Category Archives: James McDonald

That’s Five In A Row…

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And this one was Jonathan Broxton‘s fault too! He wasn’t sending enough V-energy in from the bullpen, or something.  Nah, this one’s likely to get blamed on James McDonald, who wasn’t great, allowing four runs on nine hits over five innings. That said, I didn’t have high hopes for him in the first place:

McDonald missed over a month with a hamstring pull, and his three starts since his return have been mixed. Four shutout innings on July 1 was a nice start, but then he allowed four earned runs in 6.2 IP at Iowa on July 6. Then on the 11th, he allowed just one run over 6.1 at Omaha, but did so while walking four and striking out just two, so it’s hard to say what to expect. I’m not convinced that he’s any better than Ely is right now, but I’m glad to see him get a chance.

And McDonald’s results were predictably mediocre, because while it was nice that he worked out of a bases-loaded, no-out jam… he also loaded the bases with no outs. Long-term, I still prefer him as a reliever; I know it’s only been five career starts and it’s unfair to judge him on that, but he’s been so much more effective out of the bullpen.

Of course, the Dodgers still have to worry about who’s going to start the next time the #5 spot comes around on Saturday against the Mets. It could be McDonald, or Ely (who allowed three runs in seven innings in his first ABQ start), or Carlos Monasterios, who followed McDonald with two shutout innings. My choice is Ely, probably. While his last two starts were terrible, his two previous starts were each one run allowed over seven innings. You could make the case to give McDonald another shot and I’d be okay with that, but there’s no way that Monasterios should be starting over Ely.

But really, this isn’t totally McDonald’s fault. The culprit here was the same as it’s been for a while: the Dodger offense. We’re now three weeks into July, and the offense has been entirely Rafael Furcal (1.238 OPS), James Loney (.986), and Andre Ethier (.911). Blake DeWitt‘s been decent when he gets to play (.805), Matt Kemp is sliding backwards again (.715, and you don’t hear Torre’s benching getting much credit now, do you?) and Russell Martin (.693) and particularly Casey Blake (.447; 6 hits in 53 PA) have been horrendous. Plus of course, Manny has made zero contribution.

You can worry about the pitching all you want, but when half of your lineup is a total black hole, and has been for some time now, you’ve got bigger problems than you can fill via trade.

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Regarding Jamey Carroll starting in left field… well, I applaud Torre for looking at innovative ways to get his best performers in the lineup, and believe it or not, Carroll has been a nice find at the plate. But remember, the choice here was not between Carroll or Xavier Paul; it was between Paul and Ronnie Belliard (assuming that Carroll would have started at 2B, if not LF). Belliard’s been awful all season, despite two hits on Sunday, and he proved that again last night. Has Madison Bumgarner, with all of five starts under his belt entering the game, really earned that kind of lefty/righty platoon respect?

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I missed it last week, but MSTI just celebrated our three-year anniversary – and today just so happens to be the 1,000th post. Hooray for us!

It’s Friday…

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…so why is everyone at work in such a foul mood? Anyway, the less said about last night’s game the better (I’m only half kidding when I say that watching it was less entertaining than watching the cat chase bugs around), so  let’s touch on a few widely varied topics.

Let’s start off with the rotation, where James McDonald appears likely to get the Monday start in John Ely‘s place, and while that’s not confirmed, McDonald was scratched from his start today. McDonald missed over a month with a hamstring pull, and his three starts since his return have been mixed. Four shutout innings on July 1 was a nice start, but then he allowed four earned runs in 6.2 IP at Iowa on July 6. Then on the 11th, he allowed just one run over 6.1 at Omaha, but did so while walking four and striking out just two, so it’s hard to say what to expect. I’m not convinced that he’s any better than Ely is right now, but I’m glad to see him get a chance – and fortunately for him he gets to face the Giants.

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How many people were confused when George Sherrill got into last night’s game? I asked that on Twitter, and the answer was: a lot, since they thought he had been immediately removed from the roster. Think of this like the month of August, where trades are still allowed but only once players have made it through waivers. You never hear about it, but tons of players - even ones teams don’t really plan on trading – are placed on waivers, just to see who makes it through and is available to be used in deals. It’s kind of the same thing for Sherrill, who finds out if he clears waivers today and is on the roster until then. The only difference here is that if Sherrill is claimed, he can’t be pulled back by the Dodgers, unlike the usual August waivers I mentioned.

In a related topic, I suppose this is why waiver deals are supposed to be kept so secret. Imagine if Sherrill had come out and struck out the side last night? (I know, you’d probably need some sort of medicinal help to imagine that.) How would that have made things look then?

