At the beginning of this season, we asked if putting Joe Torre and Ned Colletti together in the same organization was going to mutually exacerbate both of their well-known predilictions for big-name “experienced veterans.”

Clearly, the answer is a resounding “YES.”

Dangling well-known veteran players in front of Colletti and Torre must be like dangling porn videos in front of Hideki Matsui, because over the past two weeks the Dodgers have gone on a wild spree of acquiring big-name veterans, trading at least 4 prospects and putting down at least $7.5 million dollars combined to acquire Vicente Padilla, Ronnie Belliard, Jon Garland, and Jim Thome.

None of this makes any sense, no matter which way you slice it.

First of all, the Dodgers still have the best record in the entire National League. Yes, that’s right, best record in the whole league. They are a mortal lock for the playoffs, because even if the some how lose the division, they will end up with the wild card. So acquiring these guys for the “stretch run” makes no sense.

But at the same time, it’s not like you really need these guys for the playoffs either, when you cut about five guys from your pitching staff. At least, the Dodgers better not be stashing these guys for the playoffs. Because if you are a Dodgers fan you gotta be pretty frightened if Colletti and Torre are planning to make Vicente Padilla and Jon Garland a big part of their playoff plans.

Because the more important point here is, none of these guys are all that good. Ron Belliard has a career OPS of .753, and he’s already on the downside of that. He’s basically Tony Abreu, only 10 years older at 3 times the price. Oh wait, I forgot, he’s an “experienced veteran.”

As for Padilla and Garland, I’m not sure what to say, other than that these guys are scraping the bottom of the replacement level barrel. Padilla struggles to even achieve replacement level, and Garland has hovered just a smidgen above it for most of his career. Are these guys really going to give the Dodgers anything that they couldn’t get from guys they already have, like Charlie Haeger, Eric Stults, and Scott Elbert?

And as useless as the first three guys are, I consider Jim Thome the most useless acquisition of them all. Oh sure, Thome is a probable hall of famer and all, but he hasn’t played an inning in the field in more than two years, and now here he is on a National League team as a glorified pinch hitter. Thome even spoke with Ned Colletti on the phone and explicitly told him that he could only be asked to play first base in an absolute emergency. What use is that on an NL team? You can’t even double switch with him. Is 40 days of that that really worth a whopping 2.5 million dollars PLUS a minor leaguer?

Maybe Matsui has it right. I’m pretty sure you’d get a better return on your investment investing in porno tapes.

I was going to write this big post about how insanely unbelievable it was that Joe Torre didn’t use George Sherrill (or at least Jonathan Broxton) in the 10th inning of yesterday’s opening game of a three-game set with the Colorado Rockies, but the guy over at “Mike Scioscia’s Tragic Illness” has already said everything that needs to be said about as good as it can be said:

http://mikesciosciastragicillness.com/2009/08/25/anyone-want-joe-torre.html

Tonight, Joe Torre brought Jonathan Broxton in to pitch the eighth inning instead of the ninth, and Broxton wasn’t happy about it:

Torre brought in Broxton one inning early, flip-flopping him with Sherrill to face the heart of the Cubs’ lineup.

“I couldn’t resist it, really,” Torre said.

The manager said he didn’t think Broxton had a problem with his decision, but the closer’s body language indicated he wasn’t thrilled.

“You still got three outs,” Broxton said curtly.

FYI, Broxton is making $1.825MM this season. Torre asked him to pitch the eighth because there was already a runner on first with no outs and the Cubs had Milton Bradley, Derek Lee and Aramis Ramirez coming to the plate.

Torre makes a lot of boneheaded decisions, but asking his best pitcher to pitch in the most important spot in the game isn’t one of them.

It is one of modern baseball’s grandest traditions. Every year, without fail, Joe Torre breaks a right-handed relief pitcher through ridiculous overuse, while other, perfectly good relievers languish unused in the pen.

It happened to Steve Karsay, Chris Hammond, Paul Quantrill, Tom Gordon, Scott Proctor, and Cory Wade, and now this year it’s already happened to Ronald Belisario, the flame-throwing right-hander that the Dodgers plucked from the Pirates system, who has gone down with an elbow injury.

