The Spring Training Thread

I'm going April 3rd, and am getting a hoodie

 

that's fucken sick for a freebie

 

Fuck, I gotta go now. Was saving up cash to go to the Yankees series and the series against the Sox since one of my best friends is a fan. But I want that hoodie.

 

i hate these devil's advocate/worst case scenario/just to be different/secondguesser buzzkill fucks
but it really pisses me off when it comes from (supposedly) one of our own
:angry:

Big-spending Dodgers, Angels could still be big disappointments​

The Dodgers have replaced the New York Yankees as the MLB team with the highest payroll. The Angels aren't far behind. Expectations are huge. So is the potential for letdown.​

​

​

​

By Bill Shaikin | March 27, 2013, 6:30pm​

​

For $400 million, you could produce two Hollywood blockbusters. The Dodgers and Angels are betting they have.​

​

Los Angeles' two Major League Baseball teams have been on a buying spree, signing some of the game's most talented players. The Dodgers gave Zack Greinke a six-year contract for $147 million, a record for a right-handed pitcher. The Angels lured outfield Josh Hamilton from the Texas Rangers in a five-year, $125-million deal — a year after spending $240 million to secure slugger Albert Pujols' services for 10 years.​

​

The big contracts have fans' hopes high as the season approaches. The teams meet in exhibition games the next three nights before opening the regular season on Monday.​

​

"We want to go to the World Series," Dodgers co-owner Magic Johnson said before spring training. "If we don't accomplish that, yes, it is not a good season for us."​

​

With those elevated expectations, though, comes pressure to ride the high-priced talent into postseason play — and the potential of ugly consequences for managers and executives if the teams don't win enough.​

​

The Dodgers have a record projected player payroll of $230 million. And the Angels, whose payroll could hit about $170 million by year's end, aren't far behind. But in baseball, lavish spending often does not translate into on-field success. "That is a lesson that has been told many times," Commissioner Bud Selig said.​

​

Of the 10 teams with the highest payrolls last season, five did not make the playoffs. The New York Yankees had the highest payroll in baseball every year since 2001 until the Dodgers passed them, and they made the playoffs 11 times in that span.​

​

But they won the World Series only once.​

​

The Dodgers, 25 years removed from their last World Series title — and just one year out of bankruptcy — are the new free-wheeling Yankees, with team Chairman Mark Walter telling one reporter recently that the Atlanta Braves' historic run of 14 consecutive division championships would be repeated "on the West Coast." (He wasn't referring to the rival San Francisco Giants, who have won two of the last three World Series titles.)​

​

The hubris does not sit well with rival owners, many of whom already were troubled by the Dodgers' driving up the price of talent.​

​

"There were certainly people who resented the Yankees for spending so much money," said Bob Daly, the Dodgers' managing partner during the final years of Fox ownership, which ended in 2004. "I think everybody knows now that the No. 1 team in baseball, as far as spending money, is the Dodgers."​

​

Continued...
__

 

2 of 2...

And they're not slowing down. The new owners, who paid a record $2.15 billion for the team last May, committed $104 million to acquire South Korean pitcher Hyun-Jin Ryu and Cuban outfielder Yasiel Puig, neither of whom had played in the major leagues.

Stan Kasten, the Dodgers' president, is not concerned with the opinions of rival owners. "The most important thing to me is how our fans feel," he said. "I think our fans feel really good about it." The Dodgers have sold a record 31,000 season tickets, Kasten said.

On the days Ryu does not start, the Dodgers could field a former All-Star at six of nine positions. Yet the sports wagering site Bovada gives four teams — including the Angels — better odds than the Dodgers to win the World Series.

"I think the Dodgers have put together a very, very good team. If everybody is healthy, I think they should win the division," Daly said. "But look at the Yankees. Every day, another player gets hurt. That can destroy a team overnight."

The Yankees are expected to start the season with four of their five highest-paid position players — Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, Mark Teixeira and Curtis Granderson — on the disabled list.

The Dodgers are expected to start the season with shortstop Hanley Ramirez on the disabled list, with their left fielder and center fielder coming off injuries, and with two starting pitchers who nursed injuries in spring training and another, Ryu, who is new to America.

Meanwhile, the rival Giants, who compete with the Dodgers in the National League West, enter this season with the same lineup with which they won last year's World Series. Their payroll of about $140 million is nearly $100 million less than that of the Dodgers.

The Dodgers are a good team, said a major league scout who has been following them this spring, "but there isn't this $100-million gap in talent, which exists in the payroll. I just don't see them as a dominating club. I'm concerned the expectations cannot be met."

The expectations are no lower for the Angels, who had never spent as much as $100 million on a player before lavishing more than twice that upon Pujols in the third-biggest contract in baseball history.

When Bloomberg Sports this month ranked the world's 100 most powerful athletes on and off the field, the Angels had four players on the list, more than any other team in baseball — Pujols, Hamilton, pitcher Jered Weaver and dynamic 21-year-old outfielder Mike Trout, who by some statistical measures was the best player in the major leagues last year. (The Dodgers had no players on the Bloomberg list.)

The Angels, one of baseball's more successful teams under owner Arte Moreno, know painfully well how difficult a championship can be to win. In 2004, the first full year under Moreno, the Angels sounded much like the Dodgers do now.

At the time, John Carpino — now the Angels' president and then the senior vice president — described Moreno's 10-year strategy this way: "To be in the playoffs and be world champions. Multiple times."

In five of Moreno's first six years, the Angels reached the playoffs but never advanced to the World Series. In the last three years, the Angels have fallen short of the playoffs.

