As the hometown Los Angeles Dodgers continue their pursuit of a three-peat, a first for the city of Los Angeles since the Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant era of the Los Angeles Lakers, the Dodgers remain focused on their minor league system. Andrew Friedman has always maintained a focus on maintaining that amazing pipeline to keep bringing in more talent to this historic franchise. Many Dodger fans know that the newest piece of that pipeline started this year.
That piece is their new low-A affiliate: the Ontario Tower Buzzers. The California League that the Tower Buzzers play in finished their first half of the season last Thursday. The Tower Buzzers finished the first half of the season with a 33-33 record. Decent, but not entirely great for a team affiliated with the two-time World Series champion Dodgers. Now the board resets for the second half of the season. The Tower Buzzers are already off to a 2-1 start to the second half thanks to some key wins against their new rival: the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes (the low-A affiliate of the Anaheim Angeles…even though Arte still insists on that stupid Los Angeles declaration).
Still, so far it has been a great start for the new stadium. The locals keep the attendance high as the Tower Buzzers have seen several Dodgers stars make rehab starts here: including Brock Stewart and Blake Snell. The Tower Buzzers kicked off the second half of their inaugural season in a big way with a bobblehead night for the late Dodgers legend Fernando Valenzuela. They’ve also rolled out the red carpet for some other Dodger legends like Shawn Green and Mickey Hatcher.
In fact, some fans got to meet and greet the Dodger legends. Growing up playing little league baseball myself, I idolized Shawn Green when I was a kid, and for good reason. Green still holds or is tied for several major league records. So, when I got to meet him…I barely said it was good to meet him. Not my finest moment…but I made up for it with talking to Mickey Hatcher. As many true Dodger fans remember, Hatcher had two home runs in the 1988 World Series against the Oakland Athletics. The first home run came in Game One, where Hatcher hilariously ran quickly around the bases and famously said that manager Tommy Lasorda was waiting for him at the top of the dugout to tell him, “Go back out there and run it right.” I asked Hatcher if Tommy really was waiting for him to tell him that, Hatcher replied, “Oh yeah, Tommy always knew when the cameras were rolling…”
Overall, it’s not been too bad for the inaugural season for the Tower Buzzers. However, there are definitely a few things to work on. The offense has been inconsistent while the pitching has been almost consistently bad. Let me break it down for you. As of right now, the Tower Buzzers leads their league in home runs (97), runs scored (482), triples (30), and slugging percentage (.481). However, the team also leads their league in striking out with 785. As I mentioned, their pitching has been appalling. They are last in runs allowed (494), last in earned runs allowed (427), and they also have hit more batters (66) and walked more batters (421) than any other team.
As for the entertainment value of the ONT Field, it is definitely one of the nicest minor league ball parks to visit. Clearly people love coming to it as the Tower Buzzers lead low A baseball in attendance and are 13th overall in the ENTIRE minor league system. I will say that some of their events, such as the beach ball toss and the T-shirt toss are not very efficient in making sure all parts of the ballpark participate. They also need to double check their programs they pass out for games, because it feels like there are a lot of inconsistences in them like they were written by Chat GPT.
But I’m sure with some fine tuning, both with the entertainment and the team, will make the Tower Buzzers’ home, ONT Field, the place to visit every summer. I look forward to attending more games in the second half, especially with more Dodger legends due to visit; including Steve Sax, Joe Kelly, and Mike Scioscia.
