Matt Kemp may have grabbed the early headlines for the Los Angeles Dodgers, but Andre Ethier is the talk of Hollywood right now. Propelled by a 24-game hitting streak, Ethier has been punishing baseballs the entire season. Ethier’s strong start continued Wednesday as he not only extended his hitting streak, but hit the eventual game winning home run in the 10th inning. As with most players on extended hitting streaks, Ethier has benefited from a great deal of luck this season. While that unfortunately makes Ethier a candidate for regression as the season progresses, there are a few interesting nuggets (copyright Peter King) in his stat line that indicate Ethier is completely locked in at the plate.
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A pitcher’s hitting ability often goes unremarked upon. For roughly half the league, that’s fine since pitchers don’t hit. In the National League they do however, and while nobody ever expects much out of them, pitchers do occupy a spot in the batting order and what they do with it is part of the overall package of value that they deliver to the team.

On its own, that’s never a surprising statement to make. What I think is surprising is the range in values of hitting value that pitchers display. Granted they are always over small seasonal samples so I am taking care not to mention skill or repeatability here. Nevertheless, pitcher’s plate appearances do matter and managing not to be a federally declared disaster at the plate can be a stealthy way for a pitcher to add a significant amount of value.

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In a couple of hours, for The Morning After, you’ll see the story of the Dodgers and Braves playing a fun, exciting, memorable game. It featured pitching dominance, comebacks, clutch two-out hits, and a walk-off. The game went 12 innings, but it could have gone longer. It probably should have gone longer, really. But Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez made a decision in the 12th that, I think, cost his team the game.

Criticizing the manager is as old as baseball itself, and most of the time it amounts to petty bickering. Armchair managing is easy, because the moves never blow up in our faces. But every once in a while there is a move so painfully wrong that a comment from the ivory tower is warranted. This is one of those instances. I simply cannot understand why Gonzalez would pitch to Matt Kemp in the 12th.

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Last night, the commissioner’s office released a statement noting that the league would “appoint a representative to oversee all aspects of the business and the day-to-day operations of the (Los Angeles Dodgers) Club.” Essentially, Bud Selig was seizing control of the Dodgers “because of my deep concerns regarding the finances and operations of the Dodgers and to protect the best interests of the Club.”

As Jonah wrote last night, the last time Major League Baseball owned a franchise, it was an utter disaster. The way the Expos were ran during the time that the league had stewardship over them was an embarrassment, and highlights the problems that can arise in this kind of natural conflict-of-interest situation. With the other owners incentivized to not lose games to a property they had an ownership stake in, the Expos were essentially turned into baseball’s version of the Washington Generals.

But I have to believe that Selig learned some lessons from just how poorly that situation was handled, and he knows that he can’t make those same mistakes again. Additionally, Los Angeles is not Montreal, and with all respect to Jonah’s memories, the Dodgers are not the Expos. This is a storied franchise in the largest media market on the west coast – the problem won’t be finding a new owner, but rather picking from among the horde of people who will be interested in purchasing the team.

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“Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast.”

-ye olde Bill Shakespeare (Friar Laurence from Rome and Juliet)

After waiting many hard winter months without any baseball, it seems unfair to ask us sabermagicians to wait even longer to saberize our favorite teams and players. Unfortunately, that is what we must do. One of the core principles of sabermetric thought is the value of sample size.

We cannot do as our detractors think we do: We cannot resort to looking for greater truths from lesser findings.

So, this early part of the year features a lot of articles about players’ plate discipline numbers and pitchers’ pitch f/x changes — small slivers of reality that give us clues to how the big reality will start to look.

One such thing we can look at early in the season: batting average on balls in play (BABIP). Why? BABIP stabilizes slowly, but tends to stay in a particular range for hitters (somewhere between .250 and .350, with most hitters being quite near to .300). So, early in the season, we can usually take a gander at the Luck Loserboard (those hitters with BABIPs at or beneath .200) and get a good idea about which players are poised to rebound.
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It happens every year. A manager gets an itchy trigger finger early in the season and buries a guy before he even gets a chance to earn the faith the manager put in him to start the season. This year is no different, and with an idea sparked from Eric Seidman’s piece yesterday on Brad Emaus — an article that the Mets completely ignored when they waived him today — I present the 2011 Brad Emaus All-Stars.
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Things could be worse for the Dodgers. They’re 7-9, which is hardly terrible for this time of year. That puts them just two games off the NL Wild Card pace. While meaningless in terms of the actual postseason, it puts into perspective how little they need to turn things around. Yet, in terms of run differential, they rank among the league’s worst. Only two teams have scored fewer runs, and only six have allowed more. In fact, if it weren’t for the superhuman performances by Matt Kemp, the Dodgers might be at medium-well, approaching well-done right now.

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It’s not exactly high times to be a Dodgers fan right now. Sure, the San Francisco Giants won the World Series, but most of the bitterness of the 2010 season is directed at the divorce battle between Frank and Jamie McCourt. General Manager Ned Colletti hasn’t exactlybeen  given the complete freedom to make whatever transactions necessary for the good of the big league ballclub, being hamstrung by financial constraints and all. But he was able to tack on to the starting rotation of homegrown Clayton Kershaw and Chad Billingsley by re-signing Hiroki Kuroda and Ted Lilly, while adding Jon Garland, giving L.A.’s rotation a well-rounded staff.

But if you think the additions and re-additions of Jay Gibbons, Marcus Thames, Juan Uribe, and Rod Barajas will bolster an offense with several holes, think again. A left field and backstop sans Manny Ramirez and Russell Martin are the biggest questions for the boys of Chavez Ravine. A lesser question that will be just as publicized is the performance of current closer Jonathan Broxton, backed by an eclectic but mostly capable bullpen. The single most important X-factor that first-year manager Don Mattingly could use? A Matt Kemp revitalization, whose upside could be the difference between a third-place NL West team and a playoff contender.

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