Dodgers Diaries

According to a report on Yahoo!, the family of Roy Disney is now interested in buying the Dodgers. They join a group that includes potential bidders such as Magic Johnson and Guggenheim, Joe Torre and Rick Caruso, Larry King, and Peter O’Malley.

Where were you in 2004, when the Dodgers were being sold for a tiny fraction of the $1 billion Frank McCourt is likely to hold out for ... and still not give you the parking lots? Why couldn't you have bought the Dodgers seven years ago with some actual money and saved us from this carpetbagging thief? Why wasn't local ownership a point of pride in 2004?

-- JOHN ROSENTHAL

A 2012 baseball season with neither Frank McCourt nor Tony LaRussa is something to keep me warm all winter.

If I had known LaGenius would have retired, having nothing left to prove after winning the 2011 World Series, I would have rooted for the Cardinals. Now I feel cheap for cheering on the God-fearing Rangers.

There's no denying LaRussa's success. He's among the greatest managers of all time, one of only two to win the World Series in both leagues, and took a 2011 Cardinal team that had no business being in the playoffs past the vaunted Phillies, through the powerful Brewers and over the speedy Rangers. His mix-and-match bullpen philosophy works, and so does whatever it is he does to get the most out of players like Octavio Dotel, Arthur Rhodes, Kyle Lohse and Jeff Weaver. Those guys all have rings, while Roy Halladay does not.

But I won’t be sorry to see him go. Lefty-righty matchups are here to stay, and it seems every manager has embraced the three-pitcher inning. But at least we won't be hearing about what a genius the man is for batting the pitcher eighth, or for pretending he didn't know all along that Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco were sticking needles up their butts.

As for Mr. McCourt, the sooner he sells the Dodgers the better. The sooner the Fox TV network can back up a Brinks truck full of money to the new owners and allow them to sign Prince Fielder or some other hitter to protect Matt Kemp in the lineup. The sooner we can talk about Clayton Kershaw defending his Cy Young award. The sooner we can stop talking about injunctions and stays and oxidation of staples in legal agreements. The sooner Jamie McCourt can fade into Georgia Frontiere oblivion.

-- JOHN ROSENTHAL

Because I don’t follow basketball with any care, I usually look forward to the day the Lakers are eliminated from the NBA playoffs. It’s not just that I find this particular group of Lakers distasteful, and can’t wait until the spotlight stops shining on them. It’s also because their exploits always tend to overshadow the interesting stories taking root in the spring at Chavez Ravine.

This year, however, I'm not so sure I'd like more media scrutiny of the Dodgers. This is a team that wasn't expected to go very far, and so far, they’ve barely lived up to that expectation. Clayton Kershaw and Chad Billingsley have delivered some fine performances, but the bullpen has been one of the worst in baseball. Andre Ethier and Matt Kemp are both OPS-ing over .950, but it feels like they're the only Dodgers who can hit. Even Ethier's 30-game hitting streak came to an end before the Lakers’ ignominious exit. The team lead in home runs belongs to Rod Barajas, he of the .216 batting average.

More sportswriters focusing on the Dodgers will only expose how horrendous the past 11 months of James Loney’s career have been. More broadcasters following the team will only shine the spotlight even more brightly on Jonathan Broxton's inabilities as closer. More talk on sports radio will only amplify the swing-hard-three-times-in-case-you-hit-it tendencies of Juan Uribe and Marcus Thames. Worst of all, more media attention on this team will undoubtedly focus on the travails of their duplicitous owner, Frank McCourt, who has overstayed his welcome a lot longer than Ron Artest has.

For now, I will content myself with the fact that the Lakers’ classless exit with dominate headlines and highlight shows for at least another week. And the dismantling of this team after the 4-0 sweep by Dallas is sure to keep the purple and gold in the limelight at least until LeBron and D-Wade waltz to the championship they assigned to themselves nearly a year ago.

But then it’ll be all Dodgers all the time. And the only team that will be good for is the Angels.

-- JOHN ROSENTHAL

Call it coincidence, but the Dodgers have won five of the six games since rookie Jerry Sands entered the lineup last Sunday. Sands, the guy the team didn’t want to block by acquiring a free-agent left fielder, has not exactly lit the world on fire; he went 0-4 in Friday’s 12-2 shellacking of the Cubs, lowering his average to .111. But he’s injected an enthusiasm that seemed lacking from the team in the first two weeks.

You could also give the credit to Chad Billingsley, who played the role of stopper after even ace Clayton Kershaw faltered against St. Louis, throwing 8.0 shutout innings Sunday. That started a turn through the order in which every Dodger starter threw at least seven innings and gave up no more than two earned runs. Billingsley wasn’t quite as good in Friday’s game, scattering 7 hits over 6.1 innings and allowing 2 runs. But he didn’t’ need to be; the game was a laugher after the third inning.

Or, of course, maybe it’s the stewardship of major league baseball. The Dodgers have posted their first three-game winning streak of the season since Frank McCourt got a babysitter. Whatever the reason, it’s encouraging to see this team score some runs and put up good pitching performances.

