Dodgers Sign Kyle Tucker to 4-Year Deal!

The Dodgers have struck again! We have signed top free agent Kyle Tucker to a 4-year deal. The Dodgers are the Evil Empire, and I love it!

It's important that this is a shorter-term contract, as Tucker is a bit too fragile to go beyond 4 years.

Shohei Ohtani is Joining the Dodgers!

This is straight from the horse's mouth and is the largest contract in North American sports history.

Dodgers Sign Freddie Freeman!

The Dodgers have reached a deal with free agent Freddie Freeman. As usual with the Dodgers, it'a Moneyball with money.

Dodgers Sign Trevor Bauer!

The Dodgers have signed free-agent pitcher Trevor Bauer!

The Dodgers are Keeping Free Agents Hill, Jansen, and Turner!

Yay! The Dodgers have now resigned third baseman Justin Turner, so we're keeping all three of our major free agents. We recently resigned Kenley Jansen, and before that we resigned starting pitcher Rich Hill. Excellent!

There are also rumors that we will trade for second baseman Brian Dozier of the Twins. Let's see how things go.

Dodgers Signing of Pitcher Kenta Maeda is Now Official

The Dodgers have now officially signed pitcher Kenta Maeda to an 8-year deal.

(After counting two too many chickens with certain prior pitching "acquisitions", which both fell apart, I waited to post this blog entry until the deal with Maeda became official.)

Dodgers Sign Free-Agent Pitcher

This time, it's for real: we have signed –– past tense! –– free agent pitcher Scott Kazmir to a three-year contract.

New Dodger Pitchers (or Possibly Only One New Pitcher...)

The Los Angeles Dodgers have picked up two new pitchers: we signed free-agent starter Hisashi Iwakuma to a three-year deal, and we traded a pair of prospects to the Reds for power reliever Aroldis Chapman.

I hope we can pick up another good starter. Losing Zack Greinke to the Diamondbacks left a gaping hole in our rotation.

Update (12/08/15): Then again, it may take a few weeks for the trade for Chapman to go through --- if the Dodgers bother going through with the trade at all. (And is it really a good idea to acquire somebody with this kind of personal track record?)

Update (12/18/15): It may actually end up being zero pitchers. Um, bring back Zack Greinke?

Headline: Dodgers Go Apeshit

Wow, the Dodgers seem to have gone totally apeshit today: 3 trades today, and it looks like we're about to sign a starting pitcher (Brandon McCarthy, which is ok, as long as we don't expect him to be more than an average #4 starter... I'd rather get James Shields). These moves help somewhat, I think, but the outfield logjam is alive and well. I suspect we're not done.

It started with the news that we acquired Jimmy Rollins from the Phillies. We then traded Dan Haren and Dee Gordon to the Marlins for some prospects and a reliever. We then traded the main one of those prospects (Andrew Heaney) to the Angels for Howie Kendrick. We're also apparently close to signing starting pitcher Brandon McCarthy to a 4-year deal.

All of these stories have broken within the last few hours (and have delayed my bedtime).

Update (12/11/14): And now we have traded Matt Kemp to the Padres along with about $31 million of his salary and catcher Tim Federowicz. In return, we will receive catcher Yasmani Grandal and pitchers Joe Wieland and Zach Eflin.

Update (12/11/14): I think we have improved our team a good deal with these moves, and we sold high on Kemp. Kemp gave us some good years (and a couple of excellent ones), but the renewed offensive output he showed last year is counteracted to a nontrivial degree by his poor defense and he is rather brittle in terms of his ability to stay on the field (in stark contrast to his former ironman days). I would rather dump Ethier at this point, but Kemp had some value, and that trade with the Padres was a very good one. We have a glut of outfielders, and they are going to pay the majority of the cost for his waning years. We also have improved at several other positions and have acquired a decent number of prospects, who we can either use to keep building for subsequent years or can trade for a premium pitcher (Cole Hamels comes to mind). This is called "Moneyball with money". Jayson Stark summarized the Dodgers moves very well in his recap of Baseball's Winter Meetings. (Why is it "Winter Meetings" instead of "Winter Meeting" anyway?)

Dodgers Sign Free Agent Zack Greinke!

The Dodgers have won the Zack Greinke sweepstakes. They have agreed with him on a 6-year deal worth a reported $147 million.

Notice, by the way, that I didn't refer to Greinke as an "ace" pitcher, because on our team he is #2 in the rotation behind Clayton Kershaw.

Now let's see if we can also sign Hyun Jin Ryu. Then we're really have a starting rotation to be feared...

Update: And we managed to sign Ryu before today's 5pm eastern time deadline. Fear our starting rotation!

Update (12/10/12): In other baseball news, the Rays and Royals made a big trade. "Big Game" James Shields, Wade Davis, and a player to be named later are going to the Royals, and top prospect Wil Myers (who is awesome), a good pitching prospect, and other minor leaguers are going to the Rays. Myers should be in the lineup this year and start mashing immediately.

