The Winter Meetings begin tomorrow in Las Vegas, and if you’re anything like me you’ve got a strange combination of queasiness and excitement in your belly. Dodgers fans have a number of reasons to look at the team’s first move or moves of this offseason with more than just a bit of trepidation. Let’s look at the organization’s administration first.
Start at the top – to borrow a thinly veiled insult from every article Ken Gurnick has written that included Juan Pierre in the last two years – the McCourts have been extremely “polarizing” owners. I’m using that word in exactly the same way Kenny Boy means it when referring to JP – they suck at their job, and everybody knows they suck except for them and maybe the 1% of the Dodgers Fanbase who secretly hates Tommy Lasorda, Dodger Dogs, and Vin Scully (meaning Giants fans, the soulless/championshipless). After jacking up prices like they were charging pesos instead of dollars, Frank dropped a bunch of “We’re too poor to afford Manny” hints, even pretending that it might be strategic for the negotiations, while Jaime posited about whether fans would rather save starving children in Africa or have someone better than Andruw Jones or JP in left field next year. The McCourts have me quivering, because today’s buyers’ market is no time to slash payroll and put a 2005-esque AAA team out there. With a core of talented youngsters earning pre-arbitration salaries, $5 million/year invested in Joe Torre, and the team more popular than it’s been in years, we can’t afford to have Rich Aurilia at third. Period. The recent rumor that Derek Lowe was never offered an extension to stay in Blue further aggravates and scares me. Our best starter (and best deal, best contract, best result of the underrated DePodesta regime) didn’t necessarily want to run away from terrible run support and his hot newscaster girlfriend, and we didn’t act like we needed him?! Ay yay ay.
Next we have the front office, a bizarre smorgasbord of a savvy arbitration-wise exec in Kim Ng, a highly respected scouting director who’s maintained a powerhouse farm system despite our GMs’ and past and current owners’ propensity to sell top-tier young talent low, and finally the dunce who supposedly runs the show: Ned Colletti. Look at a picture of Ned sometime. Have you ever seen someone who looks so clueless? During the run-up to the meetings, there’s been a picture of him scratching the back of his head on the Dodgers’ official website more often than not. His decisions range from horrendous – Jason Schmidt and Andruw Jones – to miserable – Juan Pierre. Following in the pathetic footsteps of his brilliant mentor Brian Sabean, Colletti’s sunk money into injured, overweight, and whiny players and has done so with impressively long and/or expensive contracts. It pretty much goes without saying that had Manny not fallen into his lap at the trade deadline, even McCourt would have known to fire him. If there’s any hope here it’s that White, Ng, and the scouting department get enough of a say to talk Ned out of any crazy stupid contracts.
Finally, the number of holes we need to fill is pretty daunting. People have been arguing about the misrepresentation that comes about from saying, “We have umpteen free agents leaving and hitting the market.” Face it – half of our infield is up in the air (while we’re counting on a 23-year-old either to play a position where his hitting is anemic compared to league standards or to play out of position), our best hitter’s holding himself for Boransom, and we have two big league starters as of right now. If McCourt cuts payroll, we’re bidding against teams for Nick Punto instead of snatching up Furcal after his falling-out with the A’s, apparently his biggest suitor.
Now to the market – the main reason I have some good feelings about the offseason, I think. Let’s be overly optimistic and hope that McCourt sucks it up and fills Ned’s (ugh) pockets with cash to spend over the Winter.
Pitching: If the most recent Lowe rumor is true, I say pull out all the stops to get him back. Be willing to go up to 4 years, $66 million. Failing that, make an honest run at that perpetual wanderer, the Unit. Don’t go anywhere near A.J. Burnett – he’s way overvalued from a good contract year and I don’t have to go very far back in my memory to picture him as a DL-riding Marlin. CC’s out of reach. Let the Yankees lob money at him while the Giants try to bankrupt themselves to stay in the running. Next, pick up an innings-eater. Avoid getting raked over the coals in a Peavy deal. Oliver Perez will cost way more than he’s worth. How about considering convincing the Cubs to eat most of Jason Marquis’s contract and hope that he won’t lose us too many.
For the bullpen, bringing back Saito should be a no-brainer, even for Ned – he’s a cheap risk and is worth another shot to get healthy, even if he doesn’t get back to his amazing 2007 form. Big-name closers are filling up the market, and I would imagine that come January and February there will be some bullpen arms left for cheap. Non-tender Proctor and bring in some reclamation projects. Man, as an aside, I miss Wilson Alvarez.
Outfield: Wow, so many good hitters didn’t even get offered arb. Hence, it’s a buyers’ market. Manny, Dunn and Burrell are all worth the defensive liability in left IF they can be had for the right price. I don’t buy into the coyness teams are showing around Manny. I fear that he’s Arte Moreno’s wet dream, and that the a-hole is going to outspend and upstage the Dodgers again this offseason by pushing hard for Manny AND Tex. If one of those two slips through his grasp, I then could see him going after CC. I would go after the above-mentioned left fielders in the stated order, with Abreu on the radar, again especially if those three want too many years. I’m not sold on Ibanez either being worth the money he’d command or his defense. He plays a Manny-like LF without being the titanic slugger Manny is. Bottom line: be flexible on your guy, Ned, but go out and get one. Rocco Baldelli = last ditch option. Neither Andruw nor Juan better be starting on Opening Day or I bet you a lot of pissed off fans aren’t buying tickets or paying $20 or $30 or whatever parking’s going to cost next year. Needless to say, we’d appreciate you getting rid of them. Also, think draft picks… this could be your chance to make a smart decision and redeem yourself.
