The ghost of Larry Johnson

In the 1998 NBA playoffs, in the Eastern Conference Championship game 4, Larry Johnson of the Knicks started a brawl with Alonzo Mourning- both players got ejected. Johnson at that time was a role player, while Mourning was the star of the Heat. Mourning's loss ripped the heart out of the favored Heat, while Johnson ploy, while getting him ejected, was ultimately no big deal for the Knicks, and won them that playoff series. That was how the Eastern Conference was in those days.

Carlos Quentin of the lowly San Diego Padres ripped a page out of that book yesterday. Zack Grienke threw hit him on the arm and he charged the mound starting one of the most entertaining brawls in recent baseball history. At first it was great to see the Dodgers and Padres get feisty- they are two of the most laid-back teams in history, and it was great to see passion in that rivalry. The frightening part, however, was the aftermath, with Greinke getting a broken collarbone and Matt Kemp probably getting ejected for several games. There his no doubt who really won here. The Dodgers won the battle, with Juan Uribe's homer, but the Padres won the war.

Quentin is laughing his ASS off right now. He is a mediocre power hitter on the downside of his career, whom in his best years, sits out a quarter of the games. Greinke is the #2 starter of the Dodgers whom the they paid big money for, and Matt Kemp is well, Matt Kemp. Larry Johnson is smiling somewhere, his protege was obviously taking notes.

Greinke and Quentin have a history, dating back to when they were on the Royals and White Sox, respectively. Quentin won this latest chapter, he will get to rest for a few days, while the Padres plug in some journeymen like Jesus Guzman and Alexi Amarista and otherwise do not notice. The Dodgers, on the other hand, will have a hole in their lineup for the next week or so, and more importantly, a huge hole in their rotation until at least June. While they do have some depth, it is still a big loss.

Quentin and the Padres know if you can't do it on the field, you have to resort to other means. They started it, and they finished it. Can't wait 'til next week.

Waiting for Hanley: What about Dee Gordon?

Nobody is saying Dee Gordon is going to save the world or the season, or that anybody should be worried about that right now. I figure, if I'm going to panic, I will panic about Matt Kemp's 0 for 10 or Josh Beckett getting shelled before I panic about the left side of the infield.

But let's look at this Luis Cruz is 0 for 10, Justin Sellers is 0 for 6, and Juan Uribe is 0 for 3. We can rightly say that Gordon has not figured out how to hit major league pitching, but none of those guys is exactly lighting it up, either. One thing Gordon has that those guys don't have is speed, and when Tim Lincecum hands you 7 walks in five innings and you can't pull out a win, you figure some speed might help.

Pitchers may be figuring out Cruz, Uribe is most likely not poised for a comeback and Sellers is a decent utility guy, but perhaps not muh more. If Gordon is the future, or if you want to decide if he is the future, this may be a good time to get him at bats. When Hanley comes back, it may be a good idea to send him down to get him consistent at bats, but until then, why not? You can move Cruz back to third and release Uribe (he contributes more to the Giants wearing a Dodgers uniform then he would in a Giants uniform.....really), and let him continue his growth process, plus give the Dodgers a little more speed (none of thos guys are exactly rabbits), which may help them score a few runs.

Nobody's panicking, and it is a long season, but they should bring up Gordon to see if he can give them a little jolt.

Don Mattingly- Hot Seat?

One good thing about working for Frank McCourt was nobody expected much, with his piecemeal, on-the-cheap Dodgers teams, Ned Colletti would scrap together just enough talent to keep the Dodgers competitive most of the time. Don Mattingly was perfect for this. His mix of hard-boiled baseball knowledge and competitiveness with a more or less laid-back veneer was a perfect mix for that situation. He kept his team playing hard throughout the whole McCourt divorce/Bud Selig crackdown circus, and that was good.

It is a different world now.

Accountability has found it's way back to Chavez Ravine, and as extremely likeable as Mattingly is, he is probably more accountable than anyone. None of those gargantuan contratcts are going anywhere, so if the the team deep-sixes or under-preforms, Don will be in the hot seat. Some guys are best suited managing young, scrappy teams, but have trouble managing high-priced veteran teams. Buck Showlater comes to mind as a guy who can take a mess of a team and make it competitive (see Orioles 2012), but had problems when he had veteran teams with tons of expectations (Yankees and Rangers). Other guys are built to run championship teams- see his predecessor Joe Torre, who seamlessly managed a high-profile Yankee teams, but despite his dignified manner, seemed to age running the dysfunctional Dodgers.

