Diamonds For Women

[dodgerblue6]

I feel like the skipper speaks for many of us Dodger fans in response to the Padres' flurry of moves this offseason to beef up their team. I welcome the competition.
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"The Dodgers have always occupied an enormous place in the history of the game. If the Yankees are the most successful team in baseball history, the Dodgers are the most essential. Their legacy is unique."

-Baseball Hall of Fame

[forloveofthegame]

I like the way our FO has responded. They made moves to add depth and make our pitching airtight. Whether that will be enough, we will see over what will, I hope, be a full season of baseball.
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"Baseball is an allegorical play about America, a poetic, complex, and subtle play of courage, fear, good luck, mistakes, patience about fate, and sober self-esteem." - Saul Steinberg

[sunnyblue]

"Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery."

[dodgerblue6]

Oooooh! Sunnyblue, I see a T-shirt emblazoned with that for the first time fans are allowed to visit Petco Park for a Dodgers-Padres series.
_________________
"The Dodgers have always occupied an enormous place in the history of the game. If the Yankees are the most successful team in baseball history, the Dodgers are the most essential. Their legacy is unique."

-Baseball Hall of Fame

[forloveofthegame]

Hmmph.
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"Baseball is an allegorical play about America, a poetic, complex, and subtle play of courage, fear, good luck, mistakes, patience about fate, and sober self-esteem." - Saul Steinberg

[forloveofthegame]

Well, ladies, we are down to this. Some are predicting this will be the best divisional race ever. That sounds pretty crazy but it makes me wish all the more the season starts on time because I cannot wait! Article from mlb.com

If you think about it the only real time our teams were going for it at the same time in our division, both of them were tight and went down to the last weekend. Both 1996 and 2006, Padres took the division and Dodgers won the wild card. Of course it is special to me remembering the Padres winning it in L.A. in 1996 but that 2006 race will not be forgotten either. This year the 2 teams will play each other on the last weekend of the season, too. Maybe we will see another of those same set-ups for the playoffs with both teams going. It should be rowdy and wild this season.
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"Baseball is an allegorical play about America, a poetic, complex, and subtle play of courage, fear, good luck, mistakes, patience about fate, and sober self-esteem." - Saul Steinberg

[forloveofthegame]

The Dodgers GM, Andrew Friedman says the Dodgers have taken notice - Article from U-T
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"Baseball is an allegorical play about America, a poetic, complex, and subtle play of courage, fear, good luck, mistakes, patience about fate, and sober self-esteem." - Saul Steinberg

[dodgerblue6]

Yes, they have. And now it's time to turn the page and focus on getting things done on the field.
_________________
"The Dodgers have always occupied an enormous place in the history of the game. If the Yankees are the most successful team in baseball history, the Dodgers are the most essential. Their legacy is unique."

-Baseball Hall of Fame

[sunnyblue]

I think Doc is getting pretty sick and tired of being asked about it.

[dodgerblue6]

Rojo Chingon is giving the Padres their due respect.

And the L.A. Times previewed the season with a nod to the budding rivalry.

Bill Shaikin's column:

"Fernando Tatis’ 14-Year, $340-Million Deal: Cake Topper for MLB’s Best Rivalry"


By BILL SHAIKIN, STAFF WRITER
FEB. 18, 2021 6 AM PT

Spare us the East Coast nonsense. The Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees might be the most hyped rivalry in baseball, but the best coast has the best rivalry right now.

“I know,” Blake Snell said, “it’s a little feisty lately.”

In the blue corner, the defending World Series champion Dodgers. In the brown corner, with bats flipped as high as the Coronado Bridge, the San Diego Padres.

Snell spoke on a video conference Wednesday morning, as the Padres welcomed the Cy Young winner and their new staff ace to spring training. What Snell had to say in the morning faded into a footnote by the evening, when the Padres agreed with shortstop Fernando Tatis Jr. on the longest contract in baseball history: 14 years, for $340 million.

