Dodgers’ Web doings: Why is it that this mediocre team with wacky ownership is contending?

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Despite ownership that has ‘artistically executed the leap from self-destructive to certifiably wacky,’ Yahoo.com’s Tim Brown gives the Dodgers credit for being just mediocre enough at everything to have made something of themselves.

Brown said that with the travails of ownership, a rotation that has 100 career wins, cleanup hitter Manny Ramirez owning a shrinking .451 slugging percentage and Andre Ethier, Rafael Furcal and Ramirez all having spent time on the disabled list, the Dodgers should have collapsed upon themselves.

‘Really, they’ve become a model for showing up and playing, just to see what happens,’ wrote Brown.

It’s good, amusing and insightful reading.

Brown saves his best line for the Boston-area Russian healer-physicist Vladimir Shpunt, whom Frank and Jamie McCourt hired to watch games on television and send positive energy to the Dodgers.

‘Like we often say, ‘If all else fails, Shpunt!’ Other times, we say, ‘Hey, who’s the guy mind-melding with his Samsung?’ ‘

Also of interest on the Web:

-- Dodgers.com’s Ken Gurnick reports that the Dodgers have permitted triple-A Albuquerque left-hander Scott Elbert to leave the team for personal family matters. He has been placed on the inactive list.

Elbert was the Dodgers’ 2009 Minor League Pitcher of the Year and their first-round pick, 17th overall, in the 2004 draft.

He was called up May 28 and made one appearance for the Dodgers in Colorado but walked three left-handed batters and allowed a single in two-thirds of an inning. He was sent back to Albuquerque the next day.

-- There’s more reaction to the McCourts having spent more than six-K on Shpunt at eTrueSports.com, where they josh that they’ve now hired a phrenologist to examine the skull shapes of all Dodgers employees and weed out negative karma.

‘Everyone who works for us should have their heads examined,’’ the McCourts said in the bogus release.

-- TrueBlueLA.com’s Eric Stephen examines the remarkable combined success of Jonathan Broxton and Hong-Chih Kuo when the two have been pitched together since last July 27.

-- SI.com’s Jon Heyman writes that almost everything is a possibility for the disappointing Diamondbacks as management meets to figure out how to right the Arizona ship.

-- Steve Dilbeck