By the time this bidding is over, the Dodgers may be sold for near $2 billion and that could just as well be without the parking lots! (Although I feel any owner would be remiss to allow him to keep them and continue to pay a hefty price going forward). Yes, that’s right, $2 billion! One of the bids that lost out in the 1^st round put up a bid of $1.25 billion and lost!

 Do you have any idea what the Dodgers were worth at the beginning of the 2011 season? $800,000, and now they’ll more than likely be sold for double that! That’s totally incredible and it makes me wonder if this was his plan all along. Make himself so disliked that Selig would agree to sell the team on McCourt’s terms.

 The more I think about it, I have to say that McCourt may be a lot smarter than we’d like to admit. When he declared bankruptcy it was then I knew he was done as a Dodger owner because MLB rules don’t allow their owner to go into bankruptcy and keep the team but it seems that by going into bankruptcy, he was able to get the courts to settle the case in his favor.

 Think of it like this, if you’re Frank McCourt and you saw everything that Texas went through in 2010, ultimately getting sold for under market price to a lower bid that Selig approved, wouldn’t you say to yourself “I don’t want that to happen to me” if you owe millions of dollars that you can’t pay? Sure you do! And you make sure you control the whole process so you can get the most money you can!

 As much as I dislike McCourt, you have to admit he’s sly!

The week before it was revealed that NL MVP Ryan Bruan had failed two different steroid tests taken before and after the playoffs, which will result in a 50 game suspension.

So tell me, on one hand we have a player that seems to be addicted to some type of drug, whether it be aspirin or marijuana it doesn’t’ matter, he can’t kick it, it might be causing him to not be able to enter this country legally, because it’s getting ridiculous that he can’t seem to be able to get his visa on time for three straight years, I haven’t heard of any other major leaguer from his region have the same problem.

Then on the other hand we have Ryan Bruan, clearly a 1st time offender getting slammed by the media for violating the steroid policy in which there was just a heightened level of testosterone, which yes is an indicator of taking steroids but it could also be something else, we don’t know.

So which one is actually doing more harm to himself the supposed steroid user or the 2 time substance abuser? I’ll take the substance abuser, heck it’s affecting his personal life.

I think we’ve taken this steroid thing too seriously and it needs to be scaled back and baseball needs to rethink its priorities. There are a lot of young players who would love a shot at the major leagues who do it right, who abstain from substance abuse and PED’s and I think it’s time for stricter policies all around.

One of the two biggest prizes this winter, along with Albert Pujols, Fielder has yet to sign with a club, weeks after Pujols already did so with the LA Angels of Anaheim.

Prince doesn’t even appear to have had a serious discussion with any team yet, and several teams have already balked at his asking price and dropped out of the running. Fielder is believed to be asking for a contract very similar to the one Pujols received, to the tune of 10 years.

It’s the years, not so much the money, that have caused teams like the Cubs and Blue Jays to drop out. The main three teams that are left, at least publicly, are the Texas Rangers and Washington Nationals, as well as possibly the Baltimore Orioles, the latter of which would need him to come down significantly on his asking price.

Recently, though, another team has entered the Fielder speculation: the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Obviously, the Dodgers’ current ownership situation has prevented them from spending big on any free agent, and has led them to load up on journeyman types like Adam Kennedy and Chris Capuano, as well as second baseman Mark Ellis.

That doesn’t mean the Dodgers could be entirely out on Prince Fielder, though. Joel Sherman tweeted that there are several executives throughout the league that believe the Dodgers will be in the mix to sign Fielder, when talks finally start to get serious about the hefty first baseman.

There is also plenty of speculation that signing Prince could drive up the value of the Dodgers for a potential new owner, and that signing him would make the team even more attractive to prospective buyers.

The Nationals are still considered the favorite, by many, but it’s still a very intriguing situation to watch. There’s logic in the argument that Fielder could allow Frank McCourt to drive up the value of his franchise, which is expected to be sold within the next couple weeks.

Fielder has to be signed within the next month. Not literally, but he wants to be signed before camps open up at the end of February. As talks start to heat up, it’s clear that the Dodgers are a team you’ll want to keep an eye on.

Could we all be hoodwinked by Frank McCourt again? Is his plan to really sale the Dodgers or was he just bluffing so that the court could force a sale of the media rights so McCourt can get the money he needs to keep the Dodgers? That’s one of the many questions I’ve heard lately and it’s a good discussion.

