Et tu, Brute?

had to be Jimmy freaking Rollins. And I am no dodger supporter after living in LA for three years. Although, anybody…. but Rollins.

Jeff Passan of Yahoo with an absolute hatchet job on Torre.

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news;_ylt=AtjZN.LbAPHEGduunIVvlmQ5nYcB?slug=jp-torre102009&prov=yhoo&type=lgns

The premise of the article might be sound (Torre isn’t a genius) but the article is needlessly vindictive.

30 years ago I’d have let this loss ruin my week, possibly my winter, possibly my marriage.

Unlike Tommy Lasorda I don’t believe that the Dodger fans are the best fans in the world.

What great quotes. Just priceless.

because it is pointless for us to debate how wrong he is with every comment he made about baseball. I suggest everyone else do the same.

I think this is new territory for all of us. I wasn’t around last season, but I have been making TBLA my game thread home all season. So I’ve witnessed the growth from the smaller gatherings we had in April and May to the 5 continuation threads we’ve had in the playoffs. Part of me knew this sort of thing would happen and it would effect us. Last postseason I didn’t participate in the game threads as I was too nervous to really enjoy them. This year (during the regular season), when the game threads got out of hand with the silly statements (Broxton is not our guy, etc) I could usually just gently mock and move on because the baseball season is a marathon not a sprint. No one loss really matters that much in the regular season.

In the postseason it’s a different story. No margin for error. That’s why a few of us have already accepted that you can’t really build a team for the postseason; just build the best team to compete and get you into the postseason. The playoffs are a crap shoot. So after last nights game, I basically turned off my computer and caught up on some shows that I’ve missed whilst watching the Dodgers the last two nights. That being said, I know how bummed I was last night, and while I rationally understand that feeding the trolls is the worst thing you can do, when you have people descend on your home blog and point and laugh, I understand the gut reaction which is to lash out.

http://www.memoriesofkevinmalone.com/2009/10/jonathan-broxton-should-be-released.html

Because i’ve never wanted a group of fans to eat shit as much as I do now.

A part of me is hoping for an epic comeback just to see who has the balls to stick their foot up their own ass.

I said this last night, as soon as the Trolls came out in full force a good majority of us were waiting and wanting. I guess dropping a few F-Bombs and I had a naughty word that I had no right to use made it better for about 30 seconds. I am sorry guys, I know acting like that brings nothing to the table and makes the site and the awesome dudes who let us converse on here look bad.

Just winging it here, trying to calculate our chances for winning the series now.

@ Hamels 0.38
vs Lee 0.44
vs Martinez 0.55
-————————————————
9.2% series win probability. 10.9 to 1 odds.
vr, Xei

last year i was just glad to be in the post-season. beating the cubs was an added bonus. manny, torre, and blake were still brand new and there were no expectations.

this year was different. we were coming off our best postseason appearance since I was 5 years old. we went wire-to-wire. the manny suspension. o-dog’s opening day cycle. andre’s 6 walk-offs. bobble-slam. it was supposed to happen this year.

We should probably organize a True Blue LA get together for Saturday’s Game 7.

Phil: Great post. I was talking to Eric this weekend about the negativity of this site and it really is not a lot of fun sometimes. And some of it so irrational it’s comical. When Kershaw didn’t pitch well in game 1, I thought of how had it been Billingsley the site would have went after him hard. And then last night I kind of watched things but it was getting ridiculous. Broxton last night suffered similar fate.

I really enjoy what you guys have created here, and some of the folks really add to my game watching pleasure. But whenever things go south for the Dodgers there are just way too many negative comments. It’s just not worth paying attention to. And I agree with you that banning these yahoos isn’t necessarily the best answer.

Being a fan doesn’t mean you have to like everything going on with the team, but being true fan means you stick with them through thick and thin until it gets to the point where you just don’t care one way or another (see “Raiders, Oakland”).

Anyway, not sure what my point is here other than to support your comment and to let the rational posters out there know that you’ve added to my enjoyment this year. The rest of you, well you can just go DFA yourselves.