I’m not sure why Casey Coleman, the Cubs starter, is in the big leagues. His mechanics look terrible, as though he prefers to pitch out of the stretch. That’s something he did a lot of in this 2.2 innings of work.

-- JOHN ROSENTHAL

The end of the Frank McCourt era begins today, as Major League Baseball announces that it will oversee the financial and day-to-day operations of the Dodgers. It’s still unclear what the long-term implications are, but if baseball felt compelled to intervene, it means the situation was pretty serious.

At the very least, this will forestall any fire sale McCourt might have held to meet payroll. For the teams’ first payroll of the season, he was forced to borrow $30 million from Fox, the company that loaned him the money to buy the team in the first place.

Would somebody please remind me why Mark Cuban was such a poor choice to own the team? Better yet, how about the entirely broke city of Los Angeles purchase the Dodgers and run them as a public good? There would be no talk of threatening to leave the city if a new stadium weren’t built.

-- JOHN ROSENTHAL

Frank McCourt's error in the Bryan Stow situation, as in most of the situations he has been involved with regarding the Dodgers, stems from cheapness. He and his concessionaires don't hire enough staff, so lines for hot dogs and beer are too long. He doesn't hire enough security, so violence escalates quickly. He doesn't pay for premier players, so the Dodgers lack the on-field personnel to put them over the top. In each instance, he pays only for the bare minimum, if that, and it comes back to hurt him in the end.

Call me a cynic, but Sunday’s comeback win over the Rockies doesn’t prove to me that the Dodgers aren’t quitters. It proves that baseball is a funny game where the better team doesn’t always win.

As for these Dodgers, it’s not so much the players who quit as the management team around them. Over the 2009-10 winter, the front office quit on the team by failing to sign players to replace the departing Orlando Hudson and Randy Wolf, both of whom left without even a draft pick in return. Hudson was the offensive sparkplug for the 2009 team, hitting for the cycle in his Dodger Stadium opener. He hit a surprising .283 and OPSed .774, better even than the $10 million man Rafael Furcal at short. Wolf led the team in starts and innings pitched, but the Dodgers thought it was a career year and let him go.

Jon Garland put up serviceable numbers in his short career with the Dodgers, but they let him go as well.

As the trading deadline loomed, management again quit on the Dodgers, failing to acquire the kind of players who would make the team better. Off went Cliff Lee. For the third time in two years, no less. Off went Roy Oswalt. Ted Lilly came west, but only at the price of weak-hitting Ryan theriot. Octavio Dotel was another drain on the farm system that didn’t seem to indicate any immediate upside.

By the time the non-waiver deadline approached, the Dodgers were barely in contention, but kept trying to have it both ways. They wanted to unload Manny Ramirez and his hefty contract. But instead of simply dealing him, they waited until the last minute to see if the team would magically re-enter the pennant race. Still, they refused to play Manny for fear that he might get hurt and ruin the deal worked out with the White Sox.

Finally, Joe Torre quit on the team, announcing last week that he would not return in 2011. He also revealed that he had made his successor, Don Mattingly, a contractual part of his deal with the team when Torre signed in 2008. There never was, and never would be any discussion about who would follow Torre, because it was even more in writing than the name of the McCourt who owned the team.

Torre clearly had to know his mind before September 15. The timing of his announcement, however, followed the remarks by former Dodger owner Peter O’Malley, who said the McCourts had disgraced the proud Dodger franchise. You know, the one the O’Malleys sold to those fine citizens, the Fox broadcasting company. Still, the PR hit left a mark, one that could only be erased by a new news cycle in which Grandpa Torre passes on the family farm to Little Don.

Does the Jackie Robinson signing automatically exempt the Dodgers from having to do anything on behalf of minorities ever again? The team had to scramble to find an African-American player to introduce Rachel Robinson in 2006 and 2007. The 25-man roster in 2010 has had no more than four black players at a time: Matt Kemp, James Loney, and Russell Martin, with Kenley Jansen, replacing Garret Anderson when the latter proved no better a hitter than the former.

The 2010 Dodger season was over before it even began. There were flashes of above-average play, but nothing inspired other than an early season stretch where the team averaged six runs a game. Their fielding was sloppy, the pitching was uneven, and players could not stay off the disabled list. They looked like an older, duller version of the 2009 team that started out so strong and merely hung on to win the division.

The 2011 team looks to be just as awful. There will be no budget for free agent signings, and no farm system to raid for dividends that pay sooner. Mattingly may wish he had taken the opportunity to learn in the minor leagues under Tim Wallach while the team struggles through the horrible McCourt divorce. It’s going to be a long run and the temptation to quit will be just as great.

-- JOHN ROSENTHAL

Let’s assume for a moment that Divorce McCourt came to an amenable resolution in the next three days, and that Ned Colletti miraculously found $10 million in the Dodger coffers to play with. Where exactly might the Dodgers upgrade?

They need a bat, says you. OK. In the outfield, Kemp and Ethier are fixtures, the cornerstones of the franchise. Left field is more problematic, with Manny expected to return from injury at some point in the near future. If you were to trade for a left fielder, what would you do with him if and when Manny returns?

