Whenever a statement can be debated, whenever the observations or assessments are laced with personal interpretations and not based on facts, then we can say that the statement is subjective in nature. Objective means making an unbiased, balanced observation based on facts that can be verified. A statement or assessment is said to be objective when it can be verified and it does not have any interpretations based on the emotions of a person.
If some of you recommended a stock, I would absolutely short it because your opinions are driven by emotion. On any given day, you have wanted to get rid of about every player on the Dodgers, not realizing that baseball is a long, strange, funny season. Instead, I hear this kind of stuff on an everyday basis:
- “Freddie is in decline.“
- “Mookie should go back to RF.”
- “Vesia should be gone.”
- “Ramirez should be DFA’ed.”
- “Grove is just trade bait.“
- “Rojas can’t hit.“
- “The Dodgers signed the wrong Japanese pitcher.“
- “Kike needs to be traded.”
- “Kershaw should not be on the playoff roster.”
- “Roberts can’t manage.“
- “Teoscar should platoon.”
- Yada, Yada, Yada…. as the BS spews out of your keyboards!
Do You Understand Why You are Called Morons on Other Boards?
Objective vs. Subjective:
When you criticize a player or a manager, or even a team president, what you say is generally clouded with emotion, which blinds you to the facts. However, the fact of the matter is that most baseball decisions are subjective. As an example, it took some balls for Dave Roberts to bring in Yohan Ramirez to save the game. Remember him? He’s the guy that someone said should never throw another pitch for the Dodgers after his first outing. Doc had to find out how he would react in such a situation. Pretty damn good, I would say. By the way, I said that I would have left Paxton in the last game to save the bullpen and last night. the Dodgers demonstrated why that is really a thing. They almost ran out of pitchers. Many of you have no clue. Did I hurt your feelings? Sorry, Then take your keyboard and go home or man up and quit acting like a dumbass. Can you just stop the knee-jerk reactions and act like you have a modicum of understanding? This is a long season. Baseball is a funny game. What makes you cry will make you laugh!
Every damn year we go through this, and just about everyone laments how bad the Dodgers are, and they still win 100 games. No, they have not won the World Series every year, and under the new format, no one will. Those days are over, and they are not coming back, and no matter how hard you wish for it, Rob Manfred and MLB will not change the playoffs so that the Dodgers can win easily!
Last year, Marcel Ozuna of the Braves batted .085 in April. This year, in the same month, he batted .327 with a .400 OB% and a 1.036 OPS. He’s the same age as CT3, but right about now, he is playing like an All-Star. Sometimes you have to wait for good things to happen.
Last Night’s Game Was Like a Prizefight
The Dodgers and Yankees pitchers were throwing darts, and the Dodgers prevailed in 11 on a TKO. What does it all mean? It’s one game. The Dodgers did not hit, and neither did the Yankees. The Yankees are off to a great start, but their new pitchers have been “otherworldly,” and that is not sustainable. Their bullpen has four Dodgers castoffs: Santana, Kahnle, Ferguson, and V-Gon. Stanton will go on the IL soon enough. Rizzo’s best days are in the rearview mirror. Grisham is a DFA waiting, and LeMahiru needs to retire. Do you think the Dodgers have a bad bench? Try Trammell, Jones, Grisham, and Smith.
The Dodgers have too much depth on both sides of the ball. AF will make changes that are warranted. Vargas will get a chance, Outman will be back, and I think Lipcius will also get a shot. Patience… and take a dose of objectivity – also try to look at the big picture.
Discussion (36)
Disagree, not disagreeable
Kudos to Vesia for turning his fortunes around! He’s pitching even better than last year.
If losses have NO negative connotations and don’t really matter because it’s “just June”…
then why project anything positive to “just-June wins?” Makes no sense.
So crowing about June wins (Roger askew), or despairing about June losses really makes no sense.
The Dodgers have a commanding 8.5 game lead in the division, but they point to Vargas’ bad defense as to the reason they must instead play a guy at his position who sports a negative OPS+, and whose ship set sail eons ago.
That’s all one needs to know about what the Dodgers REALLY think of Vargas.
