I don't have Juan Pierre to kick around anymore.

We interrupt our regular program with the following exciting news: Juan Pierre is no longer a Dodger!. We have traded him to the White Sox for cash and two minor leaguer pitchers to be determined. He actually did have a good year as a back-up in 2009, but I'm still quite pleased to finally be rid of him. Simply, the money that we used to pay his salary is better spent elsewhere.

And so the era of Juan Pierre-bashing has come to an end. (I have to admit, however, that I am going to miss making fun of him.)

Say it ain't so!

Um, apparently Manny has been getting some help to be Manny just a little bit better. Major League Baseball is expected to announce that he is being suspended for 50 games for testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs. I guess this means that the honeymoon in LA is over? We have him through 2010 based on his current contract (which I admittedly suddenly have an urge to wish didn't exist), so it's really good that we didn't give him the longer-term deal he wanted. You know what else really sucks about this: Juan Pierre is probably going to be playing every day again. Fuck. At least we have a very large cushion that should be able to hold up while he's out of the lineup. I can't say I'm surprised, though I wasn't predicting in advance that he was doing this stuff. Part of the reason that I am not surprised is that it's hard to be surprised by anybody getting caught, and part of the reason is that he was never exactly considered angelic in the first place.

(Tip of the hat to Scott Porter.)

Update: Officially, Manny was apparently caught because of the use of a female fertility drug. (There's more to the story than that, as you can see in the various articles that have appeared in the last couple of days.) I suppose he was just having trouble ovulating?

Spring (Training) is here, so it's time to start insulting Juan Pierre again

Guess who has perhaps the worst contract in the National League? That's right, it's our old friend Juan Pierre.

(Tip of the hat to Rob Neyer's blog.)

Can we please just sign Adam Dunn?

Why in Hell are we bothering with Manny Ramirez's posturing?

As I wrote when we first signed him, I was very pleased when the Dodgers traded for Manny but I felt that we should let him walk away as a free agent because of course he'd eventually become a distraction. I wouldn't mind having him back for 1 or 2 years, but anything more than that would be stupid.

Additionally, we can just get Bobby Abreu or (especially) Adam Dunn for half the price (per year) that we've already offered Manny, and either one of them (especially Dunn!) would give us a good bat and relegate Juan Pierre to the bench. Manny and his agent (Scott Boras, who we have previously established is evil) are trying to get us to bid against ourselves. Boras certainly has done that successfully several times before (see: Andruw Jones), but thankfully it looks like it won't be happening this time. Let's just sign Dunn and a pitcher and save some money for mid-season pick-ups.

Dodgers release Andruw Jones!

The Dodgers have just officially released Andruw Jones. It's been well-known for a while they we'd be jettisoning him, but it's still great to see him officially gone. Now we just need to also get rid of Juan Pierre, and then there will be even more cause to celebrate!

By the way, I thought the move was stupid from the moment we made it, though I didn't predict it would fail as epically as it did.

Andruw: Please close the door on your way out!

Preliminary good Fucking awesome news

I'm listening to tonight's Dodger game (well, this afternoon's game where it's being played), and I have some good fucking awesome news to report.

First, the opening day starting lineup is slated to have Matt Kemp in right, Andruw Jones in center, Andre Ethier in left, and Juan Pierre on the bench. Hell yes!!!

Second, Chin-lung Hu made the team. Third basemen Nomar Garciaparra, Andy LaRoche, and Tony Abreu will all be starting the season on the disabled list (DL). I don't think Hu will be starting every day---he'll probably just be platooning---but I can always hope that that happens until LaRoche comes off the DL.

I don't know yet if Pierre will be benched for a longer period of time, but the fact that he won't be starting on opening day is absolutely awesome. Let's just hope it's a sign of things to come...


Update (3/31/08): The Dodgers have now officially announced that Andre Ethier will be the starting left fielder and that Juan Pierre will be starting the season on the bench. Hopefully, he'll stay there (or that, even better, we'll find someone to take him off our hands). Rob Neyer summarized this piece of news in a particularly excellent manner: Finally our long national nightmare might be over, as Joe Torre has bowed to reality and will use his three best outfielders as, you know, his three outfielders. But we must remain ever-vigilant, sports fans.

Cause for optimism?

Rob Neyer made the following comment in his blog today: I was in Anaheim last night, where Orange County hosted Los Angeles. I might have seen the end of Juan Pierre's career. He's been complaining about not getting enough at-bats this spring, while getting more at-bats than every Dodger but one (James Loney). Last night he led off for the Dodgers. He played all 10 innings, went 0 for 5, and left six runners on base in the 2-2 tie. He's now batting .179 over 78 at-bats.

