Good job new “Boss”. Might I suggest…
1a) Give Gene Michaels a 5 year deal to stay on as Cashman’s chief advisor.
3a) Quickly increase the seating upwards, shoot for around 58,000 to 60,000 instead of the reduced numbers plan.
4) Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes!
5) Actually I like the idea of Pauly as the hitting coach, maybe see if Willie would take back third until he gets a job offer.
6) CC and maybe Texiera. Giambi is finally gone at the end of this season.
Continue the youth program. Continue the heavy emphasis on developing pitchers.
Find a damn (good) lefty bullpen guy, even if you have to break down and trade for him.
Change the radio broadcasters. Sterling and Waldman is not working.
Try to get Al Lieter or David Cone to become more fulltime announcers. They are both very good and can and do teach about pitching. Either would make a suitable replacement for Jim Kaat.
Institute a system wide policy to teach bunting in the minors and ensure even the pitchers know how to bunt. If you can’t find some great instructors, higher some people to consolidate all the bunting tips that the “Scooter” gave over the decades on radio and TV.
Employ someone to roam the minors for older pitchers that are no longer prospects and see if they can be taught a knuckler.
Enjoy those owners’ box seats to the final game at the stadium. The damn tickets are too expensive for a non-owner that failed to get a season ticket plan this year.
Do not spend the 80 million coming off the payroll this year. Only spend about half of it.
I think there’s more money to be made fixing the games than playing them fairly. So, everybody gets an implant so they can hear my instructions on exactly how to fuck up.
I disagree. Please tell me what made CePodesta worth paying a bloody penny. All I can see is his total disregard for anything remotely resembling “clubhouse unity.” In any case, under his tenure the Dodgers were about 3 seconds from mass murder any given day. Fuck him. Let somebody else deal with his computer stats.
Lower all food and beer prices by at least 20%.
Give Torre a free rein.
Structure all contracts so that they pay off extremely well for production, and not at all for rocks. If you aren’t producing, you aren’t getting the bucks. Don’t like it? Go play for the Royals.
Build a robotic Furcal. We have the technology.
Put Vin Scully on a “no travel” contract, then pay the best doctors in town to keep him alive forever. The Dodgers without Vin is…unthinkable.
Shoot any other GM who talks to Martin, even just to say “Hello.”
Get rid of the new seats on the field and return Dodger Stadium to the pithers park it once was.
Kidnap a young power hitter.
Stop trying to steal pitchers from SF. They’re soiled goods, and never worth the cost. Learn to hit against them instead.
Since the management seems to know what they’re doing, I’m not doing too much, aside from the lounging/partying in the owner’s box: making Schilling teach Manny how to blog and/or creating the ‘Manny being Manny’ reality show, bringing back the coke bottle on the light pole, and starting a mind-control/blackmail/bribery of owners campaign to eliminate the DH. Plus giving a bonus to the guy who thought of wearing green jerseys for one game to celebrate the Celtics.
Of course the main goal is to try and swap the team for the local hockey team, where ownership change, even to a not very knowledgeable owner, would improve the team immensely.
I’ll take the Reds, the storied but struggling franchise from Cincinnati.
I would retain Walt Jocketty, as he’s just arrived and already starting to make things happen.
Unload Adam Dunn and Griffey for anything you can get. We cannot afford their salary and neither is productive at this stage of their career in the NL. They both have DH written all over them for the remainder of their careers. Dunn is just horrible in the outfield, and Griffey just isn’t speedy anymore due to injuries.
Sign Edinson Volquez to as long a contract as possible.
Move Joey Votto into left field to make room for the newly-acquired Texeira at first base. Pay Texeira a veritable mountain of cash (now that Griff and Dunn are gone, that clears up about 22 million a year alone) for a five year deal.
Hire more scouts. Pay more attention to the Latino leagues to scrape for talent, especially at the pitching positions.
Institute a system of “fireside chats” with the fans once a week on the most popular local radio show/TV station. Keep fans happy and in the loop on all but the most secret player acquisitions, etc. Continually encourage fans to come down to the park (GABP attendance is horrible…average is like 20k per game, capacity is like 48k with SRO included), using inventive and fun promotions.
Lock up Jay Bruce. Lock up Jeff Keppinger.
