Category Archives: J.P. Howell

The Pregame Meal of a Major League Baseball Player

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Have to give credit to pal R.J. Anderson of Baseball Prospectus & Rays blog The Process Report on this one, because earlier this morning he tweeted out a link to a 2008 Tampa Bay Online interview with new Dodger reliever J.P. Howell, then with the Rays.

Among other items, such as learning about Howell’s love for sleeping late, college football video games, and Johann Sebastian Bach, we get this:

Do you eat anything specific before the games?

Yeah – PBJ and Doritos. That’s it, man. Just simple.

Every game?

Every game.

Since when?

Aw, man, it probably started because my mom used to pack it in my lunch. She packed my lunch in high school, and then college I stopped in my freshman year and got hit. So sophomore year, I said, hey, I’ve got to go back, during the season, to eating my PBJs and Doritos, man. So I did and everything’s been good.

So a major league baseball player eats the same thing before games as I did when I was 12. Good to know. While that article is of course several years old and so I of course can’t vouch for whether that’s still his custom, Howell had also completed his fourth — and arguably best — big-league season.

But here’s the real question: is “PBJs and Doritos” one item or two, man?

You’d think that it’s a sandwich with a side of chips, as CookingMisadventures.com shows here:

pbj_doritos_blue_bg

Delicious! But what if it’s actually Doritos in the sandwich, as you can see in this example (along with what inexplicably appear to be Fig Newtons) from Avoision.com?

pbj_doritos_in

That’s just un-American. Is that really the type of pitcher we want the Dodgers to have in their bullpen? Should all contracts have pre-game food clauses? Is this kind of thinking what’s ruining Juan Uribe? I’m just not sure I can support Howell until we know for sure.

(83 days until Opening Day. I’m not sure we’re going to make it.)

Dodgers Add J.P. Howell to Bullpen

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jp_howell_rays

I took this during spring training last year. Never thought I’d actually get to put it to use.

In not-at-all unexpected news: J.P. Howell is going to be the newest member of the Dodger bullpen, reports Dylan Hernandez. I say not unexpected because I’ve been alluding to it for a while, and I might have actually had this news out hours ago had I not been out of touch at a concert… but hey, if my choices are watching Weezer’s entire Blue Album being performed by a band who isn’t Weezer or trying to break news about a lefty reliever, I’m not too disappointed with my selection.

Back to Howell, the California native was one of the better lefty relievers in baseball in 2008-09 before missing all of 2010 and part of 2011 with shoulder surgery. He spent much of that time rehabbing in Los Angeles, where he and his wife met while freshmen at USC. (Howell spent just the one year there before transferring to the University of Texas.) He struggled badly while attempting to return in 2011 and was somewhat better in 2012 (3.04 ERA / 4.78 FIP), though not close to his peak. Still, he held lefties to just a .200/.306/.306 line in 2012, and that’s something this bullpen badly needed since Scott Elbert isn’t a true LOOGY (and his coming off surgery of his own).

Howell reportedly will get $2.85m, and while you could argue that’s a lot for a good-but-not-great reliever, this is also a world where 78-year-old Randy Choate gets three guaranteed years, so I can’t find a lot to argue with here. His signing, once official, would fill the 40-man roster, so a move would need to be made if and when other additions happen. This also almost certainly bumps Paco Rodriguez to the Isotopes.

This is now the fifth move the Dodgers have made this winter, four of which have come on the pitching side. I’m guessing it’s safe to say the next move will be to add a position player, whether that’s a righty outfielder or a first base option.