Saturday, June 26, 2004 |
Watch Yer Back, Jim
The "Blame Tracy" bandwagon's arrived in Chavez Ravine again.
Frank McCourt is new. No one knows what he looks like with blood on his hands.And why is that? Because guys like Shawn Green, Hideo Nomo, Darren Dreifort, and Tom Martin aren't doing their jobs. Is that Tracy's fault?He fired Dodgers general manager Dan Evans last winter, days after taking over as team owner. But general managers are backroom guys who rarely capture the public's attention.
For the first time, McCourt is on the clock with manager Jim Tracy.
...
DePodesta is in the first season of a five-year contract. He is in Tracy's corner, but Tracy wasn't his hire. If the Dodgers fall out of the race, management won't wait long.
As with last year, when the hitting stank, do we fire Jim Colburn now?
What will firing Tracy accomplish, save as a sacrifice to the gods of orthopedics?
Arrive In The Third... wonders again what would have been had Vlad been in Dodger blue. I'm sure that was prompted by Vinnie's remarkably candid discussion during the game of the team's pursuit of Vlad, with Scully retelling the same story we've known since last January: Frank cancelled that negotiation at the request of Bud Selig, certainly a bad way to start as owner.
Which is to say, the real problem is ownership.
Last July, when it became obvious that Kevin Appier was not going to get better, the Angels released him. Arte continues to pay his salary, though, even as he posts absurdly high ERAs in AA ball. Question: is Frank in a position to do that with Shawn Green? What about Nomo? My bet is he isn't. Now of course, this far into the season, the team won't be able to pick up a real front-line ace -- the best we've got so far is Freddie Garcia, and there's a bunch of teams after him. And as for Green -- well, we lost our shot at Carlos Beltran. Magglio Ordoñez might be a possibility, but with the Chisox still in contention, does anyone think they're going to unload him before the season's over? And as a 30-year-old, is he really a long-term answer to any offensive question?
I'm not convinced this is a problem that money alone could solve. But it could make some answers easier to find.
It certainly is NOT Tracy's fault that Green, Nomo etc...are not performing. But it is his responsibility to do something about it. Bench Green, cut Nomo or whatever it takes. So far he hasn't really tried anything other than sitting Green for a few innings and he's at the point where he has to do something even if it's wrong. The status quo is not working.
When you have five or six starters hitting close to .300 or even better but you can't score runs, it doesn't take baseball genius to figure there is a cog missing or a bent wheel somewhere. Get it fixed.
I shudder to think where we would be had they not swept the Orioles and pulled out the Yankee series.
: 6/26/2004 11:15:00 AMThe same is true with Nomo.
The biggest problem is the team hasn't found adequate replacements for either Gary Sheffield or Kevin Brown.
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