Get rid of Ryan Freel and Corey Patterson.
I wouldn’t be afraid to continually ply the waters of the minors, particularly in a season like this one where the playoffs are just about out of reach. No sense in letting a guy languish if he’s good.
Keep Dusty Baker on a short leash. Fire Dick Pole (I know, I know) the pitching coach and hire a worthy replacement.
The entire knock against DePodesta’s alleged disregard for “clubhouse unity” is that he traded away Paul Lo Duca, good old Mr. Heart and Soul. I swear Lo Duca must have a PR department bigger than Coca-Cola. What all his critics conveniently forgot is that after he traded Mr. Heart and Soul, the Dodgers won their division, while Mr. Heart and Soul’s new team, the Marlins, didn’t get any better. (Mr. Heart and Soul later presided over the Great Met Choke of 2007.)
Honestly, they’;re major league ballplayers. If they can’t get along, who cares, and if they’re not busting their ass on the field, blame them. As evidenced by more teams than I care to count, you don’t have to be buddies to win.
And he got Brad Penny for Mr. Heart and Soul. Good trade. J.P. Ricciardi couldn’t pull of a trade like that if the opposing GM was on Ecstasy.
Huh. Yeah, I’d take Paul DePodesta in a heartbeat.
His critical decisions in an indefensibly short two years on the job in LA:
Trading Paul LoDuca, an aging catcher who has since sandwiched two horrible seasons around an adequate year and is currently hitting .190, slugging .254, and injured, for Brad Penny, the Dodgers best pitcher last year and second-best in '05 and '06 and a guy who is still only 30 years old.
Signing Derek Lowe, the Dodgers best pitcher during the two seasons when Penny wasn’t. Lowe is still with the Dodgers, still their best pitcher, and still making under $10M annually (less than, say, Barry Zito or AJ Burnett, who suck).
Refusing to re-sign Adrian Beltre after his big 2005. Since Seattle gave him $12M a year, Beltre has had on base percentages of .303, .328, .319, and .313, and has never slugged .500. At third base. Good call there.
Signing Jeff Kent to a contract that paid him way less than Beltre got. Kent has since produced at a level way above Beltre (although Kent looks pretty cooked now).
Signing JD Drew to a contract that allowed him to walk after two years. In retrospect, this was probably not a good move, but given Drew’s injury history at the time, it was pretty understandable.
So of his five major decisions, four were excellent and one was good but flawed (signing Drew was a good move; giving him the option to leave was less so).
Compare DePodesta to his successor, who has completely hamstrung what frankly should be the best team in the National League. He’s paying Juan Pierre $7.5M+ to take at bats away from Matt Kemp and Andre Ethier; last year he paid Luis Gonzalez another $7M to do the same. In 2007 he handed $8M+ to Nomar Garciaparra to soak up 400 at bats at a slugging percentage of .371 as a corner infielder, while James Loney played half a season and Andy LaRoche rotted in Triple A. He paid $15M to Jason Schmidt to be a paperweight,
And now, this year, he added Andruw Jones, who was just awful last year in Atlanta, for a 2-year contract worth $36 million.
I’ll just flat out say it. If the Dodgers hadn’t fired Paul DePodesta, the combined $100M or so that Ned Colletti has given to horrible veterans for the invaluable service of blocking the team’s best prospects would have been spent on players who can actually play. Combine those with more at bats from Kemp, Loney, Ethier, and (probably) LaRoche, and the Dodgers would have won the West last year and could do it again this year.
Ok, the highly overrated Primanti Brothers are banished from PNC Park forevermore (Primanti’s is a horrible Pittsburgh steak sandwich franchise that, for some odd reason has been given permission to sell their sh*t sandwiches at the stadium).
Most other food vendors will also be banished and replaced by shops that sell decent food. High concession prices I guess I can expect at sporting events, but why does the food have to suck so bad?
Ok, moving on to the team:
After every loss, the fans will be permitted to whip the players and/or give them electric shocks for $5 a pop ($3 if they lost by more than 5 runs) while Jason Bay apologizes over the PA system. Insincere apologies will result in Jason being shot in the head with one of those baseball cannons.
I don’t have anything else to add (I am not much of a baseball fan for obvious reasons).
:smack: :mad: