Two very interesting stories came out today and both were hatched in the Dodgers’ Asian Operations Department, something most teams don’t even have. Tony Jackson of the Daily News wrote about Takashi Saito and Bill Plunkett of the Orange County Register wrote a great feature on Hong-Chih Kuo. That duo has really been incredible for us this year and will likely play a very big role in 2006 (I’m talking about Kuo and Saito, not Jackson and Plunkett, but I like those guys, too).

As for how Saito got his nickname, he told me the other day that Andre Ethier actually coined it. No one knows why yet, but hopefully we can ask Andre the next time we see him.