New York Nine

Aside from the Yankees the Dodgers were the winners of the sports back pages this off season by a long shot. Manny, Manny, Manny is all you ever heard, will he sign? For how much? He finally did sign for the same stinking deal of 45 million that he was offered originally with the opt out clause, putting their spending second on the list this year. Its been a busy offseason for the dodgers lots of new faces and faces leaving, but with Manny re-upping many critics have made them the resumptive NL west champion before the season starts, but I find this claim to be dubious at best. While they've become better behind the plate they've lost their two best starters and their closer and I find this to be quite troublesome.


As I said they lost their two top starters Brad Penny and Derek Lowe to free agency. Granted, Penny wasn't exactly great for them in an injury riddled year, but when you line them up in from of Kiroda, Billingsly, and Kershaw that's a damn good rotation, but that is no longer the case. Indeed, with those two gone Kiroda, a very good third starter, but hardly an ace, and Billingsley, only a second year starter full time there are alot of question marks. PECOTA predicts a sophmore slump for Chad from his very impressive 207Ks in 200 innings with a 135ERA+. Add in question marks in Kershaw who's now expected to be a valuable starter while at the tender age of 21 and a bunch of question marks after that makes me think their pitching is no longer quite as dominating. What's more is Saito the closer is gone. While he was injured at the end of last year he's been an anchor for that bullpen, forcing the burly Jonathan Broxton from his crucial relief ace role to the closer spot. Losing that arm for the 7th and 8th innings will hurt, and guys like Corey Wade are unproven and thus you can't just count on him fillling that role. All of this looks to me like a recipe for disappointment for Dodger fans.


But of course they have Manny now for a full season. After his record breaking tear coming to LA its hard not to feel like they have an offense that trumps anything the rest of the NL west has to offer. In addition they added the valuable Orlando Hudson at second base, providing excellent defense, but more importantly a major upgrade from Blake DeWitt. They also re-upped Raphel Furcal for three more years who has proven to be the sparkplug of the offense and Casey Blake at third base, a pretty awful defensive third baseman who hits for very pedestrian numbers at 3rd .274/.345/.463 and an 110 OPS+ (a 100OPS+ is a replacement level player) so the're not exactly getting an allstar and they resigned him for 3 years! And to think that they traded away the ultra-talented catcher Carlos Santana who's tearing it up for the Indians right now to get him makes me cringe.


They're still a very talented team compared to some of the other teams in the divison but people seem to forget that this team was around .500 for most of the year, and even when Manny came to town they didn't do that much better. Of course their young guys Either, Kemp, Loney and Martin can always make the next step at the plate but I dont see them all making enough of a jump to realisitically challanging the Cubs for the NL crown this year. I give them a B/B- for their offseason because while getting Manny is obivously a huge upgrade and the rest of the offense should benefit from him being there, I fear that pitching staff in the not-so-trustworthy hands of Joe Torre will falter.