In the infield, Casey Blake and Rafael Furcal are both signed through 2011. Any offensive upgrades at those positions would ensure an expensive unhappy bench player. James Loney has led the team in RBIs most of the season. There are half a dozen guys in the NL who are better than him, but you’d probably have to send him away in any deal to improve production out of first base. Blake DeWitt has shown little power at second base, but he’s cheap and gets on base enough. He’s the most likely candidate to sit for a proven veteran with some pop, but I don’t see a lot of Ryne Sandbergs on the trading block.

They need a reliever. Perhaps. But with Ronald Belisario returning from rehab (or whatever put him on the “restricted” list) and Kenley Jansen an unexpected gem, all of a sudden, a bullpen that looked awful a week ago could be looking awesome a week from now. You can never have too much pitching, of course, so a deal that brought a Joe Beimel or some other lefty specialist wouldn’t be too bad.

They need a starter. Roy Oswalt is the big name still out there. Would he come to Los Angeles? He thinks Houston is too hectic. He’d wither in L.A. Plus $10 million would still leave the Dodgers $6 million short on his salary, and he’s signed through 2011. The other available starters don’t impress me a whole lot more than Carlos Monasterios. Paul Maholm? Jake Westbrook? Maybe as innings eaters to take some load off Bills and Kershaw, but I wouldn’t give up much for them.

If I had to guess, I’d say the Dodgers do almost nothing before Saturday. Maybe sign a reliever, maybe a fourth outfielder type. But other than that, you’re looking at the team that will go the rest of the way.

-- JOHN ROSENTHAL

Doug Glanville’s column in today’s NY Times reminds me of a piece I did from a fan’s perspective about Spring Training. My wedding anniversary falls during spring training every year, but because my wife is a baseball fan, we get to spend the weekend revisiting the game we love almost as much as each other.

View the spring training piece here.

Russell Martin says the 25 pounds he put on over the winter includes no love handles. It’s all muscle. Sorry, Russ, but count me as dubious, especially after the part about working out with Eric Gagne over the winter. Even if you’re not taking anything to bulk up that quickly, you probably shouldn’t mention that you’ve been associating with guys implicated in the Mitchell Report.

The Dodgers are holding “Viva Los Dodgers” days every Sunday there’s a home game in 2010. But when I called to find out exactly what the days will encompass, the PR dept. couldn’t tell me. All they knew was that the celebration will be held inside the stadium, it will be a tribute to Latinos in some way, and will include live music and presumably concessions.

You gotta hand it to the McCourts. They find ever more ways to part people from their money. No tailgating, but come on inside and enjoy our $8 beers and equally overpriced lousy food before the game even starts.

-- JOHN ROSENTHAL

Au Revoir, Juan Pierre.

A year ago, I might have said good riddance (save for the fact that I don’t know how to say that in French). But after the 2009 that Pierre put up, I’m a bit more melancholy about his departure.

Sure, Pierre had no arm. Sure, he couldn’t hit for power. Sure, he failed to ignite the offense because he didn’t get on base enough. Sure, his blind devotion to his consecutive games streak stood in the way of the development of Matt Kemp and Andre Ethier, the two cornerstones of the 2010 Dodger offense.

But in 2009, he stopped pouting about playing time, largely because he got some. It took Manny Ramirez’s 50-game suspension for using banned substances to get Pierre in the lineup on an everyday basis, but given the chance, he performed admirably. Pierre put up Dodger career highs in average, on-base percentage, slugging and OPS. I criticized him for his poor .655 OPS in 2008; in

2009, he raised it by 100 points. A .757 OPS still isn’t terrific, but for a fourth outfielder, it’s not awful.

With the White Sox, Pierre will have an opportunity to start every day -- at least until Chicago realizes he’s not much better than the parade of losers they’ve thrown out there: Scott Podsednik, Brian Anderson and Dewayne Wise (although he gets a pass for saving Mark Buehrle’s perfecto).

The Dodgers will get two players to be named later, thus debunking the myth that the PTBNL is always the same person. But this deal wasn’t about equal value. It was addition by subtraction. The Dodgers will eat about half of the remaining $18 million on Pierre’s contract, giving them about $4.5 million per year to spend on another player.

With Xavier Paul, Jason Repko or any number of minor leaguers ready to step in as the fourth outfielder in 2010, I suspect the Dodgers will use this money to upgrade the pitching staff. No, they won’t be signing any John Lackeys or Roy Halladays. They’ll look for bargains like they did with Randy Wolf last year. Like last year, they’ll wait until the scraps are left behind the Yankees, Phillies and Red Sox. Then they’ll sign a parade of horribles like Jeff Weaver, Eric Milton, Claudio Vargas, et al.

Ned Colletti has maintained that despite Frank and Jamie McCourt’s marital difficulties, the team will be business as usual. Sadly, that’s true.

So long, Juan Pierre. If you hadn’t been so grossly overpaid, we might have loved you here in Los Angeles. At $4.5 million a year, you’re a decent option for Chicago. Maybe they’ll love you there.

-- JOHN ROSENTHAL