Infield: The holes we have to fill present some interesting possibilities, but Ned’s got to let go of his love of veterans for the sake of being veterans. Shortstops over 30 don’t win championships. Granted, sitting on what we’ve got would be near-disastrous. Like talks of entering 2009 with a rotation of Billingsley, Kuroda, Kershaw, McDonald and Elbert (3.4 years of Major League service time COMBINED), you simply cannot have an infield of Loney, DeJesus, Hu, and DeWitt (3.09 seasons combined). While I too go to sleep at night fantasizing of a cheap trade for J.J. Hardy, wake up people, he was probably the 3rd best SS in the NL, top 5 in the Majors. These days SS don’t grow on trees – power production has gone back down to pre-steroid levels and teams seem pretty happy to have just good glovers with poky bats. A 25 year old who slugs and plays rock solid defense is not going to be a bargain just because there’s another good kid coming up behind him. More realistically, we should target free agents while holding onto picks. O Cab will cost too much, more in picks than years or money. Furcal’s dreaming – the offer the A’s made was better than decent, and if anyone takes that a 4-year risk on him, buyer beware. However, if we can get him on a reasonable 2-year deal with an option on the 3rd, I’d go for it. Otherwise we’re back to scrubbing around for a 2nd to 3rd tier shortstop. If the doctors and scouts truly believe Hu’s vision was the problem, give him another shot – he’ll save runs with his defense and earn his keep in the lineup as long as he hits above the Mendoza Line. If not, toss Berroa a bone and let his jersey eat a couple more grounders next season or go totally sentimental and bring back Cesar and his cannon.
I agree with what Torre’s said on the subject – DeWitt plays mean defense at 3rd and he belongs there. I don’t completely agree with the argument that his bat’s not big enough for the hot corner. He might develop. If he doesn’t he’ll still probably turn out better than King Andy. He’ll probably survive better out there than any of our stopgap solutions since Beltre. His OPS+ was 91. Casey Blake, who wants a ton of money and a 3 year deal, had a pretty terrible OBP (.313) for us and his OPS+ was all of 100. Keep the kid there and consider getting a vet backup if there’s one to be had for cheap.
That leaves 2nd Base. While Vin, God bless him, wants his lifelong dream of announcing the O Dog for the Dodgers, the guy simply isn’t worth giving multiple years at 8 figures/year and handing the Dbacks our top draft pick. Ok, I’m going to contradict myself a bit here. I ragged on Ned for grabbing up old washouts. But I honestly believe that he should go out and get Ray Durham. He still hits a ton of doubles, gets on base, and can do no worse in the field than Old Man Kent did. If Tony Abreu’s healthy and finally done suing the Dodgers, maybe he can keep him rested and even push him into hitting a few homers.
I like Loney’s chances for a rebound year (and in the long run for him to develop into a 15-20 HRs/year while topping .300 guy), and they just need to give Russ a break now and again. Is it brain surgery? Even Ardoin wasn’t so terrible he couldn’t have caught 5-10 more games this past year. Don’t overpay, though. Just go get somebody decent enough. Another aside, who doesn’t miss Olmedo Saenz, Pride of Panama? If Nomar will play for carne asada leftovers to stay with his hometown team, bring him back as a guaranteed to be mostly broken down super utility player. Buy low: snap up Brandon Inge to fill in all over. Pick up fat old man Matt Stairs, who, as he showed us in the playoffs, loves to come off the bench and hit massive homeruns. If his stock’s up too much, make a play for Hinske.
My best case scenario lineup:
C – Russ (arb eligible)
1B – Loney
2B – Durham (1 yr @ 6 mil)
SS – Furcal (2 yrs @ 10 mil)
3B – DeWitt
RF – Ethier (arb eligible)
CF – Kemp
LF – Dunn (2 yrs, maybe w/ an option for 3rd @ 9 mil, won’t block Lambo)
Bench: Hu, Garciaparra, Abreu, Stairs, Inge, Jones
Rotation: Lowe, Billingsley, Kuroda, Kershaw, Marquis
Bullpen: Broxton, Wade, Kuo, Saito, Troncoso, Elbert, Schmidt if he isn’t broken or in AAA with a 6.97 ERA.
This avoids giving up draft picks, letting Logan White continue his impressive run of drafts, and doesn’t push gigantic contracts that are likely to explode in our faces on the franchise. It assumes that McCourt ponies up money close to 2008 numbers and that quite a few big negotiations go our way. How likely is it that the pieces would fall into place this nicely? Not very. One can hope, though. A critical part of my suggested plan, though, is that our fallback options should be from within our system or low tier free agents that we don’t risk massive disappointment in.
