 innings. I guess Willie could've left him out there the rest of the way, but it might've turned a 10-2 game into a 15-2 game. The move didn't work out, but I'm not entirely sure that Randolph is somehow to blame.

First Guesing: 5/28/08

* I was very happy to see Willie Randolph give Aaron Heilman a second inning of work tonight. After he struck out the side in the eighth, I called Tim to give him the business for hating on Heilman so much. We both agreed that if the Mets didn't score in the bottom of the inning that Heilman should be given another opportunity. Randolph agreed and was rewarded with a 1-2-3 inning.
* I questioned the decision to use Damion Easley at first base and Nick Evans in left field for the second straight night. Evans is more adept at first than Easley is, so it seemed like a natural decision to play him there. It didn't seem to matter, though, and the announcers even commented on slick footwork around the bag by Easley on that slow chopper to short in the ninth inning.

First Guessing: 5/24/08

The Mets are leading 7-2 in the eighth inning today and have a man on second base with no one out. The pitcher's spot is coming up, but Claudio Vargas has gone seven innings and that's probably enough. He's only thrown 102 pitches, but it's on three days' rest. The entire bench is available - Raul Casanova, Brian Schneider, Damion Easley, Ryan Church and Endy Chavez. Church probably still isn't available because of his head injury.

Question: why use Endy Chavez as a pinch hitter? First of all, he's not hitting. Second of all, he's the only other outfielder on the roster right now. Nick Evans and Fernando Tatis are the corner outfielders for the Mets today; perhaps Chavez would be better used a defensive replacement for one of them?

Result: Chavez grounds out, because he can't hit his weight right now, but Luis Castillo dunks a double down the line to plate the eighth run of the game.

First Guessing: 4/20/08

I missed the game yesterday - my cable is out and I had personal business to attend to anyway. Apparently the game followed a pretty standard script for the 2008 season so far - the Mets won, Aaron Heilman made an appearance and Willie Randolph forgot to double switch.

The slow start has been forgotten with the current five-game winning streak, leaving the Mets atop the NL East at 10-6 with a magic number of just 146. Heilman has been mostly terrible so far, but his 11th appearance in the team's first 16 games was mostly a successful one. Called on to get out of a jam created by Joe Smith and Pedro Feliciano, Heilman gave up an RBI single before striking out Geoff Jenkins and Jayson Werth to end the inning.

And then the lost double-switch. With two outs and two on in the bottom of the sixth inning, Willie yanked Perez for Duaner Sanchez. With the pitcher's spot due up third in that inning, double switching would've given Willie an opportunity to get a little more length out of Sanchez. (But apparently getting length from relievers isn't as important though, eh Willie?) The double switch might've set up a situation where Heilman - who has been used like Mike Marshall so far this season - had a better chance at getting a day off.

Angel Pagan had made the final out of the sixth, setting up the perfect opportunity to put the pitcher in the sixth spot and put Endy Chavez in the #9 hole. Doing so would've improved the outfield defense, for starters, and would've removed the necessity to use a pinch-hitter in the seventh. By the time the sixth spot in the order came around again, it almost certainly would've necessitated a pinch-hitting appearance anyway - it just would've come at a more opportune time for the Mets.

Willie did not double switch, and although the Reyes home run that inning extended the lead to 4-0, the Mets still ended up using five relievers to nail down the final three innings. Perhaps not the most optimal use of bullpen arms?

Anyway, after the Reyes home run T-Bone left me a message, the exact contents of which are too profane for publication in a family blog. (Actually, it was a just a really long message that I don't want to bother transcribing, but the raw emotion was amusing enough to store with my saved messages.) The general message, however, was that Willie's tactical ineptitude was being overcome by the talent of his players once again. The missed opportunity will go down as just one more footnote in a long season, but there are plenty of people still taking notice.

First Guessing: 4/18/08

Nelson Figueroa had pitched six solid innings and hadn't yet breached the mythical 100-pitch mark, but was leading off in the bottom of the sixth in a 2-1 game. The temptation to pinch-hit for the pitcher must've been high, but Willie made the smart choice by letting Figueroa bat there. At that point the Mets had four more chances to tie the game and a starting pitcher who was cruising; it made all the sense in the world to give him the at-bat and see how deep into the game he could go.

RESULT: Figueroa did not reach base, but gave the Mets one more effective inning.

Then, of course, Willie forgot to double-switch after the seventh inning. Luis Castillo left two runners on and Aaron Heilman was set to pitch the eighth. Willie could've double switched by bringing Brian Schneider in to catch or Endy Chavez in to play left field. Carlos Beltran was available as well; as far as I know he's not injured and this is just a routine night off. (EDIT: Beltran has a stiff neck.) Wilie did nothing and simply left Heilman in the #9 spot in the order.

It took Aaron just 11 pitches to go through the eighth and would've been available to at least start the ninth had the Willie double switched and the Mets not scored. But Willie blew it again and Heilman had to be pinch-hit for; Marlon Anderson struck out to make Willie's failure complete.

At this point, I am convinced that Willie Randolph is intentionally refusing to double switch. He is inexplicably ignoring a unique and important National League strategy for maximizing reliever usage, employing pinch hitters at opportune times and for substituting defensive replacements. Marlon Anderson's presence on the roster becomes all the bothersome when you realize it becomes a crutch for Willie to continue to ignore double switching in order to use Anderson strictly as a pinch hitter.

RESULT: Anderson strikes out, but the Mets tie the game on a Carlos Delgado single. Heilman is forced to give way to Billy Wagner, even though three of the next four batters in the Nationals lineup are right-handed. Willie's failure to double-switch forces his closer to pitch to a series of guys who bash lefties:

Zimmerman - 1.103 OPS in 167 PA against lefties
Johnson - .938 OPS in 179 PA against lefties
Milledge - .956 OPS in 70 PA against lefties
Kearns - .883 OPS in 167 PA against lefties

Wagner gets the first two outs and sets up a wonderfully interesting at-bat with his former tormentee Lastings Milledge. I have to admit, I was absolutely rooting for a long, long home run by L-Millz there!! But Wagner gets the out and officially turns Willie's mistake into a mere footnote.

EDIT: Willie double-switched! It took waiting until the 11th inning and two unnecessarily short appearances from Heilman and Wagner, but Damion Easley has come on to play left, the pitcher slides into the #5 spot and Joe Smith is on to pitch. Of course, had Heilman pitched the ninth and Wagner the 10th ... oh, forget it, I guess I should be happy Willie even grasps the concept.

First Guessing: 4/1/08

* Tough break for Matt Wise, who looked great against the first two batters in the tenth inning before getting absolutely tattooed by Robert Andino's game-winning home run. I thought the first two pitches of the at-bat pounded the bottom of the strike zone, but the ump called both of them balls. Wise was forced to work higher in the zone as a result. He threw the home run pitch in almost the exact same spot as the 2-0 pitch; you almost never get away with throwing the same pitch in the same place twice.

* In the season opener, Willie used three pitchers to get through the eighth and failed to double switch at any point, forcing him to use a fourth reliever in the ninth inning of a 7-2 game. Tonight, he uses Marlon Anderson to pinch-hit in the eighth inning against a left-handed pitcher. One night he shows an inability to manage basic National League strategy; the next night he shows a fundamental lack of understanding of lefty-lefty matchups. Say this for Willie - he never gives you a reason to change your opinion of him ...

* Who had April 1 in the Pedro Martinez injury pool? If this hamstring pull is as bad as Endy Chavez's was last season, Pedro won't be back until the All-Star Break.