Dodger Thoughts

Jon Weisman's outlet for dealing psychologically with the Los Angeles Dodgers, baseball and life

Category: Uncategorized (Page 41 of 63)

Padilla has surgery, could resume work in three weeks … or more

Vicente Padilla had his surgery today. From Tony Jackson of ESPNLosAngeles.com:

… The surgery was performed in Los Angeles by team physician Dr. Neal ElAttrache and Dr. Steve Shin, who conveyed the results to Dodgers trainer Stan Conte at Camelback Ranch.

“Stan said it went well,” Dodgers manager Don Mattingly said. “[Padilla] is supposed to be back in Arizona sometime [on Friday], and he’ll start the rehab process. What I got was that his best outlook is three or four weeks, then he’ll start tossing.”

Because this type of surgery is so rare among pitchers, there are no plans for how long the rehabilitation will last. Dodgers general manager Ned Colletti said Wednesday, the day before the surgery, that he had been given reason to believe Padilla would return sometime during the season’s first half. …

* * *

  • Kenley Jansen’s spot on the roster seems even more secure to me after this tweet from ESPN the Magazine’s Molly Knight from Camelback: “Mattingly says Jansen will work 7th inning typically, 8th when Kuo is unavailable and could close if Broxton has gone three days in a row.”
  • My favorite tidbit from Ken Gurnick’s roundup of Dodger non-roster invitees at MLB.com is on Ramon Colon: “This is his 15th professional season and he had a great Spring Training last year to make the Royals Opening Day roster, but after a month he was released and wound up pitching in Korea. He signed with the Dodgers because they became his favorite team when they signed his older brother, Daniel, in 1989.”
  • More details on the pitching plan on Saturday from the Dodger press notes: “In Scottsdale, Dodger right-handed hurler Tim Redding will get the start and is scheduled to be followed by RHP Carlos Monasterios, RHP Oscar Villarreal, RHP Jon Huber and LHP Wilkin De La Rosa. Over in Tempe, RHP Hiroki Kuroda will make his first start of the spring and is scheduled to be followed by RHP Rubby De La Rosa, LHP Scott Elbert, RHP Lance Cormier, RHP Roman Colon and RHP Luis Vasquez.”
  • Also from the press notes: “A contingent of Dodger employees will take on a group of White Sox employees looking to avenge their loss in the 1959 World Series in a “friendly” softball game on Field 1. The skirmish will take place at 6 p.m. and admission is free.”
  • Ernest Reyes of Blue Heaven passes along this photo of Walter O’Malley in Cuba in 1959. Cutline: “Officials and players of the Reds and Dodgers received a warm welcome from Fidel Castro’s forces when they played two games at Havana, March 20-21. In front row, left is Gabe Paul, general manager of the Reds. In the second row, standing, are Bud Holman (with beret), a Dodger director, and Walter O’Malley (wearing deputy sheriff’s badge), Dodger prexy.”
  • Happy birthday, Nancy Bea Hefley …

* * *

Update: The Dodgers “plan to add one more Cactus League game to their schedule to be played sometime in late March in Tucson, Ariz., to benefit the Christina Taylor Green Memorial Fund,” according to Tony Jackson of ESPNLosAngeles.com.

The travails of Podsednik and Martin

Catching up with two expatriates …

Here’s the first interview I’ve seen with Scott Podsednik since his offseason went south (non-geographically speaking). From the Canadian Press:

Scott Podsednik’s spring is not off to an ideal start, far from it, but at least he can take some solace in knowing that other years have also started poorly and turned out fine.

Like 2009, for instance.

“It’s a crazy game,” he said Wednesday after checking into camp with the Toronto Blue Jays. “A couple of years ago I was sitting on my couch at the start of the ’09 season, so anything can happen.

“I’ve learned over the years to just kind of focus on the things you can control, and all I can control is trying to get myself ready and playing my game in between the lines. Anything outside of that is not up to my decision, so I’m going to try to focus all my energy on things I can control.”

A sound approach and, given the circumstances, a wise one for the speed demon and former all-star.

Podsednik arrived in camp on a minor-league contract signed last week, the best deal for him after an off-season that didn’t play out anything like what he expected.

In November, he declined his end of a US$2-million mutual contract option for 2011 with the Los Angeles Dodgers and opted for free agency. It backfired since “for whatever reason my market just didn’t develop,” said Podsednik. …

Then there’s Russell Martin, who is not as ready for game action as he and the Yankees thought he would be.  From Wallace Matthews of ESPNNewYork.com:

The Yankees signed Russell Martin to be their everyday catcher, but he won’t be behind the plate when they open their exhibition season Saturday against the Philadelphia Phillies.“I don’t think he’s quite ready to go and I’m not going to rush him,” manager Joe Girardi said Wednesday at George M. Steinbrenner Field. “He still talks about [his knee] doesn’t quite feel the same as it did before. I told him, I want to know when you’re 100 percent. Because I don’t want any setbacks with him. When I put him in, I want him to be ready to go.”

The 28-year-old Martin passed a physical before signing a one-year, $4 million contract in December to replace Jorge Posada behind the plate. But within a matter of days, it was announced he would undergo surgery to repair “a small meniscus tear” in his right knee, the same surgery both Posada and CC Sabathia underwent in the offseason.

At the time, general manager Brian Cashman said, “It’s not a serious surgery at all,” that Martin’s recovery would take two to three weeks and that the catcher would be “back to normal within a month.”But now, nine weeks after the surgery, Martin is still feeling discomfort. Worse, on Wednesday, he added three ominous letters to the mix: MCL, as in medial collateral ligament.

