Juan Pierre is an average outfielder. At best.
He has no power.

He has a terrible arm.

The contract the Dodgers signed him to before last season was insane.

On that, we can all agree.

So it’s really no surprise that the Dodgers have opted to go with Andre Ethier, Andruw Jones and Matt Kemp in the outfield, relegating Pierre to the bench.

But is Pierre wrong to complain about being demoted? I’m not so sure.

Here’s what Pierre told the L.A. Times:

“If they want to go a different route,” Pierre said, “I can live with it and I have to understand it but it’s something I don’t get.”

When the Dodgers signed Pierre, they knew exactly what they were getting — and they were thrilled to have it. So what’s changed?

In the four seasons before he signed with the Dodgers, Pierre didn’t miss a game. Last season, with L.A., he played all 162.

In 2006, with the Cubs, he batted .292. With the Dodgers he hit .293.

With the Cubs, Pierre’s OBP was .330. Last year it was .331.

With the Cubs, Pierre struck out 38 times and walked 32 times. With the Dodgers, he struck out 37 times and walked 33 times.

With the Cubs, Pierre stole 58 bases. With the Dodgers, he stole 64.

In every way possible, Pierre lived up to reasonable expectations. He has been, if nothing else, consistent.

If you interviewed for a job, told your prospective employer exactly what he/she could expect over the next four years and then went out and did exactly what you promised you would do, wouldn’t you be pissed if the company all of a sudden decided that wasn’t good enough?

I’m not saying the Dodgers were wrong to bench Pierre. By playing Ethier, they’re making the team better.

I’m saying they were wrong to sign him in the first place. Their inability to evaluate free agents has placed Joe Torre and Juan Pierre in an impossible situation. Pierre wants to play, but he doesn’t want to break the contract he worked so hard to land. Torre wants the best team possible, but he knows a starting gig was promised to Pierre — and he knows Pierre has lived up to his end of the bargain.
I think Pierre is right to be upset.

This is one of a series of posts in which we rip each team for their offseason blunders and praise them for their wily moves.

If the Dodgers had done absolutely nothing at all this whole offseason, I would have given them an “A” grade, because given this year’s free agent class and the incredible amount of talent already in the Dodgers system, I honestly feel that would have been the best course of action. Indeed, the Dodgers failed to contend last season, not because they didn’t have the right players, but because they had the right players and refused to play them until it was too late.

Just think: even if the Dodgers had not signed a single free agent, they could have put this team on the field (2008 ages in parentheses):

C Russell Martin (25)
1B James Loney (24)
2B Jeff Kent (40)
3B Andy LaRoche (24)
SS Rafael Furcal (30)
LF Delwyn Young (26)
CF Matt Kempt (23)
RF Andre Ethier (26)

Outside of Kent, that is an incredibly young, incredibly talented team with lots of upside and would have had no real holes anywhere in the lineup. The Dodgers would also have had an already set bullpen and rotation, and even if someone went down with an injury, they would have already had reasonable in-house replacements - Nomar Garciaparra at 1B and 3B, Juan Pierre and Jason Repko in the outfield, Chin-Lung Hu and Tony Abreu in the middle infield, and Hong-Chih Kuo, Eric Stults, and Johnathan Meloan in the rotation and bullpen.

Of course, we all knew that there was no way in hell that Ned Colletti would stand pat and run that lineup I have proposed out there, given his completely lack of trust in anyone younger than 30 and his deep, abiding love of the big name. And sure enough, Colletti ran out and splashed around in a pool of Frank McCourt’s money, signing new manager Joe Torre, centerfielder Andruw Jones, and Japanese starting pitcher Hiroki Kuroda. These moves drew a lot of positive press, but did they really help the team for 2008? Let’s have a look…

Joe Torre is one of the most respected managers in the game, and if the Dodgers had one spot they could have upgraded after last season, it was at the end of the bench, where Grady Little showed a disturbing lack of ability to keep control over his clubhouse, which fell into backbiting and bickering as the Dodgers fell out of contention. So it seems pretty hard to take issue with the Dodgers signing a manager who is widely regarded as one of the best around at handling a major league clubhouse.

But I am going to take some issue nonetheless. As I have argued previously in this space, I think that Torre’s in-game managerial skills are overrated at best, and downright suspect at worst. Also, as right as he may have been for the Yankees in the late 1990s, I am not at all convinced that Joe Torre is the right manager for this Dodgers team, now, in 2008, ie a team whose chances of contending absolutely depend on a manger who is willing to play largely untested but supremely talented kids over proven but inferior veterans, a manager I am not at all sure Torre is capable of becoming.

For example, Torre has already gone on the record as saying he is likely to view Juan Pierre as a starter:

“I’ve always been one to favor experience….Juan Pierre brings so many things. He plays all the time, he gets 200 hits, steals 60 bases. We know he has no power, but he’s a gamer. He’s the type of player that fits into a winning situation.”

