Thursday, July 22, 2010

Weisman Deconstructs The Dodgers At The Deadline

Jon Weisman has always said that his Dodger thoughts blog is his "outlet for dealing psychologically with the Los Angeles Dodgers and baseball". So it should come as no surprise that his post about the Dodgers at the trade deadline is full of the plot twists and emotional turns illustrating the tortured mind of us Dodger fans right now:

I just had so many different thoughts, and this is me trying (and, as you'll see, mostly failing) to make sense of them. But whether I make sense of them or not, 10 days from now, on July 31, baseball's no-waivers-required trade deadline, we get the kick. [...]

The issue is not whether the Dodgers are out of contention. They're not. They could be leading the wild card race inside of a week. And unless you've completely ruled out the possibility of the upstart Padres having their own problems, the NL West is wide open.

We've all seen this show before – twice in recent years, in fact. In 2006 and 2008, the Dodgers had tremendous swoons, only to recover from them.

Each time, they got help at the trade deadline – without blowing up the team.

So, what now?

It's a great piece, not really taking a stand in any direction, weighing the benefits of win now versus win later, using history as a guideline but not as an oracle. Knowing the history of the Dodgers' July trades well, and wrestling with my emotions about this team each day, I left the article a little frustrated that it didn't chart a clear course of action.

But that's why we're all so tortured, no? The path isn't clear, not for the Dodgers, and certainly not for Ned Colletti. Every move could both help and hurt, could both be praised and derided. Given our highly volatile and fickle state this year, even more so than prior years, it's not even clear what kind of team we are, four months deep into the season. Are we winners? Losers? In the hunt? Out of the running? Trying to make the move for now? Trying to set the stage for the future?

"Let the freakout begin," indeed.

5 comments:

Mr. LA Sports Czar said...

Trade GAARP for Oswalt and some prospects.

You can't put a price on veteran leadership, but I'd sure as hell try.

Kyle Baker said...

Ahhhhhh Freak out!

Dusto_Magnifico said...

If the penn needs a boost look to get it from Kenley Jansen. He may be the best option for us at the moment.

Unknown said...

We didn't "blow up" the team in 2008, but we did trade a catcher currently OPSing over 1.000 in his first 6 weeks in the MLB for 3 months of Casey Blake.

Nostradamus said...

Santana-baiting -> still frowned upon.