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Third baseman turned reliever Pedro Baez impressed Sandy Koufax on Monday during his bullpen session. Ken Gurnick of MLB.com captured the praise from the Hall of Fame left-hander:
Baez showed Koufax a natural delivery, a fastball in the mid-90s and a curveball more advanced than many of his fellow Minor Leaguers who have been at this pitching thing for years. Koufax told other staff members he'd like to see Baez in a game this spring.
The Dodgers' new television contract with Time Warner, scheduled to begin in 2014 but still awaiting MLB approval, will include televised games in three languages: English, Spanish, and Korean. Bill Shaikin and Dylan Hernandez at the Los Angeles Times have more details.
Mike Piazza spoke with David Vassegh of KLAC 570 and Hernandez on Monday, and you can listen to the 20-minute interview here.
Former big league pitcher Eric Knott wrote a guest column at Baseball Prospectus about the pressures of whether or not to use performance enhancing drugs.
Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria sounded tone deaf in his meeting with Marlins media on Monday, as recapped by both Fish Stripes and the Miami Herald. But this excerpt from the Herald caught my eye as unintentionally damning with faint praise:
Loria reiterated how the Marlins "raided the Blue Jays’" farm system and now have six of the top 100 prospects in baseball. Loria said former franchise player Hanley Ramirez, traded to the Dodgers last July, called the Marlins this offseason to rave about new shortstop Adeiny Hechavarria.
"When Hanley Ramirez calls you and tells you [Hechavarria’s] a better shortstop than [he is] you’ve got a great guy on your hands," Loria said.
Gordon Wittenmyer of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote about pitchers post-Tommy John surgery, and caught up with Koufax for his thoughts:
‘‘They wouldn’t operate on you,’’ said perhaps the greatest left-hander in history who had to walk away from the game at 30 because of bone spurs and arthritis in his elbow. ‘‘In those days, they wouldn’t do it. They couldn’t do it.
‘‘Now they go in, take a chisel, cut them off and send you back out.’’
Dan Szymborski's ZiPS projections are now integrated on all of the player pages on FanGraphs. You can see all of the 2013 Dodgers ZiPS projections here.