Look, we could talk about how the Dodgers need a second baseman now that Joe Torre completely alienated Orlando Hudson by benching him in favor of an inferior player down the stretch and in the playoffs, or how the Dodgers need another starting pitcher or two, but why beat around the bush when what the Dodgers clearly need, way more than anything else, is new ownership.

Even before the whole divorce saga exploded, Frank and Jamie McCourt had already worn thin their welcome a long time ago. These are people who forced Ned Colletti add the game’s best catching prospect as a throw-in to the Casey Blake trade just to save a lousy $2 million, but who at the same time were dropping tens of millions of dollars annually on at least 7 massive mansions.

These are owners who have refused to sign even a single one of the team’s young talent to any sort of contract at all, despite the fact that this is the obvious way to secure the long-term competitiveness of the franchise while keeping fan favorites in the fold, instead going to arbitration every single year with every single one of them.

These are owners who doubled down on Ned Colletti, giving him a secret contract of undisclosed length and size “in order to prevent speculation,” apparently not realizing that the best possible way to encourage speculation of all types is to give someone a secret contract, and all this in spite of the fact that almost all of the success the Dodgers have had recently is because of Logan White and Kim Ng and Joe Torre, and actually in spite of Colletti’s “efforts.”

Frank McCourt is the kind of owner who likes to show up in the press box in the middle of a game to “chat” with Vin Scully, blathering on and on about nothing, sometimes for innings at a time, when we are all trying to watch the game and would much rather be listening to the greatest sports broadcaster of all time.

These are the kind of owners, who used money they didn’t even have to buy one of the most storied franchises in baseball, with one of the largest fanbases and revenue streams, and proceeded to run it like it had the revenue stream of the Devil Rays, all while extracting as much income out of it as they could to support their lavish lifestyle.

And yet, instead of recognizing what an incredible stroke of luck they had to get their hands on such a team, and doing their best to keep it, they let their marital troubles spin out of control to the point where probably neither of them will keep the team, and in the meantime the a huge cloud hangs over the whole franchise. Because if you thought the McCourts were loathe to spend money on the actual team before, just wait til you see how little they spend now that they need every last penny to pay their lawyers.

In short, what the Dodgers need more than anything is new ownership, as soon as possible.

- What They Need Index -

Everyone is wondering who the “player to be named later” is in the trade that sent Jon Garland to the Dodgers, especially since the Diamondbacks are paying all of Garland’s salary for the rest of this season, plus his $2 million buyout after the season is over, meaning it’s got to be someone good.

One of the rumors out there is that it’s 2B prospect Tony Abreu, and based on a wide array of circumstantial evidence, I’m going to go ahead and say that it’s gotta be Abreu.

First of all we know that it is someone who played for the Dodgers this year, and is still on the 40 man roster. That limits the options quite a bit.

Second of all, we know that Ned Colletti and his cheapskate boss Frank McCourt are not at all afraid to trade a really good player just to save a bit of money. Although the Diamondbacks probably would have taken just about anybody for Garland if the Dodgers paid the rest of his money, it would not be strange to see the Dodgers give away Abreu, despite the fact that he posted a .991 OPS at Triple-A this year, just to save a few million bucks. That would make no sense for most teams, but we’ve seen the Dodgers do stupid shit like this before, as when they “threw in” rock god grade-A catching prospect Carlos Santana into the Casey Blake trade, just to save $2 million.

Third of all, we know that Joe Torre hates Tony Abreu.  And not just hates him in the normal way Joe Torre hates all young players, simply because they are young and not veterans, but in an extra-special, Tony-Abreu-only kind of way. Torre has been badmouthing Abreu to the press ever since spring training 2008, when he was convinced Abreu was faking an injury in what later turned out to be a sports hernia that required surgery.

Finally, we know that the Diamondbacks have a huge hole at second base, with no real options in their system, and after trading away Felipe Lopez, had basically no one to play there, other than taking a gamble that Ryan Roberts is somehow for real.

Nope, it’s gotta be Abreu.

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.

Ned Colletti has only been a general manager since 2006, but now that he has designated Delwyn Young for assignment, you can now officially field an entire major-league starting lineup out of the players he has given up on and traded away in just three years.

Apparently, Colletti only gave up on Young, a 26-year-old, major league ready 2B/outfielder with a career .303/.363/.514 minor league line, just so he can call up non-roster futility infielder Juan Castro instead of actually-on-the-roster shortstop Chin-Lung Hu (who is also better than Castro in every way).

Look I’m not saying this team I’ve crafted below is better than the team the Dodgers currently have.  Obviously, it’s not.  But it’s worth pointing out just how much talent Ned Colletti has given up on and traded away for basically no return in just slightly over three years on the job.

The All Ned-Colletti-Gave-Up-On-Them Team:

C Dioner Navarro - Traded to the Rays along with P Jae Weong Seo and OF Justin Ruggiano for C Toby Hall and P Mark Hendrickson. Now the starting catcher for the Rays. Hit .295 last season and is still just 25 years old.