So, is there a way to get the stats for the umpire’s correct calls for balls/strikes. Will MLB ever consider replacing the balls/strikes calls with a computer? One in a million?

So, you say there’s a chance?

I was really REALLY impressed that Sherrill was able to come back and strike out Howard. After looking like we were in for his second blown inning the series, he and brox showed a lot of courage in 8th.

What always made Dodger Thoughts a cool place to hang out, I thought, was the way the comments were set up. They were all numbered and you could link back and scroll through easily enough to see them. I stopped getting into the DT threads after the switch to the Times, partly because I just didn’t have the time to invest for a while. But TBLA deserves it’s credit.

In large part, this site has come leaps and bounds to be a truly great Dodgers site. I enjoyed Andrew’s stuff (I read Dodger Math quite a bit), but Phil and Eric brought some great content. One of my favorite features is the way the comments load, though. You can follow in a very clear conversation, and they load without you having to hit refresh. Not to mention the extra interaction with Fanposts, Fanshots, recs, etc.

That said, Jon was quite the wise man (hehe) to enforce unwritten (and eventually written) commenting guidelines. I say this, accepting full responsibility for dropping F-bombs like they were, well, um, bombs over some country that got bombed. But still, seems a little tough to complain about profanity in comments but then say you don’t mind a bit here and there. Negativity will overwhelm everyone after a particularly terrible game. But that’s when I read Dodger Blues and laugh it off.

But don’t forget resiliency. I feel like every game is treated like a new game here, and that we don’t completely surrender to negativity. There is hope. “Next year” was the motto for the Brooklyn Dodgers, and I think that same optimism will still hold, even through a likely change of ownership.

I had to take a break myself here- not just because of the negativity, but the negativity TOWARDS the negativity. I think that it’s all part of human nature- we tend to be passionate about what we believe, and when others don’t agree with what WE think is an “obvious truth”, it becomes very frustrating. I’ve been on both ends of this, and not just with baseball. That’s when you take a step back to gain some perspective.

Getting back to the Dodgers, though, it’s been a great season. More than anything, what I found so compelling about this group is that they fly in the face of so many things said about modern athletes- ie. there are no more “real” teams, everyone just wants to be a free agent and get their multimillion dollar contracts, etc.. I’m not saying these guys don’t want to get rich, but it’s very apparent that they also care about winning, as well as each other. Even Manny has shattered some of the more negative claims about him- SOME of them. One of the most glaring examples to me is that he really seems to want to see the young guys do well, and get a glimpse of the glory that he’s experienced throughout his career. As for Bills and Brox, I think at this point it’s reasonable to assume that they have issues on SOME level- physical, mechanical, mental, who knows- keeping them from reaching their full potential SO FAR. But they’re still young, seem to have their hearts in the right place, and with help and maturity, I think that they can get there.

As for the immediate task at hand- yes, it’s looking very bleak now, but I STILL think the Dodgers have a better shot, however marginal it may be, than the Cardinals had after THEIR heartbreak loss (which probably felt even worse than ours, believe it or not). Maybe they didn’t do it on purpose, but it’s apparent looking back that the Cardinals, along with their fans, just flat out gave up in game 3. I don’t think the Dodgers will do that. Based on what we’ve seen all year from these guys, they may go down, but we can expect them to go down fighting. Onto game 5!

That would not have been my favorite way to play the last game of the season. Another chance always works for me. One bright spot yesterday was I found out the Blues station on cable was pretty cool.

I figured the odd would be about 10%, but 9%, whatever. While you don’t expect to win a series with those odds, but there is no reason to be without hope. Probably about at least 20 things have already happened to you today that there was a 1 in 10 chance of happening. That’s about 1000 times more likely than Holliday trying to catch a ball with his balls and rallying to win. The odds of winning the next game are about 50%. Just win the next game, get home, and let God sort it out from there.

i’ll keep reading TBLA whatever the score.

Philly fan, just browsing to see what the other side was experiencing. I seriously hope the ‘trolls’ you’re referring to weren’t Philly fans coming over here to taunt. If so, I’m sorry.