And that's when consequences could kick in.

Moreno fired the general manager two years ago. At the end of last season, amid tension between new General Manager Jerry Dipoto and longtime Manager Mike Scioscia, Moreno said he would retain both men. Moreno has not said what he would do if the Angels again fail to make the playoffs.

What would happen if the Dodgers fail to reach the playoffs is anyone's guess. Commissioner Selig said he had not felt a need to explain to the new owners that money does not assure success.

"They're smart people," Selig said.

Kasten, the Dodgers president, ran the Braves when they won those 14 consecutive division championships — and just one World Series.

"Baseball is not the kind of sport where you can throw money out and expect to win the world championship automatically," he said.

The Dodgers owners inherited General Manager Ned Colletti and Manager Don Mattingly and retained both for this season. That could change if the spending does not pay off.

Mattingly has all but put his job on the line, saying recently: "If we don't win and we're healthy, they really should look at it."

Scioscia was the Dodgers' catcher in 1988, the last time the team won the World Series. He won a World Series as the Angels' manager in 2002, and he resides closer to Dodger Stadium than Angel Stadium.

So, if neither the Dodgers nor Angels enjoy the anticipated blockbuster winning season, there could still be a Hollywood-scripted ending:

The former Dodgers catcher managing his old team next year.​

__

 

mas...

Dodgers retooled roster with one objective in mind
After adding high-priced talent, ownership group embraces high expectations
By Ken Gurnick / MLB.com | 3/28/2013 10:00 A.M. ET

GLENDALE, Ariz. -- The goal for the Dodgers under Guggenheim Partners ownership is simple (just not easy): Win the World Series. Again, and again, and again.

That's why they spent like crazy last summer on marquee names, and when that didn't work, they spent like crazy some more in the winter.​

​

That's why at the organization meetings last fall, chairman Mark Walter talked about "responsibility and accountability," and why manager Don Mattingly's option for 2014 hasn't been picked up yet.

At the end of the day, this season could be the end of the line for just about anybody on the baseball side if the Dodgers can't supplant the Giants as the best team in the division, in the league, in the sport.

"You've got to beat the best to be the best," said ownership partner Magic Johnson. "Expectations? Enjoy it. You want to be picked last? This city is about expectations, come on man. That's what it's all about. Have fun with it, don't run away from it. Every team wants to win the World Series. If we don't, it's not the season that we wanted."

Johnson, the on-court maestro of the Showtime Lakers, is part-owner -- and maybe more important, executive bar-setter -- of the Dodgers. He prepared, he executed and he embodied toughness as a player, and with that in mind, he will be watching to see if his employees are as committed as he was then and is now.

It's one thing to disappoint a fan base. It's something else altogether to disappoint an icon.

So, yes, the pressure's on.

"I think it's healthy for everybody," said general manager Ned Colletti. "I can't think of being in a better spot than this spot."

The Dodgers roster is like the American economy: it isn't perfect, but it's better than it was. It should be, with a $230 million payroll.

That said, talent alone doesn't win. The Dodgers need to play a better quality of baseball physically and mentally than last year and avoid the late-season collapse that cost them a postseason berth.

As an answer to the Giants, the Dodgers' starting pitching now has a pair of aces in Clayton Kershaw and Zack Greinke, and a confident Korean import in Hyun-Jin Ryu to join Chad Billingsley and Josh Beckett; the batting order is potentially deeper than any Dodgers team in decades; and the bullpen is versatile enough to give the manager necessary weapons with hard throwers Brandon League, Kenley Jansen and Ronald Belisario handling the late innings.

One thing the owners were taught already this spring is that money can't buy health, so the Dodgers must overcome the two-month loss of shortstop and No. 5 hitter Hanley Ramirez right out of the gate.

Ramirez wasn't going to win a Gold Glove Award, but his injury has created chaos on the left side of the infield, with Luis Cruz moving from third base to shortstop and Mattingly hoping a rotation of Juan Uribe, Jerry Hairston and Nick Punto can hold things together at third base.

Whether Ramirez even returns to shortstop when he's healthy is another question to be answered.

Health also can't be rushed, so it remains to be seen whether Matt Kemp and Carl Crawford have healed enough from operations to approach their top production potential, or whether Greinke and Billingsley have overcome minor ailments to be at peak form early.

As demonstrated last year, if there is one player the Dodgers can't afford to lose it's Kemp. But at least with Crawford, Adrian Gonzalez and eventually Ramirez, the run-production burden wouldn't fall on Andre Ethier.

"Coming into this season, we're a lot better off to absorb something than last year," said Mattingly. "When Matt had the hamstring last year, we survived it the first time, but not the second one. We asked [Hairston], and played him too much and he got hurt. Juan Rivera got hurt. It's hard to say we're better off without Hanley, but there are still a lot of talented guys capable of doing things."

Greinke, Crawford and Ryu aren't the only new faces. Skip Schumaker has been added as a left-handed backup for Mark Ellis at second base and Kemp in center field, while J.P. Howell was signed to be the left-hander in the bullpen after Scott Elbert needed a second elbow operation.

A.J. Ellis returns as the quarterback behind the plate and Tim Federowicz has been promoted from the Minor Leagues as his understudy.

"This team has more depth, has more talent than last year's team," Colletti said. "Last year's team, especially early, played so hard and so well. So even though this year's team has more talent, it has to play equally as well to succeed."

Ken Gurnick is a reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.​

__

 

^nah, i'll just bury it in the spring training thread