Dodger Thoughts

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

Tag: Aaron Miller

In case you missed it: Dodgers showing some utility

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Diamondbacks at Dodgers, 1:05 p.m.
Jimmy Rollins, SS
Justin Turner, 1B
Adrian Gonzalez, DH
Howie Kendrick, 2B
Andre Ethier, LF
Juan Uribe, 3B
Chris Heisey RF
A.J. Ellis, C
Kike Hernandez, CF
Carl Crawford, LF
(Chris Anderson, P)

By Jon Weisman

We’re down to the final fortnight before Opening Day. Starting to feel it?

Here’s a big set of links from this morning and the weekend …

  • Alex Guerrero is not only making a case for a reserve role in 2015 but a starting role in 2016, as Mark Saxon of ESPN Los Angeles points out.
  • Guerrero’s roster spot could come at the immediate expense of Kike Hernandez (though, if the Dodgers keep an extra position player, perhaps not). Ken Gurnick writes at MLB.com about Hernandez, who has homered in three straight games.
  • Hernandez, who starts again today, has been a busy guy. He leads the Dodgers in Cactus League play in defensive innings with 74, and should tie or pass Joc Pederson — who has a scheduled off day today — for the lead in plate appearances. Pederson has 42 plate appearances, Hernandez 40.
  • Brandon McCarthy and Brett Anderson are each pitching in minor-league games for their next turns in the Dodger rotation — McCarthy today (in part because the Dodgers are facing opening-week opponent Arizona), Anderson on Tuesday (an off day for the big-league club).
  • Don Mattingly told reporters the Dodgers will have a bullpen game Wednesday, with Clayton Kershaw pitching again Thursday, working on five days’ rest after his last tooth-rattling start.
  • Chris Hatcher, who got rocked a bit Sunday, retiring one of five batters, gets a chance for redemption with his first back-to-back appearance of Spring Training today, pitching behind McCarthy in the minor-league game. Joel Peralta, who turns 39 today, is also doing making his first consecutive-days gambit.
  • The Dodgers have the ninth-best collection of MLB talent at catcher, writes Mike Petriello of Fangraphs, which kicked off its annual position rankings today.
  • Don Newcombe is at Camelback Ranch this week and will throw out the first pitch before Friday’s sold-out game against the Giants.
  • Aaron Miller, the Dodgers’ 2009 first-round draft pick who attempted to convert from pitching to the outfield, has retired at 27, reports Gurnick. We included Miller, who had an .826 OPS for Single-A Rancho Cucamonga last year, in our May 2014 Dodger Insider magazine story about Dodger minor-leaguers making position switches.
  • In case you need a refresher, Dustin Nosler of Dodgers Digest charts where the major national prospect rankings placed the Dodgers’ up-and-comers.
  • A lengthy roster of the talent at Dodger minor-league camp was posted by Eric Stephen at True Blue L.A.
  • Bookmark this one: Official MLB historian John Thorn has a timeline of baseball integration dating back to 1820 at Our Game, starting with the slave Henry Rosecranse Columbus Jr. playing baseball in Kingston, New York.
  • A keen analysis of how well pitchers do (or don’t) recover from Tommy John surgery is provided by Jon Roegele at the Hardball Times. “The most recent data suggest that one out of two major league pitchers who has Tommy John surgery will throw fewer than 100 innings the rest of his big league career,” Roegele concludes.
  • Fangraphs has tweaked the way it calculates Wins Above Replacement, taking into account such factors as ability to avoid double plays and advancement on wild pitches and passed balls.
  • Let’s get promotional. Promotional …

 

 

May 5 pregame: Pedro Baez and position switches

[mlbvideo id=”31519061″ width=”550″ height=”308″ /]

Dodgers at Nationals, 4:05 p.m.
Dee Gordon, 2B
Carl Crawford, LF
Hanley Ramirez, SS
Adrian Gonzalez, 1B
Matt Kemp, CF
Andre Ethier, RF
Juan Uribe, 3B
Miguel Olivo, C
Zack Greinke, P

By Jon Weisman

Continuing their efforts to fill their bullpen with healthy and rested arms, the Dodgers have called up righty reliever Pedro Baez from Double-A Chattanooga, optioning Sunday starter Stephen Fife to Albuquerque.

The news comes one day before the Dodgers’ expected activation of Clayton Kershaw from the disabled list.