You see, right now the Dodgers make up to $40 mil a year on their current TV deal, which is a freakin’ bargain compared to say the Angles who are getting over double. So what are the Dodgers really worth? Well, they’re estimated to make at a minimum $150 mil, which is more than enough to pay for a shiny new first baseman (which is why the Angels were able to afford King Al), and up to $200 mil.

So with Fox preparing to fight the recent ruling (ha, good luck) now you understand why they’re doing this. It’s not because it’s a contract or because they’re afraid of losing the Dodgers (which they are) it’s because they’re going to have to pony up an extra $100 mil to outbid other teams.

So all that being said, could McCourt use that money to pay off his debts and keep the team? Doubt it, he owes way too much money to his ex-wife and he needs the money from a sale of the team in order to pay it all off plus his debts.

Next question is could he do it? That’s a good question, I haven’t heard of any contract or written agreement between him and Major League Baseball stating he has to sell the team, so he could very well decide he wants to keep them as far as I know.

Would I welcome it? I don’t know, he’s been a jerk this year and he’s very unpopular in the city and with local legends like Magic Johnson, Steve Garvey and Orel Hershier part of groups to buy the team, why would anybody welcome him back?

To Live and Die In LA

“To Live and Die In LA, it’s the place to be,
You got to be there to know it, everybody wanna see.”

It seems free agents sure think so. The Dodgers have now signed this off-season:

SP Aaron Harang – 2 Years, $12 Mil

SP Chris Capuano – 2 Years, $10 Mil

2B Mark Ellis – 2 Years, $8.75 Mil

UTIL Jerry Hairston Jr. – 2 Years, $6 Mil

LF/1B Juan Rivera – 1 Year, $4.5 Mil

C Matt Treanor – 1 Year, $850K

INF Adam Kennedy – 1 Year, $800K

So that’s seven players going to a Dodger team who, by the way, is still in bankruptcy and at the beginning of this off-season said they wouldn’t have much money to spend. However, the front office has now committed nearly $18 million to those players for 2012.

Now…knowing Ned Colletti I know all of it isn’t being spent this season, he’s the master of deferred money which is alright to me. It just looks big but it really isn’t but the Dodgers will have a pretty solid team and it looks like Neddy boy is getting to be the master of getting overlooked and throw away players.

Or is it Los Angeles itself? LA is a great fun city, with skiing, deserts, beaches, valley’s, mountains, lakes and amusement parks all within a 2 hours drive of the city. There’s nothing in Southern California you can’t do and if you’re a GM that has to be your number 1 sell. Heck, the very fact that you don’t have to worry about rain outs should be a huge sell. Work out in 80 degree weather, not a lot of wind, easy freeways (compared to the east coast) and Hollywood, how could a player not want to come here?

P.S. I generally tend to write my articles ahead of time. I wrote this on the 6^th and since then the Angles have added Albert Pujols and C.J. Wilson and the Lakers traded for but were denied Chris Paul who may sue the league for blocking the trade, thus proving my point, LA is definitely the place to be!

Come on, you can’t tell me the prospect of not only a 5 time World Champion (meaning he likes to win), leader, community hero but also a successful self made business man owning part of the Dodgers and having a say in what goes on doesn’t excite you, I know it excites me!

Basically this is his group, which by the way is the only group to really come out and say “yeah, this is us, this is how we can afford it and this is how we’d do it.

Money Man  Mark Walter (who?), CEO of  Guggenheim Partners, a private global financial services firm, would be the money man. The group is called Guggenheim Baseball Management, which is good because that mean it’s separate from the main company and will have it’s own budget, awesome.

Baseball Operations – Stan Kasten, former president of the Atlanta Braves and Washington Nationals. BTW, Kasten became president in 1986, and it was from 1987 to 2003 that the Braves won more games than any other team in baseball.

Magic would be either the president or vice president in both the business side and recruiting players. Now…I’m not sure how well he knows baseball but he’s a smart businessman and not someone who’s very prideful and I’m sure you’ll see him with a good staff of evaluators so this doesn’t scare me. What is cool though is think about this. You’re a free agent, say Prince Fielder and you get a call from MAGIC JOHNSON asking you to come to the Dodgers…that’s gotta raise a few hairs on the back of your head.

This is definitely my favorite team, especially since they’re so open. I was high on Gilbert and friends and before then Orel and Steve but it just doesn’t reach this star power and smarts in business and finance.

