The Los Angeles Dodgers seem like a swimming pool, with a deep end on one side (pitching) and a shallow end on the other side (position players). When diving into this season, they better be sure not to injure themselves in the shallow end. The infield consists of James Loney (who shows up to the ballpark everyday and that’s about all he did last year was show up), Juan Uribe (who has played in 150 games only once in the last eight seasons), Rafael Furcal (who averages 127 games per season during his career) and Casey Blake (who is 37 years old). You would think with that kind of instability in the infield, the Dodgers would have went out looking for a Ty Wigginton type utility player with some pop to cover the infield corners, but instead they will rely on Jamey Carroll to back up all four infield full timers. That is a lot of responsibility for a 37 year old utility player with a career on base percentage that is higher than his career slugging percentage. The only real pop that the infield has is in the form of Juan Uribe, whose 24 home runs last year were a career high. It looks like the infield will have to count on the outfield for the offensive power supply.
The Dodger outfield has two of the previously thought of most promising young players in the majors in Matt Kemp and Andre Ethier. Did you get that? Kemp regressed to a .249 average and a .760 OPS last year and looked more like Rob Deer than Willie Mays with 170 strikeouts. His speed has taken a step back also while being caught 15 times in 34 stolen base attempts. There is no doubt that at age 26 he can rebound immediately and start progressing toward the type of player he can be with his Hall of Fame caliber athleticism. Ethier, age 29 in April (wow that came quick), on the other hand has stayed relatively steady in his career and will be counted on to be the backbone of the offense. There is talk of Ethier having to sit against left handed pitching because of his struggles against them. Who will take his spot in right against southpaws? Marcus Thames or Gabe Kapler? Well one of those two guys is going to spend most of his time picking up Jay Gibbons’ jock in left field. Gibbons was able to impress in his 37 games with the Dodgers last year but he is just a year removed from independent league baseball and his fielding is about as good as my free agent predictions.
The catching situation for the Dodgers is about as attractive as Charlize Theron in the movie Monster. I don’t know which is worse, the fact they let Russell Martin go because he was due to make $6 million and then turned around and signed Rod Barajas for $3.25 million or the fact they traded away Carlos Santana to the Indians in exchange for Casey Blake in 2008? Well, I guess they figured Martin would still be an elite catcher and they wouldn’t need Santana so they might as well ship him off. Call me crazy, but I would have sucked it up this year and paid the extra $2.75 million to stick with Martin just to show some sort of faith in my previous decision. If I were a gambling man, and I am, I would bet about $10,000 rupees that Russell Martin has a better chance of being an All-Star starting the season in a backup role than Rod Barajas does with a starting gig.
The strength of this Dodger team comes in the form of pitching. The rotation is extremely strong with Clayton Kershaw, Chad Billingsley, Ted Lilly, Hiroki Kuroda and Jon Garland. Any of these five pitchers would easily settle into one of the top three spots of virtually any rotation in baseball and they would all fit very nicely on any fantasy team.
The bullpen is just plain sick with Jonathan Broxton, Hong-Chih Kuo, Matt Guerrier, and Kenley Jansen although we are not quite sure who will settle in as the closer. Broxton had some struggles last season and may lose some saves to Kuo. Kuo, however, has some durability issues so that may lead to a lefty-righty match up at the end of games. Matt Guerrier should settle in nicely in the setup role and will be relied upon to cover any extra outs that may be needed going into the ninth inning if they are to go with Kuo as the closer of the day. Kenley Jansen, a converted catcher from the Netherlands, exploded on the scene last year with 41 strikeouts in 27 innings. We all hope that Don Mattingly doesn’t fall too much in love with him and exploit his arm by overusing him since he has only been pitching for two years. This bullpen is as sexy to me as Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown once were to eachother.
The swingman of the pitching staff is Vicente Padilla. Recently I have read nothing but praise for Padilla, who has a 4.77 ERA and a 1.42 WHIP over the past four seasons. I just don’t see the reasoning behind this praise, but maybe the scouts see something I don’t. I picture him as a long relief guy that could step in and take a turn or two in the rotation if needed. The scouts picture him as a guy that can add a couple of miles an hour to his pitches in a relief role and maybe end up contending for the closer role. I picture him as guy that can sweat all over a pitching mound in mop up situations. He sweats worse than I do when a cop pulls me over, barely.
Overall the Dodgers are set to make a splash in the NL West based on pitching and the fact the Giants have done pretty much zero to improve on a Cinderella team. I do expect there to be some sort of growing pains with Mattingly as the full time manager since this team did not perform well for a highly respected manager such as Joe Torre. Either way, they should be in contention throughout most of the year and Dodger fans should get ready to enjoy a ton of 4-3 ballgames that can be won by the strength of their bullpen. Get ready Dodger fans because the water/offense is going to be cold, but you’ll get used to it, just like in a pool. Get it?
That was pretty much the worst end to an article in history but hey, I’m not perfect and I had to tie it to my opening statement somehow. If you wish to receive a free barf bag in the mail from me please send me 12 UPC symbols and I will gladly get it off to you immediately.
Prediction: I am picking them to end up 2nd in the NL West be hind the Giants so you should immediately call your bookie and have him put you down for the Dodgers winning the division.
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