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By Peter Gammons
Special to ESPN.com
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April 13
The season was seven days old when a New York headlined begged "Break Up The Yankees." A man at the Gold's Gym across the street from Fenway Park demanded to know if "the Red Sox are going to wake up and release David Wells." An online chat questioned whether Mark Mulder was a major mistake by the Cardinals, and in Chicago, Dusty Baker was being blamed for the delayed return of Mark Prior.
Ah, the cold realities of April.
|  | | DePodesta, left, and McCourt have taken their lumps in the L.A. press. |
Then there are the Dodgers, who in many corners were dismissed as the trash-barrel residue of a statistical general manager who dehumanized players and sent the character people like Paul Lo Duca and Alex Cora out to pasture, replacing them with numbers. "It's not like I broke up a dynasty," said Paul DePodesta, who is in the media ridicule line behind only Kobe Bryant and Frank McCourt in Los Angeles. "We did finish first last season (and won a postseason game, the first since the Reagan administration). What some people fail to realize is that when we took over, we were an older team that hadn't won.
"We're trying to rebuild and contend at the same time, which is a complicated, tricky process. Look, did we do everything we wanted last winter? No, some things didn't go right, because when the starting pitching market got so inflated it prevented us from doing everything we wanted to do. We had to begin with pitching. But even without doing everything we wanted, what we are opening the season with is a team that is significantly younger and has far more financial flexibility."
In keeping with Billy Beane's theory that a GM spends the first two months figuring out what he has, the next two months acquiring what he needs and the last two (or, hopefully three) months going for it, DePodesta adds, "when the time comes when we have to make some changes, we have money to spend and a pretty good farm system to work from."
Of course, what makes DePodesta's case more difficult to spell out in April is the fact that the Dodgers have been devastated by injuries. Eric Gagne is out until May. Brad Penny could be out until the end of April. Wilson Alvarez opened the season on the disabled list. Jayson Werth, expected to be their breakout player, was still recovering from a wrist injury suffered in their first spring training game when he was hit by Florida's A.J. Burnett.
Oh yes. And the first game they lost this season? Jose Valentin's error cost Derek Lowe a win.
The trade that began the questioning of DePodesta was the one last July 29 when he sent Lo Duca, Guillermo Mota and Juan Encarnacion to the Marlins in a complicated trade that brought Penny, Hee Seop Choi and Steve Finley. Penny broke down, but, as planned, Yhency Brazoban stepped in and replaced Mota, and had Finley gone to San Diego instead, the Padres would likely have finished first. DePodesta also freed the Dodgers from Encarnacion's contract. Time will tell if the Dodgers pitchers will not miss one of the best leaders in the game behind the plate.
Then this winter, Adrian Beltre was allowed to walk, Alex Cora was non-tendered, Finley was replaced by J.D. Drew and Shawn Green was dumped. That put Kent and Valentin at second and third, where Cora and Beltre played so well in the field, leaving the magical Cesar Izturis as the only above-average defensive infielder. Yet ... "Valentin has played more than 160 games at third in his career and played the position very well this spring," DePodesta said. One game.
When healthy, the Penny-Jeff Weaver-Odalis Perez-Lowe foursome should be fine. Alvarez and Scott Erickson add depth and kids like Edwin Jackson, Jonathan Broxton and Chad Billingsley are on the immediate horizon. If Gagne is healthy, the bullpen is fine.
There are a lot of baseball folks who wonder if Choi will ever be what his numbers say – a .380 on-base, .500 slugging guy. They wonder about Valentin and Kent, Bradley and Drew, and whether Dioner Navarro can be their catcher by midseason.
But the NL West does not appear to have a dominant, flawless team and while the Dodgers' infield defense isn't as good as it was, the outfield defense is probably the best in the division. So they try to win with starting pitching, get what is needed in July, and with only Lowe, Drew and Perez signed past 2006, the door is open to Joel Guzman, Russell Martin, James Loney, Andy LaRoche, Blake DeWitt, Chuck Tiffany and their kids.
The Dodgers were hardly a dynasty when DePodesta took over, and like most rebuilding jobs, there are going to be difficult and controversial choices. Lo Duca was one. Beltre was another. Cora. Green. People get hurt in the process, and while this is a people game, what DePodesta is trying to do deserves to be judged by the team's performance, not what baseball folks and we in the media think will unfurl.
Financial realities
DePodesta said, "unless you're the Yankees, you might be able to win once through free agency, but to sustain it is practically impossible financially." And even the Yankees are feeling the fiscal strain of not producing players.
Theo Epstein agrees with DePodesta. "We have put a lot of emphasis into building our farm system while trying to compete," Epstein said. "You have to have $300,000 players to practically afford the star-level players." The Red Sox figure it is not out of the realm of possibility that sometime in 2006 they could have Kevin Youkilis at third, Dustin Pedroia at second, Hanley Ramirez in center, Jon Papelbon in the rotation and Cla Meredith and Abe Alvarez setting up in the bullpen.
Meanwhile, the Red Sox have stayed in touch with John Olerud as a possible Doug Mienkiewicz replacement. Olerud is still bothered by the foot injury that knocked him out of the playoffs, and hopes to be ready to start trying to play by May 1.
Six thoughts
• The prayers of everyone in the game go out to esteemed colleague and friend Jayson Stark, whose mother, June, passed away last week. She was not a good, but a great person and the greatest fan of one of the finest journalists of his time.
| Tough-luck starters |
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Starting pitchers have left games after the sixth inning with leads and had their bullpens blow the leads (2002-present):
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Tim Hudson
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19
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Kip Wells
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16
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Oliver Perez
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15
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Cory Lidle
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14
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Randy Wolf
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14
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Darrell May
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14
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Source: Elias Sports Bureau
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• What Dr. Charles Steinberg wrought Monday for the Red Sox ring ceremony was as close to perfection as anyone could imagine. But in some ways what Joe Torre, Derek Jeter and the Yankees did by standing on the steps of their dugout and applauding was perhaps the best thing about the day, a tribute to the Red Sox, their tradition and, most of all, their fans. "They earned it," Jeter said. "They defeated us."
• Bobby Crosby is the one player Oakland could least afford to lose.
• The fact that Carl Crawford's contract was completed by the new owners, not Vince Naimoli, raises voices in Tampa that Naimoli might actually step down in the near future and that Gerry Hunsicker will end up the general manager.
• Brian Roberts' rapid ascension to a premier second baseman is testament to his intense work ethic honed by Mark Verstegen and Athletes Performance Institute in Tempe, Ariz.
• Few 32-year olds could better handle fame than Theo Epstein, who could be a rock star in his home town. But while Theo may love to play his guitar, his persona is closest to his twin brother Paul, a devoted social worker. Every penny that Epstein makes either speaking or doing a donut commercial with Johnny Damon goes to charity.
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