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BP’s Jay Jaffe says that the Dodgers have regressed more on defense from 2009 to 2010 than any other team in baseball:

Having accentuated the positive, we’ll move on to lambasting the negative, since eliminating it doesn’t seem to be an option, or even very much fun. And No. 1 on the list of teams that deserve it are the Dodgers, who went from leading the league in DE last year by a whole seven points to ranking 10th this year. Not surprisingly, one key culprit appears to be the loss of Orlando Hudson (+17), though Blake DeWitt and friends have been a respectable two runs above average at the keystone. At third base, Casey Blake has declined (+13 to -5), and Rafael Furcal has dropped off (+13 to +4), surprising given how much more Furcal-like he’s been when available. In the outfield, Matt Kemp has lost 10 runs himself (+8 to -2), a particularly rough blow when coupled with his 20-point drop in True Average. Luckily for the Dodgers, they’re second in the league in strikeout rate, minimizing the number of balls in play.

It’s really hard to argue with any of that.

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Ramon Troncoso‘s pitched in four games for the Isotopes, and he’s allowed two homers – though he has struck out five and walked just two. Only one of the two homers was at home, so it’s not all the ABQ effect, though last night’s was a walkoff. Not good.

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ESPN’s Buster Olney speculates on who may want to buy the Dodgers should the McCourts be forced to sell:

There is speculation within the sport that if the McCourts are forced to sell the Dodgers as they go through their divorce proceedings, the person who is most perfectly positioned to buy the team is Dennis Gilbert, the longtime agent and team executive. Gilbert lives in the L.A. area, is a known quantity to commissioner Bud Selig, and Gilbert essentially finished second in the bidding for the Texas Rangers last year — largely because Nolan Ryan chose to align himself with Chuck Greenberg. Gilbert knows a whole lot of people, big hitters in the money world, and if the Dodgers’ franchise needs rescuing — and in the sport right now, the team’s ownership troubles are regarded as a cover-your-eyes embarrassment — Gilbert will have the financial wherewithal to restore the club to its past greatness.

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Garret Anderson update: his 0-1 last night kept him steady at #10 on the list of “worst seasons in Dodger history“, though with only six more hitless at-bats, he’ll likely be up to #7.

Also, while I have a lot of respect for Tony Jackson, this part of his chat yesterday killed me:

Sam (Fullerton)
How much longer will the Dodgers leave the corpse of Garret Anderson out on the field before they waive him?

Tony Jackson 
That’s a good question, Sam, but I get the sense they’re not going to wait much longer, unless Garret suddenly gets hot. I do think Torre and the coaching staff likes having him around for what he brings to the clubhouse. He lockers next to Matt Kemp at home, and I think they think he has been a good influence. So it may come down to how long the front office is willing to go along with the wishes of the staff.

Maybe I’ve been off on a distant planet or something, but haven’t we heard plenty of whispers that people aren’t always thrilled with Kemp’s attitude, culminating in the benching that seemed to be a direct result of a spat he had with bench coach Bob Schaefer? So… wouldn’t that then mean that Anderson’s actually doing a terrible job at mentoring, too? Guess we can just add that to the list of things he can’t do anymore.

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As long as we’re getting on Anderson, I should be an equal opportunity naysayer and expand on the D I gave Ronnie Belliard in the first-half grades. He’s got one hit in his last twenty-eight at-bats, and he’s hitting just .220 on the season. Clearly, he’s not much of a contributor in the field, either.

I don’t think cutting him is as clear-cut as it is for Anderson, simply because there’s not an Xavier Paul behind him ready to step in. Chin-lung Hu isn’t any sort of a bat, and Ivan DeJesus needs to play every day after losing last year to injury. In addition, Belliard is really the only backup 1B on the team, unless you count Casey Blake.

So his spot is secure for now, but I’d really like to see if the Dodgers can cheaply go after Russell Branyan, as I suggested earlier this week. Think about it: dump Anderson, dump Belliard, keep Paul, acquire Branyan. You’d then have your non-catching bench split between two righties and two lefties, you’d be covered in the outfield with Paul and Johnson, Jamey Carroll could cover backing up 2B/SS/3B, and Branyan would be a true lefty power bat who could actually play some 1B. Even if you think that stretches the non-1B backup infield to have only Carroll, remember that it’s only six weeks until rosters expand, ABQ isn’t that far away should injury happen, and if worst comes to absolute worst, you could still stick Russell Martin at 3B for the late innings of a game where injuries mount until reinforcements arrive.

Now Taking Applications…

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In my frustration over the horrendous yet predictable outing by Ramon Ortiz last night, I said that I didn’t know who should start the next time around, but that it couldn’t be him. That’s a little unfair of me; if I’m going to say there’s a problem, I should at least offer a solution, right? Well, in the comments of that post, I got to discussing alternatives to Ortiz and… well, it’s ugly.

