2022-23 Hot Stove League

It certainly appears that way. Gotta hope his bat comes back around to make up for his defensive shortcomings.

This might be the worst defensive infield we have seen in our lifetimes of fandom, especially with the elimination of the shift.

Or they could surprise the hell out of us and be stellar solid.

Or hope a LOT of balls get hit to Freddie.

GO DODGERS!!!

Dodgers Infielder Gets Rave Review from Top Prospect Evaluator

Story by Jeff J. Snider • Yesterday 7:00 PM

Dodgers prospect Miguel Vargas continues to hit, but it was his defensive improvement that really stood out in Keith Law's evaluation of him.

t's Top 100 Prospects list season, and the latest installment comes from Keith Law of The Athletic. The Dodgers have done well on all of these lists, but perhaps nowhere better than Law's list, where they have eight players in the top 100, more than any other team.

Coming in at number 23 overall and LA's number two is infielder Miguel Vargas. Vargas batted .304/.404/.511 in Triple-A last year, and while his short time in the big leagues wasn't as successful, everyone remains very high on him offensively, including Law.

Vargas was arguably the best hitter in the PCL last year, and certainly the best one under the age of 26, hitting .304/.404/.511 with just a 14.6 percent strikeout rate for Oklahoma City while playing four different positions, putting him in line to be the Dodgers’ second baseman this year if Gavin Lux slides over to short. ... We didn’t see his best bolts in the majors but he’s topped 110 mph off the bat in the minors and hits a ton of line drives, with a swing that might make him more of a 40 doubles/20 homers guy than a 30 homer guy, although either way he’s likely to post OBPs in the upper .300s.

Let's see, an OBP in the high .300s, a fair number of homers, and a ton of doubles. Can you make a career out of that? We can look no further than Freddie Freeman to see that's absolutely the recipe to be a big star. In fact, Vargas's .304/.404/.511 line in the minors last year was very similar to Freeman's .325/.407/.511.

The concern about Vargas has always been where he would play defensively. Last year, Law wrote that Vargas had only a small chance of staying at third base and was likely destined for first base. This year? Well, the tone is different.

Vargas has always been able to hit, but his body has improved substantially since he first broke out in 2019, when scouts questioned whether he’d get too heavy or slow-footed for third base; now he’s a plus runner underway and there’s no doubt he could stay at third or handle second.

"No doubt"? We'll take that, for sure. Add it all up, and Law sees a star in Vargas.

I think he’ll be ... a high-OBP hitter who smashes a ton of doubles, maybe getting to 50 or so in his peak years, with solid-average defense at second or third, but maybe has years where he hits “only” 15-18 homers and is quietly excellent instead.

Sounds like Law sees a floor of "quietly excellent," which is why we're all so excited about Vargas.

It’s COMPLETELY unrealistic as long as Daisy is piloting the ship. He has been handed the best team in the entire league since taking over for the original DDF.

Yet he has only one title in a shortened season to show for it.

Sure - you can certainly say that he was “cheated” out of two more, but some of his “decisions” in those series ALSO cost us games and in a best of seven series, one stupid decision leading to an L can and did lead to “close - but no cigar”.

Unfortunately, the puppet and his master can do no wrong in the eyes of this ownership group and if we end up dead last in the division this year with 60 or 70 wins, it’ll be attributed to this “youth movement” and “growing pains”, rather than their incompetence.

I was never a fan of the hiring and nearly a decade later that has not changed. I wonder if we could hire Bauer’s Ho to pull the same shit on Daisy as she did on Trevor?

I’ll set up the Go Fund Me page and make the first contribution myself!

GO DODGERS!!!

Hernández: Julio Urías proved he can be the Dodgers' ace. Now they must pay him like one

Opinion by Dylan Hernández • 3h ago

Don’t mistake his humility for weakness. Don’t confuse his silence for contentment.

Julio Urías has pride.

Listen to him carefully. It’s there.

“I always try to give respect to whomever deserves it,” Urías said in Spanish. “I try to do my thing and hopefully they also carry their part, no?”