Ouch. That is not a good sign.

Meanwhile, Torre remains the highest-paid manager in the game, and I am not sure that money wouldn’t have been better spent elsewhere - say signing a top-flight middle reliever or something.

Similarly, the press also rained praise upon Ned Colletti for signing Andruw Jones, despite the high price tag, hailing it as a case of buying low and minimizing risk by not locking the team in to Jones’s mid-30s decline years. But Andruw Jones was pretty helpless at the plate last year, and while he is extremely unlikely to repeat last year’s showing, and certainly represents a big upgrade from Juan Pierre in center, both offensively and defensively, it is not at all clear that the Dodgers have made themselves a better team by giving Jones Manny Ramirez money for the next two years, unless Colletti and Torre are committed to forcing Pierre into a bench role, which there is no sign that they are. If, as seems to be the plan, Juan Pierre is shifted to left field, the Dodgers may actually be a worse team for having signed Jones, because if Juan Pierre is allowed to take away even 200 at-bats that would otherwise have gone to Matt Kemp or Andre Ethier, the Jones signing becomes worse than a wash.

The third big offseason move the Dodgers made was to sign highly sought after Japanese starter Hiroki Kuroda to a 3-year $35.3 million deal. While Kuroda definitely pitched like an ace in Japan, most projections have him pitching more like a 4th starter in the major leagues, which means that at $12 million per year, he would be one of the most expensive 4th starters around. Evaluating the Kuroda deal comes down to the question of whether Kuroda would outpitch Esteban Loiza this year (the man he is bumping from the rotation), and even though he probably could, it is very questionable whether the difference in their performance would be worth all that money.

The only other move the Dodgers have made all offseason at the major-league level was to sign veteran Gary Bennett to be their backup catcher. While this deal didn’t make big headlines, I think it was another questionable move by Ned Colletti, signing a veteran where a rookie or a no-namer would do. I can’t help asking myself the question, “Is Gary Bennett even replacement level?” We are talking about a guy who has had an OBP under .300 for the last five seasons in a row, and has never walked more than 24 times in a season. And given that everyone recognizes that star catcher Russell Martin was probably overused last year and will need to be rested more often this season, it would have behooved Colletti to have come up with a backup catcher who could at least achieve replacement level output when he plays.

Sill, when all is said and done, the Dodgers’ offseason has to be accounted a success this year, because Colletti somehow resisted the temptation to trade away Matt Kemp, James Loney, and Clayton Kershaw, and didn’t make any truly terrible deals as he has done in past years with Juan Pierre and Jason Schmidt. Assuming Colletti can show similar restraint going forward, Dodgers fans have reason to be cautiously optimistic about this coming season, and especially the next few years after that.

Offseason Grade: B

Additions: Joe Torre, Andrew Jones, Hiroki Kuroda, Gary Bennett

Losses: Luis Gonzalez, Randy Wolf, David Wells, Mark Hendrickson, Mike Lieberthal, Olmedo Saenz

Projected Lineup, Rotation, and Closer:

SS Rafael Furcal - .270/.333/.355, 25 SB
LF Juan Pierre - .293/.331/.353, 64 SB
1B James Loney - .331/.381/.538
CF Andruw Jones - .222/.311/.413, 26 HR
RF Matt Kemp - .342/.373/.521
2B Jeff Kent - .302/.375/.500, 20 HR
C Russell Martin - .293/.374/.469, 21 SB
3B Andy LaRoche - .226/.365/.312

RHP Brad Penny - 16-4, 3.03
RHP Derek Lowe - 12-14, 3.88
RHP Chad Billingsley - 12-5, 3.31
RHP Hiroki Kuroda - 12-8, 3.56 (Japanese stats)
RHP Jason Schmidt - 1-4, 6.31

CL Takashi Saito - 1.40, 39 SV

- Hot Offseason Action Index -

It appears that Juan Pierre, the Cubs’ lead-off man – and free-agent-to-be – would “not mind” playing for Ozzie Guillen.

It seems that a slight rumor at the end of a disappointing (’embarrasing‘ sez the hyperbolic moron, Marriotti – for whom, you Jay?) season is the only good news the South Siders have heard in a while.

From the Sun-Times:

‘Yeah, I love Ozzie,” Pierre said of Sox manager Ozzie Guillen, his former third-base coach during the Florida Marlins’ World Series championship season in 2003. ”I know how he is as a person. He talks, but you go out there and play hard with no excuses, and you get along with him. Just knowing him and being around him for so long, and winning the World Series with him, yeah, I definitely wouldn’t mind playing for Ozzie.”

For the record, I may have given up before the ChiSox were mathematically eliminated, simply because I realized this team was going nowhere; but embarrassed? Mariotti, you dumb pundit, we won the World Series last year, we a have chest-deep rotation signed through 2007, we may sign a true lead-off man in Pierre, we set records in attendance this year; why would the Sox be an embarrassment?