1B Willy Aybar - Traded to the Braves along with P Danys Baez for Wilson Betemit. Became the first man off the bench for the AL Champion Rays last season, often getting starts at 3B, 1B, and DH.

2B Delwyn Young – Designated for assignment and set to be traded because Ned Colletti and Joe Torre like journeyman Juan Castro off the bench more than prospect Chin-Lung Hu, and apparently are willing to sacrifice a perfectly good player for this.

3B Wilson Betemit – Traded to the Yankees for Scott Proctor.  Currently a bench player for the White Sox.

SS Cesar Izturis - Traded to the Cubs in 2006 for two months of Greg Maddux. Currently the starting shortstop for the Baltimore Orioles. Amazingly, Ned Colletti somehow failed to even offer arbitration to Maddux that offseason, in a decision which has still never been explained, so the Dodgers got nothing when he then signed with the Padres. This decision looked even sillier when the Dodgers traded for Maddux *again* in 2008.

LF Milton Bradley - Traded to the A’s along with infielder Antonio Perez for Andre Ethier. Currently the starting rightfielder for the Cubs.

CF Cody Ross - Traded to the Reds for P Ben Kozlowski. Currently the starting centerfielder for the Marlins

RF Jayson Werth - Colletti allowed Werth to walk as a free agent after the 2006 season when he could have been resigned for a song. Werth signed with the Phillies for $850,000 and helped lead them to a World Series championship in 2008. Werth is currently the Phillies starting rightfielder.

SP Edwin Jackson - Traded along with P Chuck Tiffany for relievers Danys Baez and Lance Carter. Currently the no. 3 starter on the Detroit Tigers.

Amazingly, out of all the players Colletti got in return when he traded these players away, only Andre Ethier is still with the Dodgers, and only Ethier was even really worth much of anything to the team.  Granted, Ethier is a pretty good player, but outside of that Bradley trade, Colletti’s trading record shows that he has kindly stocked the lineups, benches, and minor league systems of his opponents while basically getting nothing in return and then having to fill all those holes he created with expensive free agents.

Like giving kimchi to a man with stomach ulcers, cigarettes to a lung-cancer survivor, or Japanese cartoons to an eplileptic, giving experienced-veteran-loving Joe Torre to experienced-veteran-loving Ned Colletti was only bound to make Colletti’s notorious case of big-name-itis worse.

Exhibits A, B, C, and D of this phenomenon are Doug Mientkiewicz, Jeff Weaver, Juan Castro, and Tanyon Sturtze, four “experienced veterans” who look primed to make the Dodgers opening day roster, all four as non-roster invitees.

As anyone who reads this blog knows, Joe Torre likes to go with what he knows, and always prefers the devil he’s heard of to the devil he hasn’t.  And Torre’s fingerprints are all over these four guys.

Mientkiewicz, Weaver and Sturtze have all played under Torre in the past when he managed the Yankees, and who better to play the Luis Sojo/Miguel Cairo role of Torre’s Latino futility-infielder binkie than their stastistical triplet Juan Castro?

The one that makes the least sense of all here is Mientkiewicz, a first baseman who hits like a third-string middle infielder.  But he has certain qualities that Torre and Ned Colletti just can’t resist, so let’s quickly run through Mientkiewicz’s truly impressive “experienced veteran” credentials:

• He is a veteran (11 MLB seasons)
• He is known for his defense (gold glove, 2001)
• He is known for his experience (six teams in five years)
• He has won a World Series title (Red Sox, 2004)
• He provides subpar offense (100 career OPS+. At first base.)
• He is over 30 (age 35 in 2009)
• He is white (very much so)

What is there for Torre and Colletti not to love?

Look I realize that it is possible to find good bargains among non-roster invitees, but usually these are younger guys who still have even a shred of upside left. The problem with going with experienced veterans is that they is what they is, and if what they is is not all that much, then guess what you are going to end up with? Not all that much.

Or even worse if keeping a Doug Mientkiewicz means that you have to trade away an out-of-options, cost-controlled, still talented youngster like Delwyn Young just to make room for him.

If Ned Colletti is not the worst GM in all of major league baseball (thank you Brian Sabean!), he is awfully close. Colletti proved once again how overmatched he is by the actually intelligent GMs in the game by trading away top pitching prospect Jon Meloan and breakout minor league catcher Carlos “Santana” Santana for Cleveland utility player Casey Blake.

Of course, Blake was coveted by several teams because he is a free agent to be on a team going nowhere and thus figured to be a decent bat who could be had for a fairly cheap price. Which makes the high price the Dodgers paid so baffling.

