More Gammons Quotage

From "Six Teams To Watch" on mlb.com:

2. Dodgers

"I look at the Dodgers, think about [Rafael] Furcal leading off, [Matt] Kemp, Manny [Ramirez] and [Andre] Ethier 3-4-5, see [Clayton] Kershaw, [Chad] Billingsley and [Jonathan] Broxton and see a lot of star-quality players," says one GM.

Kemp and Ethier are exploding into superstardom, with the character to boot.

Torre says, "This will be James Loney's breakout season. It is all coming together." As Don Mattingly points out, Loney is already a very good situational hitter who's knocked in 90 runs two years in a row, "but while he's very good hitting in the gaps, there's a lot more as he learns."

Russell Martin put his weight back on, says, "I have my legs back and can drive the ball again," which means he can be a 50-doubles hitter at any time.

Even if Ramirez is somewhere between what he was in 2008 and what he was when he came back, 25-30 homers and a .900 OPS in Dodger Stadium will do just fine. He did get paid the remainder of his 2009 contract this year, but how happy he'll be knowing his 2010 salary is deferred could be an issue, although this is a contract season.

Blake is a leader and consummate professional, Blake DeWitt can hit and is improving at second, and the players are thrilled with what GM Ned Colletti got for virtually nothing in Reed Johnson, Garret Anderson, Ronnie Belliard, Brad Ausmus and the ever-undervalued Jamey Carroll to give Torre a solid veteran bench.

The issues over the long haul will be pitching depth. Kershaw, Billingsley, Hiroki Kuroda, Vincente Padilla and either Russ or Ramon Ortiz are the starters. How Kuroda and Padilla hold up will be interesting, and with Ronald Belisario unable to get into the U.S., and Hong-Chih Kuo on the DL, there will be more pressure on George Sherrill and Broxton.

In time, Chris Withrow and Josh Lindblom could come out of the Minors to help down the stretch. Withrow, two years off injury and Steve Blass-like control problems, was one of the most impressive young pitchers in Arizona.

The Dodgers are really good, and like the Rockies, the soul of the team -- Kemp, Ethier, Kershaw -- are coming into their primes. They just can't afford to have holes to fill come the Trade Deadline.

Better get ready, Mr. Loney. Gammons thinks you're about to be even more freed...

Quotage

• Do Dodger fans have a reputation? From "Answer Man: Padres' Heath Bell talks toys, conspiracies and Pez" by David Brown at Big League Stew:

  DB: What's the bullpen atmosphere like at Dodger Stadium?

  Bell: We get thrown a lot of beer in that little area. The fans over there do a good job of rattling us. It's their territory. You just want to tiptoe. You don't want to dig your feet into L.A. You just want to tiptoe in, play the game, tiptoe out. Don't tick anybody off.

• Confirmation, straight from the horse's mouth. From "Timm's Two Cents: Five Minutes with Peter Gammons" at DodgerDugout.com. Nice interview, Robert!

  On the East Coast bias…
  • "Yeah, it’s absolutely true. With west coast games starting so late, and New York being the media hub that it is, the East takes all the headlines."

Interpret My Peter Gammons Dream

Get out of my head, Peter Gammons!

I'm in a small airplane being piloted by Peter Gammons.

I think, Isn't he a bit old to be flying an airplane?

As if on cue, Gammons goes into Vomit Comet mode, dive-bombing the aircraft up and down. I close my eyes and try not to puke.

Eventually he settles down and the ride smooths out. I take a peek.

The view is beautiful. Sky and clouds and vapor trails.

As we land, we pass through a field of airplanes which are made entirely of clouds.

On the ground, I try to convince people of the planes made of clouds. No one believes me.

♦

Earlier at SoSG: Interpret My Manny Dream

cloud photo from Humor at Why Be Normal?

What's the Hubbub, Bub?

From @pgammo (Peter Gammons):

At the end of this season Manny will have made $205M in 12 years, and is back to his 2008 tricks. McCourt would love him to retire. Today

Hey, Manny hit 17 homers in 53 games for the Dodgers in 2008. We would LOVE for him to be back to his 2008 tricks. All he did was say something sane and realistic about next year ("I'm old, maybe I should DH in the AL. Oh, and baseball is fun") while cannily lowering expectations for this year. How dare he intend to enjoy himself this season??? I'm sure Gammons' assertion isn't inaccurate, but the only reason Frank McCourt would love for Manny to retire would be for the $20 million in savings.

