Colletti is facing tough decisions

Welcome back, Lakers fans. We rejoin this Dodgers season, already in progress.

You haven’t missed much, and you’re back just in time for what could be a crucial month. The Dodgers are a bad team, in a bad division. They should be buried by now.

They’re not, thanks to the generous insistence of the Arizona Diamondbacks in turning a one-team race into a five-team race. The National League West is there for the Dodgers’ taking.

That could be a bad thing. This isn’t a World Series team, not close to one, not yet. There’s no sense tearing up this team for the chance to go three and out in October -- unless, that is, your job depends on getting to October.

Frank McCourt isn’t telling.

In three seasons under Ned Colletti, the Dodgers’ victory total has gone from 88 to 82 to a projected 74, while the payroll has gone from $98 million to $108 million to $119 million.

There’s a lot of busts, for a lot of money: Jason Schmidt at $47 million, Andruw Jones at $36 million, Nomar Garciaparra at $19 million, Esteban Loaiza at $8 million.

The Dodgers have almost twice as much money on the disabled list as they do on the active roster, with the injured parties including Garciaparra, Jones, Rafael Furcal and three-fifths of a starting rotation in Schmidt, Brad Penny and Hiroki Kuroda.

This is not the best of resumes for a general manager.

“I have the utmost confidence in Ned and his group,” McCourt said. “We’ve come light-years in terms of having more of a team in the front office.”

This is not to diminish McCourt’s satisfaction in no longer having to referee intramural disputes, but the object is to win, not just to play nice. Colletti could win, or try to, by trading young talent for veteran help before the July 31 trading deadline.

“We have never made a decision during my ownership based on immediate, near-term, win-loss results,” McCourt said. “That’s not how we’re built. That’s not what we’re about.”

The apparent conclusion, then, would be that Colletti would be safe no matter how the Dodgers finish. Colletti and McCourt agreed last year, after all, that the Dodgers should not package young talent for Johan Santana, Miguel Cabrera or Mark Teixeira.

However, McCourt refused to say whether Colletti will keep his job if the Dodgers finish with a losing record.

McCourt called it a trick question, and not unjustifiably. If the Dodgers spiral toward last place, he doesn’t want to be reminded of a quote he gave in June. He gave a quote in support of Paul DePodesta three years ago, then fired him before the Dodgers had lost even one more game.

That leaves Colletti with no assurances, and with no idea what kind of team the Dodgers might be fielding by the trading deadline.

“Our dilemma between now and then is to figure out how good the team is,” Colletti said.

They’re not one player away. They have used nine starting pitchers, tied for the most in the league. They’re last in the league in home runs, last in the league in doubles, near the bottom in walks. That means they need a bunch of singles to score, without a bunch of .300 hitters.

So they have lost 19 of their last 28 games, scoring barely three runs per game. Amazingly, they have lost only one game in the standings during that span -- but here come the Colorado Rockies, with Matt Holliday, Troy Tulowitzki and Brad Hawpe all off the disabled list.

The Dodgers could get some power if they can get Furcal, Jones and Garciaparra off the disabled list.

“The first part of deciding what we need is, what is our team?” Colletti said. “If we’re not going to have any of those three for the rest of the year, which is a longshot, you can look at it one way.

“If we’re going to get them back in a couple weeks, we’ll have a couple more weeks to make a determination of what we have.”

It’s a longshot that all three guys come back, stay healthy and hit for power. But first things first: If they get those guys back, and Penny and Kuroda too, maybe they cross their fingers and hope they really are one player away.

If that player is C.C. Sabathia, he might be a two-month rental. McCourt already is wary of long-term pitching contracts, and the Schmidt experience isn’t going to help persuade him to offer Sabathia five guaranteed years.

If that player is Holliday, the Rockies have made it clear they would add an NL West surcharge, an extra player in return if they trade him within the division.

In either case, the Dodgers would risk disrupting the core of young players they have trumpeted for years without ever letting that core establish itself. They also would risk gutting the depth of an organization that now calls Angel Berroa its major league shortstop.

The kids won’t all pan out, but Russell Martin, Chad Billingsley and Jonathan Broxton already have. James Loney, in his first full season, is hitting .308.

Matt Kemp, in his first full season, is hitting .291 with seven home runs and 13 stolen bases. He has driven in 43 runs, the team high.

The coaches might tell Blake DeWitt something once and might have to tell Kemp the same thing five times, but he is by far the most talented among this group, the most coveted by opposing teams. The Dodgers say they aren’t trading him.

The Angels mix in Howie Kendrick or Casey Kotchman, relatively invisibly, because they have Vladimir Guerrero and Garret Anderson to carry the load. The Boston Red Sox mix in Dustin Pedroia or Jacoby Ellsbury, in the supporting cast for David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez.

On the days the Dodgers rest Jeff Kent, they might run Kemp, Martin and Loney through the heart of the order. If those three can anchor themselves there, the Dodgers can start breaking in youngsters where they should be, at the bottom of the lineup.

The Dodgers could get to October yet, in this division, without an extreme makeover. If they shatter the emerging core, there could be a lot of veteran patch jobs in the future, a lot of overpriced .500 teams. That’s a high cost for one round of the playoffs, unless you believe you better get there today or you won’t see tomorrow.

Colletti insists he won’t go for broke to try to keep his job, to showcase himself for the owners.

“There’s no question they’re hungry to win,” Colletti said. “I’m hungry to win. Certainly, our fan base is hungry to win.

“I take a long-term view. Had I wanted to be selfish, I could have recommended a lot of different things. I choose not to be selfish. We’re going to be strong enough to withstand the bumps.”

When doing something big and doing the right thing are not necessarily the same thing, he can only hope that doing the right thing is good enough.

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bill.shaikin@latimes.com