Its been a boring few days for Dodger fans, not much happening other than the Hudson signing, so I thought I would take this time to talk about a league-wide problem, the use of performance enhancing drugs.

I’m actually not going to get deep into the details of the steroid problem in baseball, as thats really been beaten to death.  I was doing some research online to acutally back an arguement I was making on Yahoo Answers, and I found one of the best articles I’d ever seen written about steroids and PEDs.  In this article (linked at the end) an amateur cyclist decides to find out for himself how much PEDs really improve performance in athletes.  This guy actually goes to a doctor who puts him on a regimin of PEDs and he outlines exactly how much they really helped him.  It’s a rather amazing article to read and really gives you insight as to what these drugs actually do.  For example, I’ve heard many a times that steroids can’t help you hit a baseball, they only help you hit a baseball farther, but I never knew before that HGH (one of the major drugs in the BALCO scandal) actually improves eyesight in many, which could actually help you hit a baseball.

This is a fairly long read, but I think its something that most people really should read, as it really does give insight as to how easy it is (or was, as this was from 2003) to legally get PEDs and how much they actually help.  Enjoy.

http://outside.away.com/outside/bodywork/200311/200311_drug_test_1.html

So, there really hasn’t been any real news to talk of as of late, so may as well talk a little about the biggest question most Dodger fans have about this offseason, what’s going to happen with Manny.

As reported on dodgers.com, Colletti has been talking with Manny more frequently and for longer durations as of late.  There’s still no word as to if we’re getting any closer to signing him, though I really think we’ll be signing him soon.

As most probably know, Manny has already been offered 2 deals, 2 years $45 mil and 1 year $25 mil and he rejected both.  He reportedly wants a 4 year deal in the range of A-Roid money, like $27 mil a year.  The problem with giving him that kind of money is his age.  As great of a player as Manny may be, its unlikely he’ll be playing at this level in 4 years, and no team really wants to give him $30+ million during a season he’s not still at an elite level.

Manny seemed to be counting on interest from other teams, like the Yankees, to cause a bidding war for his services, but that never happened.  At this point, I think Manny knows he isn’t going to get his 4 year deal.  At the moment its almost like a game of chicken, who’s more desperate, Colletti to get Manny back or Manny to get a contract so he isn’t sitting out one of the few productive years he has left.  I think Manny has more to lose than the Dodgers do, so I think he’ll soon cave and take the deal.  Manny has never been known as a workhorse, and, in my opinion, he’s using these contract discussions to get out of the harder spring workouts, and will sign in time for spring training games to start.

First of all, before I get into today’s topic, the deal reported yesterday became official today, as the Dodgers signed Orlando Hudson to a 1 year 3.4 million dollar deal.  Hudson, who made $6.2 last year, was looking for a deal in the $10 million range, but settled for a significant pay cut from last season.

Now, on to todays topic, the Dodger rotation.  I’ve heard a lot of talks about how the Dodgers may have the hitting this season (especially if we resign Manny) but with the losses of Lowe and Penny, our rotation would be significantly diminished.  While losing those 2 arms won’t help, but they mght not hurt us as much as most may think.

We’ll start with our new ace, well not necessarily new to us, but new to the “ace” role, Chad Billingsley.   This will be his first season as our #1 pitcher and the 24 year old righty is coming off his best season and I think he’ll only get better.  He does have some control problems at times, but he strikes out more than a batter per inning.  The main concern for Billingsley this season will be how well he’s healed from the broken leg he suffered in the offseason.  He reported no pain when throwing off the mound recently, and hopefully he’s at 100% by opening day.

Our likely #2 will be Hiroki Kuroda.  Last year was his “rookie” year in the majors after playing in Japan and it took him a little bit to get used to MLB hitting, but he closed the season out well, which bodes well for this season.  During the months of August and September he posted ERAs of 2.29 and 2.96, and had two good starts in the playoffs, both wins, including 6 1/3 shutout innings against the Cubs.  The only knocks on him are his age, 33, and the fact that he usually only goes about 6 innings, but I look for him to be a solid #2.

Our #3 is likely to be Clayton Kershaw.  While his numbers don’t necessarily stand out in any way, he’s only 20 years old, and will be turning 21 before the season.  If you compare him to other young lefties, his rookie year was very similar to Tim Lincecum’s rookie year, and we all know Lincecum won the Cy in his 2nd season.  The thing about Kershaw is that he was 3 years younger than Lincecum in his rookie season, and could quite possibly have more upside.  Now, I’m not guarenteeing a Cy for Kershaw this season, but seeing a jump like we saw with Lincecum last season wouldn’t surprise me, especially from a guy who’s been compared to Sandy Koufax while in the minors.  Expect huge things from Kershaw.

1-3 we’re solid, but #4 we’ll turn to vet Randy Wolf.  I don’t really know what to expect from Wolf this season.  He’s an average pitcher who can hopefully eat up some innings and hopefully post a .500 record for us.  He did close out 2008 on fire, going 4-1 with a 2.23 ERA in September, and who knows, maybe he figured something out that he can use this season, but I’m just hoping for decent outings.