First, the good news.  The next time the 5th starter spot comes up again is Monday, which is conveniently an offday. So long as Joe Torre doesn’t do something stupid like push everyone back a day and just lets the Ortiz spot be skipped, we can avoid the issue for another turn through the rotation. The bad news is, that spot would next come up on May 29th, in Colorado of all places. So not only is no one beating down the door to get the job, it’s in the worst possible location. You’d think that with well-regarded prospects like James McDonald, Scott Elbert, and Josh Lindblom in AAA, at least one would be worthy of the job, but a quick look at their recent appearances says otherwise.  Granted, ABQ is a hitter’s park, but that’s not enough to excuse numbers so ugly that McDonald’s 5.77 ERA is the best of the top four starters.

McDonald did throw five scoreless in the outing before this. But damn, these trends are not going in the right direction.

Elbert’s done a better job at keeping runs off the board, for sure… but look at the walk numbers and tell me that’s not terrifying. On the season he’s walked 28 batters in 32.1 innings. No wonder he’s not getting past five innings.

Lindblom’s interesting, because while his season stats look lousy (6.05 ERA), he’s got a nice 39/14 K/BB ratio. That said, he’s coming off two lousy starts himself (including walking six in four innings), so it’s not like he’s forcing the Dodgers’ hand here.


Ha! And to think I was worried about him getting a callup when I saw the team in New York. What an absolute disaster he’s been; if anything, he should be worried about sticking with the Isotopes, much less making it to the bigs.

The remaining starts in ABQ were split between John Ely, who we already know all about, and Tim Corcoran, who hasn’t been in the bigs since 2007 and has made just three starts in AAA. So there’s no help coming from there, and there’s no one in AA worth calling up (sidenote: all spring, I had my “NRI invite list” on the sidebar, and I’d cross names out as they got cut or shipped out. I could never figure out what happened to John Koronka, who I disliked even the non-roster signing of, and then never heard from again. At the time, I wrote, “Man, he sounds unqualified to even try out for the Isotopes.” So what happened to him? He’s in AA ball, allowing a 1.500 WHIP. It’s time to find a new career, I think.)

Granted: the start is still over a week away, so it’s possible that McDonald, Elbert, or Lindblom rip off a nice start or two and get back in the team’s good graces. Possible, but extremely unlikely, so help isn’t going to be coming from AAA.

That being the case, you’re left with two options. First, there’s Charlie Haeger, who will be nearing the end of his rehab stint by then. He’s been good but not great in his two starts for Inland Empire, and it seems that his “injury” has healed. That said, even I’m not dying to see him back in the rotation, and especially not in Coors Field.

So there’s only one right answer here, and it’s the answer Joe Torre dreads the most. You have to start Carlos Monasterios. The Rule 5 pick has been surprisingly effective as the team’s longman, not allowing more than one earned run in any of his twelve appearances. With the bullpen rounding back into form and Jeff Weaver back, Monasterios’ role as a reliever has lessened, and he already showed he could survive as an emergency starter, allowing one run in four innings against Pittsburgh.

Does anyone really think that Ortiz can outperform Monasterios right now? Of course not. With the limited options, it’s the only right choice – and then what you do is DFA Ortiz as soon as Haeger’s rehab stint is up, pushing Haeger to the bullpen and perhaps using him as a tag-team partner assuming that Monasterios won’t go deep into the games.

Please Don’t Make Me Watch Josh Towers

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In the aftermath of today’s extra-inning win over the Nationals (2 homers for Casey Blake! 2.2 scoreless for Carlos Monasterios!), Dylan Hernandez dropped some sobering news:

Vicente Padilla to the DL with a sore forearm; Jon Link being recalled.

So in the last 36 hours, the Dodgers have placed their most accomplished hitter and their Opening Day starter on the DL. Fantastic. But with usual spot starter Jeff Weaver on the DL himself, it also means the club doesn’t have any idea who is going to start in Padilla’s place on Tuesday in New York – a game which not only is going to be on ESPN, but which I will be in attendance for.

The only reliever on the roster who could concievably step in would be former starter Ramon Ortiz, but that’s not a possibility I’m even remotely prepared to accept. What’s far more likely is that Link is up for just the next two games, before being sent back to AAA once again in favor of that day’s starter. But who? Here’s the options from among the current Albuquerque rotation:

James McDonald. Hasn’t pitched since last Sunday, when he left after just one inning with a broken fingernail. He’s hardly been overwhelming when healthy – 4.97 ERA, 17 hits allowed in 12.2 innings.

