Lost in Translation
By Neal Pollack
Over the last couple of weeks, while the sports talk guys tried to decide whether Elton Brand’s text messages to his former Clipper teammates were legally binding, and everyone on Earth blathered on about the legendary mystique of Yankee Stadium, I bit my mustache worrying about what the Dodgers were going to do next. My worries didn’t have much to do with their performance on the field. By now, we pretty much know the pattern: Great pitching, horrible pinch-hitting, and vaguely incomprehensible lineups. Instead, like any over-thinking fan, I worried about the general manager.
The worries grew even greater when, the Saturday before the All-Star Break, Takashi Saito started shaking his hand around with two outs in the bottom of the ninth of a tie game. Dodgerland began buzzing, and the buzz became a screaming panic on Sunday morning when, somehow, we learned that Saito hadn’t been able to hold his toothbrush upon waking. I hoped that this was some baseball version of Lost in Translation, that “not being able to hold your toothbrush” was actually Nippon slang for “arm feels stronger than ever,” but the MRI revealed otherwise and Saito was placed on the DL until at least September. Given the general incompetence of the Dodger training staff, he’ll be lucky to survive 2008 with all his limbs, and we’ll probably never again get the unique pleasure of watching a slim Japanese man jog toward the mound from the bullpen to the tune of “Bad to the Bone.”
But this is baseball and injuries happen. The best franchises rise above setback. By now, we’ve all come to realize that the Dodgers are not among those best franchises. Across the Dodger chat boards, which work themselves into a frothy panic anyway over such matters as if Andy LaRoche should start at third over Blake DeWitt, terrified posters began throwing around names of bad relief pitchers for whom blissfully incompetent Dodger general manager Ned Colletti might trade rather than insert setup man Jonathan Broxton – steer-sized and with a 100 mph fastball – into the closer’s role. Jon Rauch and Brian Wilson would be bad enough, but worst of all, Dodgerland feared the arrival of declining Oakland bullpen ace Huston Street, whom A’s GM Billy Beane has been shopping. If Billy Beane is trying to trade you, anyone who’s read Moneyball knows, then your baseball utility is fading. Just ask the Giants, who are paying Barry Zito one trillion dollars to go 3-12 with an ERA over five.
Can you blame Dodger fans for being worried? Three players that Colletti let go – Milton Bradley, JD Drew, and Dioner Navarro – featured prominently in the AL’s All-Star Game win this year, and Drew actually won the MVP. Instead of Drew, Colletti signed Juan Pierre, about whom I can muster not much more strength to complain in this space, and then to compensate for Pierre’s lack of ability to throw the ball more than three feet, he signed Andruw Jones. According to the statistics gods, Jones is at present having the worst offensive season in baseball history, for which – please don’t die when you read this – he is being paid 18 million dollars.
At this point, I don’t even know if Colletti’s incompetence has to do with an unnatural preference for washed-up veteran players over young players. Lord knows the battlefield is littered with young Dodgers these days, some of whom are doing better than others. Besides, there are plenty of good veteran players, like, say, Chipper Jones or Manny Ramirez, whom I’d welcome to the Dodgers for $18 million. It’s more that Colletti has no idea what he’s doing. If he’s heard of a player, then that player must be good. A few of those players, like Julio Lugo and Wilson Betemit, have gone on to moderate success, after the Dodgers got rid of them in favor of lesser alternatives. But most, like Bill Mueller and Jason Schmidt, have broken down completely the second they put on the Blue. Colletti is a sucker in a used-car lot, thinking that the next vehicle he buys will be the one that finally gets him to Vegas, but each one is a bigger lemon than the last.
Yet the Dodgers are only a game out of first despite the fact that they are three games under .500. The playoffs, remarkably, remain a very real possibility. Does anyone really think, though, that genuine help is on the way, that the Dodgers will make sensible roster moves to put them over the top? If you do, let me bring you back to early July.
For one brief shining week, the only veteran in the lineup was Jeff Kent, who can occasionally rumble with the youngsters. The Dodgers won five out of seven, and then seven out of 10, and a little promise began to shine through the gloom. Then Andruw Jones returned from the DL before he was ready and started striking out five times a game. Nomar took over at shortstop, with the range of a pillar of salt. The Florida Marlins came to town, with a payroll only slightly more than Jones’s salary, and took three out of four.
Now Mark Sweeney and his sub-.100 batting average are threatening to take the roster spot of someone who could still have a legitimate career, and Juan Pierre’s recovery is moving along “quicker than expected.” This means that the Dodgers’ season will quickly go into the tank, management will publicly blame the wrong people, and the used-car dealers of Major League Baseball will lick their lips and start dialing the front office at Chavez Ravine.
Published: 07/23/2008
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