6-4-2 — an Angels/Dodgers double play blog: They're Trying To Get Me To Swear: Padres 1, Dodgers 0

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Sunday, April 13, 2008

They're Trying To Get Me To Swear: Padres 1, Dodgers 0

Today's DT thread was a rich mother lode of public cringing about the Dodgers, including the introduction of new (to me) blog Garciapierra, whose purpose in life is apparently to kvetch about such matters as Juan Pierre playing ahead of Matt Kemp, and presumably, Nomar Garciaparra having a starting role at all (or maybe any role with the Dodgers, for that matter). It is hard for me to get too worked up about that, for the simple reasons that

For the entire time Frank McCourt has owned the team, he has consistently had a hide thinner than Kleenex. This means he is insanely worried about What People Will Say, and in particular, public annoyances like Bill Plaschke.
The Dodgers are unwilling to cut losses. By signing a big risk with Andruw Jones, the Dodgers showed that while Ned Colletti understands he made a mistake with Juan Pierre, at the same time he fails to understand the pivotal lesson about sunk costs. The high-dollar deal made with Joe Torre merely adds an exclamation point to this example of hypersensitivity to (wrong, ill-informed) public opinion.

For these reasons I no longer find myself that much caught up in the whole business of whether Kemp should start over Pierre or Jones; both players were bad ideas at the time, and their presence on the team is merely reflective of that. Nevertheless, I repeat the common concerns for those who appreciate them, because it seems like I have seen them expressed elsewhere, but not yet so concisely:

317. Lefty Supremacist
My goodness... This game is just... an omnibus of every last one of my frustrations.
Pierre over Kemp?...check.
Horrid managerial decision?...check.
Jones doing his thing?...check.
The good hitters looking bad?...check.
Billingsley on the hook for the L after a good outing?...check.
I honestly can't think of a single good thing that has happened so far.

Except, of course, that Billingsley's previous performances were, in the main, simply godawful; he failed to get out of the third in his only other start this year, and his two relief appearances were uneven. Nevertheless, Bills pitched a fine game but his offense didn't support him; the good hitters will be bad just because they're facing Greg Maddux, and that's how things roll.

One of the few things to go right for the Dodgers was roughing up — if not, in the end, enough — Trevor Hoffman, who looks increasingly dyspeptic on the mound. If the Dodgers have problems because of their veteran fetish, imagine how many games Hoffman will have to blow before Kevin Towers calls Hoffy in to his office and sits him down for that final talk.

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