The Trolley Dodger

Ready for the game: water, nachos, Coke, Dodger Dog, and notebook.

Manager Dave Collins chats before the game.

Girls softball players accompanied the 66ers onto the field — here’s Randy Wolf, with Bernie helping out.

Randy Wolf throwing a warmup pitch.

Gave up a homerun to the first batter — Wolf struggled in the first inning.

Wolf considers his next pitch.

Channel 2/9 sent out a crew to capture video.

Bernie the 66ers mascot exhorts the crowd.

Appropriately, it was Bring Your Dog day at the park. The little poodle was very sweet and spent most of the game sleeping on either owner’s lap — made me miss my standard poodle. The huge dog behind the poodle was either a ginormous dog of some sort, or the owners thought it was Bring Your Bear day.

LHP Marlon Arias.

The lineups are posted in the concorse, and you’ll see the guys scoring the game there beforehand, preparing their sheets. As I was taking this picture, a young man was teaching his girlfriend how to fill out theirs.

After the win, the 66ers file into the dugout. Wolf was long gone by this time.

In “Citizen Announces the Dodger Blue Line Light Rail”, LAist pointed to one guy’s wishful dream, a subway connecting…

…many popular attractions, notably: Dodger Stadium, Sunset Strip, West Hollywood, Hollywood, L.A. Live, Staples Center, Convention Center, Union Station, Silver Lake, Echo Park, The Grove. It would supplement the future Wilshire Blvd. “Purple Line” and Exposition “Blue Line.” I’ve also thrown in a few extensions (some planned/proposed, some conceptual) on the other existing lines, here and there.

The Dodger Blue Line can be viewed via Google Maps.

Previously, LAist covered a real-life alternate method of getting to the Stadium, “Go Metro To A Dodgers Game”.

I happened across this special story about an event during the All-Star events in San Francisco.

While I’m not certain of the malady the author’s son Kevin is suffering from, it sounds like a particularly awful cancer:

The past three months have been filled with some great moments and many struggles for Kevin. This past week has not disappointed. What an experience… We got through this one with only a minor complication. Kevin did fantastic otherwise. Next week, Stem Cell Transplant (Rescue) For those of you that have had a chance to read the article about the High Dose MIBG treatment..Well, you really have to see it to believe it !! Lead walls, gieger counters, and even a radioactive boy…My radioactive boy !! This room was so notorious in that Hospital that even some Doctors were apprehensive about entering.

Sitting in the hotel lobby of their SF hotel, the family (and Kevin’s bald head) drew the attention of an anonymous benefactor.

When up walks a man from out of nowhere and drops four tickets on our table and says “Here are four tickets to the All Star game, have some fun”..

A few minutes later, they were at the All-Star Game! That would have been special enough, but the next day the magic kept happening.

Cade and I were sitting at the breakfast counter at a 50’s diner and we began to talk with a very nice man over breakfast. I won’t bore you with the details but the man happenned to be Russell Martin’s father. Yes Russel Martin, the ALL STAR catcher for the DODGERS !! He was there to see his son play in the game and the following series with the Giant’s….

I won’t repost the entire rest of the story, but suffice to say both Russell Sr. and Jr. did good, going out of their way to help.

I made it to the 66ers game tonight to watch Randy Wolf pitch. He had his customary rough first inning (including giving up a homer to the very first batter), but here was his pitch breakdown (accurate to +/- 5 pitches):

• 1st: 19
• 2nd: 8 (27)
• 3rd: 16 (43)
• 4th: 10 (53)

53 pitches, 4 IP, 3 R, 3 ER, 6 H, 2 HR, 4 K, 1 BB

Randy looked in pretty good shape, albeit perhaps not going all out (from this not expert eye). No obvious difficulty or pain. The 66ers post-game news item seems to suggest there might be more rehab — “Making the first of what could be a limited few Minor League rehabilitation starts, former All-Star Randy Wolf took the mound for the 66ers.”

Mario Alvarez took over in the 5th and went the rest of the way and took the win. The 66ers won the slugfest 11-5. Adam Godwin in left field made two Web Gem-quality defensive plays (and almost made a third) in the later innings, drawing cheers and standing ovations.

