Dodgers Diaries

Being a travel writer, I have to name Brian Barton as my new favorite Dodger. Being well-traveled isn’t exactly a feather in one’s cap in baseball terms. And indeed, the 28-year-old outfielder has seen his share of minor and major league towns since being drafted.

If he never sticks with a big league club, Barton has a promising career ahead of him as an aerospace engineer. I’m rooting that he gets to go out and play for a while before he settles into a desk job.

For a complete interview with Barton see the following story from the Riverfront Times.

Barton is among the 33 players who will make the Dodgers’ trip to Taiwan next week. Of course he is. With experience visiting more than a dozen countries, he’s better traveled than the rest of the roster put together. What’s interesting to me is how little international travel experience the rest of the roster has. From the Dodgers’ PR staff:

SEEING THE WORLD – A survey of the Dodgers’ Taiwan roster reveals that there are several international travelers in the group. Among the more unique places that Dodger players and coaches have traveled are Spain and Morocco (Jon Link), England (Josh Towers), Holland and Cuba (Chin-lung Hu), Brazil and Japan (Manny Ramirez), Belgium (J.D. Closser), Colombia and Panama (Ronnie Belliard), Germany and Italy (Lucas May), Argentina and China (Xavier Paul) and Saudi Arabia (John Shoemaker). Brian Barton is the most seasoned traveler, having visited more than a dozen countries, including Ethiopia and Peru.

-- JOHN ROSENTHAL

Included on the list of players who will accompany the Dodgers on their March 10 trip to Taiwan is Ronnie Belliard. Yes, the same Ronnie Belliard who showed up to camp a couple of pounds over the 209 his contract requires. It’s a pretty lenient contract, however. All he has to do is be 209 or under at any point during spring training. A long flight across the Pacific might be enough to dehydrate the last two pounds out of him.

Others on the Taiwan excursion include James Loney, Manny Ramirez (the optimist says it’s so the Dodgers can keep an eye on him; the pessimist says it’s so he can restock his supply of performance-enhancing herbs), Eric Stults, Xavier Paul, Lucas May, and of course Taiwan natives Chin Lung Hu and Hong Chih Kuo.

On a separate note, Dodger Stadium looked a little bedraggled on Sunday for the college tournament. The signs on the outfield wall looked like they hadn’t been changed since October; there was still a “Postseason on TBS” banner in centerfield.

-- 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

Joe Torre made an unexpected move by naming Clayton Kershaw his Game 1 starter. But if you factor in a desire to have Vicente Padilla start at home, the choice isn’t that surprising after all. Given the choice of moving one of his lefties to the road, Torre opted for the more seasoned Wolf, who spent the first eight years of his career in the city of brotherly love and is almost assuredly itching to show the Philly faithful what he has left in the tank.

The rest of the roster filled out almost in lockstep, with the same 11 pitchers as in the NLDS except for Kuroda replacing Garland. The hitters include the usual starting eight, plus Belliard (or Hudson if you consider Belliard the new starting 2B), Castro, Ausmus, Pierre, Loretta and Thome. Sorry Jon, but you didn’t see any action in the NLDS, and you definitely won’t in this series. Then again, neither did Chad Billingsley, who started the season as the Dodgers’ ace. Baseball is a funny game.

With the Phillies’ abundance of left-handed pitching, it would have been nice to add a right-handed bat to the bench, especially one that could play the outfield as a defensive replacement for Manny Ramirez in the late innings. Problem is the Dodgers don’t have a player like that in their system. Xavier Paul is probably their best outfielder not in the starting lineup, but he too is a lefty. The only right-handed bat in the system is Jason Repko, known more for his glove. And after Mark Loretta’s heroics against St. Louis, there’s no way the Dodgers were going to bump him from the roster.

With Jim Thome taking up two roster spots (one for himself and one for somebody to run for him should he reach base), the Dodgers’ bench is going to be short again. After Thome and Pierre pinch-hit, there isn’t much pop on the pine. Unlike the pitching staff, where the strength is in the late innings, the Dodgers' offensive attack is going to have to come from the front lines.

--- JOHN ROSENTHAL