Belisario, with his fine 2.42 ERA and 1.18 WHIP, had already appeared in a team leading 43 games and was on pace to make a ridiculous 85 appearances this season.

But what makes this usage patter all the more insane is that for much of the season, the Dodgers have been carrying eight (8!) relievers on their active roster, meaning there was simply no excuse to ride Belisario so hard. Guys like Will Ohman, Travis Schlichting, and Scott Elbert sat around in the bullpen for weeks while only making a handful of appearances.

The worst part about all this for the Dodgers is not even losing a talented young arm like Belisario. It’s that now Joe Torre is going to ride Ramon Troncoso, an even more talented young arm, even harder than before (Troncoso was alread 2nd on the team with 38 appearances).

As I have about written previously, what makes Joe Torre’s usage of his favorite go-to righty of the moment so insane is how he uses them robotically only in certain situations, with no attention to proper rest, pitching guys on back to back days, and then not pitching them at all for a week, or even more bizarrely, bringing his top set-up man into blowouts on 0 days rest when he is clearly not needed at all.

When it comes to bullpen usage, Joe Torre is a madman, and he needs to be stopped!  He’s literally ruining career after career.

I am simply astonished to see how often Joe Torre is making Russell Martin catch all 9 innings in interleague matchups in AL parks so far this year.

Given Martin’s well-known wearing down at the end of the past two seasons due to overuse, and the fact that his poor performance this season may well be related, away games in AL parks seem like golden chances to keep Martin’s bat in the lineup while resting his aching body.

And yet, so far in 5 out of 7 such games so far this season, Joe Torre has pencilled Martin in at catcher, giving the DH duties to someone else. This makes no sense whatsover, especially since backup Brad Ausmus is a well-respected game-caller who is batting .305 with a .375 OBP so far this year and is getting paid very well for a backup catcher – he should be used. And even moreso, as mentioned, Martin could really use the rest.

I mean, I could understand if Joe Torre had some big bat off the bench that he really wanted to get into the game as DH, but the two guys he has been DH’ing instead of Martin are 37-year-old Mark Loretta (.635 OPS this season) and minor league emergency call-up Mitch Jones, neither of whom is anyone’s idea of a “big bat.”

Has there ever been a bigger gap between a manager’s reputation and his actual in-game lack of managerial skills than in the case of Joe Torre?

One thing that has been really bothering me ever since Joe Torre took over as manager of the Dodgers last year is that he basically never ever uses the double switch.

A perfect example was tonight’s game on the road against the Chicago Cubs.  In a very tight game with the Dodgers leading 2-1, Torre yanked starter Randy Wolf after he allowed a leadoff homer to start the eighth, and brought in relief ace Ramon Troncoso.

With closer Jonathan Broxton having thrown a ton of pitches the day before, Torre was obviously hoping that his second-best reliever Troncoso would be able to go two innings for the save (which was why he had even allowed starter Wolf to come out for the eighth).

But the pitcher’s spot was also due to bat 5th in the top of the ninth.  This meant that there was absolutely no reason not to make a double switch, because if the pitcher’s spot came up in the 9th, it would almost certainly mean there were runners on base and in scoring position, and in a one-run ball game you would certainly not want to have to bat a relief pitcher in a situation where runs were definitely needed.

But sure enough, as he has done ever since he returned to the National League, Torre did not make a double switch of any kind, and sure enough Troncoso made it through the 8th just fine, and sure enough the Dodgers got something going in the 9th, and sure enough Torre sent a relief pitcher up to bat with two runners on base and two outs, and Troncoso struck out swinging to end any chance of scoring further insurance runs.

Now, Troncoso was able to close out the Cubs in the bottom of the 9th for the save, but that is almost besides the point, because he did so in spite of some flat-out terrible managing by Torre.

There was absolutely no excuse not to make a double switch in the 8th inning, as the game was almost over, Torre was *clearly* planning to go with Troncoso for two innings, and he had his entire bench available.  Torre clearly never even considered it, however, nor did any of the Dodger coaches suggest it.

An artfully executed double switch is not only one of the most beautiful strategic maneuvers in baseball (and one of the main reasons why the DH is an abomination), but it is also a crucial tool in an NL manager’s toolbox to ensure that he maximizes his teams ability to score runs and his own ability to get more innings out of his best pitchers.

