2011 may have been the most tumultuous season in Dodger history, but it was still a winning one as the club finished with an 82-79 record. Here's the latest from Chavez Ravine….
- "Andre Ethier's quirky personality has begun to wear thin on teammates and staff alike," several sources have told ESPN Los Angeles' Tony Jackson. While Ethier would bring back a solid return on the trade market, Jackson doesn't think a move is likely to happen since Ned Colletti said the club needs Ethier's bat.
- Also from Tony Jackson, a source close to the Dodgers says assistant GM Logan White was recently in Japan scouting left-hander Tsuyoshi Wada of the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks. Wada will be a free agent this winter and is known to be looking at a move to Major League Baseball. NPB Tracker's Patrick Newman compared Wada to Dallas Braden, pitching-wise.
- Don Mattingly's first season may be "more of a managerial audition than a chance for Mattingly to establish himself as a Los Angeles fixture in the dugout," writes T.J. Simers for the Los Angeles Times. Simers suspects a new owner will want to "fumigate the place" of past Frank McCourt decisions, including hiring a new manager.
- Alex Tabin has been hired as the Dodgers' new Director of Baseball Contracts, Research and Operations, according to a club press release. As Steve Dilbeck of the L.A. Times explains, Tabin will fill many of the duties handled by former assistant GM Kim Ng.
- The Dodgers will have roughly $105MM committed to their 2012 payroll, projects Jon Weisman for ESPN Los Angeles. This could mean L.A. will have little to spend this winter, especially if any extra money goes into multiyear extensions for Ethier, Clayton Kershaw, and/or Matt Kemp.
Can a Dodgers fan please tell me what “quirky personality” means?
“Quirky personality” is the writer’s way of saying he’s very full of himself…a Blue diva. Sadly, I started to really see that come out over the last few weeks of the season until he was taken out. Granted he had a knee injury, but I recall him saying the same thing in March that Manny Ramirez said a year prior: “This is probably my last year in a Dodger uniform”, like he knew he wanted to not come back.
Just get rid of mccourt, everything else is SECONDARY!
If the ladder part of the season is any indication, the Dodgers DON’T need Ethier’s bat.
Seems to me what Most People want is a quick end to all of this and for The Dodgers to get back on Track…I’m not sure there is a quick end to all of this as long as Selig wants to be adversarial to McCourt.Selig has threatened to Disenfranchise The Dodgers if McCourt is allowed to Auction off The Dodgers TV Rights…This would mean a sudden Hole in The Schedule… For Example all Teams playing The Dodgers would suddenly not play on those Days… Does this make any Sense to even say out loud ? Yet Many People can not see that Selig is every bit as Toxic ( if not more so ) than McCourt in this Mess.Selig is going to Drive this one right into The High Courts Hands if he’s not Careful and The Commissioners Office may become in Jeppardy in that case…Selig has over reacted the entire way causing this mess… but only since it went public due to the Divorce. While The Fans only learned of the McCourts activities because of the Divorce Seligs office was aware of Those same activities all the way so, why didn’t he do something about this much much earlier ??????
Selig doesn’t want ownership drama to cloud over the Dodgers for another season, so he’s threatening to disenfranchise as an ultimatum. I think it’s perfectly fair.
I would gladly take Ethier’s “quirky personality” on the Giants
PLEASE KEEP HIM IN DODGER BLUE!! Also Simmers was the one that was reporting all of the Ethier stuff.. Im sure he was frustrated it happens look @ Kemp last year.. Simmers was stirring the pot on that situation last year too.. Hope he comes back and does the same thing Kemp did after his down year..
Please don’t keep Ethier in Dodger blue. I’ve been talking about Ethier’s “quirky personality” for A LONG TIME. Even when he was doing well, he would say he hoped to play in Arizona in the future. Please! Get rid of this guy. Trade him away, lets get some prospects and use the money to get Fielder, who at least is good friends with Kemp and Gwynn and is familiar to So Cal.
True he’s never going to win the Tommy Lasorda Bleed Dodger Blue award, but at least he hits a ball with a bat instead of trying to hit someone else with it. Also remembering how down everybody was on Kemp this time last year. Ball players are people too.
Its not that he’s just had a bad year though. For years he has talked about what team he’s going to play for next. Then even before his disappointing season started he began to talk about not expecting to be here next year, and he’s continued to say things like that through out the season, up to his recent rant on management making him play hurt (which Mattingly denied; say what you want about his managerial skills, but I don’t think Don is lying when he says Ethier never told him he was hurt enough to not play). Even when Kemp was having a poor year, you never really heard him say bad things about the team, you never really heard him say anything about wanting to play elsewhere.
I understand that Ethier is a good player, and he’s allowed to be crapped out, just like the rest of us. But, according to this article, he’s already starting to rub people the wrong way in the clubhouse. To me, that is more dangerous than him having a down year; its bad chemistry and it makes for a disjoint team.
I was already suspecting that he was a clubhouse cancer, and it seems like, at the very least, he’s in the beginning stages of becoming one. I dunno why we don’t make all parties happy, trade him, and move on. If the second half of season is any indication, we don’t need Ethier to win, so if we can save money on him, and spend it elsewhere (read Fielder) then we’d get an automatic upgrade to the team; and we’d get the added bonus of good chemistry.
I’m more concerned about the dynamics of the team than with how Ethier as an individual is producing. Even if he had a .300 average and 25+ HRs, the bad attitude negates all that if the rest of the team isn’t vibin’ with him. You can argue that if he’s having that kind of year, he wouldn’t be as “quirky,” but like I said, history says Ethier can be having a good season and still be unhappy playing in LA.
He simply DOES not want to play in LA. I don’t understand why people would want ANYONE who doesn’t want to be here, to stay here.
I can’t pretend to know what he wants. Maybe he really doesn’t know himself, except of course to be paid a lot of money (like all ballplayers). We only hear bits and pieces of the story second and third-hand. Trying to understand the whole picture from those fragments is like trying to paint a landscape through a keyhole. Funny you should compare to Kemp, though, since he and his agent had that very-public feud with the coaching staff last year. Pretty clearly he was saying “it’s them or me.” Lots of people were really down on Kemp not only for his poor play in 2010 but for his obvious lack of respect for somebody in management. Led to many calls for him to be traded. Sound familiar?
All ballplayers should learn to shut up when subjects like where they want to play or how much deserve to be paid come up. Some do, some never do. A loose-lipped player is a long way from necessarily being a “clubhouse cancer.” We just don’t know if that’s really true. And finally, trying to trade Ethier now is trading him probably as low as he’ll ever go, after a season-ending injury and surgery.
So I say the best baseball move is to keep Ethier for now. He may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer but he knows how to play the game.
I count myself lucky that I do not have to read Simmers’ “work” more than a few times on MLBTR. Is he really this stupid all the time or does MLBTR just highlight his foolishness? “Fumigate the place” by getting rid of Mattingly, who by all accounts did a fine job managing this team, despite all the ownership problems.
I have read (and posted) less idiotic opinions here.
He really is that bad. All the time. In Southern California, those who are old enough to remember, long for the likes of Jim Murray.
Trade either and mattingly to red sox for that stud rookie catcher and Terry Francona