For this season, the deal changes nothing. Tatis would have been the Padres’ shortstop anyway, and the team could have signed him for $1 million. Fangraphs projects the Dodgers with a 98% chance to make the playoffs and the Padres a 93% chance; no other team has a smoother path toward October.

The Padres this winter imported Snell, Yu Darvish and Joe Musgrove for their starting rotation.

“We’ve noticed,” Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said last week, when he introduced Trevor Bauer: We’ll see you Snell, who won his Cy Young three years ago, and we’ll raise you Bauer, who won his Cy Young last year.

With the Tatis signing, the Padres handed their swinging friar a megaphone and told him to shout to the masses: Trust us, San Diego! We’re not here for one or two playoff runs; we’re here to drive the Dodgers crazy for the rest of the decade!

The Padres have a sports-mad city to themselves. And what sweeter way to win than to beat L.A., the city to which San Diego’s NBA and NFL teams fled?

We’ll see. The Dodgers have won eight consecutive division championships; the Padres have five division championships in their 52 seasons.

And what, Dodgers fans might wonder, does the Tatis signing mean for the Dodgers’ chances of retaining their shortstop? Absolutely nothing.

Corey Seager is eligible for free agency after this season. The Dodgers signed Mookie Betts for $365 million on the eve of his walk year and Clayton Kershaw for $215 million on the eve of his. They let Justin Turner, Kenley Jansen and Rich Hill try free agency one winter and signed them all. They let Turner try free agency again, and they signed him again.

The Dodgers are blessed with such financial resources that they do not have to sign a young player early because they worry about getting outbid in free agency. They can afford to wait. If Cody Bellinger’s performance dips, or if he is injured, the Dodgers are not on the hook for a long-term deal.

In smaller markets, where the Dodgers and Yankees are feared as financial Goliaths, teams can entice a young player with security and accept the risk that comes with a long-term contract.

The Tampa Bay Rays did that with Snell, then traded him to the Padres anyway, freeing themselves of all but $11 million of his $50-million contract. That is the Rays’ way. They also traded David Price, Chris Archer and James Shields before their contracts ran out. They win, but they have not sold even 2 million tickets since their inaugural season.

The Padres’ attendance jumped 11% in 2019, when they signed Manny Machado. Since then: Slam Diego, the first playoff appearance in 14 years, and now the Tatis deal.

The Padres could sell 3 million tickets in 2022. They are developing the land around Petco Park. They are the only game in town for corporate sponsors. There is money to be made, and a good chance Tatis emerges as the face of baseball, coupling exceptional talent with a flair that Mike Trout shuns. At 22, Tatis is the youngest player to appear on the cover of the “MLB The Show” video game.

Yes, the Padres are on the hook to Machado and Tatis for a combined $640 million. But guess what team has the most players in Baseball America’s ranking of the top 100 prospects? Yes, the Padres.

Maybe this all works out, and Tatis signs another lucrative contract at 35.
Maybe he hobbles to the final season of the new contract, when Turner will be 50.

“We’re aiming for the big cake,” Tatis memorably said last year. He was talking about the World Series. But, in another winter in which too many owners served their fans a heaping portion of financial flexibility, the Padres served their fans Wednesday with quite a sweet treat.
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"The Dodgers have always occupied an enormous place in the history of the game. If the Yankees are the most successful team in baseball history, the Dodgers are the most essential. Their legacy is unique."

-Baseball Hall of Fame

[forloveofthegame]

Thanks, Linda.
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"Baseball is an allegorical play about America, a poetic, complex, and subtle play of courage, fear, good luck, mistakes, patience about fate, and sober self-esteem." - Saul Steinberg

[dodgerblue6]

And there's more! It's just getting started.
_________________
"The Dodgers have always occupied an enormous place in the history of the game. If the Yankees are the most successful team in baseball history, the Dodgers are the most essential. Their legacy is unique."

