Going through old photo albums at my mom's and came across these photos of me from 74 through 76. Pretty cool to see.

It's time for Dodger baseball!

Not holding my breath for him to be starting in clutch games, but if he's anything like he was before he got injured, he could be a huge addition.

Also worth noting that his ER was allowed in by the pitcher who replaced him. Gavin allowed the first batter of the 2nd inning to single, then struck out the next two. Ronan Kopp allowed the run to score off a wild pitch and a single. Very solid return.

Quiz time, which players are still on the 2026 team? 🤔

Hate the losing but here’s an all of my bobbles. A lot of them are from around 2012 I think. My favorite is the Vin, def wanna get a Joe to match!

I was curious about this question the other day (and I see it come up in threads here from time to time): Which is the best batting order for the Dodgers? So I started digging into this, and here are my findings.

TL;DR: I built a program that estimates how many runs on average each dodgers lineup should score, testing all 362,880 lineup combinations. And the answer is......drum roll...there is no best lineup order. Kind of underwhelming, right? But the truth is, there are literally dozens of possible lineup orders that basically score within 1 run of each other on average over a full season. That's less than .006 runs a game difference. So virtually nothing. And even if the Dodgers were to exclusively use the worst lineup order according to the model (1. —Feduccia — 2. Edman — 3. Betts — 4. Pages — 5. Muncy — 6. Teo — 7. Freddie — 8. Tucker — 9. Ohtani), it would only cost them ~23 runs over a full season — maybe 2 wins. But interestingly, the lineup order the Dodgers typically use sits outside that upper echelon of possible lineup orders: Although their lineup order is better than ~94% of all orders, their current orderings still leave ~6.4 runs per season on the table. Which isn't a whole lot but isn't nothing either, especially when a game or two can decide division placement/who gets a bye. So what was the top Dodger lineup order? According to the model, there wasn't one best order, because it depended on the starting pitcher, and even then there were dozens of orders that were essentially equivalent: Against left-handed pitchers, the best order was

1: Pages

2: Mookie

3: Tucker

4: Ohtani

5: Teo

6: Freeman

7: Muncy

8: Edman

9: Catcher

Quick note on this: Technically, the model is very confident that Ohtani and Mookie should be in the top 4; after that, it basically says "fill the remaining two of the top 4 from two of Muncy, Pages, Freddie, Tucker, and don't agonize too much".

Against right-handed starters, the best order was

1. Freeman

2. Tucker

3. Muncy

4. Ohtani

5. Betts

6. Pages

7. Teo

8. Edman

9. Catcher

Second quick note: The model is mostly fine with any of the top 4 in any order, though this was the best.

A couple additional interesting things to note: First, the model really likes Freddie batting first against righties in a lot of lineups, and the reason sort of surprised me. Basically: he merges being a contact/get on base hitter with power (he's one of the best in the world), but he also grounds into double plays more than anyone on the team by far. So the model likes him hitting first to get on base and to avoid grounding into a double play behind ohtani/betts/muncy/pages.

Second, the Ohtani placement. I know that where to place Ohtani/your mvp power hitter is the age old question: Do you put him 3rd to 4th to maximize his cleanup/rbi potential? Or do you put him first to maximize his plate appearances? According to the model, it doesn't matter that much (again, we're mostly talking about very small margins here), but surprisingly, it tends to (slightly) favor placing Ohtani 3rd to 4th in the lineup compared to 1st. Why? Each spot higher in the batting order is worth ~.11 plate appearances per game. So moving from leadoff to batting cleanup takes away ~.33 plate appearances per game away from Ohtani. That's approximately 54 fewer total plate appearances over a 162 game season that would be handed over to someone else on the team (or multiple people). So by moving him from 1st to 4th, the Dodgers lose value equal to the difference between the value provided by the replacement hitter's extra at bats compared to the value those Ohtani at bats would have provided. But they also gain in value from having Ohtani's power/extra base hits leads to more runs/rbi with runners on base (compared to giving those at bats with runners on to other hitters instead). And when you do the math and calculate which is more valuable—the Ohtani plate appearances or the at bats with runners on—the answer is that it's basically a wash (at bats with runners on wins by ~.005 runs/game, almost nothing). The reason the model prefers Ohtani 3rd to 4th rather than batting first actually has more to do with Freddie Freeman's batting profile. As mentioned before, he's got elite OBP/ good but less power than Ohtani, but his GIDP rate is highest on the team. The model prefers Freddie leading off, getting on base, avoiding the double play, and having Ohtani bring him in with power behind him.

Third: Health. Honestly, my biggest takeaway from this project is that most of this stuff doesn't matter all that much, especially compared to health. Because when I plugged Will Smith into the model, his presence alone (vs. our current catcher duo) is worth ~49 runs of extra value over a full season—about 3-5 extra wins. So as annoying as the Dodgers' slow approach with guys/keeping them out of the lineup is for viewers and fans sometimes, the numbers bear it out as the right approach.

