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Thursday, June 28, 2007 |
The DePodesta Mistake In The Mirror
Jacob Jackson has a fine piece about Paul DePodesta's Dodger tenure at The Hardball Times, one I generally agree with except for this:
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To be fair, Colletti, like DePodesta, presided over a playoff berth in his first season with the Dodgers last year, and his team currently stands at 43-33, just a half-game back of the pace-setting Padres. But he's also enjoyed an increase in team payroll and an obviously higher tolerance from ownership for mistakes than DePodesta enjoyed. A Colletti apologist might point to Schmidt's clean off-season MRI and say that blaming him for Schmidt is unfair. But Schmidt's uncharacteristically low velocity and poor performance in the second half of '06 were obviously better indicators than a clean off-season MRI.That may be true, but he also had at hand trainer Stan Conte, freshly removed from the Giants, and who should have had a very good working knowledge of Schmidt's innards (to the extent that men in such capacities can have). To me, there were two mitigating circumstances regarding the Schmidt acquisition:
- The Dodgers needed rotation stability. Normally I'm in favor of playing the kids, but Chad Billingsley, despite a very respectable 3.80 ERA and a 7-4 record in 16 starts, only pitched seven innings three times the whole season. Games often went into the bullpen, thus taxing that resource more often. Schmidt pitched into the seventh and beyond 19 times last year. Now, you could argue (as Jackson does) that his second half implied he was having shoulder problems, but the alternative explanation is that, hey, it's the second half.
- The Dodgers only offered Schmidt three years. This is the really important point, and one I keep returning to. Even if Schmidt doesn't pitch one day for the Dodgers, his contract isn't going to be an albatross for the team the way the Darren Dreifort or Kevin Brown deals were, simply because it just isn't that long.
Labels: depodesta, dodgers, injuries
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