It was pretty cool to learn over the weekend that former Dodger GM and current Padre exec Paul DePodesta started his own blog. He knows his baseball, obviously, and the chance to see how the braintrust of a baseball team gets their work done isn't something we come across every day.

In addition to those workings, the other two things I was most looking forward to reading about were DePodesta's views on the rest of baseball and his star-crossed tenure with the Dodgers. Alas, it wasn't meant to be.

1) Per MLB rules, I am not able to discuss players from other teams. Therefore, if you ask me about trade rumors or what I think of other players, etc, I can't answer.
2) There have been a lot of questions regarding my time at the Dodgers that I haven't published. I am simply not permitted to speak about anything relating to the Dodgers. Sorry. I didn't want you thinking that I was blowing off all of those questions.

He is allowed to talk about his favorite Pinot Noirs however. He thinks the 2005 Talley Vineyards is drinking really nicely and enjoys it with lamb chops. Also he loved Iron Man!

Obviously, tampering concerns and, I'm guessing, a non-disclosure agreement are keeping him silent on the other fronts. That's understandable but too bad. I'd still love to hear him explain how trading Paul Lo Duca and Guillermo Mota for Brad Penny was such an egregious personnel error that Ned Colletti now has his job.

(H/T SportsbyBrooks)

On Deck is FanHouse's look at the day's most intriguing baseball matchups

Chicago Cubs (24-16) vs. San Diego Padres (15-26) - 2:20PM Est.

There are thirteen games on the schedule today in baseball, and nine of them are going to be played under the sun, the way the baseball gods intended it to be. So I figure I may as well feature the team that plays more day games than anybody else in baseball, the Chicago Cubs.

The Cubs offense has been mashing the ball all season long, and now Alfonso Soriano has finally joined in on the fun, as he's homered in three straight games (leading off the last two). Soriano is hitting .487 on the current 10-game homestand for the Cubs, a homestand that Chicago is off to a 5-1 start on.

Today will also mark the debut of Jim Edmonds in a Cubs uniform, as what most Cubs fans would surely consider a sign of the apocalypse becomes reality today. Why the Cubs would need Edmonds, I don't know, but they got him.

Despite all signs pointing towards Dodgers uber-propsect Clayton Kershaw getting the call to start this weekend, it appears as if he will not be promoted to the majors anytime soon. Tony Jackson reports that people inside the Dodgers organization believe Kershaw needs to wait a little longer in order to not exceed his innings ceiling for 2008.

Saturday's fifth-starter assignment will almost certainly go to either Kuo or Park, with no chance of it going to Kershaw. Torre said, 'To me, it's doubtful.' I got a more definitive 'no' from another source within the organization.

Torre also pointed out that in the effort to have Kershaw throw no more than 170 innings this season, that has to be projected not through Labor Day, when the minor-league season ends, or through September, when the big-league season ends, but through October and the major-league postseason. 'It would be unfair if we didn't consider October as part of his innings.' That means they have to be even more conservative with him.

Wonk, wonk. If you're a fan of young, ridiculously talented pitchers and freakish upside, this is sad news. On the other hand, if you're a Dodger fan, you should be happy. Sure, the club could use him now, but just be glad they're thinking of the future.

It could be much worse. Seriously. You could have hired Dusty Baker. Kershaw would have thrown five complete games by this point if that was the case.

Fantasy Spin: Single year leagues can hold off on grabbing Kershaw ... for now. Maybe. If you're in a league where you've got a guy who's jumpy on prospects, and you have an open spot on your bench, it wouldn't hurt to grab him now and plan to trade him. Keeper leagues absolutely want this guy.

Ron Stilanovich is so damn hot right now. And yes, I know this Andre Ethier clip is older, but the Y-Tube had previously pulled it. Although I should be careful -- excuses are like poems. They're for sissies and no one wants to hear them.



This might not be the funniest clip (it's debatable between this and the Carlos Zambrano piece), but it's definitely Stilanovich's best acting work, so when I saw the Dodgers' official blog had it listed, I had to repost.

It seems like once we get past NFL season, coaches and teams could stop acting the fool re: players being injured, but for some reason, they seem wont to keep hiding injuries. And it's really freaking irritating. Such is the case with Rafael Furcal, who has been day-to-day for what feels like a week now. But he is headed to the disabled list, apparently.

Shortstop Rafael Furcal, who has missed the Dodgers' last five games because of lower back pain, was placed on the 15-day disabled list Monday. The move is retroactive to May 6, meaning the earliest Furcal can be activated is May 21 for the final game of a three-game series at Dodger Stadium against Cincinnati.

I guess at least it's retroactive, so that's not as bad (unless you started him this week in fantasy! *muffled scream*). Or unless you're the Los Angeles Dodgers, who desperately need Furcal doing intangible type things at the top of their lineup to really get them going.

Seriously. I don't buy that much into that sort of hype, but they were white hot before he got hurt and have gone 1-4 without the guy. They need him. Not to mention he was making a legitimate case for MVP (even if it was driven by an absurd BABIP) and absolutely tattooing the ball everywhere. Nightmare all around.

Fantasy Spin: Reserve him and go fishing for a cheap SS eligible type guy like Clint Barmes. I'm also going to suggest throwing out feelers while he's hurt and dealing him when he comes back. It's unlikely that he keeps up his previous pace and we saw how he struggled when hurt last year. Oh, and don't punch any walls. It hurts.