The Dodgers will attempt to move both Taylor and Vargas this summer.
My theory is that the Dodger brass have already decided that Vargas is no longer part of their long-term plans. If they still believed in Vargas that strongly, he’d be getting the starts that Taylor is getting.
Just a theory… but why isn’t Vargas playing? Why is Taylor, slumping so badly, getting more chances to get on track?
One reason is Taylor’s contract. Another is that Taylor is so much more versatile than Vargas.
It wouldn’t surprise me if both Vargas and Taylor both get dealt this summer. The Dodgers would have to eat most of Taylor’s contract to do so, but they might. Vargas should be much easier to deal.
Nice win, 11 runs at Yankee Stadium and there was a truly post-season buzz in the stands. The game was on Fox, so we got Joe Davis and Smoltz. Pre-game crew featured two former Yankees, Jeter and Rodriguez, and Mookie’s old teammate, David Ortiz. I love Big Papi, but he is really hard to understand sometimes. But his short interview with Mookie was cool. As far as the Dodgers are concerned, all of the players in the starting lineup got hits. 5-9 drove in 8 of the 11 runs, but 1-4 scored 7 of them. So, this was a total team effort. Stone did a great job navigating the Yankee lineup. His only real mistake was Judge’s home run. He pitched out of a couple of jams and then was victimized by a couple of soft hits in the sixth. But Vesia got him out of that mess. Teoscar is now tied with Ohtani for the team lead in homers and is all alone at the top of the RBI list with 47. When asked about the lineup with Taylor in left, Roberts said he wanted his best defensive lineup out there. People call people names on the internet because they are invisible. There are no reprisals. You aren’t going to get punched in the mouth because you are not facing the person you are antagonizing. Most of my life, I have had a short fuse. Overcoming my bad temper was something I had to really work on. Now, I realize all that arguing is a total waste of energy. And I also realize from when I was writing for this site, you have a lot of people who are going to disagree with what you say. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. Others are allowed to disagree with that opinion. What is moronic to some, makes perfect sense to someone else. Maybe they just could not express it in a way the other person understands. I am not always right, and I have no more information than any other fan. I never played beyond high school, or when I played ball all the time in the service. I love the games history, and I read an awful lot. What I can discern is trends by watching, and then going back and researching the history of what a certain GM< player or manager does. Freidman has made a ton of trades. He has pulled off a few blockbusters at the deadline. Most notably, the trades for Darvish, Machado, Scherzer and Turner. There was also the three-team trade that brought Latos, Morse, Avilan, Arroyo, Johnson, Peraza and Wood to LA in 2015. I understand why many want Robert Jr. He is a talented player. But his MO says that AF rarely trades for an impact bat at the deadline. Very rarely. Turner came to the Dodgers simply because LA was not going to send both Ruiz and Gray to the Nats for Scherzer. To get the deal done, they added Turner, and the Dodgers added two other minor leaguers. Machado would have never been a Dodger had there not been a need for a SS. But Seager was injured, and the Dodgers wanted a better option than Taylor and Kike who played 103 games there. Machado played 51 games there, and 16 at third. That is why I feel he won't trade for an impact bat, but someone who is more complementary and who is a more consistent contact hitter. Will it happen? Only AF knows what his strategy and approach to the deadline will be. And don't say, hey he traded for Betts. That was a winter deal.
Gotta question Mark, you ever notice on this site when the Dodgers win there are hardly any positive comments aside from good game and such. But when they lose the arm chair managers come out in force , first thing is fire Roberts, which as long as Freidman is in power, ain’t gonna happen, and also offer amazing hitting and lineup advice, even though nobody has even sniffed the big leagues. Trust the damn process! There is something about Doc, and a few guys on this site have pointed it out , that the players respect and love about him, ever notice you never notice anything toxic coming out of the clubhouse, and that s been for years! Yeah, he ain’t perfect , but he is a great fit for this team. And I’ve already noticed some of our so called ‘fans ‘ are saying the Yankees aren’t at full strength with Soto out, and I call BullShit. Nobody really talks about it, but Roggin and Rodney on AM 570 sportsnet LA had a great point the other day. Not having Muncy in the lineup has really impacted the offense. Yeah, his average isn’t the greatest, but he provided protection for Will Smith and also made the lineup way more dangerous, plus the dude is edgy, which is what we need . Always a threat to go yard, and he will be back . . So once again, back off everyone, we are still not even close to full strength yet, not even counting Kersh, Kelly, Miller, Graturol,
Just amazing, all the hater trolls on the spectrum LA sites are crickets. Not a sound, 8-2 has a nice ring to it. They refuse to give Roberts any props when he puts a lineup out there that kicks ass in a crucial series or plugs in the pitching to shut down the Yankee threats. Fing pathetic. And I’m watching some of you keyboard cowboys on this site as well. Watch what you say when you throw out your haterade when things are going south for a bad stretch or two. Got a big ass bottle of ketchup for you to eat your crow with. Same doomsday crap was being vented about a month ago when the Braves came to town, and we all know how that turned out. Trust this team and the long game. And hey, Taylor got a hit!!
Platoon that guy!!!!!!!!
Say what you want about some of docs decisions, but he has pulled all the right levers so far with the bullpen this series, vesia was a brass ball decision with the bases loaded and yankee stadium rocking. Proof that all Roberts can do is put these guys in situations he believes they can handle, totally up to the player to execute. About 50/50 sometimes with the bullpen. Box of chocolates.
Huge! Vesia rescues Stone! Very nice performance by the young man. Kept his composure with a lot of soft contact hits.
In the past the Yankees have had a no facial hair policy.
I have not noticed any Yankee players with beards and only a couple with pussy bumpers.
Verdugo looks a lot better.
1. The only reason I can think of for not playing Vargas against left handers is they don’t trust his defense and prefer Taylor’s glove to Vargas’ bat. I don’t agree if that is the call but they have far more information than I do. If this is the case then bring up Lipcius to play third and let Kike play left in a platoon. It is really hard to justify playing Taylor at this point given his performance the last 220 games.
2. I would probably be classified as hoarding prospects if I were a GM but I would not trade Rushing, DePaula, and Knack for Robert. He has averaged 92 games a year in four years prior to this and only 11 games this year. The injury history is a flashing red light. Rushing and Kackor better yet, look for a cheaper alternative.
3. Nice to see Ohtani shorten up and go the other way. That is a great approach compared to his approach these last fifteen games.
4. The Roberts mound trip to console Ramirez and boost his confidence is why the criticism of Roberts is tedious at times. I am pretty certain that is the tip of the iceberg in terms of how he relates to players and how he manages different egos and personalities.
5. Yamamoto’s outing last night should give Dodger fans hope that we have two really good starters to pitch games 1 and 2 in postseason series. Two of Buehler, Stone, Miller, and Kershaw (fingers crossed but not counting on it) look to be the most obvious candidates for games 3 and 4. He was everything he was cracked up to be.
I guess the decision makers are going to keep putting Freddie and Ohtani back to back vs lefty starting pitching. Freddie’s hitting .230 while smith is over .400 or even teo who mashes lefties. But forget tonight it has been going on all year. Just doesn’t make sense. Late inning relievers, openers, all lefty and freeman can’t touch them. Ohtani not much better but he is holding his own.
Kike goes to short porch!!
Time to see if Gavin Stone is ready for the big moment
maybe Taylor plays tonight since ole Barnsie probably catching tomorrow ! still makes no sense at all!
7:35 PM ET
Dodgers (40-25)
Yankees (45-20)
SP Gavin Stone R
6-2 2.90 ERA
SP Nestor Cortes L
3-4 3.46 ERA
Confirmed Lineup
SS Mookie Betts R
DH S. Ohtani L
1B F. Freeman L
C Will Smith R
RF T. Hernandez R
CF Andy Pages R
2B Miguel Rojas R
3B E. Hernandez R
LF Chris Taylor R
77° Wind 10 mph Out
NO Vargas against a Left handed pitcher
BTW, I never called anyone a moron until the moronic comments.
Here’s an easy way to see who has the weakest 6-9 Hitters:
Add their OPS together.
