In an emotional night during which Nick Adenhart was honored, Boston dropped to the lowest you will see them all season—last place—after a 6-3 loss to the Angels.

Tim Wakefield was solid through six, giving up three runs on six hits, but Jered Weaver was better giving the Sox only one run—unearned—through 6.2 innings. After a rare poor performance by Justin Masterson in the 7th, a two run 8th could not pull the Red Sox out of the hole.

Reigning MVP Dustin Pedroia had a hit in three at-bats, a sign he might be coming out of his slump. Kevin Youkilis was 2 for 4 as he continues to tear the cover off the ball. It seems like him and Pedroia are evening each other out. For every line drive in the gap that Youkilis hits, Pedroia hits a line drive right at someone, like his scorcher into the glove of a leaping Chone Figgins.

I didn’t tune into this game until about the 4th inning since I wasn’t very pumped up for baseball after a 5-4 OT Bruins win over the Canadiens on Thursday which was Boston-Montreal at its best and ugliest. After the disappointing game on Friday, I’m still not very pumped up for baseball. I’ll still probably watch the game on FOX though, unless I go to the Boston Blazers fan fest at TD BanknorthGarden. Post-opening week April is always a dull time for me, especially when both the Celtics and Bruins are doing so well. Come the Yankees series on the 24th I’ll be back into it.

Red Sox Notes

Brad Penny makes his Sox debut today.

Jed Lowrie is just 1 for 11 so far on the season.

After three poor games against Tampa, Jacoby Ellsbury was 2 for 4 in Friday’s game.

Sox color commentator Jerry Remy fell ill before the game, leading NESN to bring in some guests to the booth, my personal favorite being the always entertaining color commentator for the Angels, Rex Hudler.

 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.