Please, please, pretty please: Say it's so!

I saw Pierre's performance in the box score, but of course games like last night are now making me feel the time zone gap. Evening west coast games like that will always start too late for me to watch live. Last night's game started a few minutes after 2:00 am local time and tonight's game will start after 2:45 am local time. I'll be able to watch lots of baseball on the web, but the time zone is going to make me miss a lot of Dodger games (and I greatly prefer watching them live rather than recordings later on). I knew that would be the case when I made my decision to come here (and I made my peace with that without an issue), but that doesn't mean I can't wish it weren't the case. :)

More comments on the fact that Juan Pierre sucks

Rob Neyer devoted yet another blog entry to the simple fact that Juan Pierre sucks and (even more relevantly) that we have better players who we can (and should!) put in the everyday lineup instead of him. Amen, brother!

By the way, today was Opening Day of the baseball season (the earliest it's ever occurred). The Red Sox and Athletics played a game in Japan this morning---I watched about an 75 minutes of it before I needed to go to a meeting---and play another one tomorrow. Meanwhile, other teams are still playing exhibition games. In fact, the Red Sox and Athletics will go back to playing a couple of additional exhibition games before the regular season starts in earnest (with every team playing games that count). This is, naturally, an artifact of playing two regular season games in Japan. (I very much support the idea of playing some regular season games in other countries. I think it is excellent to do that.)

Rob Neyer blog entry: "Dodgers need to eat Pierre's money"

Here's the blog entry in question.

Here is the summary of Neyer's point: "What you can't do is pretend that $44 million wasn't dropped into a giant sinkhole, and keep running Pierre out there every day. Not if you're serious about playing big games in late September. You just can't."

Comment: Amen!

Worst projected Major League regulars

Courtesy Rob Neyer's blog, here is Dayn Perry's list of 2008's worst projected Major League Baseball regulars.

The left fielder is none other than Juan Pierre, though I beg to differ with his assertion that "As long as Pierre's in center field, he is mediocre enough to tolerate." I call bullshit! If he were in center field, I think he'd be the worst player at that position too!

If the Dodgers are smart, we'll just eat Pierre's contract and let both Matt Kemp and Andre Ethier play every day in the outfield. That would improve the defense slightly and improve the offense considerably!

I am heartened, however, that three of the four infielders projected to be the worst at their position are geriatric Giants. That is a team in serious decline, which makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. (Now I just need to be able to say that accurately about the Yankees as well...)

Quote of the Day

Spring training is getting ever closer, and with that in mind it's time to get a little bit more into the swing of things when it comes to baseball. There are so many time-honored traditions from this time of year---like reading top-prospect lists, thinking about who is going to be on my fantasy baseball team, looking at all the projected starting lineups and rotations, and (most important of all) insulting Juan Pierre.

With all these things in mind, my quote of the day comes from an online chat hosted by ESPN's Rob Neyer. The chat concerned whether Joe Girardi (new Yankees manager) will have a bigger impact than Joe Torre (new Dodgers manager). A reader named "Viktor" from Azusa, CA wrote the following:

"As long as Torre doesn't give Pierre the 668 AB's he got last season, he'll fit in just fine."

Comment: A-fucking-men!

Baseball's Worst Hitters and Pitchers for 2007 (by position)

The season isn't over yet, but here is the current list of baseball's worst of the worst for 2007.

The list is compiled by position, with OPS+ as the metric of choice for position players and ERA+ as the metric of choice per pitchers.

OPS, which stands for on-base percentage + slugging percentage, is an excellent quick and dirty method for measuring the quality of somebody's offense. OPS+ just means what one's OPS is realtive to the league average. (I don't know if the National League and American Leagues are being separated in the quoted stats.)

ERA+ refers to what one's ERA (earned run average) is relative to the league average. ERA is computed by taking a pitcher's earned runs, multiplying by 9, and dividing by innings pitched. (That is, it measures how many runs does a pitcher allow during a full-length game that are determined to be his fault.)

Do you want to guess at which player is the worst in the Majors in center field? Here's a hint: he sucks! I can't believe we're going to end up paying this guy over $9 million a year for several years. Yuck. (By the way, Nomar Garciaparra isn't even close to worst among third baseman in terms of OPS+ because Nick Punto's stats are historically bad.) If Nomar were still playing first base as he was for about half of the year, then he would rank worst by a large margin. He currently has an OPS+ of 75 and the listed first baseman, Lyle Overbay, currently has an OPS+ of 85.)

