Dodgers Diaries

Sigh.

Is this how it all ends, not with a flameout by Jonathan Broxton, but with a whimper by the offense? The Dodgers’ 2010 season may have come to a close Sunday with their 2-0 shutout by the hated Giants, completing a payback sweep from June. The Dodgers are 8 back in the division and 6 in the wild card and show no signs of pepping up.

Larry Bowa found lots of places to lay the blame and has used a well-known LA Times columnist as his megaphone. I won’t link to it for the same reason baseball games don’t show the morons who run on the field: I don’t want to encourage that kind of writing.

I believed this team was flawed at the beginning of the season, and I’ve seen nothing all year to dissuade me of that opinion. Bringing in Ted Lilly was a long overdue solution for the fourth starter role, but the time to do that was in April, when Charlie Haeger and James McDonald were costing the team games. Bringing in Lilly for just two months now may be too little too late.

If the cost of Lilly was Blake DeWitt for Ryan Theriot, I’m not sure the Dodgers improved themselves. Theriot is quick and a capable defender, but his OBP is terrible. As Orel Hershiser quickly deduced on the Sunday telecast, he seems afraid to take a 3-2 pitch. He’s also six years older than DeWitt and a whole lot more expensive.

Octavio Dotel for James McDonald and Andrew Lambo bothers me a little less. Dotel seems to be exactly the same kind of closer as Jonathan Broxton: Good in easy spots, but can’t get the big saves. McDonald showed in two straight seasons that he wasn’t capable of retiring major league hitters on a consistent basis. Lambo is much heralded in the Dodger organization, but his 50-game suspension for PEDs makes me wonder whether his talent was real or man-made.

Scott Podsednik added a left-handed bat to a team that needed a right-handed one. He’ll be the fourth outfielder if and when Manny returns. If the Dodgers are out of it and Manny is dealt to a team in contention, Pods will play out the string in left field.

In all, I see the Dodgers made a lot of moves that didn’t really make them all that much better. This team was built on Manny Ramirez providing pop in the middle of the order, and without him, it’s not capable of producing runs. Sunday’s lineup attempted to manufacture runs by placing speed in the top three spots. But speed alone doesn’t win games. You can’t steal first, as the 1-for-11 performance demonstrated. Theriot’s OBP is too low for that strategy to work, and Podsednik’s caught-stealing rate makes him as much of a liability as Matt Kemp on the bases.

It’s not over. The 2007 Rockies showed you can go .500 for the first five months of the season and then go on a winning streak that will take you through the playoffs. We’ll see if the Dodgers are capable of that kind of performance.

-- JOHN ROSENTHAL