DODGERS NEWS/RUMORS Thread

Discussion in 'Los Angeles DODGERS' started by irish, Oct 12, 2019.

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  1. 1988Blues

    1988Blues DSP Legend

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    Disgusting fucks. Nothing worse than cheaters but the league rewards them.
     
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  2. Gebbeth

    Gebbeth DSP Legend

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    There just shouldn’t be a 2017 WS winner. I’m also leaning toward no 2018 winner either. Why is MLB protecting these teams? Afraid of another roids issue? It became an issue because MLB didn’t do anything about it. Why repeat that mistake?
     
  3. 1988Blues

    1988Blues DSP Legend

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    It’s the way it was it done. In your face don’t give a shit if it destroys the game and player / coaches keeping it under wraps until someone doesn’t get what they want and then they squeal. Fuck that punishment for all involved to keep the game clean and set the standards. This bs excuse is just a bs. What an embarrassment and a true black eye on the sport. It’s even worse because the punishment does not meet the severity of the crime
     
    Last edited: Jan 25, 2020
  4. BlueMouse

    BlueMouse 2020 World Champions

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    MLB wants to make out like this wasn’t a big deal in hopes that fans will just forget and move on. Sad thing is, they might be right. My only hope is that the Astros are beaned, and bruised, and knocked down, and cleated, while the umps turn a blind eye - so that in the end they wished they had gotten the 80 game suspensions they deserved. It’s wishful thinking, but a guy can dream.
     
    Last edited: Jan 26, 2020
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  5. Bluezoo

    Bluezoo Among the Pantheon

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    Aye...from the first pitch of the 2020 sseason...
    So let it be written, so let it be done.

    "One must not cheat anybody, not even the world of one's triumph"
    --------Kafka
     
    Last edited: Jan 25, 2020
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  6. Fall Winslow

    Fall Winslow McRib

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    " ..keep the game clean.. " Lol Now, that was good. If it's not HGH/roids, it's greenies. If it's not greenies, it's tech espionage. If it's not tech espionage, it's skirting international signing rules. If it's not skirting international signing rules, it's MLB doctoring baseballs to increase home runs. If it's not MLB doctoring baseballs to increase home runs, it's half the league tanking. If it's not half the league tanking, it's hitters corking their bats. If it's not hitters corking their bats, it's pitchers going to the brim of their hats for all kinds of illegal substances to gain an advantage. If it's not pitchers using illegal substances to gain an advantage, it's a Black Sox scandal. If it's not a Black Sox scandal, it's pitchers throwing - what can be classified as an actual weapon - at another human-being's head. And on and on and so forth.

    " ..keep the game clean.. " Smh This is the dirtiest game in sports..of all time. DOAT. And yet the only real mystery - remains - why was Chokeshaw brought into game 5 so the Nats could ether the team's season?
     
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  7. THINKBLUE

    THINKBLUE DSP Gigolo

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    I'm really anti throwing a ball 90+ MPH at another human being on purpose. But this is the exception.
     
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  8. 1988Blues

    1988Blues DSP Legend

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    Who’s running my team: The Los Angeles Dodgers
    by Bill Felber | Fansided/ Call to the Pen — 24 January 2020

    Our series of articles looking at the front office structure of each major league team continues as we look at the Los Angeles Dodgers.

    ◆ Owner: Guggenheim Partners (Mark Walter)
    ◆ President (Stan Kasten)
    ◆ President of Baseball Operations: Andrew Friedman​

    Is any executive in all of Major League Baseball in a better position than Andrew Friedman?

    The answer is: Maybe Brian Cashman with the Yankees…but that's about it. Combining track record with resources and the authority to use them, Friedman is at the top of the game's food chain.

    Nominally, he answers to Walter and Kasten, the faces of a 10-person consortium – which also includes Billie Jean King and Magic Johnson – who purchased the Los Angeles Dodgers for $2 billion from Frank McCourt in 2012.

    As a practical matter, though, the Guggenheim investors' role in the team consists of getting out of Friedman's way. It is a rewarding occupation because since his hiring away from Tampa Bay following the 2014 season, Friedman has delivered post-season appearances to Los Angeles with the regularity of the United States Postal Service.

    Since Friedman's arrival, the Dodgers have won 60 percent of their regular season games, pocketing all five NL West championships and by an average margin of six games.

    The obvious rap on Friedman's has been their inability to win a World Series. That's inarguable. But it is worth keeping in mind that the present multi-layered playoff system vastly increases the role of chance in determining the overall champion, so to some real extent faulting Friedman for not building a World Series winner is faulting him for not winning the lottery. He's purchased plenty of tickets.

    The Dodgers have resources to commit to winning, and they have committed them. The team's $3.30 million valuation (based on research by Forbes) is the game's second highest, trailing only the Yankees. That's up a nifty 65 percent from when Guggenheim bought the team from McCourt in 2014, and up a staggering 453 percent over the past decade.

    They made a team record $549 million in 2019, a 222 percent growth rate over the decade and up 187 percent since the ownership/front office changes.