Scott Elbert. Tonight’s scheduled starter, but missed the game to be with his wife as she gives birth. In addition, Elbert’s been lousy so far – in 14 innings over three games, he’s allowed 13 ER while walking 11 (though striking out 16).

Josh Lindblom. Scheduled to pitch on Sunday, but he’s been hit even harder than Elbert. Despite a nice 13/3 K/BB ratio, he’s allowed 24 hits in 14 innings, which helps explain that 5.79 ERA.

John Ely. Slotted to go on Monday, and he’s pitched well in his first season in AAA (and with the Dodgers), putting up a 3.00 ERA and a 12/8 K/BB ratio.

Josh Towers. Towers has the terrifying trifecta: Tuesday’s his regular turn, he’s off to a decent start (3 ER in 12 IP), and he’s a veteran over 30.

Interestingly enough, none of them have pitched since Friday. ABQ was rained out on Saturday, and 33-year-old Seth Etherton (6.30 ERA in 23 MLB games, none since 2006) started tonight’s game in place of Elbert.  None of Lindblom, Ely, or Towers are on the 40-man roster, but that’s not really a huge issue since Cory Wade or Brad Ausmus can still be moved to the 60-day DL.

Now, in any normal situation, I’d say that McDonald or Elbert would be the no-doubt choices here.  Yet the fact that each has missed time due to either personal or injury issues, plus the fact that neither’s been all that great anyway, means that this isn’t a normal situation. Lindblom’s been hit hard, and while Ely’s been good I just can’t see them making that move. So as much as I hate to think it, say it, or write it, I really think this situation has “Josh Towers” written all over it.

On the other hand, you could just send Tommy Lasorda to do a rain dance. By the looks of the clouds gathering outside my window, this could be a rainy couple of days in the city.

When Do Spring Training Stats Start to Matter?

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We all know that March stats are the most unreliable figures in baseball. The level of competition is uneven at best, since the rosters are full of minor league guys with no shot of playing in the bigs this season. You’ve got pitchers working up to their full velocity, or trying out that new curveball which they’d never throw in the regular season. Plus, hitters are either trying to get their timing down or just making sure they don’t hurt themselves. All these variables – plus the unbelievably small sample sizes – make spring training stats almost useless. We all love Blake DeWitt, but does anyone really think he’s going to OPS 1.092 this year, as he is in the spring? Do the 18 excellent innings put up by Russ and Ramon Ortiz matter more than the 9 or so horrible seasons they’ve combined for in the last few years? Of course not.

Yet at some point, you have to realize that James McDonald is rocking a 20.25 ERA – having allowed 19 runners in just 5.1 innings - and wonder how much of that stat line can be dismissed. When McDonald was knocked out of the 5th starter competition the other day, it didn’t bother me all that much; with the issues the bullpen is having and the limited number of starts the last rotation member gets, you could make the case he’d be needed more in the bullpen. But too many outings like yesterday’s…

McDonald, having pitched his way out of the competition for the final spot in the rotation, might have pitched himself off the team by allowing six runs on six hits with two walks in 1 1/3 innings. McDonald sat in front of his locker with head in hands after the game.

“James had a tough night,” said manager Joe Torre. “He had good stuff and got ahead 0-2, then it was 3-2, and all of a sudden bad things happened. He’s just got to be more economical.”

…and you wonder whether he’s even going to make the roster at all. Remember, despite his failure as a starter last year, McDonald was excellent out of the bullpen (2.72 ERA, 48/20 K/BB ratio) so his inclusion on this year’s squad should have been a foregone conclusion. But McDonald has been so bad this spring (nothing is more troubling than the 2/5 K/BB ratio) and there’s so many other pitchers impressing that it’s going to be hard to look past his otherwise meaningless spring line.

Remember, McDonald does still have minor-league options left, and the Dodgers have several pitchers in camp who can’t be sent down without being exposed to other teams. If it means holding onto Charlie Haeger, Eric Stults, Carlos Monasterios, or even the odd Ortiz or two, then perhaps Albuquerque is where he’s best served.

Obviously, there’s side-effects to that, both good and bad. Not having an effective McDonald in the bullpen as he was last year is another blow to a squad that’s missing Ronald Belisario (still!), has lingering health questions about Hong-Chih Kuo (though he did pitch an apparently pain-free inning last night), and an achy George Sherrill. That said, the long-term goal should be for McDonald to be an effective starter, and he’d certainly get much more of an opportunity to do that at AAA than in Los Angeles.

My best guess here is that unless he massively turns himself around, and soon, he’s pitched himself off the roster. But that’s hardly the last we’ll see of him, and once the inevitable injuries and poor performances at the big-league level happen he’ll still be a big contributor to the 2010 Dodgers.