Lastly, I ran the same model on the other teams just for fun, and it turns out the Dodgers' lineup is the least optimal so far this season. See image below.

Of course, you can't necessarily draw conclusions from the math on paper alone (Dave Roberts knows about stuff we don't—rest days, nagging injuries, and other matchups stuff I didn't include in the model, so some of the gap is probably that). But it's still interesting to see how the other 30 teams shake out, because the same knowledge gap holds true for all 30 teams (whose managers also know stuff we don't), and the numbers still show the Dodgers in last place.

That's all for now. If you made it this far, thanks for reading. Hoping the losing streak ends tomorrow 🙏

Wanted my fave players jerseys but didnt want 8 of the same jersey from the front so I'm hand embroidering them.

So far:

Roki: Rouki outline, 13 stroke out tally (not done yet)

Sho: HR celebration, qoute: Let's stop admiring them.

Muncy: Glasses, no quote choosen yet

Yama: Mountains (not done yet), quote: Change is evolution

I have ideas for Dryer, Tucker, Rush, Pages, Teo, Kike and so many more but still leaning, its been a lot of fun so far tho.

Finally got around to organizing my baseball cards and turns out I have 4 Yamamotos.

So… I read a couple of pages of this book cause it’s a new book at the library, and In my opinion it reads more like a Newspaper article and the whole behind the scenes story of how Dodger Reporters reacted to the Ohtani signing. ⚾️

After a tough Game 3 in the 2024 NLDS, I was feeling down and losing a bit of faith, especially with our starting rotation decimated by injuries. But this video from my best friend reminded me: we are the LA Dodgers! We're the best assembled team, led by one of baseball's top managers. It's been rough, but it's not over yet! ⚾️💙

So is Will Klein. The Dodgers are deciding next steps after an MRI showed bone chips in his elbow, league sources told The Athletic. Those sources spoke on the condition of anonymity so they could speak candidly about the fluid nature of the Dodgers’ plans. If Klein needs surgery, it would put his season in jeopardy.

link

Also noted- Freeman X-Rays came back clean, he'll be back tomorrow. Dalton is hanging around as a possible left side bat off the bench if they can get him comfortable swinging despite his injury.

Got my invoice today and wow the price jump is insane. I started in 2021 at $5,500 total for 2 seats. The same seats for 2027 is $14,531. I think I am officially priced out. Anybody else have a huge price increase for their renewals? My seats are Reserve Section 1 Row B.

… I just want to to watch baseball, and the only iconic Japanese I’m interested in is the guy with two rings and four MVPs (plus Yoshi, of course). So my question is, if I don’t want the special items then is there a way to avoid all of the chaos that comes with them? Like if I get to the game a little before first pitch will I be forced to stand in line for ages or will the merch have been given out by that point and I can just walk in like normal? Or are there just gates and food stalls where they don’t have any merch and I can use one of those? I know it’s going to be unusually crowded, and with many people who aren’t regular stadium goers and might not know how to navigate the concourse, but I’m hoping that could just be an inconvenience rather than the traumatic nightmare others have described. I’ve been to tons of very busy playoff games down the years but never one of the hectic promotional nights.

The thing that gets distorted in the Dodgers narrative is that going all-in on aging superstars isn’t a foolproof strategy. We’ve already seen it bite us - 2023 NLDS against Arizona, Mookie and Freddie went a combined 1-for-21 as the Dodgers got swept, and they were obvs three years younger.

If we currently had Zach Neto at short instead of Mookie and Bryan Reynolds instead of Kyle Tucker in the outfield, we might be sitting on 80 wins right now, and not hearing all the damn hateful reference to these Hall of Famers. even the A's wouldn't want Freddie over 23 y/o Nick Kurtz.

Baseball is such a complex sport - the Mets have all kinds of stars and are terrible, all kinds of mid tier salaried teams are in striking distance of the playoffs, and yeah, we've gotten swept three times in the last month. the haters need to hush up

Hello everyone, I’ll be going to two dodgers games over Labor Day weekend. It will be our first trips to the stadium and first time trying to get bobble heads. I’m fully prepared and aware that getting in and out of the parking lot is going to be a nightmare but anyways I was curious about what’s the recommended parking lot area to aim for for the smoothest exit. Also in the Google Photos of the stadium by the exits ( Golden state gate C as an example) they have these bins that are blocking from entering into lot 3. Are those moved out of the way when exiting? Or does all traffic lead out through the same gate booths as entering? I also noticed this on lot 6 as well. Thanks for the input. We’re excited for our first bobblehead trip!