    So assiduous have the Dodgers been in committing those resources to player development that they have often forgotten to actually turn a profit. It is a testament to the ownership's desire to produce a consistent winner that until 2018 the Guggenheim-Friedman group never actually made money, although that has turned around nicely. In 2019, gross pre-tax earnings equaled $95 million.

    LA benefits in all the free-market ways that make the disadvantaged envious of the advantaged. At $1.617 billion, their market productivity ranks second behind the Yankees. They are also second only to New York in brand revenues ($554 million), and at $577 million, they are fifth overall in stadium revenue.

    Just to make matters less equitable, they command $552 million in revenue sharing funds, the game's 11th largest share.

    Dodger fans pay dearly for the privilege of basking in all this success. At $79, the Los Angeles Dodgers rank seventh in average revenue per attendee.

    Aside from the raw revenue advantages, the plan works because Friedman is a certified genius at what he does. Considering his performance both in Tampa and Los Angeles, it is entirely plausible to construct a case for Friedman as one of the 25 best team builders in the game's lengthy history. Until 2018, he did so in Los Angeles atop a front office structure that also featured Farhan Zaidi as general manager. But when Zaidi left for San Francisco, Friedman left that position vacant and assumed GM duties himself.

    He came to the game from an investment background following graduation from Tulane, where he played college ball.

    Shortly after Stu Sternberg's purchase of the moribund Rays in 2005, Sternberg went looking for new, young energetic leadership and found Friedman, at the time the team's director of baseball development. It was a stroke of genius; within two seasons Friedman took a team that had never topped 70 victories to the World Series.

    From 2008 through his departure following the 2014 season, Friedman's Rays won 55 percent of their games – playing in the tough AL East – and appeared in four post-seasons.

    Working both with Zaidi and since 2019 on his own, the Los Angeles Dodgers system has become legendary for its productivity. Since Friedman's arrival, that system has produced Joc Pederson, Corey Seager, Cody Bellinger, Walker Buehler, and Alex Verdugo. Beyond that, another touted class including Gavin Lux and Tony Gonsolin is poised to make its mark this season. As a group, the 31 Friedman callups to date have generated +16.4 WAA* for the team's cause.

    During the 2019 season – operating solo – Friedman was responsible for 34 decisions that impacted the Dodger roster. The net impact of those 34 decisions was +9.4 games, the third best total of any of the game's 30 chief execs.**

    When critics want to shoot at Friedman's operation, they aim for his relative hesitancy to dabble in the big-name free agent market. Although the club is perceived to have been involved in bidding for such top-line stars as Gerrit Cole, they have not actually landed a big name from outside the team on Friedman's watch.

    In this area, Friedman's caution may stem from an absence of need – the Dodgers have, after all, averaged 97 wins – or from having been burned previously. LA signed two relatively big-name free agents prior to 2019, pitcher Joe Kelly(three years, $25 million) and outfielder A.J. Pollock (four years, $55 million), and neither panned out.

    Easily Friedman's two best outside free agent signings were less higher-profile. Following the 2015 season he went to Japan to sign pitcher Kenta Maeda to an eight-year, $25 million deal. Then entering 2018 the Los Angeles Dodgers picked up Oakland reject Max Muncy at close to the league minimum. In his first two seasons, Muncy has generated 70 home runs.

    ___________________________________________________

    * This calculation is obtained by determining the net impact of all player transactions on team performance for the season(s) in question. Wins Above Average is a zero-based offshoot of Wins Above Replacement; thus, the final figure suggests the degree of positive or negative movement in the standings attributable to front office moves.

    ** Alex Anthopoulos rated +15.1 in Atlanta, and Thad Levine was +11.5 in Minnesota.


    .
     
  9. irish

    irish DSP Staff Member Administrator

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    what a smug prick

    “We got the report. We read the report. We accepted the report. The next day, we went right back to building the best team we could to win a World Series in 2020.”
    — Stan Kasten, Dodgers president and CEO
     
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  10. VRP

    VRP DSP Legend

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    HOLY SHIT DUDE
     
  11. Bluezoo

    Bluezoo Among the Pantheon

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    Guess the Alex Wood signing got by you.
    For real.
     
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  12. irish

    irish DSP Staff Member Administrator

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    Verlander laughs saying Astros were “technologically and analytically advanced”
    by Craig Calcaterra | NBC Sports — 4 hours ago

    Justin Verlander was at the annual Baseball Writers Association of America banquet last night, on hand to accept the 2019 Cy Young Award. Normally such things are pretty routine events, but nothing is routine with the Houston Astros these days.

    During his acceptance speech, Verlander made some comments about the Astros’ “technological and analytical advancements.” The comments were greeted by some laughter in the room as well as some groans. At least one person on hand claimed that other players present were visibly angry.