He was talking about the Dodgers and how this could be his final season with them. He will be a free agent next winter.

The Dodgers haven’t always treated the 26-year-old the way teams typically treat pitchers of his stature, and now the only way they can show him the respect he craves might be to pay him more than owner Mark Walter and the front office would like.

Urías was clearly the Dodgers’ top pitcher last year, but the team waited until five days after its regular-season finale to name him the Game 1 starter for its National League Division Series against the San Diego Padres.

The year before that, when Urías won 20 games in the regular season, the Dodgers deployed him as a reliever in two of his four playoff appearances.

Urías has never complained about how the Dodgers have used him and manager Dave Roberts basically called him the staff ace over the weekend, but enough minor slights have piled up over the years to raise questions about how much the franchise values him.

What Urías means to the Dodgers should be obvious, and if they don’t realize what they have in him, it’s just another example of them being so smart to the point of being stupid.

Urías was the NL leader in earned-run average last year. His 37 wins over the previous two seasons are the most in baseball.

As a Mexican pitcher in Los Angeles, he also provides the Dodgers with an invaluable link to the community, an extension of Fernando Valenzuela’s legacy to which they paid tribute by announcing the No. 34 jersey would be retired.

David Vassegh, who hosts the postgame talk show on the Dodgers’ flagship radio station, was the co-emcee of the team’s FanFest on Saturday. Tasked with maintaining a festive atmosphere at Dodger Stadium, Vassegh did what people often do to liven up crowds: He stated an opinion that he knew was shared by virtually the entire audience.

With Urías on the main stage next to him, Vassegh called out, “We want Julio a Dodger for life, don’t we?”

The rhetorical question elicited the response Vassegh anticipated, the ballpark suddenly sounding as if Urías had struck out a batter with two outs and the bases loaded.

The fans’ wishes alone won’t keep him here, of course.

His complicated relationship with the Dodgers has likely diminished the possibility of him accepting a hometown discount.

He certainly will have options on the open market, his age making him particularly attractive. His agent, Scott Boras, pointed to how Max Scherzer was 30 when he signed a seven-year, $210-million contract with the Washington Nationals in 2015. Another one of Boras’ clients, Stephen Strasburg, was 31 when he inked a seven-year, $245-million deal after the 2019 season, also with the Nationals.

(Strasburg pitched in 8 more games the rest of his career.)

A former teenage prodigy who broke into the major leagues at 19, Urías will be 27 next winter.

“He offers a team the utter prime of his career,” Boras said.

Six pitchers have signed deals worth more than $200 million. Each of them had already registered more than 1,200 innings between the regular season and the playoffs, and that includes Clayton Kershaw, who landed a $215-million contract after just five-plus years of major league service.

Urías has only 658 innings to his name.

The Dodgers have something to do with that, as their cautious approach with him early in his career limited the mileage on his arm. Why shouldn’t they be the team that takes advantage of that?

(Shoulder surgery also knocked him out for a year & a half.). 

Urías maintained his usual soft-spoken demeanor Saturday when answering questions about his future.

“Right now, I’m focused on playing,” he said. “My representatives and [the team] will have their time to talk, but right now, I’m 100% focused on the field.”

He restated how much he enjoys playing in front of heavily Mexican and Mexican American crowds at Dodger Stadium, but when asked if he has thought about how this could be his last season in Los Angeles, he replied, “That’s not something you can hide. Obviously, I’ll try to maximize my focus on baseball, and later, what has to happen will happen.”

The Dodgers shouldn’t have to think about what that is, regardless of whether they plan to be a part of the Shohei Ohtani sweepstakes next winter. They can afford both players. There isn’t another player in baseball who is more perfectly suited to play for a particular team than Urías is for the Dodgers.

Urías sounds as if he knows what he’s worth, but does the front office? The answer will have significant ramifications for the Dodgers, both on the field and off.

The Dodgers Are Still Paying for Their Trevor Bauer Mistake

Los Angeles released the pitcher last month after his domestic violence suspension ended, but his signing is still impacting the organization.