Baez, looking to make his MLB debut, has a 2.84 ERA in 12 2/3 innings for the Lookouts, though he hasn’t been striking out batters at his customary rate in the early going. Having averaged 8.5 strikeouts per nine innings last season in the minors, Baez has eight whiffs so far this season. He last pitched Friday, throwing two shutout innings with two strikeouts.

As many of you know, Baez began his pro career as a third baseman before making a Kenley Jansen-like conversion to pitching. Below: Cary Osborne’s story for the March 2014 Dodger Insider magazine on position switches in the farm system (click to enlarge).

 

A Switch in Time - 1

A Switch in Time - 2

Looking back on a quake-free year in San Francisco

With Giants righty Matt Cain having to rest an inflamed elbow, Grant Brisbee of McCovey Chronicles uses the occasion to marvel at San Francisco’s 2010:

It’s tough to explain now. The Giants won it all. It’s hard to go back and rediscover that sense of urgency. What were we all worried about? The trick is to start the season with a garbage offense, and then a) hope that a journeyman minor league free agent turns into vintage Carlos Beltran, b) count on a rookie catcher to come up and propel the offense for a month, and c) scour the waiver wire in case there are teams in Florida giving away productive outfielders. It turns out we were just being paranoid.

But when you hear this

“(Cain) has not thrown a baseball since he came down with elbow inflammation on Sunday, making it seem unlikely he will miss only one turn in the rotation. At the same time, he seems totally unconcerned about what he confessed is the first elbow issue of his career.”

… you remember why there was urgency in the first place. The Giants were built around young pitching. Young pitching is beautiful, like, oh, a shiny idol made of solid gold. But while you stand there, mouth agape, marveling at the golden treasure, you hear the boulder. The boulder isn’t evil. It’s just obeying the laws of physics. And it’s going to crush you. It’s going to crush you real dead-like. …

And when I hear that Matt Cain’s elbow is barking, it makes me appreciate just how danged fortunate the Giants and their fans all were. The Giants made it through an entire season with four young starting pitchers, and there weren’t any injury concerns. They didn’t have to recall Todd Wellemeyer. They didn’t have to shoehorn in Henry Sosa for a start or two. The young pitchers were good, and they were healthy. …

It was special. Never take it for granted.

* * *

Alex Belth of Bronx Banter passes along Duke Snider stories from oldtime scribes Roger Angell and Dick Young.

* * *

There will be a $1 Dodger Dog day at Dodger Stadium on May 30 when the Rockies play.

* * *

This morning, the Dodgers played a ‘B’ game in which Ted Lilly made his first spring appearance, as Tony Jackson of ESPNLosAngeles.com notes. And as Ken Gurnick of MLB.com notes, Lilly’s relief crew included three former No. 1 picks – Zach Lee, Ethan Martin and Aaron Miller – whose signing bonuses alone totaled nearly $8 million. Lee was the only one of the trio to allow a run.

Later on, the Dodgers have their first night game of Spring Training …

Dodgers at Reds, 6:05 p.m.

Minor leaguer Redman suspended for 50 games

Prentice Redman, a 31-year-old career minor leaguer who has a .401 on-base percentage and .551 slugging percentage for Albuquerque this season, will sit out the next 50 games after testing positive for amphetamine usage.

Redman’s only major-league appearances came in 2003 with the Mets. The Dodgers announced that Matt Kemp will be sent to Albuquerque to replace Redman. Just kidding.

Xavier Paul (.392/.594), Jamie Hoffmann (.358/.441) and Michael Restovich (.367/.556) are the other primary outfielders on the Isotopes, with Timo Perez and Jay Gibbons also seeing time on the grass.

The news of Redman’s suspension comes on the day that Dodger prospect Andrew Lambo returns to the field for AA Chattanooga after serving his own 50-gamer.

Lambo is joined by the recently promoted Jerry Sands and Aaron Miller.

Meanwhile, the Minnesota Twins called up Jason Repko. Repko has a .780 OPS in AAA this season, batting mostly against righties. His numbers are better against righties for a change, but BABIP (batting average on balls in play) explains that.

Goodness gracious, forsaken alive: Billingsley, Dodgers drag fans into 7-7 marathon

Lisa Blumenfeld/Getty Images
Chad Billingsley retired nine of his first 10 batters, but only got eight more outs from his next 18.

Chad Billingsley, who was looking ever-so-close like that guy who could always be counted on to get the job done, is now the guy getting the Job done.

