Five Dodgers listed as final World Baseball Classic are revealed.

Five Dodgers will be represented in the World Baseball Classic, according to final rosters announced Thursday.

Ronald Belisario (Venezuela), Luis Cruz (Mexico), Adrian Gonzalez (Mexico), Nick Punto (Italy) and Hanley Ramirez (Dominican Republic) will all leave the team in March to compete in the third edition of the tournament, which will crown its champion March 19 in San Francisco.

Paco Rodriguez (Spain), Peter Moylan (Australia) and Alfredo Amezaga (Mexico) were listed on their respective country’s preliminary rosters but elected not to participate.

Some odds and ends from Dodgers spring training.

Some odds and ends from Thursday at Camelback Ranch, the final day before the Dodgers’ position players are expected to report to spring training.
Continue reading “Some odds and ends from Dodgers spring training.” »

Spring training preview: Relief pitchers.

Brandon LeagueToday begins our daily countdown to pitchers and catchers reporting to Spring Training on Tuesday with a position-by-position breakdown of the Dodgers’ roster. We begin with the bullpen.

I didn’t include Aaron Harang, Chris Capuano or Ted Lilly on this list, even though one or more of them could wind up pitching out of the ‘pen. Even without them, this is a solid unit on paper with ample depth. The closer situation is fairly clear, but the Dodgers enter the season with more viable options for the ninth inning than they’ve had in recent seasons.

There are a few injury concerns facing this unit, but none are severe. With one exception, the Dodgers’ bullpen should start the season healthy, capable of becoming one of the best in the National League.

Continue reading “Spring training preview: Relief pitchers.” »

Daily Distractions: Ellis and Belisario headed for arbitration?

Happy salary figure exchange day. May the odds be ever in your favor.

The Dodgers’ two salary arbitration-eligible players, A.J. Ellis and Ronald Belisario, will present their contract proposals to the team today. Both might end up signing a new contract today. They might end up negotiating with the Dodgers for a couple weeks. Or, they might let an arbitrator decide how much they should earn next year — their proposed salary or the team’s. That rarely happens.

In fact, the Dodgers haven’t had an arbitration case since Joe Beimel on Feb. 9, 2007.

Last year, only Clayton Kershaw got close to going to arbitration before signing a two-year deal on Feb. 7.

Ellis made $490,000 in base salary last year and Belisario made $480,000, according to Cots. Roll out a starting catcher and a set-up man with comparable stats, at comparable points in their careers, with comparable injury histories (or the lack thereof, in the case of these guys) and you have the basis for a negotiating point. Sometimes that’s easy to get to, sometimes it isn’t, but it’s fair to expect these guys will be getting raises very soon.

For other arbitration resolutions around the league, MLBtraderumors.com has set up an updating “arbitration tracker” link here.

Or, just do what everyone else does and stay glued to Twitter. Today’s links …

Continue reading “Daily Distractions: Ellis and Belisario headed for arbitration?” »

Daily Distractions: How long does it take to rebuild a farm system?

Baseball America is expected to bestow the St. Louis Cardinals with the mantle of Best System in Baseball, eight years after BA had St. Louis ranked dead-last, 30th among the 30 teams. (BA doesn’t typically announce its rankings until late March/early April, but that article explains what to expect and why.)

Folks who spend more time thinking about prospects than major-league players — you know who you are – tend to forget that organizational rankings are nothing more than opinion polls. Titles such as “top organizational prospect” are opinions, not facts.

But I think there’s some significance to the Cardinals’ turnaround to the Dodgers, who ranked sixth, 23rd, 21st, 11th and 24th the last five years (in order) in BA’s annual list. Last March, BA wrote: “If OF Alfredo Silverio hadn’t had a breakout season in 2011, it would be hard to pinpoint a Los Angeles position prospect with much upside—and he could miss the first two months of the season after an offseason auto accident. [Frank] McCourt hasn’t spent on the draft or the international market, severely weakening the system.”

Guggenheim Baseball Management has spent liberally on the major-league product, but team president Stan Kasten has gone out of his way to state the importance of rebuilding the Dodgers’ farm system. That can’t be done overnight, but how long will it take? Eight years might be reasonable in an age of international signing restrictions and draft restrictions that favor lower-revenue teams.

That’s a topic for a longer story on a different day, but definitely good food for thought.

Some links to start your work week:

Continue reading “Daily Distractions: How long does it take to rebuild a farm system?” »