I’m not sure if Torre just spend too long in the AL, is getting too old, or if he never used the double switch, even back when he managed in the NL before, but it is shocking and simply unacceptable how many times this season (and last year as well) he found himself having to send a reliever to the plate just to keep him in the game, or found himself having to pinch hit for a reliever who was pitching really well, when these problems could have easily been avoided with a simple double switch.

But Joe Torre never makes double switches.

The New York Mets and LA Dodgers just played the worst baseball game I have ever seen.

In an extremely tight game that ultimately wound up in a 3-2 victory for the Dodgers in 11 innings, the Dodgers did just about everything possible to lose, in a conventional sense.  LA was outhit by the Mets 12-5, went 0-11 with men in scoring position, left 14 men on base, had five starters hit 0 for the game, and watched Cory Wade blow a save.

Amazingly, this "hit" by Sheff was an RBI single.

The only thing was, the Mets went above and beyond normal suckiness to achieve National Baseball Hall of Suck and Museum caliber suckiness.

At the end of the game, the scoreboard showed “only” 5 errors by the Mets, but the Mets made about every mental error it is possible to make, from Fernando Tatis giving up an easy out and foolishly coming home against speedy Juan Pierre in the first, to horribly failed bunt attempts, to miscommunication in the outfield, to Ryan Church scoring easily on a double to put the Mets on top 3-2, only to have the run erased upon appeal because he forgot to step on third base. Oops.

But nothing summed up the game quite like the decisive bottom of the 11th inning. First, Mark Loretta walked. Then Xavier Paul hit the lamest, easiest flyball to center that you ever saw, all high and floaty and slow and just begging to find solace in the warm embrace of a glove.

Naturally, Carlos Beltran and Angel Pagan spent more time shouting at each other than watching the ball, which fell harmlessly between them and thus spurned, trickled mournfully away toward the wall. So now Loretta was on third and Paul was at second.

The Mets were of course in a desperate situation now, in a 2-2 tie in the bottom of the 11th with runners on 2nd and 3rd and no outs, so they were forced to intentionally walk the mighty Juan Pierre and bring Beltran in as a fifth infielder.

Naturally, the Dodgers did all they could to kick that gift horse right smack in the teeth, with Rafael Furcal bouncing a lazy, tailor-made double play ball right to drawn in first baseman Jeremy Reed.

But the Mets would not be denied the loss they so desperately sought.  And Reed delivered with a miraculously sucky throw in the vague direction of home plate. With all the time in the world, and Mark Loretta still so far up the third base line, you wondered if he were even paying attention, Reed hurled a screwball so ridiculously far to the left of desperately diving catcher Ramon Castro that the degree of separation could only have been achieved by the intervention of a higher power.

And Vin Scully had the perfect call: “Marv Throneberry lives again!”

It was just that kind of game for the Mets and Dodgers: anything you can suck at we can suck at even more. Even when the Met’s scored a tying run in the 8th, it was on Gary Sheffield hitting the weakest, softest, most surrenderous seeing-eye grounder you ever saw.

You wanted to award both teams with losses.  And maybe give the Mets 2 or 3 losses, if not more.

But that’s the way baseball goes sometimes, and as professional ballplayers, these guys will have to block it all out and come back strong tomorrow.

“Don’t feel bad, guys,” Dodgers manager Joe Torre deadpanned to his shockingly victorious team in the clubhouse after the game. “Tomorrow we’ll beat them.”

As of this writing, Dodgers reliever Will Ohman has not pitched in 8 days.

I can’t find any news of an injury or anything, or any mention of him in the news at all for that matter, and if I didn’t know Joe Torre was the Dodgers manager, I might think he fell into a black hole or something.

But apparently Joe Torre’s legendarily bad bullpen management is only getting more nonsensically rigid as he ages.  Apparently Torre’s conception of Ohman’s role in the pen is so specific that a situation only comes up every two weeks or so.

Torre clearly has no understanding of the need to keep relievers fresh by getting them some work every now and again, even if it is not the exact, perfect, totally conventional situation to use them in.

Meanwhile, he is currently pitching reliever Ramon Troncoso into his 4th inning of work at Coors field.  Sheesh.