Which one is Don? We will find out this season.

Despite all the firepower, it shall be the pitching this year....

Clayton Kershaw's performance on Monday was one for the ages. We can do away with all this talk about "potential". he is entering his prime, and has one scary ceiling. Barring injury, he will go up with in the pantheon with guys like Sandy Koufax, Fernando Valenzuela and Orel Hershiser, if not surpassing them. We can be happy that Stan Kasten, Magic Johnson and crew are actually trying to put a team around him that is worthy.

Do not be fooled though. It is still about the pitching. Matt Kemp can have a crazy year a la 2011. Adrian Gonzales, Hanley Ramirez and Carl Crawford can have years like they did in the hopefully not too distant past. You can figure once and hopefully future mainstay Andre Ethier, with all those other guys around him can maintain his decent power and high OBP, but it is still about the pitching. How Kershaw, Zack Grienke, Josh Beckett, Hyun-Jin Ryu, Chad Billingsley and whoever fills the fifth spot hold up in consistency and health over the season will determine whether the Dodgers are a playoff team or better, or watching the World Series at home like everyone else in L.A. has been doing since 1988.

The fact that Kershaw had to fuel the Opening Day rally with his bat says all you need. Yes- the bats will certainly have their moments, even if all of our wishes do ot come true, but Kershaw will have to be the horse of the rotation, the guy who gives the other teams an uneasy pause when they know they will face him in an upcoming series. Grienke should be a fine #2, despite the fact he doesn't seem to be profusely bleeding blue (He said he took the Dodger job for the money, and while that is the truth for more ballplayers than we would care to admit, he could at least throw a half-assed bone toward the Great Blue Legacy). I figure if he goes out there 32 times and keeps his ERA in the low 3's, he can say what he wants.

It is the middle guys that have you wondering. I'm not worried about Ryu's so-so performance on Tuesday- he had lots of ground balls and kept the Dodgers in the game, and was not helped by Justin Seller's errors. You have to be encouraged by Josh Beckett- lousy final spring start aside, he looked sharp in Arizona, and was a pleasant surprise last year down the stretch. You have to like a guy like Beckett pitching half his games in Dodger Stadium, still a pitcher's park like no other. These four guys should also take some of the heat off Billingsley, who actually started to resemble his good self last season before injury. If these guys get hurt, Aaron Harang and Chris Capuano are more-than capable fill-ins.

All this sounds great on April 3, but what about September? Kershaw began to break down last year, Grienke stayed pretty consistent, but Ryu is still untested, Beckett is a wild-card, and we're not sure we want Capuano or Harang as our lean-to guys in the dog days. You know the Giants will be there like they always will, and the Diamondbacks are always a pain in the neck, and while the prognosticators doubt the Rockies and Padres, they have snuck up on us before, so who knows? They need to be consistent and durable. The organization has shown it is not afraid to make a trade to make things happen, but do we want it to come to that?

Jerry Buss RIP

This is a baseball blog, but successful franchises in any sport can always look to Jerry Buss and his ownership of the Los Angeles Lakers as a model for ownership. One can say that he had great coaches like Pat Riley and Phil Jackson, one can say that he had great talent evealuators like Jerry West and Mitch Kupchak. One can also say that he had great players- Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant, to name the top dogs. That would all be true.

But someone had to see the talent in those guys, especially West. Someone had to know when to involve themselves in the nitty-gritty and whe to stay out of the way. Buss was a master at that. Someone also had to feel the pulse of the team and know when the times were changing for instance when they traded Shaq. Was it too early? too late?. You don't take anything away from the front office, but Jerry would've had to sign off on that. Someone also had to know not to lose their cool during sudden hard times, for instance when Magic revealed he was HIV positive.

On top of the teams, there was the brand. He created Showtime. He made it so Staples Center and the Forum were and continue to be the place to be. There were great teams, but Buss pushed it up a notch and made it into Hollywood-worthy entertainment, which it continues to be. He probably had lots of help their too.

Sometimes being a great leader is not only leading thecharge, but it's also picking the right people to surround you and letting them do their jobs. The success of the Lakers over the last three decades is testamnt to this.

The Great Leap Forward?