-Baseball Hall of Fame

[dodgerblue6]

And one final post for this thread, because we're now ready to stop talking and start playing.
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"The Dodgers have always occupied an enormous place in the history of the game. If the Yankees are the most successful team in baseball history, the Dodgers are the most essential. Their legacy is unique."

-Baseball Hall of Fame

[forloveofthegame]

Here we go. The Union Tribune even interviewed Steve Garvey about this one!
_________________
"Baseball is an allegorical play about America, a poetic, complex, and subtle play of courage, fear, good luck, mistakes, patience about fate, and sober self-esteem." - Saul Steinberg

[dodgerblue6]

Thanks, Cath. I have to say much has been written about this series and whether it's fair to consider the Padres the closest rival of the Dodgers.
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"The Dodgers have always occupied an enormous place in the history of the game. If the Yankees are the most successful team in baseball history, the Dodgers are the most essential. Their legacy is unique."

-Baseball Hall of Fame

[sunnyblue]

With 6 of the first 7 games between them having been played already there is already a list of best moments so far in those series, just this first month of the year. I'm not sure I agree it's the biggest rivalry in baseball. It's been good. But with the Water hoarders in second place we have to look out for them just as much.

[forloveofthegame]

Well, ladies, here is a good rundown of where the National League West stands, and it brings up some thoughts about the rest of the season - article from padres.com
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"Baseball is an allegorical play about America, a poetic, complex, and subtle play of courage, fear, good luck, mistakes, patience about fate, and sober self-esteem." - Saul Steinberg

[forloveofthegame]

I just went back to look for this thread and noticed the posts were all from 2021! The 2022 season was one where I felt my boys were completely overmatched and that was why they finished 22 games out of 1st place. Then came October and it was like a new season. So now - I know Juan Soto is testing the waters with some of his comments lately! It is still a few weeks away until our teams play each other for the first time this year, first weekend of May.
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"Baseball is an allegorical play about America, a poetic, complex, and subtle play of courage, fear, good luck, mistakes, patience about fate, and sober self-esteem." - Saul Steinberg

[dodgerblue6]

I try not to say too much, given where I live, but Juan Soto seems to be popping off rather early. Sorry, Cathy, I think I speak for many Dodger fans when we say our team respects the Padres but they don't feel they have to go out of their way to engage in trash talking with them. They're trying so hard to emulate every part of our game in an attempt to dethrone the Dodgers, but let's not let one playoff series win spin the assumption that the tide has necessarily turned for good. It may, but a lot has to be proven yet. I can appreciate the Padres' confidence, but I could do without any of these players mouthing off. I was especially impressed with Clayton's comment before the season began that they're doing a great job and it's good for baseball. But I still think we're the team to beat." No doubt he is saying that because the Dodgers have won the division nine of the last ten years and are still defending champs even if they didn't advance last October.

Last, how about talking on the field? Remember, it's a long season, and a long October if you play your cards right. Even a team with a 5-14 record against the other during the regular season can get hot at the right time. With expanded playoffs, this allows for even a third-place finish for the Dodgers to make them eligible for postseason play.
_________________
"The Dodgers have always occupied an enormous place in the history of the game. If the Yankees are the most successful team in baseball history, the Dodgers are the most essential. Their legacy is unique."

-Baseball Hall of Fame

[sunnyblue]

I mostly agree and just want the "talking" to be done on the field.

[forloveofthegame]

Alright ladies your points are taken.
_________________
"Baseball is an allegorical play about America, a poetic, complex, and subtle play of courage, fear, good luck, mistakes, patience about fate, and sober self-esteem." - Saul Steinberg

[forloveofthegame]

Kevin Acee writes in the U-T about a possible division race between the 2 teams. Here is the column.
_________________
"Baseball is an allegorical play about America, a poetic, complex, and subtle play of courage, fear, good luck, mistakes, patience about fate, and sober self-esteem." - Saul Steinberg

[dodgerblue6]

Oh, boy! Well, I have a lot to say about this that I'm going to save for later.
_________________
"The Dodgers have always occupied an enormous place in the history of the game. If the Yankees are the most successful team in baseball history, the Dodgers are the most essential. Their legacy is unique."