I’m kinda liking facing the Dodgers, because there’s so many ex-phils on the team, that I’d be cool with the Dodgers representing the NL in the WS. Randy Wolf, Jim Thome, and Larry Bowa are all ex-Phillies I still root for. Padilla….ehh…not so much.

I think the strike zone has been pretty atrocious, I don’t believe that it’s directed at one team or the other, the guys back there have just had postage stamp strike zones that move. The Phils were more of a beneficiary of it yesterday, I will agree, but I don’t think that’s intentional, just how the roll of the dice went.

take heart. if the angels could come back yesterday after that devastating loss in game 2 in ny, the doyers can come back in game 5.

focusing on “having to win three games” and “running the table” and “hamels/pedro/lee” misses the point entirely. the doyers still have the home field advantage in this series, something the halos don’t against the yankees.

the doyers simply have to win game five and then they get to come back home. that’s all that matters right now. i guarantee you if they win tomorrow, they and their fans will feel better, just as if they had held on last night, their 11-0 embarassment wouldn’t carry the same weight. it’s a cliche but it’s also true, since you can only play one game at a time, players/fans need to only think in terms of one game at a time. they can’t go back and replay game four, nor can they play games six and seven tomorrow.

and another thing, do you think the phillies, and their obnoxious fans want to lose in front of the home folks and have to come all the way back here to have to end this series??? my guess is the doyers flight back to la would be a much better one than the phillies. just ask torii hunter and the angels, momentum in the playoffs can change with one swing of the bat.

don’t despair doyer fans, twenty six other teams would trade places with you right about now.

I know I don’t always keep my composure and I can lose my cool in a big way, but I think everyone needs to vent sometimes, especially after a loss like that.

For me, I was watching the game laying with my gf on her couch and when Rollins got that hit, I just layed there and didn’t say a word for about 5 minutes, just watching the post game (I wish I had the remote in my hand at the time, I just didn’t want to or couldn’t move). Never before had I felt so empty as a sports fan. Not only that, it just felt like it was bigger than sports; It felt like something I loved had been stolen away from me.

After the initial shock, I started to feel better after a while. I knew it was not yet over, just very improbable, and I thought about the amazing season I have watched in 2009, that being the best season of Dodger baseball I have ever witnessed. I thought about the emergence of Matt Kemp as the true 5-tool talent he has been hyped as for the last few years, the emergence of Kershaw showing that he will indeed some day (maybe even soon) be the ace pitcher for the Dodgers, the first full season of Broxton at closer and how he was mostly brilliant. Those three things stuck out at me more than anything else this year, maybe adding in Ethier’s audition to becoming a true star in the MLB.

With the things I mentioned happening this year, even if the Dodgers don’t make it to the World Series, they have shown gigantic strides to being a truly great team. Maybe they are just a year away, who knows. If Kemp, Ethier, Kershaw, and Broxton continue their great play, and Billingsley can go back to how was the first two and a half months of the season and Martin going back to at least 08 Martin, I think this team has a very good shot of making the NLCS again next season. I would just like to see the bullpen kept almost exactly the same with Wolf staying if there is a 2 or maybe even 3 year deal offered by Ned. If that happens, I think there is no way we can’t see the Dodgers make it at least this far again. Now the only trick is to find out how to stop this damn Phillies offense, lol.

Also, I never blamed Broxton for blowing that save. I mean sure, that walk to Stairs was just uncalled for, but it’s not like he’s never walked anyone before, it could have just been the luck of the draw there, though most likely it was memories of last year. It was just a very nice hit by Jimmy Rollins gives me chills just to type his name that happened to come off of Broxton. I don’t think he even made a mistake pitch, Broxton was pitching just amazing (I know there was the 4 pitch walk to the guy 0 for his last 30 and the hit batter, but I don’t remember seeing him hit 97 and above for so many pitches in one outing) and Rollins made great contact. I do think that 4 times out of 5 Rollins wouldn’t have done anything with that pitch. Oh well, nothing can be done about it now.

People who think Broxton should be traded or what have you, would you rather have JJ Putz next season? How about a trade for Kerry Wood? Yeah, I thought not.