Basically, this is a rather poignant reminder that the Dodgers have had two gaping holes in important spots in the lineup for the entire year. We have better players on the roster, and we should be playing them!

Barry Bonds liveblogging (Day 2)

7:10 pm: The Dodger game against the Giants is about to start. I'll again keep track of Barry Bonds' at-bats and hopefully report on his failures in this space.

7:29 pm: Barry Bonds had his first at-bat as the first hitter in the top of the 2nd inning. He flied out to right field on a 3-2 count. The Dodgers are currently leading 1-0.

8:11 pm: Barry Bonds came up in the top of the 4th inning and grounded out to first baseman James Loney. The Dodgers are currently up 2-1.

8:47 pm: Barry Bonds came up in the top of the 6th inning and hit a fly ball to shallow centerfield. Much to everybody's surprise, Juan Pierre made an excellent diving catch of the ball! (I need to check how he and Nomar are faring offensively... Nomar got a pretty decent lead recently, but I think the gap has since closed a bit.) The score is currently tied 2-2.

9:33 pm: Barry Bonds came up in the 8th inning with two outs, a runner on third, and the Giants leading 3-2. The Dodgers ostensibly started the at-bat by pitching to Bonds. However, they were really just seeing if he would chase a bad pitch, as after two balls, they stopped kidding themselves and finished up the at-bat by walking him intentionally. Fred Lewis then came in to run for Bonds, so that's it for tonight's Bondsblogging.

Tomorrow, I'm going to play frisbee, so I'm unlikely to liveblog about Bonds tomorrow. However, I will continue to report on baseball milestones here.

Baseball Update

I might add more to this entry later tonight. (I want to talk about my fantasy teams, but I'll wait until tonight's updates are in.)

First of all, the Dodgers kicked the Giants' ass today! We scored 6 runs in the 9th inning to turn a close 3-1 game into a 9-1 devouring. Because the Padres lost today to the Diamondbacks, our victory put us back into a first place tie in the NL West. (We have spent quite a few days of the season tied for first with the Padres...)

It's also time for a Nomar vs. Juan Pierre update.

Here are some of Juan Pierre's stats (through tonight's game): .313 on-base percentage, .340 slugging percentage, and .653 OPS (on base + slugging percentage).

Here are some of Nomar Garciaparra's stats: .318 OBP, .332 slugging percentage, and .650 OPS.

Before tonight's game, Nomar held a .653 to .651 lead in OPS, so it looks like this battle of sluggers might last all the way until the end of the season. Juan Pierre's lead in slugging percentage is a bit bigger but still extremely small. This battle is going to be fierce! Stay tuned.


In other good news, today's loss to the Devil Rays dropped the Yankess below .500 again. Oh how I love to see them suffer!

Nomaaaaaah vs. Juan Pierre: Fight!

As several of you know, I've been dogging Juan Pierre ever since the Dodgers signed him during the offseason to an expensive, multi-year contract. There's basically only one thing wrong with him: he sucks.

In 2004 and earlier, Juan Pierre actually did what he was supposed to do: get on base. However, he hasn't done that for years, even though he is paid the salary that someone who does that might command. Oh, and he plays a lousy center field. Sometimes he'll outrun his mistakes and otherwise he won't. Basically, Pierre is a waste of money and batting him in the #2 spot in the batting order is just retarded.

The situation with Nomar Garciaparra is a somewhat different one. For one thing, he had a very good year for us last year. Unfortunately, this year he seems to have forgotten how to hit anything besides the occasional single. Also, as the Dodger stadium statistics screen made sure we were aware on Monday night, Nomar has a fantastic batting average when runners are in scoring position. But Nomar is supposed to be a power hitter and he has just 14 (count 'em!) extra base hits this season (12 doubles and 2 homers). Do you know how many Juan Pierre has this year? 17 (13 doubles and 4 triples)! As I write this, Pierre also has a better OPS than Nomar. Nomar started the year playing first base but has since moved to third base to make room for James Loney, who already has 9 extra base hits in a small fraction of the plate appearances that Nomar has.

So, the question I've been asking all year is 'What happened?' Nomar's power has just disappeared overnight, which suggests to me that there is an injury that has not been made public. He's hitting like a #8-hitting shortstop rather than what he's done in the past. Something is wrong.