Fans probably will love this trade: Angels give up Casey Kotchman and minor-league pitcher Stephen Marek … and get Mark Teixeira. Sounds sexy. Sounds wrong. The Angels have been consistent contenders in the American League West in this decade, and one of the biggest reasons is this one: They rarely make trades like this one.

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This could have been a turning point day for the Dodgers.Good news: Joe Torre benches Andruw Jones and broadly hints the $36 Million Mistake won’t be back in the lineup any time soon. Bad news: Nomar Garciaparra suffers a tweaked knee and leave in the middle of a 2-0 victory. He said it didn’t hurt […]

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Now that I’ve just written that headline … I wonder if it is the right thing, considering that nearly every major move taken by Dodgers general manager Ned Colletti has gone so spectacularly wrong. I mean, it is possible for him to do anything right when his resume includes Andruw Jones, Jason Schmidt and Juan […]

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For the first time in 32 years, I am spending most of my summer in Long Beach, the city where I grew up. And I am reminded of several of the patterns of summer, here by the Southern California ocean. And how we passed the time during those glorious 12 weeks or so between school […]

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On the previous entry, someone who saw Andruw Jones play in Atlanta — where he was a real player … actually, a star … for most of a decade … hopes that Dodgers fans get to see that guy before they, oh, I don’t know … start pelting him with rotton tomatoes. My response to […]

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I certainly want to say, “yes, of course he is.” Particularly among the position players. But the competition is a bit stiffer than one might think. One source I stumbled across lists the “top five” busts for a 10-year period going back from 2007. That list includes three pitchers, however, and pitchers are notoriously difficult […]

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Francisco Rodriguez, aka “K-Rod,” has vowed to test his value in the free-agency market at the end of the season. I know this concept agitates some Angels fans. “How can we go forward without our star closer?” Well, they can do it quite easily: By letting someone else sign him to a long and extremely […]

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People who live in New York City love to call it “the greatest city in the world.” But most everyone who doesn’t live there considers it, at best, an interesting place to visit and, at worst, a place to see once and never return to. Besides being crowded, dirty and polluted, it’s just jammed with […]

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I’m a National League fan. Baseball is like that. You have a strong preference for one league or the other. If you are any kind of fan at all. So I was pulling for the National League to win an All-Star Game for the first time since 1996 (!) tonight. For most of the night […]

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A Dodgers team some predicted would play for the World Series has some work to do. The Dodgers are 46-49 at the All-Star break, and now we have four days off to figure out why. Not that the players need time off to explain their fitful first half. Top 10 Dodgers excuses for being 46-49:

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