Boosting The Bison

Jon Weisman over at Dodger Thoughts did a great job at highlighting Bill Plaschke's recent valentine to Matt Kemp, which reflects a change of heart from his earlier rips on Kemp. Writes Jon:

Well, Plaschke's new column for Monday's editions of The Times shows he has come to appreciate Kemp's value – as have presumably Kemp's earlier detractors – although not without a few parting shots. "His infamous baserunning blunders? He deals with them." [...]

Not every prospect pans out. Some seem to pan out and then disappoint you later. On the other hand, not every prospect is Joel Guzman or Chuck Tiffany. The Kemp example reminds us how careful you need to be before you give up on prospects – how carefully you need to evaluate them – as well as the danger of buying into a convenient story line at the expense of a meaningful one.

One of the great things about Weisman's DT work is that there's a body of work long enough to track longitudinal changes, both in a player's development and skill advancement, as well as a columnist's opinions. I imagine that exposing Plaschke's turnabout (as well as suffering through his template-driven writing style), must be a delicate operation for a LATimes-associated (and funded) blog; meanwhile, other Dodger blogs (namely MSTI and ourselves, for starters) can point out the logical flaws and irrational "reasoning" with scrutiny and vitriol. Weisman does a nice job at putting down a smackdown in a polite, courteous fashion.

But back to the subject: Kemp is indeed worthy of a valentine from his local paper's columnist, and I'm glad he got it. I was also pleased to see the Kemp montage inserted into Fox's Saturday broadcast of the Dodgers/Reds game, giving him some national (regional?) publicity. Kemp leads the team in batting average and OBP, is second in HR and RBI, and third in OPS.

Sure, he still makes baserunning gaffes, like getting picked off second base Saturday to squelch a sixth-inning rally (in a game the Dodgers went on to romp anyway, partially fueled by a Kemp three-run HR in the seventh). Without Kemp and Andre Ethier pacing the team through all of its ups and downs, there is no way we'd be leading the league, let alone the division (a point to which Peter Gammons refers in his most recent column, in the course of pointing out that Manny Ramirez's post-suspension play has been akin to the period where Gammons thinks he "quit" prior to leaving the Red Sox).

Let's take a second to praise the Bison, and at least celebrate the fact that this Bison isn't an endangered species any longer for the Dodgers.