Results tagged ‘ ian kennedy ’
Mar-Lo, Bla-De, and P-Mart
If I was Mark Loretta’s agent, I’d tell him to begin calling himself Mar-Lo, and run around quoting Christopher Marlowe plays, claiming to have actually been Shakespeare, and wearing Elizabethan Breeches.
Just a thought.
According to Jon Heyman, talk around Dodgers camp is of Mark Loretta being traded to the Yankees, possibly for young pitcher Ian Kennedy.
On the one hand, the move makes sense for the Dodgers, despite the fact that they just signed the utilityman Loretta, and have yet to dress him up in his pretty blue and white and trot him out for a real game. He’s basically a more-polished version of Blake DeWitt, with more tread on his tires. When we signed Orlando Hudson, the backup infielders positions became much more interesting.
C: Russell Martin
1B: James Loney
2B: Orlando Hudson
3B: Casey Blake
SS: Rafael Furcal
LF: Manny Ramirez
CF: Matt Kemp
RF: Andre Ethier
Bench
C Brad Ausmus
IF Blake DeWitt
IF Mark Loretta/Chin-Lung Hu/Tony Abreu
OF Juan Pierre
OF Jamie Hofmann/Xavier Paul/Jason Repko/Delwyn Young
DeWitt, Ausmus, and Pierre are sure things for the bench. The remaining infield spot would go to Loretta, Hu, or Abreu. Loretta is the better of the three, but he’s a movable piece. If you can get something from him in a trade, you’re probably better off doing so and plugging Hu in as the second utilityman.
On the other hand, this is the stupidest imaginable trade we could make right now. The Dodgers need pitching. Our rotation right now:
Chad Billingsley
Hiroki Kuroda
Randy Wolf
Clayton Kershaw
Jason Schmidt/Claudio Vargas/Shawn Estes/Jeff Weaver/My Grandmother/Tommy Lasorda
Billingsley, Kuroda, and Kershaw average 250 major league innings pitched between them. Combined, they’ve thrown just 728.2, five more than 24-year-old left-handed Scott Kazmir. Adding Kennedy, who has thrown fewer than 60, is not the best move we can make.
Kennedy is a promising young major league-ready pitching prospect. That’s an invaluable commodity. The problem is that so is half of our current rotation. The point at which you trade Mark Loretta for Ian Kennedy is about the same as the point where you just decide to promote James McDonald and add him to the rotation, already.
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The year was 1993. Bill Clinton had been elected president for the first time a few months earlier, and the Dodgers looked positively stacked, with a killer Opening Day lineup:
CF Brett Butler
RF Darryl Strawberry
LF Eric Davis
3B Tim Wallach
1B Eric Karros
C Mike Piazza
2B Jody Reed
And the Bulldog himself, Orel Hershiser, toeing the mound. Orel led a very talented starting rotation, with Tom Candiotti, Kevin Gross, Ramon Martinez, and Pedro Astacio. Jim Gott headed up a very good bullpen, which also featured Roger McDowell and Todd Worrell.
Anticipation was heavy for Tommy Lasorda’s team. They’d go on to finish 81-81, fourth place, 23 games out in the West.
But there were some bright spots. Not the least of them Ramon Martinez’s kid brother, a slight little 21-year-old righty who wore #45; who had a jheri curl, bad English, and a vicious competitive streak.
I wonder if he’s as good as his brother? we all asked ourselves.
His name was Pedro. Perhaps you’ve heard of him.
He only threw 107 innings for the Dodgers that year, but still finished ninth in Rookie of the Year voting after going 10-5 with a 2.61 ERA and striking out 119.
Then, because we couldn’t bear the thought of having a dominant right-hander who had ace material at just 22 years old, we traded him to the Montreal Expos for young second baseman Delino DeShields.
And we won the NL West. But it didn’t really count, because there was this whole players’ strike and there were no playoffs. Which is too bad, because we obviously would have won it all after that kind of a blockbuster trade.
Now, after a few noteworthy years with the Expos, Mets, and Red Sox, Ramon Martinez’s brother is unemployed. He played in the World Baseball Classic – 6 innings in 2 games for the hapless Dominican Republic team, which is now out of the tournament. He struck out 6, tying him for fourth-most in the first round of the tournament, and didn’t walk any. A 0.00 ERA, a 0.17 WHIP, and a fastball that’s being clocked at 92 with the “old school tail” on it, according to Matthew Cerrone.
And here are the Dodgers, scratching their head and wondering if a fifth starter will fall from the heavens into their laps. They’re considering trading one of their key offseason acquisitions (who has a no-trade clause, by the way) for another unproven young starter in Ian Kennedy.
If only I could think of another candidate…
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