Tonight’s Dodger lineup (which AVF will post) and includes CT3 is 2369.
The Yankees is 2125… and they are allegedly the best team in baseball.
We’ll see about that!
Could we use Robert Jr in CF? Right now our CF’s hitting .539 OPS, second worse in MLB, with a -6 DRS! Ouch! I have no problem overpaying for him. We have a deep enough farm system. AF could easily put the best package together for him if he so wanted. Do it AF!
Mark, I’ll be posting the lineup a little later today,but it will get done before game time.
Muncy (oblique) has begun taking dry swings and doing plyo-ball workouts, Bill Plunkett of The Orange County Register reports.
This is a step forward for Muncy, as he had previously been unable to swing a bat at all after continuing to experience soreness in his oblique. However, manager Dave Roberts said last week that the third baseman is on a “slow program,” so Muncy doesn’t appear to be particularly close to a return. He hasn’t played in a game since May 15 and will likely need to go on a rehab assignment before rejoining the big-league club.
Speaking of morons, who were the announcers in that hideous Apple game? Very annoying from what I’ve heard on the highlights. Pisses me off to have the game blacked out when I’m paying for the mlb.com pass. On the other hand, my brother-in-law, a Yankee fan, was still able to watch it from CT on the YES network on his cable. Crazy.
But I wanna be head moron please can I
The more baseball i watch the more i want to turn the sound down and watch it muted!! Does every single play require the announcer to scream? It’s become unwatchable!! trying to watch college baseball and it’s just as bad!! Just recently lost MLB. network on my cable provider. At first i was pissed, but it had gotten so silly it was like ESPN! Anybody got any suggestions on cable replacement? Paying out the a** and nothing worth watching!!
Oh no. Mark or Bluto thinks I’m a moron. I don’t think I can ever post again! Oh well. My point with Teoscar is that we need to get more AB’s for Vargas and see what we have with him. If it’s at the expense of Heyward or Hernandez right now, then so be it. We could win the West if I batted ninth. I have no idea what the Dodgers are doing with Vargas. They profess that he’s an elite hitter, then let him prove it. One out of three games isn’t giving him a shot. At least make the OF a four man rotation and play him regularly for a couple of months. Then you know by the deadline what you have and what you need.
Very nice competitive win last night.
Love over pitching and what we have on the IR coming back over the next few months.
After this series it’s time to clean up the bench.
Try a couple of the hardworking, overachievers eager to prove they are not just good AAAA players.
6-7 weeks before the trade deadline is just about enough time to get these guys enough at-bats to prove they belong or demonstrate enough to add value to a trade, or are just AAAA pieces.
Free up 2-4 (40 man) roster spots depending who you would like to bring up.
Lipcius/ Gauthier/ Owings/ Hoese or Feduccia (on 40)
Outman (another shot)
Barnes’s (IR) finger nail is acting up per an undisclosed report from Ladodgertalk .
Send down Lux and good by to Taylor and Kike
You can also easily replace (on 40 man)
Gus Varland and maybe J.P. Feyereisen if needed
I would keep AAA relief picture Ricky Vanasco if he can gain some control, I like his stuff.
Go Dodgers!!
Great performance by Yamamoto and big win by the Dodgers!
Yamamoto lived up to his reputation and was fantastic!
I questioned paying Yoshi more than any pitcher in MLB history, and I still question the money paid to him. If he can pitch like last night for the next 12 years, then I will be proven wrong. It won’t be the first time one of my opinions is wrong, but baseball blogs are about sharing thoughts and opinions.
The game last night was a classic baseball game between two of the best teams in baseball. Regular season baseball does not get much better than a tense 2-1 game over 11 innings. Every pitch and every play were meaningful until the last out. Yamamoto was the star for the Dodgers, but the bullpen was also fantastic.
After an epic ball game, Mark decided to write an arrogant column with an air of superiority. He spends a lot of time and money to run the blog and has every right to call us morons because our opinions differ from his. Mark has made some bad predictions in his time just like the rest of us. The 11 comments cited by Mark as BS may turn out to be wrong, but none of them were extremely crazy or moronic in my view. In fact, I made a few of them myself. My summary of the column is: your comment is objective if you agree with Mark, and it is subjective and moronic if you disagree with Mark.
