Dodgers Blue Heaven: Blog Kiosk: 3/29/2016 - Dodgers Links

Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Blog Kiosk: 3/29/2016 - Dodgers Links - Libertore, Ryu and Jamey Wright

You gotta respect a man who wants to give it one last try. After all, calling it quits is the toughest thing to do. Via Ken Gurnick on twitter, 19-year veteran pitcher Jamey Wright is retiring. Via Eric Stephen at True Blue LA:

"I have no regrets in this game. Everything I got I had to work really, really hard for," Wright said. "What I tell some of the young guys is that the hardest thing to do is staying in the big leagues, and there is no excuse for letting somebody out-work you."

Wright said he might one day get into coaching, but for now he was focused on "being with the most important team," his wife and three kids.

"I am very blessed to be in the clubhouse and be with these guys I missed it last year and I will continue to miss it," Wright said. "One thing about pitching for 10 different teams, I've got more friends than anybody. That's one of my greatest accomplishments."

As you will recall, Jamey spent the winter working out with Clayton Kershaw after seemingly being done with the game and just got that itch. Via Andy McCullough at the LA Times in February:

“The first time out felt great. The second time felt even better. Then we started getting some other guys in there throwing, but I wanted to keep throwing. I wanted to take it through and see how it feels.”

Check out Wright's statistics here. Photo above via Jon SooHoo/LA Dodgers 2016. Below are more links to check out:

Mike Noren at Cecil Cooperstown shares original drawings that look like Baseball cards of ballplayers who are underappreciated. Check out the drawing he did of Steve Garvey here.
Jeff Sullivan at FanGraphs ranks the starting rotations. In spite of the Dodgers issues with the #5 spot they are ranked second in the league.

It’s fair to argue whether the Dodgers really have the best rotation in baseball, because as seen here, they’re essentially tied with the Mets, and you can argue either way in a tie. So, maybe the Dodgers should be No. 1, or maybe the Dodgers should be No. 2. But the bigger point is one a good number of people appear to be missing: this rotation is excellent. Absolutely, yes, it’s unstable. It’s unstable sort of by design, which is why the Dodgers assembled so many options. But come year’s end, expect this rotation to be at or near the top in total value. Even with all the injuries, the Dodgers are sitting pretty.

Adam Liberatore misses the cut. He is sent to minor league camp, via Eric Stephen at True Blue LA.
Jeff Passan recently released a new book called "The Arm," and shared a brief excerpt pertinent to the Dodgers. He writes about a little bit about an unknown "arm" specialist named Dr. James Buffi - who now exclusively works for the Dodgers. (Link Here)

Buffi’s initial research confirmed the importance of the flexor-pronator muscles in the forearm. Perhaps they were what enabled R.A. Dickey to pitch without a UCL. Maybe they explained why some pitchers stayed healthy and others didn’t. To further test his hypothesis, Buffi worked with researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital’s biomechanics lab, which captured the throwing motions of 20 college pitchers with markers as well as ground-force data collected with force plates. Buffi’s optimization algorithm fit the markers in the model as close as possible to those on the real pitchers. “The goal,” Buffi said, “is to get the model to move in exactly the same way the real pitcher moves.”

Via Josh Jackson at MiLB, "Dodgers Prospect Primer: Bellinger busts out."

"I never really hit a lot of home runs in my life. You start hitting a couple and you start getting comfortable, and you start realizing that the pitches that you were hitting up the middle, you think you can hit out. They backspun sometimes, and they got out of there. I think it's more of progressing through the years. The game kind of slowed down a little bit."

Via Doug Padilla at ESPN, "Hyun-Jin Ryu's timetable starting to become clear."

Asked if Ryu is essentially on a spring training timetable now, when pitchers would transition to live BP once position players arrived in camp, Roberts said, “That’s fair.”

A normal spring lasts six weeks, meaning that Ryu is about five weeks away from completing a typical preseason progression of bullpens, live BP and games every five days, while building a pitch count in each start.

It suggests that Ryu would be ready to pitch in games, without restrictions, by the second week of May.

This is interesting, and for a card collector probably worth a trip. Via Rich Mueller at Sports Collectors Daily, "Vintage Card Donations Lead to Fresno State Display."

The display of more than 380 baseball cards will be the inaugural exhibition of the Fresno-based American Baseball Card Museum. The museum is a new nonprofit organization to “promote and facilitate the study and appreciation of American culture, history and art through baseball cards.” The museum’s strategy is to build its collection via tax-deducible card donations from aging collectors.