Los Angeles Times columnist T.J. Simers deserves credit. No matter what you think of the guy, he's not afraid to get into it with players in the locker room, and he's not afraid to write exactly what he thinks. Which is why he can write columns like this, in which he calls Andruw Jones "Tubbo" and "clueless" after having a summit with Jones in the Dodger clubhouse. Awesome:

Without the fans, I said, there's no reason for you to be here in Los Angeles playing baseball and no way you're getting paid $36 million over the next two years. "I don't care," he said. "You play for the team, you don't play for the fans. The fans never played the game. They don't know."

Both a Tubbo and clueless, which really isn't a very good combination for the player with the highest annual salary in Dodgers history.

Um ... yeah. Probably not the most polite way to write a column, but Jones couldn't have handled that interview any worse. Rather than claiming to do his best for the fans, or something like that, Jones officially said he doesn't care, just before pointing at Simers' belly and guessing that Simers was "going to die tomorrow." That's a fantastic way to exacerbate fan hatred, not to mention draw columnist ire. Officially, Jones now has both.

Maybe not really. But it's a pretty catchy headline, no? Best part? Not even really mine. Besides, even if Juan Pierre actually did read FJM, there's little to no chance he would admit it. That would be like people who revel in his speed and gutsiness and whatnot actually saying "WOW! Juan Pierre is a better batter when he is patient at the plate and attempts to draw walks and thereby raising his OBP. Shock! And awe!"

Apparently though, that is what happening -- Pierre being patient. Not reading FJM. From Buster Olney:

'He's picking through pitches,' said one talent evaluator. 'I think with the competition going on' -- with four Dodgers outfielders competing for three spots -- 'he had to re-think a little bit the way he was playing. In the time I've seen him, you can really see him trying to get on base, in a way that's different from in the past. There's a deliberate thought process going on there. His at-bats look different.'

That's because they are different, so far. Entering Wednesday's game, Pierre is averaging 3.67 pitches per plate appearances, more than a quarter of a pitch better than the 3.40 pitches per plate appearance he averaged last year, and he is hitting .316, with a .388 on-base percentage. He's never had an on-base percentage of greater than .378.

You know what the funniest and most ironic thing about this is? Juan Pierre, bastion of Moneyball haters everywhere, saw four men competing for three jobs in the Los Angeles Dodger outfield. And he realized that the key to getting more playing time was to get on base more -- i.e. exploiting a market inefficiency being better at someone else in a particular area that is more valuable to his team. Even if it's small in market and sample size, he's still using the failing of others to secure more playing time.

If you spent 12 years working at one job, interacting on a daily basis with the same people, you'd probably end up becoming friends with some of them. If you left that job for another one in the same industry, would you stop being friends with those people?

I wouldn't and don't know too many people who would. That makes me and Michael Kay very different people. The Yankee TV announcer and host of his own radio show ripped Joe Torre earlier this week for being in contact with some of his former players with the Yankees.

That's probably surprising to anyone who watched a Yankee game called by Kay. He used to rave about Torre's job handling his players. He also sarcastically referred to him as "St. Joe" while railing about the impropriety of those conversations. Neil Best of Newsday asked him why.


Gosh, what's wrong with people? You rip someone as holier-than-thou after they leave the general vicinity, in the process of creating a mountain out of a molehill, and then they assume that you meant it in a derogatory way.

The feeling you get out of Los Angeles, at least on the Dodger side of the monorail tracks, is that Clayton Kershaw, a.k.a. Public Enemy Number One, needs to be called up now. That guy who yells a lot on ESPN everyday at 5:30 inked a column about it a while back and now Esteban Loaiza is disabled list bound, which will create an opening in the Dodger rotation on May 17. Yhency Brazoban is scheduled to take his spot for the immediate moment, but it sounds like Dodger fans could get their wish sooner than later.

Kershaw, 20, could replace Brazoban or another reliever on the active roster the next time the Dodgers need a fifth starter -- probably on May 17. The spot belonged to Loaiza, whose move to the disabled list is retroactive to Sunday, making him eligible to be activated May 18. Hong-Chih Kuo has also pitched in that role, but Manager Joe Torre said he wants Kuo to remain in the bullpen.

A place for Kershaw on the 40-man roster can be opened by moving Jason Schmidt from the 15-day to 60-day disabled list. Asked Wednesday about the possibility of Kershaw's being called up, Torre replied, 'You'll have to wait and see.'

Oh, Joe ... you're so cryptic. And full of candy. But mostly cryptic. Color me, for one, friggin delighted at the prospect of seeing Kershaw buckle knees with this curveball. Bear in mind though, that even Torre has been more or less pointing out the similarities between young Clayton and some Sandy Koufax guy. Who may have been good or something.

On Deck is FanHouse's look at the day's most intriguing baseball matchups

Pittsburgh Pirates (13-19) vs. San Francisco Giants (14-19) - 7:05PM Est.

The Giants tried Barry Zito as a starting pitcher for a little over a year, but it didn't work out.

The Giants tried Barry Zito as a relief pitcher, but after only eight days in the bullpen, that wasn't quite working out either.

The Giants wanted to try Barry Zito as a corpse at the bottom of McCovey Cove, but the law doesn't look highly upon such actions, so with no other alternatives, they've decided to try him as a starter one more time.

Tonight baseball's worst contract will return to the mound as a starter, bringing with him that 0-6 record, the 7.53 ERA, and that 1.95 WHIP of his.