Around The Web: Good Help

Baseball America: Will Lingo ranks the top general manager prospects, and the Dodgers have three of them.

8. Kim Ng, Assistant GM, Dodgers: A premium candidate for years now, Ng, 41, has a resume that stacks up against anyone's, with significant roles with the Dodgers, White Sox and Yankees, not to mention a stint with Major League Baseball. She's the first woman to interview for a GM job (with the Dodgers in 2005) and was a finalist for the Mariners job. There's a dichotomy of feeling on her qualifications, however, with many people praising her administrative and organizational skills but others knocking her for talent evaluation. Supporters note that she's smart enough to know what she doesn't know, and would hire people who complement her skills. The bottom line is that it will take a bold owner to hire baseball's first female GM, and it's not clear who that will be.

9. Logan White, Assistant GM/Scouting, Dodgers: White, 47, has earned a reputation as one of the best talent evaluators in the game over the last decade, not only surviving under three different GMs but rising from scouting director to assistant GM. White was a pitcher in the Mariners system from 1984-87 before joining the organization as a scout, and he worked his way up through the scouting ranks with the Mariners, Padres and Orioles before becoming the Dodgers' scouting director in 2002. He's more than just a good scout, though, with good people skills and leadership qualities and a willingness to think unconventionally.

10 more names to watch (listed alphabetically)

DeJon Watson, Assistant GM, Dodgers

On one hand, it's great that Ned Colletti's front office helps are so astute. On the other, I would absolutely hate to lose them.

Dear Tommy John Letters: Everybody go there and encourage Brian Akin to keep his blog going even if he decides not to continue with baseball.

Dodger Divorce: Forbes says the Dodgers are worth quite a lot and have been running in the black since 2006.

FanGraphs: It's an article recapping Charlie Haeger's strikeout heavy start against the Marlins, but the analysis I found in the comments was most interesting.

As Charlie Hough once explained to me, the knuckleball actually benefits as well from seemingly still days. Air currents are not continuous, you see, so the “jumping” motion of the knuckler is actually caused by the asymmetries of the wind force on the travel to the plate. These mini air-eddies cause that sharp and unpredictable movement, which is more beneficial to the knuckleball cmp to other pitches (a rotating ball, e.g. any other pitch, has greater angular momentum and is thus less affected by these micro-eddies).

The statistical analysis on Tim Wakefield in domed stadiums seemed to back this statement up. Interesting.

TMI: That payroll thing? It's pretty important.

If you spend at the league average (Payroll Index = 100 percent), your chance of making the playoffs is 27 percent. If you spend at double the league average (Payroll Index = 200 percent), your chances are 77 percent. And if you spend at half the league average, your chances dwindle to almost 0.

Once you see it like this, it's very obvious that something needs to change. Either keep the inequity in place, but realign to make it plainly obvious that it is inequitable. Or create a system where payroll is not such a huge decider. But don't hide behind the idea that payroll is not that important.

Makes sense.