Close to scintillating in the first three innings Wednesday against Arizona – he threw 45 pitches and faced one over the minimum while striking out four, lowering his season ERA at that point to 1.08 – the be-plagued Billingsley staggered through 61 pitches over the next 2 2/3 innings, allowing six runs on eight hits in all while walking three. And what looked like a breeze for Los Angeles became an even longer endurance test than Tuesday’s 3:42 game, with the Dodgers and Diamondbacks headed into extra innings, 7-7, exactly four hours after the game’s 7:10 p.m. start time.

It took some doing for Billingsley to not outpitch Arizona’s Rodrigo Lopez, who allowed five runs and 11 hits to the first 22 Dodgers he faced, but Billingsley did it, and he is now facing his latest calamity.

In the fourth, trailing 3-0, Arizona surrounded a Justin Upton infield hit with four big fly balls off Billingsley – a homer by Stephen Drew, a double by Adam LaRoche and sacrifice flies by Mark Reynolds and Chris Young. Billingsley then issued a walk before he got out of the inning, after which Matt Kemp put the Dodgers back in front with a two-run homer.

In the fifth, Billingsley came very close to making his previous inning look like an aberration, retiring the first two hitters before making a great 1-1 pitch to Drew that was called a ball. Drew eventually drew a 3-2 walk, and then Upton doubled and LaRoche singled to tie the game again.

And in the sixth, Billingsley again came within one strike of making it through, but Conor Jackson doubled right down the third-base line on an 0-2 pitch to give Arizona a 6-5 lead and cast Billingsley adrift. He finished the night with 116 pitches to get 17 outs, and his ERA leaped to 5.73.

Mark J. Terrill/AP
Rodrigo Lopez looked like a sure-fire losing pitcher in the early going, but it didn’t turn out that way.

Starting in the top of the fourth, of the nine baserunners Billingsley allowed (leaving out an intentional walk), six did their damage with two strikes. Last year, opponents had a .245 on-base percentage against Billingsley with two strikes, though it’s safe to assume that figure was higher in the second half of the season. Tonight, Billingsley couldn’t shut the door, on the Diamondbacks or his doubters.

The Dodgers tied the game in the bottom of the sixth inning on a Kemp sacrifice fly but didn’t get any more runs despite loading the bases with one out. Then, Carlos Monasterios was called upon for the first time in his career in a close situation and gave up a dead-center leadoff homer to Upton in the seventh. Ramon Ortiz bailed Monasterios out of a two-walk, one-out jam that pushed the game past the 3:00 mark with nearly three innings to go by inducing a double play. George Sherrill, trying to recover from his bad start to 2010, also got a double play and then a strikeout to handle the eighth, while Charlie Haeger made himself useful in relief with a shutout ninth. (For the record, yes, that’s a Jonathan Broxton situation too if he’s available.)

Manny Ramirez doubled to lead off the bottom of the ninth with the Dodgers’ 18th baserunner, but after James Loney struck out, Casey Blake doubled home pinch-runner Jamey Carroll to tie the game at 11:06 p.m. A Blake DeWitt grounder moved Blake to third. Russell Martin was intentionally walked, but pinch-hitter Reed Johnson grounded out to send the game into the 10th.

Despite my stating the obvious, the offense and the pitching stayed at their weird extremes. Kemp, Ramirez, Martin and Andre Ethier each reached base at least three times. But regardless of what was to come in extra innings, Los Angeles will be practically desperate for Hiroki Kuroda to deliver another sharp performance Thursday against Dan Haren.

* * *

Hong-Chih Kuo is scheduled to make a 20-pitch rehab appearance in the first inning Thursday for Inland Empire. Elsewhere in the minors for the Dodgers:

  • Scott Elbert struggled in the unfriendly confines of Albuquerque, allowing five runs on five hits and three walks while striking out four in four innings. Jay Gibbons (4 for 5) won the game for the Isotopes with an RBI single in the bottom of the ninth after reliever Jon Link (8.10 ERA) blew his second save in as many nights.
  • Great Lakes righty Brett Wallach, who pitched five no-hit innings with eight strikeouts in his first start of the season, came back with another five innings tonight and allowed one unearned run while striking out six. Opponents are 5 for 34 (.147) against him this season. Brian Cavalos-Galvez went 3 for 4 with two doubles and has a .394 on-base percentage on the season.
  • Chris Withrow of Chattanooga got hammered tonight: six runs (five earned) in 2 2/3 innings with one strikeout. The Lookouts made five errors and lost, 15-2.
  • Aaron Miller went six innings for Inland Empire tonight and allowed six baserunners and one run (on a sixth-inning squeeze). That was a 1-0 game until Pedro Baez singled in the tying run with two out in the bottom of the ninth, and then the 66ers won in the 10th.

