Couple of little notes ...

First, the Dodgers' season-opening series at San Diego, which originally was a four-game set that later became a three-game series with an off-day on the second day, well, it's back to a four-game series again (so much for that off-day trip to Del Mar). The two teams will now play a 7:05 p.m. game on April 7. To offset the change, the three-game series at San Diego the final week of the season is now a TWO-game series, Sept. 29-30. Oct. 1 is now an off-day before the Dodgers host Colorado Oct. 2-4 to close out the regular season. What this means is that the Dodgers will have played SEVEN games, not six, by the time they play their home opener on April 13 against the Giants. More importantly, it means they'll need FIVE starting pitchers the first time through the rotation, something the scheduled usually allows them to avoid. As a colleague pointed out earlier today on the telephone, that could explain why there is this late push to add more guys to compete for the fifth spot (Shawn Estes, Eric Milton, etc.) ...

Secondly, it now appears that an arbitration hearing is all but inevitable for Andre Ethier. It is scheduled for Tuesday in Phoenix, and the sides haven't made much progress, if any. Once again, Ethier filed at $3.75 million, the Dodgers filed at $2.65 million. If it goes to a hearing, his salary will be one of those two figures, not a figure in between. This will be only the third arbitration hearing for the Dodgers in the years Kim Ng has been handling these things. The club won both of the previous ones, with relievers Eric Gagne in 2004 and Joe Beimel in 2007.