Heard about Derek Lowe from a couple of guys sitting behind me. Such a bummer.

I should have a few pictures up soon.

On the Daily News website, I stumbled across a small gallery of four pictures featuring Dodgers manager Grady Little and his new motorcycle, tooling around Pasadena. Nice ride!

UPDATE — the Press-Telegram has an article today on Grady and his bike: “Little time for rest”

He loves the sweet aroma of flowers and freshly cut grass. He basks in the wind dancing on his face but is protected by a shield so bugs don’t do the same. He zooms below the shade of overhanging trees and around beautiful, old homes. There are no traffic jams in these parts. Frequent speed bumps are the only minor irritation.

Unless he has breakfast scheduled with general manager Ned Colletti or another meeting, he usually cruises the streets of Pasadena every morning during a Dodgers homestand.

So apparently, 7/23 is a popular day for Dodger births — at least seven of them, anyhow, including two Hall of Famers.

• Hod Ford, 1897 (Brooklyn 1925)
• Paul Chervinko, 1910 (Brooklyn 1937-1938)
• Pee Wee Reese, 1923 (Brooklyn 1940-1957, LA 1958)
• Don Drysdale, 1936 (Brooklyn 1956-1957, LA 1958-1969)
• Nomar Garciaparra, 1973 (LA 2006-)
• Larry Barnes, 1974 (LA 2003)
• Hong-Chih Kuo, 1981 (LA 2005-)

Happy Birthday, everybody!

UPDATE

In the minors, Las Vegas 51s 1B Larry Barnes is also a birthday boy today, born in 1974. He celebrated by hitting a double in the first game of the double header against the Rainiers today, then a homer in the second game.

UPDATE #2

According to today’s Inside the Dodgers post, it’s also assistant athletic trainer’s Stan Johnston’s birthday today.

No word yet on the bat boys or Dodger Stadium vendors. ;)

There has been a lot of “fanager” talk over the season about the optimum Dodger lineup given our current roster. One of the favorite layman suggestions has been to drop Juan Pierre from the 2nd slot to the 8th — never mind the vocal folks who want to drop him altogether. ;)

In a discussion on lineups in the midst of a recent thread on Dodger Thoughts, one of the commenters linked to “Evaluating Traditional Lineups” on Retrosheet. For the sake of fun, I thought I’d pull a paragraph out of context and play around with the idea therein:

One pattern is clear here. The top three hitters in the lineup, both in terms of on-base and slugging percentage, hit 3rd, 4th and 5th, respectively. The players with the next two highest on-base percentages hit 1st and 2nd, followed by the rest of the hitters, in declining order of their on-base plus slugging percentages in the 6th through 9th slots.

This is based on the real-life composite NL and AL lineups of the years 1993-2004.

Now I should point out that the author warns against what I’m about to do…

Unfortunately, these small-scale subjects are usually what people care about. They don’t want to know about a composite Giants team from 1999 to 2004, they want to know about a single season. People aren’t concerned about generic teams, they want specific answers. How much did it cost the 1961 Yankees having Bobby Richardson leading off? Or having Horace Clarke in the same spot nine years later?

…but since I’m not conducting a scientific study, but rather a thought experiment, I’ll just ignore all that. ;)

Here is the Dodger roster sorted by OPS. Now, obviously I can’t just take the top 8 OPS players and plop them in the lineup. For one thing, Hong-Chih Kuo would be 7th on the list. But there are also position issues to keep in mind.

To no one’s surprise, Youth Is Served in the top OPS producers. Ignoring pitchers:

• Matt Kemp 1.007
• James Loney .942
• Wilson Betemit .866
• Russell Martin .844
• Jeff Kent .844
• Luis Gonzalez .835
• Andre Ethier .811
• Tony Abreu .743
• Rafael Furcal .729

So what might a hypothetical Dodger lineup look like going by the arbitrary OPS method?