-Baseball Hall of Fame

[forloveofthegame]

I agree the taunting was uncalled for. It just makes them look childish after the fact. You don't poke a Hall of famer especially when you think how good his record has been against my boys over the years.
_________________
"Baseball is an allegorical play about America, a poetic, complex, and subtle play of courage, fear, good luck, mistakes, patience about fate, and sober self-esteem." - Saul Steinberg

[dodgerblue6]

I didn't post this earlier, but it was a preview of the series from the L.A. Times:

"Dodgers Open Series Against Padres Eager to ‘Move Forward’ From Playoff Failure"

BY JACK HARRIS

MAY 4, 2023 6:08 PM PT

Dave Roberts immediately recognized the feeling.

The first time the Dodgers manager watched the viral video of Giannis Antetokounmpo’s news conference answer about the nature of “failure” last week — when the Milwaukee Bucks star considered the meaning of the word in the wake of his team’s shocking first-round postseason elimination — Roberts couldn’t help but relate.

To the way Antetokounmpo rubbed his hands in his head, visually grappling with the dichotomy of a great regular season that ultimately featured just a lone playoff win.

To how the NBA icon tried to compartmentalize the accomplishments of his team’s overall performance, against the fact they’d fallen woefully short of their ultimate goal.

To the exasperation present in Antetokounmpo’s voice, straining as he tried to reframe his club’s early exit not as an outright failure, but one of the many painful “steps to success” that sometimes feel inevitable in team sports.



Dodgers vs. Padres roundtable: Did 2022 NLDS signal a power shift in NL West?


“In sports, you get used to that,” Roberts said. "Because there’s only one champion every year. So our DNA is to be able to sustain that, and continue to move forward.”

Roberts would know better than most.

Six months earlier, on a rainy October night in San Diego, his team was in an eerily similar position.

Their own record-breaking, 111-win regular season had ended in stunning — and early — fashion at the hands of the Padres in a National League Division Series.

And just like Antetokounmpo and the Bucks, they too had to grapple with the meaning of “failure” in the wake of their latest, and most pronounced, postseason disappointment.

“People that are gonna say it was a failure, they haven’t gone through what we’re going through,” Roberts said this week, ahead of the Dodgers’ first rematch with the Padres since last year’s NLDS. “That’s what’s different in sports than anything else. It just takes a certain psyche to be able to handle that.”

And six months later, that’s the emotion that, for many in the Dodgers clubhouse, lingers most going into this weekend’s series at Petco Park.

Not animosity for the Padres. Not a preoccupation with their budding rivalry. But a lingering discontent with themselves, and the narrative of failure that still surrounds the way their 2022 season ended.

“Ultimately, the goal is to win, so if you didn’t accomplish that, that’s a failure,” third baseman Max Muncy said. “But I think along the [way], you can accomplish so much, and you can have so many successes and other things that’s not a failure. So for me, it’s a two-part thing.”

Muncy pointed to the Dodgers’ regular season triumphs last year, when they led the league in scoring, runs against and became just the seventh team in MLB history with 110 or more wins.

“To me, that’s not a failure,” he said. “But at the end of the day, we didn’t win the World Series. So I understand both sides of that.”

When reflecting on last year’s NLDS specifically, Muncy’s biggest regret had less to do with the opponent, and more about “how we lost” the best-of-five series in four games, “having the other team play with more energy, almost like they were hungrier for it than we were,” he said.