TOM VERDUCCI4 HOURS AGO

Editors’ note: This story contains graphic accounts of domestic violence and sexual assault. If you or someone you know is a survivor of sexual assault or domestic violence, contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673 or the Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233.

Trevor Bauer is gone from the Dodgers, but the mistake of signing him continues to impact them. President of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said last week he expects the team to remain over the first luxury tax threshold this year, a remnant of the reduced suspension ruling by an arbitrator that left the Dodgers on the hook for $22.5 million in salary to Bauer, or $24.5 million in dead competitive balance tax money.

With plans to fold young players into their roster this year from a flush farm system, the Dodgers considered an opportunity to get under the $233 million first tax threshold and reset their tax rate as a first-time offender for 2024. But after the Bauer ruling, and after multiyear deals last week for Miguel Rojas and Tony Gonsolin, they have crept to $238 million.

Sitting barely above the threshold as a repeat tax offender is the worst possible position. You either a) reset the luxury tax rate by getting under the threshold, thereby saving millions, as they did in 2018, when they won 12 fewer games and still won the pennant, or b) blow past it. You don’t tip-toe over it as a multiple-time offender—a small gain with a huge tax implication coming in ’24, when the Dodgers will try to sign Shohei Ohtani and retain Julio Urías.

Tax rates are set by payrolls at the end of the season. Friedman said he does not anticipate trading salary to limbo under the threshold. That means the Dodgers are more likely to add payroll during the season, especially because the Padres right now have the better team on paper.

MLB suspended Bauer last April for two full seasons after a nine-month investigation found that he had violated the league’s domestic violence policy. An arbitrator ruled on Dec. 22 to reduce that suspension to 194 games, essentially giving Bauer credit for time served—he was placed on administrative leave shortly after a San Diego woman filed a petition seeking a restraining order against him on June 29, 2021—and restoring all but 50 days of his pay this season. The suspension remains the longest for domestic violence in league history. The Dodgers designated Bauer for assignment 14 days after his reinstatement and released him after no team claimed him off waivers. He is still a free agent.

The San Diego woman said Bauer assaulted her during two encounters of rough sex that began as consensual. She said he choked her until she lost consciousness, sodomized her and punched her hard enough that she sought treatment at a hospital. “I felt like my soul left my body, and I was terrified,” the woman said during a hearing in August 2021, according to the Associated Press. Bauer and his representatives have denied the allegations.

The woman was denied the restraining order after the August hearing. The court ultimately found that the woman’s claims were “materially misleading,” and Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Dianna Gould-Saltman said the only evidence of anything happening while the woman was unconscious was from being “hit on the butt.” In February 2022 the L.A. County district attorney’s office announced it would not press charges against Bauer. The joint domestic violence agreement with the players association gives MLB the right to suspend a player even if charges have not been filed.

As Sports Illustrated previously reported, the league also looked into allegations made by at least two other women, who The Washington Post reported shared similar accounts about Bauer. He and his representatives have denied those, as well. Authorities did not press charges in either case.

The Post reported that all three women initially participated in the arbitration but that one, in Cleveland, dropped out last summer, citing “personal and family matters.” The Post also reported that the third woman, who is in Columbus, Ohio, “described what she saw as a last-ditch effort by Bauer to embarrass or intimidate her before she testified. She said [his attorney’s] private investigator contacted former acquaintances with no relation to the case to ask about her dating history, including whether she had past relationships with professional athletes.”

Bauer has sued the San Diego woman—as well as at least two media outlets that reported on the allegations—for defamation. In July the San Diego woman countersued him, alleging battery and sexual assault. In November, a judge denied Bauer’s petition to dismiss the countersuit.

Two years ago this week, the Dodgers signed Bauer to a three-year, $102 million contract. The move was controversial at the time due to Bauer’s history of harassing people online and promoting harmful conspiracy theories.

