Dodgers' Kasten Says Ticket Prices Will Not Increase For '13; Attendance Bump Significant

Dodgers President Stan Kasten, when asked if he expects the team to raise ticket prices for the '13 season, replied, “I do not,” according to Steve Dilbeck of the L.A. TIMES. Kasten: “We’re going to be tweaking, just for reasons of seat classifications. But in general prices aren’t going up. Some may, while others go down, but in general they will stay the same.” He added that the team's increase in attendance this season "was actually greater than announced." Kasten: “For reasons I don’t want to get into, it’s a brighter picture than you all realize, because of the way the arithmetic was done this year vs. how arithmetic was done in the past" (LATIMES.com, 10/4). MLB.com's Tracy Ringolsby wrote shopping on the free-agent and high-priced trade market was something Kasten "believed was necessary for short-term credibility in a place like Los Angeles while the long-term plan is put in place." Kasten: "We have a plan to become a scouting and player-development organization. That's our goal. In the short term, we needed to do some things. We do need to compete in the next two or three years, until we get everything into place" (MLB.com, 10/4).

EXTREME MAKEOVER, CHAVEZ EDITION: In L.A., J.P. Hoornstra reports the Dugout Club seats at Dodger Stadium, where "high-rollers cozily sit in the background of home plate and both dugouts, were covered with gray tarps Thursday." Usually, this "serves as a fixed image for the solemn scene between baseball seasons." But this year, it "hinted at a big rumbling -- the expected renovations of the undersized clubhouses, and the installation of a new visitor's batting cage, underneath the seats." A formal announcement is "expected within a week or two." Kasten said, "Out in the seating bowl we're going to have more bars, more restaurants, more hanging-out areas, more gathering areas like you see in parks" (L.A. DAILY NEWS, 10/5).