Albert Pujols Signs a 10-Year Deal with the Angels

Wow, this is pretty major! Albert Pujols has signed a 10-year contract with The The Angels Angels of Anaheim! Wow!

Update: As you can see in the linked article above (which has been updated), the Angels have also signed free agent starting pitch C.J. Wilson.

Update: Meanwhile, my beloved Dodgers continue their tweaking with greaybeards. Aaron Harang is just about officially signed now. All of these bit players are useful (and trading Dana Eveland for prospects is solid), but we really need to get our ownership situation in order so that we can do some more serious things. Thankfully, we have signed Matt Kemp to a mega-extension, and that of course is an excellent start to righting the ship. Anyway, we have two of the best players in the Majors in Kemp and Clayton Kershaw, and hopefully the minor tweaks will help enough in the short term to really get our butts in gear once the ownership situation is fixed.

Cliff Lee Signs with the Phillies

The Phillies have signed Cliff Lee as a free agent. Yup, they've got a pretty good starting rotation.

First Jon Garland and Now Juan Uribe

It won't become official until the physical scheduled for tomorrow, but the Dodgers have apparently signed free agent infielder Juan Uribe to a contract for 3 years and 21 million dollars. Uribe becomes our starter at second base. He isn't great or anything, but he sure beats Jamey Carroll, who was previously slated as the starter. Recently, we also signed Jon Garland to a 1-year, 5-million-dollar contract to be our 5th starter. Now that was an excellent move! (We had previously resigned Ted Lilly to a 3-year deal before the free agency period began and resigned Hiroki Kuroda to a 1-year deal.) Our starting pitching is in shape, and now some of the other stuff is coming along too. We still seriously need to improve at both 1st base and catcher---our incumbents are substandard---but things are looking up in Los Angeles.

Dodgers sign utility man Jamey Carroll

The Dodgers have signed free agent utility man Jamey Carroll to a 2-year contract. He's a useful spare part, but that's about all I have to say. I'm glad Juan Pierre's gone, though. :)

Big Baseball News

There is some big news on the baseball pitching front today.

The Red Sox have signed free agent John Lackey to a 5-year contract. Additionally, Roy Halladay is apparently going to the Phillies as part of a 3-team deal that will send Cliff Lee to the Mariners. That's pretty major! Meanwhile, the Dodgers seem to be handcuffed by the McCourts' divorce. Thus far, we've only managed to lose significant pieces this winter, and signing hurler Josh Towers to a minor league contract doesn't exactly count as a significant acquisition.

Update (11:03 pm, UK time): The article about the Halladay trade apparently jumped the gun, but the trade is evidently "close" to happening. Stay tuned. And in related news, Dewey beat Truman.

Update (12/15/09): The trade is all but official now. Essentially, it's a done deal, but the press releases from the teams that put the official wrapping on things aren't quite out yet.

Update (12/16/09): The trade now is official, and as reported earlier (though after the original link I used) it includes four teams rather than three. It's really nice to see a huge trade like this now and again.

Manny is staying in LA.

This was inevitable: Manny Ramirez will remain a Dodger in 2009. Thankfully, we mostly resisted the urge to bid against ourselves (which is a Scott Boras specialty).

The Dodger announcers on Andruw Jones

The Dodger announcers had a bit of a discussion about Andruw Jones during today's spring training game:

Charlie Steiner: "Let's see. Andruw Jones this spring is 1 for 7 with an infield single and 6 strikeouts."

Rick Monday: "He's in midseason form."


Comment: Ouch!


(The discussion then continued for a little while, but its start was just priceless.)

Dodgers sign Orlando Hudson

It's not quite official yet, but apparently the Dodgers are about to sign second baseman Orlando Hudson to a one-year contract. It's apparently going to cost about $4 million + incentives, so we're really taking advantage of the depressed free agent market. This is quite a good acquisition for the price.

Dodgers resign Rafael Furcal

The Dodgers have apparently resigned shortstop Rafael Furcal to a three-year contract. It was reported a couple of days ago that Furcal had signed with the Braves (his original team), but apparently there were some shenanigans (on the part of his agent) involved in those negotiations.

Dodgers sign Mark Loretta

It's not exactly world-breaking news, but the Dodgers have apparently signed free agent Mark Loretta. Loretta is a solid spare part who knows how to get on base and can play all over the infield. He should no longer be an everyday player (though he had a couple of excellent seasons as a starter back in the day), but as a part-timer and occasional platooner he's a good player to have around. Also, he's one of the best baseball players ever whose last name is a woman's first name.

There is an article on epsn.com that seems to be about the Dodgers general manager claiming that C.C. Sabathia wants to play for us. Ladies and gentlemen, this means it's a slow news day. We'll see if that changes. Baseball's winter meetings are going on right now, after all, so something interesting could happen.

Update: The Dodgers have apparently resigned Casey Blake to a 3-year deal. I approve! (By the way, you can use this as a hint to try to figure out the rest of the woman's-first-name-as-last-name all-star team.)