Will Carroll released his team health report for the Dodgers, and with it comes the good news that we no longer have the worst medical staff in baseball. If that's not progress I don't know what is. The article is behind the Prospectus money machine so I can't really go into specifics, but I can say that there's no real surprises other than high injury risks for Derek Lowe and Chad Billingsley. Carroll isn't happy with the red that the system spat out, and Jon Weisman goes into more detail on Billingsley.
Since crowd participation is important Carroll had the SBN bloggers fill out the lineups and ask him a question, and since it came from me, you can probably guess who I asked about.
I wish I could give some sort of definitive answer here, but it depends on how the injury is managed and minimized by Conte and company, and whether it actually impedes his ability to get to the plate. There's also some question over whether the back problem could be affected by keeping him at third base, but that's less of a concern than the rotational forces he puts on his back with his big swing. LaRoche has all the skills save the ability to stay healthy. Guess which one everyone will be talking about until he has either a big hitting streak or a couple months without even a whisper of injury?