65 thoughts on “Open Thread #6

  1. 18 year old Julio Urias named top lefthanded prospect in basbeall! Who needs Scherzer? FO needs to keep a slot in the rotation open.

      • On the other hand, if he is mature beyond his years, as those both inside and outside the organization are saying, keep in mind that Clayton debuted in the majors at age 20, after 30 games at A level and below and 18 games at AA level. Urias already has 40 starts at A level and below. With a season at AA he could be ready by next year.

        • I don’t think they’re going to risk his future. The SOP these days is to increase innings very gradually as the prospect matures.

          • OK, but 50 his first year and 90 the next so shouldn’t the target for next year be at least 130. By comparison, Clayton went 122 innings in AA in 2007 and then 61 innings in 2008 before coming up and pitching 107 in the Bigs

  2. I wonder what it would have taken to get Grandal, other than Kemp and $32MM? Could we have gotten him for a prospect or two, not the Big Three? How about Ethier or Crawford and ALL their salary? Trading Kemp is about the only thing I really dislike the new FO for. And the only good thing I can say about them is that they’re NOT Ned!

    • Pretty sure if anyone had offered anything for either Andre or Carl it would have been taken. Kemp was the only one of the four outfielders (other than Puig, whom they weren’t going to let go) anybody wanted to give up much for.

      • They really didn’t give up “much” for him, remember, they got $32MM too.. I was basically saying give up one of them for nothing, we pay all their salary. That ought to be worth something… Plan B: We negotiate a deal with Ethier; example: We owe him about $52MM, we offer to pay him $2MM a year (deferred payments) for the next 20 years and release him. He is now a free agent, can make his own deal with the DiamondBacks. Everybody’s happy.

        • The Pads got a player in his prime at basically $15 million a year over five years. By comparison, Ryan Braun, a year older, has a seven year contract at about $20 million a year. Who got snookered on that one? Believe that the FO was a little bit too eager to implement their plan.

  3. Funny….

    I always ask my patients if they have any New Years’ Resolutions ….
    One actually stopped and asked me the other day… ” How about you, Doc? ”


    Not having even thought about it, my first thoughts turned to Vinny, our Dodgers, and
    Spring Training. So, I told him that my New Years’ Resolution is to make it out to
    Camelback and check out our Dodgers. ( Nice man because, as it turns out, he’s a
    big Giants fan – and, he told me was going to go to AZ to check out his Giants and
    he didn’t make any wise cracks about the World Series, Kershaw, et. al. )

    Spring Fever, Catch It! 🙂

      • This year’s should be better defensively, with upgrades at 2B and SS. Might be a wash offensively, with upgrade at 2B and downgrade at SS.

  4. Should the Dodgers try and sign Casey Janssen? Anything left in his tank do you think?

  5. I am amused by you guys who want Friedman et. al. to empty his wallet for Scherzer, Shields or Lester. Even if it’s other people’s money, as this is, it’s funny to hear people advocating spending gazillions of dollars rather than exercising frugality, particularly when there’s no guarantee of good results either way. Remember the number of free agents who have failed over the years, even for the Dodgers. Andruw Jones, anyone? OTOH, yes, Kevin Brown worked out well for us. But still.

  6. Thanks for the greetings friends!

    I have been thinking lately about Cole Hamels and our new FO. My thought is if Ned was still in charge and pulling the strings, he would have traded one or two (or all three?) of Pederson/Seager/Urias to get Hamels. I highly doubt it happens now – for which I am pleased. Don’t get me wrong, Hamels would likely be great for the Dodgers for the next 2-4 years, but the price I believe would be too high.

    Anyway, I think that’s the difference in approach between Ned and our new FO team.

  7. All that to say, I look forward to many great discussions of all the Dodgers news and game day threads this coming year.

  8. I plan on being a more regular poster on this site. I read Dodger Insider with Jon of course, along with Dodger Digest and True Blue LA. But in terms of online Dodger community – well, this is the one for me. Thanks again Link for keeping the old Dodger Thoughts now Elysian Fields gang together. I like it here.