After Clayton Kershaw (who is currently up with the big club), Meloan was the pitching prospect closest to putting up good numbers in the majors. Meloan had been an absolutely dominant reliever last year in the minors. Last season at double-A Jacksonville he had compiled a 2.18 ERA and 19 saves and 70 strikeouts in 45.1 innings, and then posted a 1.69 ERA in 21.1 innings at triple-A Las Vegas.

In fact, in his entire minor league career, Meloan has posted an astonishing 335 strikeouts in only 262 innings.

But this year the Dodgers insisted on trying to convert Meloan back into a starter, and he posted an unsatsisfying 5-10 record with a 4.97 ERA, although he did keep striking out almost a batter an inning.

Given how dominant Meloan had been as a reliever, and given that with Takashi Saito down with an injury the Dodgers were in need of a setup man, Meloan and his live arm should have been up with the big club already, especially given the relief innings they are currently wasting on retreads and nobodies like Ramon Troncoso, Brian Falkenborg, and Jason Johnson.

And he certainly should not have been involved in any trades for a two month rental like Casey Blake.

Carlos Santana is not quite as awesome a prospect as Meloan, but he is having a huge breakout season in high A, batting .318 with a .424 on base percentage and a .563 slugging. Most impressively, he already has 66 walks on the season and has walked more than he has struck out, which reminds one of the minor league career of another catcher you may have heard of, current Dodgers backstop Russ Martin.

But giving up good prospects is not always bad if you get a good return. The real problem with this deal is Casey Blake and the guys the Dodgers already had

Not only is Blake going to be a free agent, thus making him only a two month rental, but he is also unlikely to represent an improvement over they guys he is replacing at third base. While it is true that rookies Andy LaRoche and Blake DeWitt have been slumping of late, and Blake has been hot, we are talking about Casey Blake here.

Blake is a 34-year-old no-glove utility guy posting an .830 OPS when his career average is only .782. It seems much more likely that he will hit at something less than an .830 clip the rest of the way than that he will continue to hit 50 points above his career average OPS in his age 34 season.

But the real downside of the Casey Blake deal is that Casey Blake is one of the worst defensive third basemen in baseball, whereas DeWitt is excellent and LaRoche is at least average. Given that the Dodgers are now going with Blake at third, cement-footed Nomar at short, and 40 year old Jeff Kent at second, it is not a stretch to wonder if the Dodgers do not now have the worst defensive infield in baseball. At the very least you can count on any ball hit to the hole on the left side getting through for a hit.

Given that the Dodgers are heavily depending on groundball pitchers such as Derek Lowe and Hiroki Kuroda, this is very very bad news. When you throw in how questionable it is that Blake will even be able to outhit Andy LaRoche (if the Dodgers actually let him play every day), this trade is just a huge subtraction all around.

But of course, Casey Blake is Casey Blake, a big-name “experienced veteran” (big bonus points for his prematurely gray hair), and this is the Casey Blake of the Cleveland INDIANS who nearly went to the World Series last year. So naturally Ned Colletti couldn’t resist, no matter the price.

You knew it was only a matter of time before his incurable case of chronic big-name-itis flared up again.

Look, we all know by now that the Tampa Bay Rays have a pretty talented team this year, and that their league-best 33-22 record is no fluke. We know about BJ Upton, and ROY candidate Evan Longoria, and aces Kazmir and Shields. But had we quite realized that even their catcher, Dioner Navarro, is looking like the second coming of Tony Gwynn, slashing line drives left and right and batting .361 despite his equally Gwynn-esque portly frame?

This is the kind of performance that screams “fluke.” After all, this is the same Dioner Navarro who posted batting averages of .227 and .244 in his previous two seasons. We can also note that Navarro has an unsustainably high .404 BABIP so far this season.

But if we look closer, it becomes clear that Navarro has likely turned a corner in his career. At the All-Star break last season Navarro was batting an atrocious .171. Then, he switched to a new bat, changed his stance, and began going the other way more. Since then, over a span of 299 at-bats, he is batting .314.

While the high BABIP indicates that Navarro is certainly not the next Tony Gwynn, even if his BABIP were to regress to the mean, he would still be one of the better hitting catchers in baseball. And despite having been a starting catcher for 3+ seasons in the major leagues, he is still only 24 years old.

So I think it is safe to say that we can now add Navarro to the rapidly growing list of extremely boneheaded blunders made by Dodgers GM Ned Colletti. Originally a Yankees prospect, Navarro had been desperately coveted by Colletti’s predecessor Paul DePodesta, and finally secured as the centerpiece of a trade for slugger Shawn Green. Colletti then promptly appeared on the scene and shipped Navarro off to the Rays for Mark Hendrickson, who put up truly atrocious numbers as a Dodger, going 6-15 with a 5.01 ERA in 198 crappy innings of work before being non-tendered last winter. Yep, that’s all the Rays had to give up to get what looks to be a star starting catcher for years to come.

Nice one, Ned.

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 Kemp (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.

Still, 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 -