Peter Gammons Locates The NL West

Credit Peter Gammons for breaking through ESPN protocols and writing a nice piece on the NL West, which he points out is 24 games over .500 in games played outside its division. He also had nice things to say about the Dodgers' core, notably its outfield of Manny Ramirez (about whom you can still taste a lingering bitterness from Gammons, a Red Sox diehard), Andre Ethier, and Matt Kemp:

The joke is that Dodgers GM Ned Colletti could be arrested for shoplifting, as in the last two seasons he has acquired Manny Ramirez, Casey Blake, George Sherrill, Jon Garland, Jim Thome, Doug Mientkiewicz, Ronnie Belliard and Vicente Padilla and paid them a combined total approximately the equal of the $2.7 million that the team saved during Manny Ramirez's suspension. [...]

For now, the Dodgers hope Garland and Padilla give them innings and support Randy Wolf, Kershaw and Chad Billingsley and allow Joe Torre to wait until the seventh and eighth innings before he has to ready his bullpen. Then, too, they need Ramirez to come back.

Scouts who have watched the Dodgers say Manny has not been able to catch up to fastballs up in the zone since his return, which makes him subject to any conclusions you choose. His OPS from his arrival in L.A. until his suspension was 1.200; it's been .882 since.

But Ramirez's history is that when he has slumped, he has had trouble connecting the leg lift of his (left) front foot and his (right) back shoulder. "That's what's been happening," Don Mattingly says. "The timing is not there, and he's flying open and spinning off and trying to hit the fastball. It's been better lately, so I think that timing will come back.

"As good as some of our young players are," Mattingly says, "they need Manny going well. He picks up everyone's confidence. He makes everyone better."

Not that Kemp and Andre Ethier haven't blossomed as star players. Ethier is Paul O'Neill, right to the point that the only thing distracting him is his self-disgust at making outs.

This past week, 11 scouts took a poll amongst themselves on whom they would take between Ethier and Kemp. Ten took Kemp. "In my mind, watching him hit, play hard, throw, cover center field," says a GM, "he's got to be one of the 10 best players in the game." The astute Larry Bowa says, "He's improved as much in one year as anyone I've ever seen."

Mattingly insists there's a lot more to come. He says that where last year Kemp tried to do everything with his athleticism and essentially hit with his upper body, he has learned to use his legs and has gradually learned to stay back on and lay off breaking balls and off-speed pitches. "There's a lot of Gary Sheffield in Matt, in that he is never afraid," Mattingly says. "He's tough, he never gets intimidated." As Colletti points out, the fact that Kemp's best friend on the team may be Blake says something about his core love of the game.

Or, maybe Kemp just like beards! In any event, it was nice to see the writeup; thanks, Peter, and hope you don't get in trouble with the ESPN brass for not writing about the AL East.

Rumors Persist About Peter Gammons Trade from ESPN to Yahoo! Sports

Continuing to echo through the hallways of the GM meetings in Dana Point are rumors about ESPN pundit Peter Gammons getting traded to Yahoo! Sports for Kevin Kaduk; Gammons would apparently pick up Kaduk's "Big League Stew" blog beat.

For Gammons, widely identified as the sole source of unyielding misinformation about a supposed Russell-Martin-for-Jason-Varitek trade, this would indeed be an ironic twist. Gammons, who has made no secret of his disdain for the Dodgers' role in the Manny Ramirez two-month rental deal (fully funded by his own Boston Red Sox team!), has looked to fuel the fire of trade rumors about a number of the Dodgers' young core of future all-stars, particularly Martin.

From an anonymous blogger writing about "Five baseball columnists we are watching to see if they end up on the trade market":

Peter Gammons. Some sports media officials have spread the word that Gammons will either be let go from ESPN altogether or traded to Yahoo! Sports, with a straight-up trade for Big League Stew editor Kevin Kaduk a possibility. Whether or not it actually happens will be somewhat interesting to see, but sites looking forward to pick up a three-time Sportswriter of the Year and future Baseball Hall of Famer would do a headfirst dive to get in on Gammons, who turns 65 in April 2009. I've also heard that the San Diego Union-Tribune is making a major push on Gammons and Bill Simmons.

Could the Gammons trade rumors be true? Stay tuned, sports (media) fans, as the hot stove league fires up this month.