A.J. Ellis replaces injured Brad Ausmus on roster


Keith Srakocic/AP
Brad Ausmus

Russell Martin’s unexpectedly quick recovery from Spring Training injury kept the Dodgers from having a catching tandem tonight of A.J. Ellis and Lucas May or J.D. Closser.

Ellis, who turned 29 Friday, has been recalled from Albuquerque to join the 25-man roster in place of Brad Ausmus, who has gone on the disabled list for the first time in his career with a pinched nerve in his back. Tony Jackson of ESPNLosAngeles.com has details:

… Ausmus said that while the injury originates in his back, it presents itself in the form of numbness all the way down his left leg, from his hip to his foot. The injury isn’t related to a chronic lower-back problem Ausmus has experienced sporadically during his career, an issue that flared up again during spring training and caused him to be shut down for a week.

“The other day, when I was catching in Pittsburgh, about the eighth inning my hip started giving me some problems,” he said. “I was hoping it was just a case of not having caught that much after missing a week of spring training. But over the next 18 hours, during any prolonged sitting or lying down, I would get a shooting pain down my left leg.”

Ausmus said he had trouble sitting on the team bus to the airport after Thursday’s game and on the charter flight to Fort Lauderdale, then had trouble sleeping that night. He woke up Friday morning feeling what he described as “pins and needles” in his foot.

The decision to place Ausmus on the DL actually was made before Friday night’s game, but it was kept quiet so the Florida Marlins wouldn’t know that Russell Martin was the Dodgers’ only catcher. Ellis was scratched from Albuquerque’s game at Oklahoma City during batting practice, but he wasn’t able to get a flight until the following morning.

Ausmus, who will turn 41 on Wednesday, said he was disappointed that he didn’t finish his career without a DL stint, but that he understood why it had to happen now.

“I’m pretty much at, or really close to, the end of my career, although who knows when it’s going to end?” he said. “I was hoping to avoid it my entire career, but this time, there wasn’t much chance of that. [Trainer] Stan [Conte] and [manager] Joe [Torre] knew there was too much risk involved in putting me into a game and that they would have to have somebody else here. The only way to do that was to put me on the DL.'” …

Joe Torre told reporters this afternoon that Ellis would start Sunday’s day game – the fourth start of his career and the second that has ever come before the month of September. Ellis will be catching knuckleballer Charlie Haeger, whom he caught in Albuquerque about nine times last season (if my quick scan of the minor-league game logs of Fangraphs is correct.)

Torre also said that Andre Ethier (a ripe old 28 years old today) won’t start this weekend but might come off the bench, and that he is a possibility for the starting lineup at Tuesday’s home opener. Manny Ramirez also will be held out of the starting lineup Sunday.

* * *

  • Josh Lindblom gets his first start for Albuquerque at 5:05 p.m.
  • Tim Wallach’s son Brett threw five no-hit innings Friday in his first start for Great Lakes, while 2009 first-round pick Aaron Miller struck out 10 in his five innings for Inland Empire.
  • Blue Heaven posted some fun Dodger-related videos from this year and yesteryear.
  • Pedro!

Straight out of ‘Seinfeld’

Sorry, Kramer, but no dice.

In the sixth inning of today’s game, there was a moment strikingly similar to “The Wink” episode of “Seinfeld.”

Aaron Miller, the Dodgers’ 2009 first-round draft pick, was facing his first batter. He gave up a long fly ball over the head of Xavier Paul in center field. The batter flew around the bases for what appeared to be an inside-the-park home run.

But then the official scoring came in – it would only be ruled a triple, plus an error on Paul.

The batter? Jose Constanza.

BOBBY: Hey, …

KRAMER: Huh?

BOBBY: … that’s not a home run. (grabs frame)

KRAMER: Yeah, maybe not technically, but …

BOBBY: You said he’d hit two home runs.

KRAMER: Oh, come on. Bobby, Bobby! That’s just as good!

BOBBY: Well, you’re not taking that card.

KRAMER: Now, Bobby, Bobby, we had a deal . . . gimme that …

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