Are Dodgers Really Much Worse Off?

Almost nobody doesn’t like the good old days.

But here’s the thing.

Last year wasn’t them. And neither was the decade before it.

And, if we’d all grab a paper bag and breathe, we may remind ourselves what Paul DePodesta and Frank McCourt have broken up.

We had our doubts about the Dodgers at the start of last season, did again at the trading deadline, and then for all but one game in October.

Those aren’t good old days. That’s a good old day.

Have the Dodgers become so pathetic that one win after Oct. 1 is something to bronze? Rhetorical question.

Weep over Adrian Beltre if you must. They screwed up and if they’re lucky it won’t grind at their souls for more than 12 years, maybe 13. But before we turn Paul Lo Duca into Campanella, and Jose Lima into Drysdale, and Alex Cora into Robinson, and the ’04 Dodgers into the ’98 Yankees, let’s not fire up the torches and march on Chavez Ravine just yet.

It is quite possible these Dodgers won’t win as often as those Dodgers.

But who among the departed -- other than Beltre, they screwed up -- could not be replaced?

The pitching staff is better. That is indisputable, if for no other reason than there is enough depth to keep Kaz Ishii bound and gagged in the players’ lounge for months.

A healthy Brad Penny (they say, they hope, they duct-tape) for a damaged Brad Penny. Derek Lowe for Lima. A trim Odalis Perez for a flabby Odalis Perez (and at three-fifths the price!).

What we’ll say for the defense is, well, the pitching staff is better. But by June 1, Jeff Kent will be your first baseman, Antonio Perez will be your second baseman and Hee-Seop Choi will be your 25th man. It’s how the world works outside the Matrix.

DePodesta said at the first news conference of the week that he has three center fielders. And, at a minimum, four good knees between them. Curiously, J.D. Drew can walk after two years of a five-year contract. If it’s without a limp, though, that’s money well spent.

The defense and pitching are a wash. One gets worse, the other slaps its head and takes the ball back and gets on with it, and if DePodesta has been living clean maybe Cesar Izturis saves them all.

These aren’t the pitching-and-defense Dodgers of your elderly uncle whose choice of headwear screams “Cap Day 1976.” For the moment, until June 1, they’re the pitching-and-backing-up-third Dodgers. The good news, there’s less of third to back up now, thanks to the off-season skip-loader rental.

The last Dodger lineup that won a game -- on Oct. 9 -- hit 161 home runs in the regular season. Forty-eight of them came from Beltre (they screwed up). The next Dodger lineup -- coming April 5 -- hit 147 home runs last season, assuming Choi at first base and David Ross at catcher. Or, in strict “Moneyball” terms, the new lineup drew 432 walks to the old one’s 403. Stricter still, the average player’s on-base plus slugging percentage in October’s lineup was .774, against April player’s .791.

We have no idea what that means for April 5 against the San Francisco Giants, other than that none of it will replace Beltre, standing on one good ankle, carrying everybody on the barrel of his bat.

So, it cost the Dodgers Beltre. In some ninth inning in the near future, it will cost Jim Tracy his defensive replacement and, perhaps, Eric Gagne a save. It cost Shawn Green, a wonderful, caring guy not worth $16 million, but whose contract brought Lowe.

In the moments before he’d leave for the owners’ meetings in Phoenix on Wednesday, McCourt stood for photos with Lowe, then slowly walked a high-ceilinged corridor to the left-field corner.

In their first full off-season together, his general manager had overhauled the 25-man roster, primped the farm system and bargained to the final nickel with the manager and his coaching staff. And McCourt had raised ticket prices for the best seats, started construction on better seats, and stood against the squall as first Beltre and then Green departed.

He said he was quite pleased and that someday, maybe soon, the Dodger population would be too.

“My job is to build a winner,” he said. “Not a flash-in-the-pan winner, either.”

To McCourt and DePodesta, that meant broad strokes, starting pitching and, McCourt said, “a change of culture.”

One playoff win for a generation of fans, he said, was not worth protecting, and he was right. In an industry that invites spending and allows its small markets to stock its larger ones, which in turn drives payrolls and ticket costs, the O’Malley and Fox solutions were to sell the franchise. This is McCourt’s.

For better or worse.

“I’m very concerned about what the fans think,” he said. “But I can’t make all the decisions I have to make if I make them on what’s momentarily popular. What I know will be popular is [winning a championship.]

“I think Paul and these fellas are doing a great job. I recognize that it’s painful. I empathize with the fans. But what has to be done has to be done.... The fact of the matter is, the team had not performed over the years in a way that I thought the Dodgers should perform.”

He called the Dodgers and the New York Yankees the “premier franchises in baseball.”

One of them has acted as such.

“That’s what this is about,” he said. “Is the team perfect? No. This is all a work in progress. I’d ask for the minimum amount of patience. I’m not patient myself, so I know how hard it is.”