Why the Dodgers Still Don't Get It

Before I go talking about the dodgers again...Go Red Sox!  I've been watching you and I'm rooting for you.  Hi, Jacoby Ellsbury, my wife and father in-law think you're hot.  

Now that that's out of the way, time to discuss less fortunate teams.  Trying to improve your team should always be a good thing. Unfortunately, the Dodgers have a history of sabotaging their success through short-sighted moves. Trading away guys like Pedro Martinez and a certain manager destroying great, young arms by overwork are a few ways to destroy an up and coming organization. Bringing in the wrong free agents can waste both money and squander a younger talent that was capable of doing the job and trading him away for a spare part because the young player has nowhere to play.

Where the hell am I going with this? The first article I read on the dodgers plans for next year has good, bad, and ugly ideas in it.  Some of the ideas are the author's (he's pretty good though) and not the G.M.'s so I'm taking it as just conjecture rather than a statement from the organization as to how they're leaning.  I'll now don a poncho and shoot from the hip.

The Ugly

I'll skip to the ugly.  The ugly is that the dodgers may be compounding an earlier mistake, signing Juan Pierre to play center field, by signing another free agent center fielder (Jones or Hunter), then shifting Pierre to left instead of getting rid of him.  I disagree with any transaction that chooses keeping Pierre over Ethier if they trade for or sign an outfielder.  I thought they said loud and clear that this was a youth movement.  Ethier is better than Pierre. 

Also, letting a good, young, cheap, albeit brittle arm slip away by possibly non-tendering Emperor Tsao (1.054 whip  103 era+) who makes near minimum while leaning towards re-signing the likes of Rudy Seanez ($700k) and Mark Hendrickson ($3 millionish) qualifies as pretty ugly.  What the heck?  It makes me wonder about talent evaluation when a team has such a great bullpen is considering bringing back flotsam like Seanez while letting a great waiver grab in Tsao float away.

The Bad

The bad includes the organization leaning towards tendering Mark Hendrickson by attrition.   He has a few good things going for him.  He's really tall (6'9"), he's left handed, and he's decent as a swing man.  The bad things are that Hendrickson isn't all that good, a little less than average to be more precise (1.45 career whip & 90 era+), he'll make at least 3 million next season, and he blocks young arms while starting too many games.  I'd rather the dodgers go with easing a young arm like James McDonald into the majors via the bullpen like they did (albeit a bit unnecessarily) with Billingsley.  They could also commit to Eric Stults as the lefty swingman.  It not hard to find a cheaper, younger guy to pitch at or under a 5.21 e.r.a. already in the organization.  Finally, I just don't want to see another season of Hendrickson bouncing back and forth from bullpen to the rotation.  I'm sure many other fans agree.  That said if it were a choice between re-signing Seanez and Hendrickson I'd have to go with the lurching lefty.  He's in both bad and ugly because depending on who else the dodgers re-sign, keeping Hendy might not be so bad.

The Good 

The good includes (although this is Tony Jackson's assumption) that the contracts of Ramon Martinez and Randy Wolf will most likely be declined.  Martinez presumably moves on to another organization since the dodgers have Wilson Valdez, Tony Abreu, and another of the wife's favorites, Chin-Lung Hu all being capable, young infielders.  A decline of Martinez's option would be a huge positive message to me as a fan that Ned won't blindly re-sign old friends when he has better internal options.  He got rid of Tomko.  Maybe he's getting it sometimes.

Another good thing is the mention of Alex Rodriguez as still a free agent target instead of the organization backing off or preemptively stating they have no interest in ARod.  This guy, although I personally dislike him, is the one true difference maker on the free agent market.  If there was a guy worth thirty million dollars a year, it would be ARod.  He would greatly help the dodgers if signed.  He may also feel more comfortable in Los Angeles in terms of the pressure he puts on himself from the perceived expectations of everyone.  L.A. is stereotyped as being laid back.  True dodger fans know this is a sham but ARod won't.  He also would have no other superstar players to share the limelight with in L.A.  Landing this type of name would seem to excite the competitiveness in the owner, Frank McCourt, who would love the attention signing the best player in the game right now would bring him.  He supposedly wanted Vladimir Guerrero while he was still in the process of buying the team but was told no by Selig.   This could be the guy that makes up for that missed opportunity.  It's been a while since L.A. has had a superstar player, and maybe with good reason.  Gary Sheffield (complainer), Piazza (good guy who got the shaft from fox), and Kevin Brown (jerkoff) were quite a while ago. I like the idea of a adding ARod in that it's just money, dodgers have alot of kids to be able to afford him and that it would prevent Colletti from pursuing an outfielder (I think Torii Hunter is a very bad idea and Andruw Jones is just kind of a bad idea).  I spent a lot of keystrokes on this when most likely Boras and ARod finds a way for him to stay in New York.  Just saying he's worth going after if he hits the market.

I read elsewhere that Wolf would still consider coming back for about what he made last year. The dodgers should again jump at Wolf for the bargain price of 7 or 8 million dollars for one or two years.  He's a bargain considering the dodgers paid Brett Tomko 4 million a year to pitch so much worse.  You can't count on him to be healthy, but he's a solid fifth starter for half a season/100 innings whichever comes first.  Hopefully this time around they shut him down as soon as he shows signs of being hurt instead of letting him make a few starts hurt.  Wolf's overall numbers last season took a bit of a hit for that reason.  

Another good thing is the club is considering picking up Mike Lieberthal's 1.5 million option.   The irrational side of me says the club should go cheaper because Russell Martin is the best thing since pine tar and rosin bags and could never get hurt, but Martin isn't invincible and may still have a few things he can learn from a veteran such as Lieberthal who was no slouch in his prime offensively and defensively.  If the dodgers get more offense, perhaps Lieberthal could get more playing time and Martin can get a little more much deserved rest so we don't see him fade later in the season.  I agree with Jackson's point when he asks where are you going to find such a good catcher comfortable with such a limited role.  1.5 million seems to be a small price to pay for such a veteran that accepts his role on the team and doesn't cause trouble like Jeff Kent and Luis I'm glad he's Gone-zalez when their playing time was reduced and the season went sour.  Maybe these experiences with veterans acting like five year olds and almost every young player performing as advertised taught Ned that the stopgaps aren't so necessary and that he can be more aggressive in handing jobs to young players without putting veterans in their way.

At the macro level the good is the dodgers announced their direction was going towards utilizing youth.  The bad is that they aren't exactly practicing what they just preached about going with young players.  The ugly is that they are considering signing another veteran outfielder without getting rid of the veteran that didn't work out, a.k.a. Juan Pierre, simultaneously making the team older and worse.