In January 2019, he responded to a Texas State student on Twitter, trolled her for more than a day and exposed that she had consumed alcohol underage. His followers tormented her to the point that she told USA Today she spent the next three days crying.

In a tweet posted Nov. 10, 2016, Bauer echoed a quote falsely attributed to philanthropist George Soros rooted in antisemitism. He amplified the racist conspiracy theory that former President Barack Obama was not born in the United States in a tweet from Feb. 10, 2017. During a start in May ’18, he carved “BD 911” into the Wrigley Field mound—which afterward he claimed said “BD 91.1” and was not a reference to the "Bush Did 9/11" conspiracy theory.

In the end, the Dodgers will wind up paying him $61 million for 17 starts. The overall cost will be much greater than that.

Dodgers: Chris Taylor Shares on How He's Tried to Improve His Swing This Offseason

Story by Ricardo Sandoval • 3h ago

CT3 has been working on his swing all offseason long

The offseason the time where players improve their game, whether that’s lifting weights, staying in shape, or working on your overall game. It’s where you make your best and most work as a big leaguer.

LA didn’t finish where they had envisioned last season, especially Dodgers utility star, Chris Taylor. Taylor had one of his worst season as a member of the Boys in Blue only posting his lowest average as a Dodger, .221 and posting a Dodger-low in slugging at .373.

From All-Star one year to a forgettable season the next; Taylor is prepared to make a big splash in 2023.

CT3 spoke with the media on Saturday during Fan Fest at Dodger Stadium and told reporters how he’s improved his swing in the offseason.

“A lot of our guys have done that. Everybody to different amounts. I think just going there for a day and hearing what they have to say, some valuable information. If you’re not taking advantage of all the resources given to you, what are you really doing? … I think it would be very stubborn to not give it a shot.”

Taylor could not find his groove in 2022, as he struck out more often than not with a rate of 35.2%.

All that is in the past, as Taylor is doing all he can so he won’t repeat that kind of performance.

The 32-year-old credited the Driveline Baseball facility for his improvement. According to their website, Driveline Baseball is a data-driven baseball player development organization that helps train players through state-of-the-art motion capture assessments, physical therapy evaluations, and specialized assessment-retest-based pitching, hitting, and high-performance coaching.

Los Angeles will need everything Taylor has and more in 2023 due to what LA lost during the offseason.

Every Dodger fan is looking forward to the new season and hoping for an All-Star-level-type season from the utility star.

Max Muncy breaks down his 3B comfort level amid Justin Turner’s departure

Story by Ryan Bologna • Tuesday

The Los Angeles Dodgers infield is going to look different this season after the departures of Trea Turner and Justin Turner, but Max Muncy does not seem to be uncomfortable with the idea of playing third base full-time.



“I got really comfortable over there last year,” Max Muncy said in an interview with Alanna Rizzo on MLB Network. “Third is a position I’ve played several times over the years and I’ve always said when you’re playing there once a week or once every two weeks it’s a hard position to kind of adjust to and get used to.”

Muncy played 713 innings at third base in 2022 according to Fangraphs, much more than he played in any season prior. The most he played at the position in prior seasons was 271.2 innings in 2018. Muncy stated that he is more comfortable at third base due to how much he played the position in 2022. He also said he has no preference for where he plays, he just wants to be in the lineup.

“I don’t care where I’m playing as long as I’m in the lineup and they know that,” Muncy said, via MLB Network.

Gavin Lux will likely be filling the void at shortstop that is left by Trea Turner, and Muncy was asked about how he thinks Gavin Lux will perform at that position.

“I think Luxy is finally going to get a chance to play the position that he’s played his whole life, and I think that’s something that has kind of, maybe effected him a little bit over the last couple years,” Muncy said via MLB Network.

Muncy said that it is not easy to play a variety of positions and has experience doing that for the Dodgers, moving between first, second and third base in his time with the team. Now he is projected to be the full-time third baseman with Justin Turner’s departure.

While the Dodgers infield will look different this season, Muncy is optimistic that the group will perform well in part due to multiple players having continuity at the positions they will be playing.