So, the seasons' over, and has been for the last couple weeks. I don't know, at some point in the last three weeks, something just snapped inside me and made me just not care any more. Maybe it was watching various people start over Andy LaRoche, maybe it was simply losing and not having anything worth while to say about it except "this sucks", maybe it was just the fact that my life now consists entirely of work and beer pong. I don't know, point is, I really haven't felt anything worth saying about baseball for the last three weeks.
So, here we are, another disappointing Dodger season. As with any time we face disappointment, we look for people to blame. Grady Little seems to be getting the brunt of it, but I just can't feel anything about a manger after Jim Tracy. Sure, he started Wilson Valdez in left that one time, but at least he's not starting Jason Phillips at first all day. At some point, I guess all of my complaining about managers and general managers got to me and I just became nihilistic about the whole thing. Yeah, Grady Little does some stupid, stupid things, but anyone else that the Dodgers would reasonably hire would do exactly the same thing, so why let it bother me. If the Dodgers want to stick with the good old boy network, I can't do a thing about it.
And that probably is just why I feel so burned out about baseball right now. Because as long as the Dodgers are just going to stick in the good old boy network, everything they do will just be as predictable as the winds. A few weeks ago, I was having a chat with a friend of mine about how the Dodgers should spend the 25 million dollars or so they'll have freed up in their payroll. Assuming they couldn't afford A-Rod, the best honest to god answer I could come up with without getting into bizarre trades was sign Francisco Cordero and create the most devastating bullpen man has ever seen. How awesome would it be to have Scott Proctor and Jonathan Meloan as your fifth and sixth inning guys? The Dodgers have the pieces they need, right now, to become a dominant force until the mid 2010s and the only thing that they really need to do is save money for the next superstar that comes on the market.
When the Dodgers were in first, this seemed like a totally reasonable plan. Now that the team has imploded and Jeff Kent has turned into Jefferson Davis, I don't know what to think. There's no way the media will let the Dodgers do nothing after finishing in fourth place this year, and there's nothing that's shown me that McCourt won't do exactly what they tell him to do. Once the World Series ends, I'll spend the next three months hoping the Dodgers stay out of the headlines. I want the biggest news off the off season to be that Mike Sweeney signed for $750,000. No, I can't have that now, I have to spend the winter scared that we're bringing in Torii Hunter and Mike Lowell while Kemp and LaRoche are traded for Jarrod Washburn to bring in both veteran savvy and post season experience.
This offseason is the turning point for the Dodgers and Ned Colletti, if he's able to stay the course and let our young talent lead the team, I'll have a whole new opinion of him. As much crap as I talk about him, I do think he realizes that Kemp and Loney, not Kent and Gonzalez are what's going to put this team over the top. What I don't know he can do is take a beating from the media. If Aaron Rowand is patrolling left field for us next year, then he's quite simply spineless and one of the worst GMs in the game. If that happens, I'm probably done with all of this. Here's hoping I'm not.