I will admit it, and I'm sure most Dodger fans will agree with me that we are absolutely ecstatic that Frank McCourt got booted and the new Stan Kasten-Magic Johnson- Guggenheim group came in. And while some would be horrified at the Dodgers becoming a salary dumping ground for the various overpaid and unhappy former members of the Marlins and Red Sox, it is still miles ahead of the mediocrity that McCourt signed off on.

You also have to shake your head at the potential this team has. Joining the core of Clayton Kershaw, Andre Ethier and Matt Kemp is old nemesis Adrian Gonzales, and while the Marlins may have an opinion about it, them letting a still-young Hanley Ramirez go was pure madness. Jeffery Loria pulled a fast one on the Marlins fans, just as he sold out Montreal before, and in the dog-eat-dog world of professional sports, the Dodgers got the better of it. Top that off with adding Josh Beckett and Zack Greinke to the rotation and Carl Crawford to the outfield, you gotta be happy or at least hopeful about the upcoming Dodger season.

Keep in mind, though, like our beloved Lakers, what looks great on paper does not always translate to the boxscore and the W/L column. Remember that Gonzales allegedly was one of the leaders of the clubhouse revolt against Bobby Valentine, remember Beckett was one of the guys who allegedly yucked it up with chicken and beer in the clubhouse while the 2011 season went down in flames for the Red Sox. Ramirez was also a noted malcontent long before the Loria bloodbath. Crawford is coming off of a serious injury, and all of those guys are coming off disappointing seasons. None of them were able to help the Dodgers make up ground against the Giants, either.

Now it is time for these guys to show us what they have. Will Gonzales's power numbers and OBP continue to decline? Can Ramirez, not even 30 yet return to form? How will Crawford look coming off of a huge injury and declining stats? You have to think Beckett and Greinke will benefit from pitching in the NL West and Dodger stadium, but the offense is a real concern. Furthermore, if these guys fail on the Dodgers, the team will be stuck with some huge contracts on some aging underperformers they will have a hard time getting rid off.

So we fans are optimistic. There is lots of power in that lineup, and while there is not much speed (provided they don't find a place for Dee Gordon in the lineup), and they now have one of the best 1-2-3 rotations in the game, with still some capable guys in the back end. The bullpen seems to be solid, so the ownership has done what they can- now it is up to the players.

Mike Piazza Hall of Famer?

Funny in all this talk of Hall of Fame nominations, it does not seem there is serious talk about Mike Piazza getting nominated. Everyone talks about Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa and Roger Clemens and their prospects of getting in (or not), but there is little talk about Piazza's prospects.

Why would a Dodger blogger talk about Piazza? His acrimonious departure in 1998, was akin to the folkies freaking out when Bob Dylan showed up to the Newport Folk Festival with an electric guitar. While most people blamed the Dodgers for that fiasco, Piazza's alleged greed had something to do with it.

Let bygones be bygones. It was a business deal that went horribly wrong, with all sides having something to do with it, plus it was 1998, almost fifteen years ago. Love or hate Piazza, he was the huge driving force for the Dodgers for much of the 1990's, and while he was here, he more than kept his part of the bargain.

Bottom line, he is the best offensive catcher to ever play the game. take nothing away from Johnny Bench or Carlton Fisk, Piazza shredded baseball in his time. He had nine years of 35+ home runs, six years of 100+ RBI's. His .308 lifetime batting average ( 9 seasons he hit .300+) dwarfs any other long time catcher with his power. His .377 OBP is simply ungodly. he was durable, lasting sixteen years where in all but two seasons catcher was his primary, if not his only position (The Mets played him at first a bit, and the A's used him as a DH in his final season, but other than that, he was a catcher). He had seven straight years of over 135 games caught. Nobody- not Fisk, not Bench, not anybody came close.

There are detractors- there are murmers he took steroids, but he was never called out in any reports, and although he was an effective catcher and hitter into his mid and late 'thirties, he had a more or less normal decline that players suffer. He never had the injury woes of a Mark McGwire or Ken Caminiti, nor did he have the logic-defying late career renissances of Clemens or Bonds. Aside from some minor leaguers, he has never been called out by former players or teammates. It still means he might have done it, but with no proof or even serious speculation, who is to say? He did play in a homer-happy era, but his well-rounded stats say he would've been a dominant player in any era.

It must be the steroid thing is why the writers are holding off. They might say "he didn't win a championship" or "he wasn't a strong defensive catcher" but that is hogwash. Anyone who had his stats over that period of time deserves serious consideration unless there are mtigating circumstances, Could steroids be that?