“When you lose in that sort of fashion, I think that stings a lot more than just being outplayed,” Muncy continued, echoing a sentiment that was shared by Roberts and others in the wake of the Dodgers elimination. “Obviously, everyone is gonna say they outplayed us, and that’s probably true. But to me, it was more, they just brought so much more energy and were so much hungrier for it.”

Muncy’s hope is the Dodgers will be better for it.

“I think we learned that lesson that, you have to learn how to play with emotion,” he said. “During the regular season, we’ve always been so successful because we stay level-headed throughout the entire thing. You can’t play 162 with emotion. But, when we reach the playoffs, we have trouble flipping that switch.”

First baseman Freddie Freeman added another viewpoint this week.

He pragmatically noted the Dodgers situational hitting woes last October, an unforeseen issue after the team excelled in such spots during the regular season.

“What can you learn? I mean, I learned we needed to get some hits with runners in scoring position,” Freeman deadpanned. “I could give you cliches, but to be honest, baseball is different … You just got to get it done. And if you can’t get it done, you’ll have the same result. That’s just how it is, until one year everything kind of magically works together and you win.”

And did the Dodgers inability to do so last year constitute a failure?

“I don’t say it’s a failure,” he said. “You just didn’t achieve what you wanted to achieve, and then you start over again.”

After restarting slowly this year, the Dodgers found a groove over the last week.

They’ve won six games in a row. They’ve taken an early lead in the NL West. And during a 6-0 homestand, they showed flashes of the kind of contender they believe they are.

“It’s really starting to come together,” Muncy said.

That’s why, while this weekend might represent a slightly more significant step — the team even realigned its starting rotation to have top starters Clayton Kershaw, Dustin May and Julio Urías all pitch against the Padres — their long-term goals will take more time.

They’re still trying to rectify their frustrations from the way last year ended. To erase the label of failure they carried into this new season.

“I say it all the time,” Muncy said, putting the importance of the Padres rivalry into perspective. “You’re almost playing yourself more than the opponent.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~!

DB comments: It's hard for me to believe these guys didn't see that coming. The Padres playing the Dodgers, the team that had beaten them in every series all season long, but with a retooled team getting hot and hungry in the playoffs--really, you couldn't figure that out? That one I may have to pin on Doc. He usually has the team well-prepared but if they felt helpless against all that, it makes me wonder about a lot. On the other hand, with the Dodgers there every year, the feeling had to be that if they lost in the first round, oh, well, there's next year and they'll be back. And they always are. At the same time, the Padres were making only their second playoff appearance in 16 years, so maybe they were hungrier. They didn't have the luxury of having had many consecutive appearances, and it certainly seemed they were making a statement, that if this were their only shot, they were going to make the best of it. And they came in playing very well. The Dodgers came in coasting to the division title, with a playoffs round bye as a reward for that.

Still, that's on the manager and coaching. These guys have to be ready for that kind of energy.

In retrospect, it was nice to see them make a statement of their own--that we're back, you may have beaten us in the last series, but we're turning the page and this is a new season. You've beefed up with plenty of offseason moves. We hardly made any.

It is indeed a new day, a new year, and the Padres will get another crack at the Dodgers this coming weekend in L.A.

And the beat goes on.
_________________
"The Dodgers have always occupied an enormous place in the history of the game. If the Yankees are the most successful team in baseball history, the Dodgers are the most essential. Their legacy is unique."

-Baseball Hall of Fame

[dodgerblue6]

And...it's on again tonight!
_________________
"The Dodgers have always occupied an enormous place in the history of the game. If the Yankees are the most successful team in baseball history, the Dodgers are the most essential. Their legacy is unique."

-Baseball Hall of Fame

[forloveofthegame]

I wish Soto had kept his mouth shut. I wish the scoreboard op didn't taunt the Dodgers. I would love to say "Wait Until October" but that would be a cop-out.
_________________
"Baseball is an allegorical play about America, a poetic, complex, and subtle play of courage, fear, good luck, mistakes, patience about fate, and sober self-esteem." - Saul Steinberg