Finally, our #5 will have a lot of competition.  Leading the way will most likley be Jason Schmidt, if he’s healthy.  Would be nice if he was, seeing as we’ve been paying him top dollar for 6 starts over 2 seasons.  If he comes back healthy and to the form he was in SF, he could be the best #5 in the league.  If not, we might be stuck with Eric Milton or Jeff Weaver.  Milton is coming off Tommy John surgery and wasn’t really good the last 3 seasons he played.  Weaver hasn’t been much better, but the last time he was a Dodger in 2005, he was actually respectable. 

Overall, we actually may have a better rotation than we did last year, when you consider that we didn’t really have Penny long last year anyway, so we”re really only losing Lowe, and improvements to Billingsley, Kuroda, and Kershaw may make up for the loss.  We definitely have question marks in the 4 and 5, but we have 4, maybe 5 pitchers competing for 2 spots and hopefully they’ll step up.  I’m really looking forward to this season and seeing what our young pitchers can do, especially Kershaw.

 The Dodgers are apparently now in talks with free agent second baseman Orlando Hudson.  Hudson has reportedly lowered his asking price from $10 million since, with todays market, there are no teams willing to pay that for him. 

Colletti told dodgers.com that he wasn’t necessarily looking to replace Blake DeWitt, but more or less looking at options.  The article on dodgers.com said if Manny doesn’t sign we could always use Hudson at second, move DeWitt to third, and Casey Blake to left. 

Personally, I would like the signing, as Hudson is a proven second baseman, a 2 time gold glove, and he can hit.  Last year Hudson hit .305 while only playing in 107 games due to an injury, but if you look at his stats, his average has gotten better every year.  I don’t know how much I would like the musical chairs of players, especially since, if Manny doesn’t sign, we have a perfectly healthy Juan Pierre to play left, and while he doesn’t add the power that even Blake has, he has batting average and speed.

Ideally, we could sign both Hudson and Manny and have an even better offense than last year.  I’d like to see Hudson as an everyday 2B and let DeWitt and Blake fight it out for 3B/utility IF.  Granted, there would be many options that Torre could look into with this signing, and would be nice to add another bat to our lineup.

While we all look forward to this upcoming season after an NL West title and a postseason victory, this year’s Dodger team is going to look a little different than we’ve come to expect over the past few seasons.

First of all, we’ve lost 2 of our starters in Derek Lowe and Brad Penny, as well as mid-season acquisition Greg Maddux who finally hung up his cleats.  Our bullpen also took a hit losing the likes of Chan Ho Park, Takashi Saito, Scott Proctor.  We also released CF Andruw Jones and long time 2B Jeff Kent retired.  So, there are a lot of people we’re used to seeing in Dodger Blue who won’t be here anymore.

We also do have several who we may or may not be losing, as they’re still free agents.  The biggest one would be Manny Ramirez, who we’ve made several unsuccessful offers to, but I really think will be wearing Dodger Blue by the beginning of the season.  Some others who I’m not so sure about are Nomar Garciaparra, Joe Beimel, and Mark Sweeney.  All three of them kinda suffer from the “odd-man out” though I know a lot of fans who wouldn’t mind seeing Nomar back, and Beimel could help out our bullpen, but not really sure if Ned plans to even negotiate with them.

With all those departures, we have some new people coming in, mostly pitchers.  Recent signings of ex-Dodger Jeff Weaver along with Shawn Estes, Randy Wolf, Eric Milton and Claudio Vargas will be competing for roster spots.  Wolf will likely be our 4th starter and Estes will likely try to compete for the 5th spot or maybe a bullpen spot along with Vargas.  Weaver was signed to a minor league deal along with Milton, but I’d expect both to be in LA at some point in the season.  In addition to career starters, we’ve also signed ex-Dodger reliever Guillermo Mota to sure up the pen.  So we have a lot of pitching to compete for the open slots and I’m excited to see how they all perform.  As for our offense, it will be the same lineup we’ve been used to (assuming Manny re-signs) but we have added a few reserves to help out in backup catcher Brad Ausmus and utility infielders Mark Loretta and Juan Castro. 

So, there have been a lot of moves that the Dodgers have made, and it’s going to be an interesting season, hopefully ending with another NL West crown. 

Hello Dodger fans, and welcome to majorleagueblogging, I’ll be covering your Los Angeles Dodgers this season. 

I thought I would start out by telling you a little about myself.  My name is Jimmy and I’ve been a Dodgers fan ever since I can remember watching baseball.  I’m from CT, so not a local but I never miss a game on mlbtv and keep up with all the team news religiously. 

In the upcoming weeks, I’ll try to post some info on our outlook for the upcoming season and try to highlight some of our key players and transactions.  If there are any topics you specifically would like me to cover, feel free to let me know.