*ahem*
The Los Angeles Dodgers are the National League Western Division Champions.
and they couldn't have possibly been more annoying this season
** edited to fix unclear meaning **
Tell me about it. Well, Ramirez certainly has given them some umph.
It looks like LA has the lo/hi in the playoffs (LAD/LAA).
No matter how much you hate the Angels, a Freeway Series would let us thumb our noses at the sports media bias very, very, very much against all west coast teams.
if the season turned in september, then andre ethier should get a great deal of credit for LA's success. he hit .455/.543/.697 in september, to manny's .373/.468/.787. they both OPS'ed about 1.25 for the month, but if manny didn't have an utterly super human SLG for the month, ethier would have posted much better numbers. and ethier doesn't get much credit for it.
of course, ethier spent a good part of september hitting in front of ramirez, which oddly coincided with his numbers going insane.
still, joe torre deserves a great deal of credit for starting ethier over pierre on opening day. not too many managers would have started a kid over a $44M bust that the GM signed, and undoubtedly wanted to see in the lineup every night.
LA got andre ethier straight up in the milton bradley trade with oakland, by the way. paul depodesta made that trade, if memory serves.