You’re pretty close 90% of the time!!
I know Mark it just couldn’t be better. Everything is so rosy. Roberts is the greatest manager ever. Freidmen is a genius and how dare anyone second guess the brilliant way dodgers do things. I can’t comprehend how we haven’t won ten titles in a row other than them other teams must be getting really lucky
oh by the way Mark, a few weeks ago i said Luis Arraez would be hitting over .300 by the all star break. you wanted to bet me he wouldn’t!! He’s around .330 with 89 hits. no. power and not great defensively, but wouldn’t he look good batting 8th in dodgers lineup?? Even dumbasses are right. every blue moon!! lol
We’re duelin’
The comparison between Ozuna and CT3 is not a good one. CT3 is slumping for over 1.5 years now, Ozuna had a bad month a year ago.
And it is also a fact that we have a lot of weak bats on the roster who are collectively not hitting: Barnes, CT3, Kike, Lux. That is four guys out of 13 . The jury still out on Pages and Vargas with heyward just returning from the IL.
That is a lot of question marks. Objectively viewed.
Yamamoto was fantastic last night. True ace performance with ace stuff. I will call him Yoshi from now on.:-)
Ramirez has filthy stuff when he is on. IMHO that was among Docs best managerial moves when he hugged him in Cincy on the mound. LOoks like that turned Ramirez season around. Maybe his career. Got to give credit when credit is due.
I hate that they mic up players. That error on Kike was the final straw for me. And what was all that cable hanging off of Kike ? From Apple? Apple? Got to be kidding me.
Bobby Miller looked fine yesterday, not very good but fine. Velo is almost fully back. I can see the Dodgers go with a 6th men rotation when he comes back.
dePaula and Joendry Vargas have not played in a couple days with their teams. Anything wrong with them or just rest?
Francys Romero
@francysromeroFR
The Los Angeles Dodgers will sign Taiwanese OF Ko Ching-Hsien (17) for around $700,000 bonus, sources confirm.The official signing will be in the next few days.
Hsien is an athletic and multi-tools outfielder who shined at the last World U-18 with .550 AVG, 1 HR, 4 RBI.
Once the deal becomes official, it is expected that the Dodgers will have $3,152,500 remaining in their international signing bonus pool, which is a sizable amount. This is an important fact to consider with the Dodgers’ interest in Japanese pitcher Rōki Sasaki.
From an objective standpoint our bottom of the lineup is one of the worst hitting in the league. This is a fact not subjective. Will that change? With Taylor trending the wrong way for 2 years, Kiké ave at best, lux no sign right now n platoon guy, Barnes no, Rojas hitting over his head, pages n Vargas who knows. Even if the bottom gets better is the upside enough? Except for pages and Vargas the rest have a track record so we shall c. I think we need another hitter (subjective) because the results are not in.
Any way great to c the Dodgers win last night. Yamamoto was super. Playoff type atmosphere where the Dodgers have pitching this year but the offense absent . Playoff pitching will slow the offense but it shouldn’t be dismal. Looking forward I would target offensive improvement based on the weakness at the bottom based on the stats.
But thank you for explaining what objective and subjective means. I thought u were Bluto for a minute. I just don’t understand why somebody posting a subjective or objective post sends some people into a condescending personal attack. Is there a rubric for posting?
ok mark i am one of the dumdasses you pointed out! I didn’t ever want to see Ramirez wearing blue again!! But as everyone says it’s EARLY!! (he looked filthy last night!). Yamamoto was outstanding!! Of course the yankees fans will scream no Soto!! Well we had no Muncey!!! Little different player but still a major part of the dodgers. Bullpen again was nails! if Barnes is going to catch a game in this series, shouldn’t it be today? Especially since Will caught 11 innings last night. Please Doc, No Taylor today !! It would be nice to get today’s game, but please not taylor and barnes, and kiki all playing together!!! Gavin Stone can tighten his grip on the number 3 spot. in the rotation with a strong performance. He continues to pitch like he has, no way he ever goes back to the bullpen!!