Go figure it took a horrible owner to get people to care about owning the Dodgers. Matt Kemp and Clayton Kershaw’s stellar numbers last season I’m sure helped as well. You don’t invest in something without a future and the Dodgers have a great future ahead of them.

Then Colletti signs someone that’s overlooked to be a utility player, and the guy outperforms his contract (Carroll, Miles, etc).

So with Mark Ellis having a pretty bad injury history and Kennedy a career of performing for good teams, Kennedy will become a more valuable piece to the Dodgers than Ellis, heck there’s a good chance Kennedy plays more at second than Ellis this season.

No way, he just hits the ball too hard. The only way I see him getting 50-50 is if he runs up his walks more, gets less doubles and triples and if he hits 3rd the whole season, which I’m not sure will happen. Also, he plays center field and that’s a position that can be hard on the legs, if you look at his stats, he usually hit better in the first few innings, tapering off toward the end. I can see 50-50 if he were in LF or RF but not CF.

On the other hand, I love that he’s setting such lofty goals, it means he’ll work hard to reach them and he’ll continue to earn the money he’s gotten. Just don’t get caught up in your own hype me boy, the Dodgers need you.

First, there’s this stupid argument about Bruan playing in “pressure situations” for most of the season because he was in a playoff race. I find that ludicrous you try playing on a team that’s going nowhere and put up numbers for no one but your own pride. If anything there’s more pressure, especially on a team that was as offensively challenged as the Dodgers. 

Second let’s look at protection, who did Ryan Bruan have hitting behind him? Prince freakin’ Fielder! That’s right, the guy who finished second in the NL behind Kemp for HR’s and RBI’s with 38 HR and 120 RBI, who had a 50 HR Season, who drove in 141 RBI’s in 2009 , yeah that Prince Fielder. Do you know who hit behind Matt Kemp? No? It was no one as good as Fielder let me tell ya. There was  Uribe, Loney, Blake, Rivera, Ethier, Barajas, Sands and I don’t think any two of those even gets close to the numbers Fielder put up. So if anyone had more pressure on them this whole season, not just in the playoff race, it was Matt Kemp and he performed quite well.

Lastly, here’s one I have not heard and which I feel really changes things. Switch Matt Kemp and Ryan Braun for the season and who’s numbers change the most? If you say Kemp ding ding ding, you’re a winner. Why do I say that? Easy, just look at the numbers he had when just Juan Rivera hit behind him in the 2^nd half. The majority of the time Matt Kemp had Rivera behind him, he was 3^rd and Rivera was 4^th and in that he had 11 HR’s in only 35 games with 34 RBI’s and scored 38 runs as opposed to 77 runs in 126 games hitting 4^th he also only had 1 GDP as opposed to 15 hitting 4^th, he was a much better hitter and all around player and not just a slugger. Having even a little protection behind Kemp made him better and if he had a guy like Fielder behind him, I can’t even imagine the numbers he would’ve put up.

 There are other things as well, Kemp is a better fielder, he plays a more physically demanding position, so putting up bigger numbers is actually more difficult because he does a lot more running than Bruan, Kemp was THE offense for the Dodgers, Bruan was a cog, etc.

Who cares about record, who cares about whether or not a team makes the playoffs, how VALUABLE was the player to his team and no one was more valuable to his team in the whole of baseball than Matt Kemp.

Yes, Rivera isn’t known for his defense but Ellis and Treanor are and since they let Rod Barajas go to the Pirates, it’s obvious the Dodgers front office is thinking that they have enough offense on the team to compete in the NL West and I’m one to agree.

With the resigning NL Cy Young winner, Billingsley, and Lilly already signed up, along with the way the bullpen pitched in the 2nd half, these Dodgers are built like a modern version of the 1980′s teams. They don’t have a lot of hitting but they hit enough, they get on base, use speed and station to station running to get runs and make sure you don’t score anymore runs.

If you remember, when they were winning a lot of games they didn’t have a lot of come behind wins, that’s because they’re not built like that, what this Dodger team needs to do is get ahead early and stay ahead with good pitching and a great bullpen and minimize casualties on the base paths and the field.

Just because this team didn’t go after Ramirez, Fielder or Pujols doesn’t mean they can’t beat the Giants, Rockets and Diamondbacks for the division title, they have more than enough and I fully expect them to be in the race all season long.