    It’s hard to tell the context of it all without a full video — maybe Verlander meant it as a joke, maybe the reactions were more varied than is being described — but here’s how reporters on hand for it last night are describing it:
    [​IMG]
    If it was a joke it was ill-timed, as not many around the game think the sign-stealing stuff is funny at the moment. Especially in light of the fact that, despite having several opportunities to do so, Astros players have failed to show any accountability for their cheating.

    And yes, that includes former Astros Dallas Keuchel, who was praised for “apologizing” at a White Sox fan event on Friday, but whose “apology” was couched in a lot of deflection and excuse-making about how it was just something that was done at the time and about how technology was to blame. Keuchel also tried to minimize it, saying that the Astros didn’t do it all the time. Which is rich given that the most prominent video evidence of their trash can-banging scheme came from a blowout Astros win in a meaningless August game against a losing team. If they were doing it in that situation, please, do not tell me they weren’t doing it when games really mattered.

    Anyway, I’d like to think Verlander was just trying to take a stab at a joke here, because Verlander is the wrong guy to be sending to be sending any kind of messages diminishing the cheating given that he has a pretty solid track record of holding other players’ feet to the fire when they get busted.

    For example, here he was in 2018 after Robinson Canó got busted for PEDs:
    [​IMG]
    Of course, consistency can be a problem for Verlander when his teammates are on the ones who are on the hook. Here was his response to Tigers infielder Jhonny Peralta being suspended in the wake of the Biogenesis scandal:

    “Everybody makes mistakes. He’s my brother. We fight and bleed and sweat together on the baseball field. If my brother makes a mistake, especially if he owns up to it and serves his time, I don’t see how you can hold a grudge or anything like that. “It’s one thing to step up and be a man and own up to his mistake.”

    Verlander, it should also be noted, was very outspoken about teams engaging in advanced sign-stealing schemes once upon a time. here he was in 2017, while still with the Tigers, talking about such things in a June 2017 interview with MLive.com.

    “We don’t have somebody, but I’m sure teams have a person that can break down signals and codes and they’ll have the signs before you even get out there on the mound. It’s not about gamesmanship anymore. It used to be, ‘Hey, if you can get my signs, good for you.’ In the past, if a guy on second (base) was able to decipher it on a few pitches, I guess that was kind of part of the game. I think it’s a different level now. It’s not good.”

    Which makes me wonder how he felt when he landed on the Astros two months later and realized they had a sophisticated cheating operation underway. If the feelings were mixed, he was able to bury the part of them which had a problem with it, because he’s said jack about it since this all blew up in November. And, of course, has happily accepted the accolades and the hardware he he has received since joining Houston, some of which was no doubt acquired by virtue of a little extra, ill-gotten run support.

    Anyway, wake me up when someone — anyone — associated with the Astros shows some genuine accountability about this.
     
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  13. BlueMouse

    BlueMouse 2020 World Champions

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    Verlander is a major tool. The fucktard cheats too.
     
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  14. irish

    irish DSP Staff Member Administrator

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    his hypocrisy is amazing
     
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  15. 1988Blues

    1988Blues DSP Legend

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    This is why the should rethink the punishment and truly hand out severe suspensions to prevent future damage of this magnitude
     
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  16. BlueMouse

    BlueMouse 2020 World Champions

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    No kidding. Verlander making jokes (or just too dense to realize what he’s saying), the Houston Sports Awards giving Bregman Athlete of the Year awards, Jim Crane firing 2 guys who were already suspended and acting like the rest of the organization is first class, their fans mocking Dodgers and Yankees fans... yeah, they learned their lesson /s
     
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  17. BlueMouse

    BlueMouse 2020 World Champions

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    No remorse. None.
     
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  18. No Name

    No Name Well-Known Member

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    Hypocritical fuck
     
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  19. ColoradoKidWitGame

    ColoradoKidWitGame DSP Legend Administrator

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    Before the horrific and tragic event from this morning took all our attention, there were a couple rumors circling the web.

    • A report out of Boston says that the Red Sox are leaning more heavily to potentially trading Betts. The Dodgers and Padres are the two teams in on him. They have spoken to the Dodgers about multiple scenarios, Betts for prospects, Betts for better prospects + a larger contract and potentially a Betts/Price tandem. Though they seem to think that Price is valuable. They think the Dodgers make the most sense, but never discount Preller.
    • Rosenthal says the teams have not discussed Price in their conversations. He thinks the Red Sox should think about moving him before it gets too late. It’s more about the Yankees and Rays expected to be really really good.
    • The Reds are said to be the clear favorite for Nick Castellanos. The Reds could be a very interesting club.
     
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  20. Bluezoo

    Bluezoo Among the Pantheon

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    The truly scary thing about ( previously) undiscovered lies is they have a greater capacity to diminish us than exposed ones.
    Given the arrogance and dismissive attitude of the guilty, plus the" punishment" which has ensued in it's wake, we can only hope this is worn around every cheater's neck like a festering, inescapable albatross.
    When this goes on, and the penalty is this level, is it wonder why our culture is is divided as it surely is ?
    What effect is forthcoming in every Little Leaguers mind about fair play in sport, and more importantly, life?
     
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