1. C Russell Martin
2. 2B Jeff Kent
3. CF Matt Kemp
4. 1B James Loney
5. 3B Wilson Betemit
6. LF Luis Gonzalez
7. RF Andre Ethier
8. SS Rafael Furcal
9. Pitcher

You’ll notice a couple of things to start with: no Juan Pierre, no Nomar, and Raffy is in the 8th spot. The composite lineup assumes what most managers and fans assume, that your fastest player or best base stealer will be batting leadoff. Let’s do a wee bit of rearranging:

1. SS Rafael Furcal (S)
2. C Russell Martin (R)
3. 1B James Loney (L)
4. CF Matt Kemp (R)
5. 3B Wilson Betemit (S)
6. 2B Jeff Kent (R)
7. LF Luis Gonzalez (L)
8. RF Andre Ethier (L)
9. Pitcher

Now without getting too deep into it, that already looks like it would work well against lefties or righties. But since the arbitrary by-the-number method doesn’t keep handedness in mind, we could do an alternating setup that would take into account the players vs LHP/RHP (i.e. OPS filtered by LHP/RHP splits):

Versus LHP

1. SS Rafael Furcal .838 (S)
2. CF Matt Kemp 1.047 (R)
3. 1B James Loney 1.179 (L)
4. C Russell Martin 1.101 (R)
5. 2B Jeff Kent 1.100 (R)
6. LF Luis Gonzalez .904 (L)
7. RF Andre Ethier .797 (L)
8. 3B Wilson Betemit .751 (S)
9. Pitcher

Versus RHP

1. SS Rafael Furcal .680 (SS)
2. RF Andre Ethier .815 (L)
3. CF Matt Kemp .987 (R)
4. 3B Wilson Betemit .891 (S)
5. 1B James Loney .837 (L)
6. LF Luis Gonzales .814 (L)
7. 2B Jeff Kent .775 (R)
8. C Russell Martin .764 (R)
9. Pitcher

A case could be made that since Tony Abreu’s OPS vs RHP is higher than Kent’s, he should be the 2B. I think getting Kent to hit in the 7th spot would be enough of a challenge for your hypothetical manager. ;)

Juan Pierre’s first-half OPS was so much lower than that of the potential players at the three OF positions, that it doesn’t make a lot of sense to put him back in. If his hitting continues to improve in the second half, however…

And what to do about Garciaparra? Nomar’s last few games notwithstanding, you almost want to divvy things up by Home and Away splits. Nomar has an .825 OPS at home, better than everyone in the above lineup except Betemit, Kemp, and Kent. Nomar’s away OPS? .517. Yikes.

Isn’t it weird that no one has picked up Brady Clark yet? The Dodgers released him on June 20th, and while he wasn’t necessarily having a great season (he only had 58 at-bats), I can’t imagine someone doesn’t need a fourth outfielder.

Actually, I’m rather surprised the Mets haven’t swooped in to grab another ex-Dodger. ;)

UPDATE Well, not the Mets, but the other team snapping up former Dodgers. According to MLB Trade Rumors, “Red Sox Sign Brady Clark”

Tim Dierkes over at MLB Trade Rumors cracked me up with a bullet point in his post earlier today, “Rosenthal On Teixeira, Dunn”:

Rosenthal believes the Royals could not even acquire a Tony Abreu from the Dodgers for Octavio Dotel. Previously it had been said that the Dayton Moore was asking for Matt Kemp or James Loney. And Duke Snider plus Sandy Koufax.

Repeat after me: Octavio Dotel is a reliever who is on a one-year contract.

Maybe if they add what’s left of the corpse of Zack Greinke on the table, plus eat the remainder of the Odalis Perez salary we’d still be paying, then we’ll start talking guys like Tony Abreu.

I finally got a hold of MLB 07 The Show. Whoo hoo!

I like waiting until the price comes down. :) Anyhow, I was checking out the manual and was pleased to see the available pitches has been expanded since last year. I look forward to trying out the Gyroball and Eeephus. :)

• 4SFB - Four-seam Fastball
• 2SFB - Two-seam Fastball
• RFB - Running Fastball
• CUT - Cut Fastball
• SPL - Splitter
• CB - Curveball
• 12CV -12-6 Curveball
• SCV - Sweeping Curveball
• SL - Slider
• SLV - Slurve
• CH - Changeup
• CIR - Circle Change
• SNK - Sinker
• FRK - Forkball
• SCR - Screwball
• PLM - Palmball
• KN - Knuckleball
• KNCV - Knucklecurve
• GYRO - Gyroball
• EEPH - Eephus Pitch