“I injured my MCL in the offseason,” Martin said. “But the surgery wasn’t for the MCL, it was for the meniscus. When they looked at my knee they saw that I had a meniscus issue as well, so in the time it would take for the MCL to heal, the surgery would heal, so they might as well do it. It was just a prevention type thing.”

Whatever the real extent of the injury, it has so far prevented Martin from participating in the full range of catching drills — he has not taken part in blocking drills yet — and will keep him out of the first spring training game at least. …

Andre Ethier on the Baseball Tonight Bus


Andre Ethier, Tim Kurkjian and John Kruk on ESPN’s Baseball Tonight bus.

Not to be confused with Joe Bologna, Vic Tayback and Stockard Channing on “The Big Bus.”

Mota motors

Kirby Lee/Image of Sport/US PresswireManny Mota, fastest pinch-hitting genius on three wheels …

When the Dodgers open Cactus League action Saturday with split-squad games on the road against the Angels and Giants, the starting pitchers are scheduled to be Hiroki Kuroda and Tim Redding, respectively.

In other news and notes …

  • Today from Tony Jackson: Dodger hitting coach Jeff Pentland talks about James Loney.

    … it is precisely that — not getting the ball to leave the yard, but getting Loney’s bat into the relatively small hitting zone more quickly — that Loney and Dodgers hitting coach Jeff Pentland have been working on not only since the start of spring training, but basically since the end of last season. Loney flew to Phoenix from his home in Houston twice this winter for extra work with Pentland at the team’s Camelback Ranch facility.

    “In order to hit the ball in that certain area, it’s really difficult,” Pentland said. “James probably isn’t as consistent as he needs to be at getting his bat to that spot. What he needs to do is put the bat head in a better position so we can add some sharpness to the ball. I never tell guys to swing for the fence. I want guys to hit the ball hard consistently. If they do that, there are going to be times where they catch it just right and it’s going to go out of the ballpark.”

  • Here’s Baseball America’s 2011 Top 100 Prospects list. Dodgers: Dee Gordon (26), Zach Lee (89), Rubby De La Rosa (90). In a related story, J.J. Cooper writes about how spectacular the 2011 Royals class of minor leaguers is, putting it atop a top 10 that also includes the 1991 and 2006 Dodgers.
  • Today’s edition of David Pinto’s 2006-10 PMR defensive ratings at Baseball Musings hones in on center field. The Dodgers have performed poorly there over the past five years. On an individual basis, Juan Pierre and Matt Kemp are neck-and-neck.
  • According to Jesse Wolfersberger of Fangraphs, no starting pitcher in baseball allowed fewer homers than expected in 2010 than Chad Billingsley.
  • Hank Aaron appears on tonight’s “Late Show with David Letterman.” Here’s a clip.
  • At today’s Hollywood Radio and Television Society panel, writes my Variety colleague Stuart Levine, Showtime president David Nevins said that “it’s not a God-given right” for viewers to be able to watch sports for free and called the transition of high-profile events to cable a “very natural and obvious evolution.”
  • Lead (or lede, if you’re on the inside) of the day goes to my former Stanford Daily colleague Eric Young, writing for the San Francisco Business Times:

    The Warren Commission took 300 days to turn in its probe of the Kennedy shooting.It took the 9/11 Commission 603 days to publish a report after the Twin Towers attack.

    It has been 695 days — and counting — since baseball commissioner Bud Selig appointed a three-person group to study whether the Oakland A’s can relocate in the East Bay. …

Kurkjian, Jackson: Sound bites on the Dodgers

“The thought that the Dodgers are going to be irrelevant this year like they were the second half of last year, I just don’t see that happening in this division,” ESPN’s Tim Kurkjian says in the clip above. “I sense a whole-new Dodgers this year.”

Below, here’s Tony Jackson of ESPNLosAngeles.com talking about Davey Lopes and the Dodger baserunning.

The talk of the sports world: Caltech ends 310-game losing streak


It’s actually a 310-game losing streak in conference games – Caltech has an overall record in 2010-11 of 5-20. But Tuesday, the Beavers won their first conference game since January 23, 1985.

More at ESPNLosAngeles.com and from Diamond Leung at ESPN.com:

… And after the 46-45 triumph at home against Occidental, they celebrated with students who rushed the court and dumped water on the third-year coach.

“I always wondered, ‘How does a coach let that happen?’” (Caltech coach Oliver) Eslinger told ESPN.com late Tuesday night. “I saw it out of the corner of my eye, and I kind of didn’t want to get out of the way.

“I was marinating in the moment. It was like the world stopped, and the stupid streak stopped, and now we can concentrate on winning the SCIAC.” …

Davey Lopes gets me excited about 2011

Kirby Lee/US PresswireYou’ve come to the right place.

Tony Jackson’s Spring Training update today for ESPNLosAngeles.com focuses on Davey Lopes’ tutoring the Dodgers. Some good stuff therein:

… The 45-minute session dealt mostly with the basics. But Lopes delivered his message in a charismatic, entertaining way, with a lot of the no-nonsense language one might expect from a 65-year-old baseball lifer who believes in doing things the right way, mixed with a little bit of humor.

The audience appeared to include every non-pitcher the Dodgers have in camp, and that audience burst into laughter on a few occasions, usually when Lopes would get especially animated while demonstrating the wrong way to do something.

For those who were paying attention, though, there were a lot of lessons.

For one, Lopes isn’t a fan of the headfirst slide. He also isn’t a fan of the slide into first base.

“There are two reasons why you slide,” Lopes told the assembly. “First, to slow your body down. … Second, to avoid a tag.”

And thus, Lopes said, the only time a slide into first base is justified is to avoid a tag if the player covering has to come off the bag to take an off-line throw. …

Elsewhere …

Clayton Kershaw is coming at you