ESPN Adds Insult to Injury By Using Frightful Photo of Derek Jeter

I mean, seriously. Jeter looks absolutely horrific there. Jeter's visage simply had to have been photoshopped; I mean, look at those deep crevasses (crevices?) on his forehead and those puffy bags under his eyes. Would a man with his own line of skin care products have skin that wrinkly? I think not. I mean, I know he is one "DRIVen" guy, but still.

Hey, and look who's there to write the surely sensitive eulogy, "NY falling, Boston rising"? Peter Gammons? What a shocker!

Gammons' Grapefruit Gems Mention Martin

In his "eight to watch" column recapping the highlights of the Grapefruit League, ESPN.com's Peter Gammons is watching Russell Martin, among others (insider subscription required):

6. Russell Martin: The game's best catcher approaches his craft like Varitek, accepts responsibility for his pitchers, and has been a leader amid the veterans/kids media war of last winter. Larry Bowa loves to watch him take ground balls at his original position, shortstop. "We could put him at shortstop," says Bowa, "and he'd be fine."

[...]

The torn ligament in Andy LaRoche's thumb is a significant blow to the Dodgers, as LaRoche had opened many eyes and has a chance to be a legitimate power bat at the corner. Unless they change their minds and trade for Brandon Inge -- which doesn't seem likely -- that means Nomar Garciaparra will open the season as the third baseman. Dodgers coaches say Garciaparra has had a very good spring swinging the bat, and they appreciate that his all-out, unorthodox fielding style is not easily translated to third base. But it had been a majority opinion on the staff that Nomar would not have been happy as LaRoche's caddy or as a utilityman, so the loss of LaRoche probably ensures that the Dodgers will not have to make a decision on whether or not to eat his contract.

[...]

The talk of Dodgers camp has been 19-year old left-hander Clayton Kershaw. "He's going to help us this year," says Russell Martin. "He has dominant stuff, a great curveball you can almost hear." Some of the coaches suggest Kershaw might be able to help right now, but more likely he will open the season in the minors. Kershaw has only five starts above the A level, but between A and AA last season struck out 163 in 122 innings. Also in Dodgers camp, Larry Bowa is sold on the future of SS Chin-Lung Hu. "He can really play defense," says Bowa.

I suppose all it takes to get a Gammons mention is to play the Red Sox every once in a while. Suddenly, we've got some wicked pissah commentary (take that, Charlie Chowda!).

Gammons Investigates Drew's History, Discovers NL West Exists

Taking an unusual respite from his unyielding Red Sox / Yankees coverage, ESPN.com's Peter Gammons wrote a nice piece on the foundation of pitching that has lifted all boats in the NL West. In a piece posted today entitled "NL West on the rise," Gammons breaks down all five teams, including the Dodgers: [note the link is for insider subscribers only]

Then one looks at the Dodgers and their pitching now that they signed [Jason] Schmidt and Randy Wolf to go with Lowe, Penny and either Chad Billingsley or Hong-Chih Kuo. Grady Little's patience helped Takashi Saito turn into a 24-for-26 closer with 107 strikeouts in 79 innings at the age of 36, and if Saito -- who was the equivalent of a walk-on -- goes back to what he was in Japan, Jonathan Broxton is in the wings, Billingsley could become a reliever, Yhency Brazoban is coming back and there is Jonathan Meloan coming out of the lower minors after punching out 91 in 52 innings.

They will pitch, and while Colletti took some heat for the money he gave Juan Pierre, at the time the Dodgers had one outfielder. Now, they have Pierre and Rafael Furcal at the top of the order. They have James Loney and Nomar Garciaparra at first; Jeff Kent at second; Wilson Betemit, Andy LaRoche and Garciaparra at third; Russell Martin and Mike Lieberthal catching; and an outfield combination of Pierre, Luis Gonzalez, Andre Ethier, Matt Kemp, Garciaparra and Marlon Anderson. "We have some flexibility, so we don't ask too much of our better young players," says Colletti....

It's a division with really good young players, energetic organizations and, most of all, pitching. The NL West isn't just out there any more.

I do like Gammons' writing overall and I appreciate the fact that he went outside his comfort zone to cover our division. He profiles all five teams, but it seems like only the Dodgers have built both a contender for today as well as a deep system for tomorrow.

He's generally positive on the Padres, and for the Giants mentions the potential upside of Matt Cain as well as the Barry Bonds circus. Gammons also says the Snakes might contend as well if their youth movement holds up.