Brian Kamenetzky: The Dodgers are the Joneses

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It’s over now, and I feel better, thanks for asking.

No disrespect to Mark Loretta, but the success or failure of the Dodgers’ offseason was overwhelmingly dependent on re-signing Manny Ramirez (pictured at right with owner Frank McCourt) or replacing his offense in some sort of wigless Plan B. Fortunately, in the end, the Blue got the real thing and have, now that it’s all said and done, set themselves up with a solid lineup at a reasonable cost.

All in all, a very good winter.

Orlando Hudson constitutes a cheap, legitimate upgrade at second base. Re-signing shortstop Rafael Furcal was vital, given the lack of legitimate alternatives (Angel Berroa and his toy collection notwithstanding). Adding Randy Wolf was a low-risk, decent-reward move. It would have been nice to add more arms to the rotation, but among the free agent starters the only one I’d have thrown money/years at, other than CC Sabathia, was Derek Lowe, who by all rights said he wasn’t interested in playing here anymore. I would have liked to see more depth added in the pen -- Guillermo Mota does not inspire, and can anyone remind me again where Joe Beimel went wrong? -- but bullpens are the place where randoms and castoffs fairly routinely become major players. Raise your hand if you had Chan Ho Park as a contributor last year?

When the worst thing you can say about a team’s moves is that a third year for Casey Blake is not likely to pay off in the cost/benefit analysis or that a better backup catcher would be handy to have around, that’s pretty good. All accomplished without major financial potholes (see Pierre, Juan; Schmidt, Jason; Jones, Andruw).

With Manny securely in Dodger blue for another year, maybe two, the McCourts have another chance to rebuild their image. I’ve written on multiple occasions (there are more examples, but I’m struggling to navigate the ol’ Blue Notes archives) about their tendency to botch the PR end of things to the point that most of their good work in assembling a competitive squad and providing a great place to watch it goes to waste. Ask the average Dodgers fan if the team spends money on a winner, and the answer is no, despite ample evidence to the contrary. Note: Spend wisely? Different question, and not really Frank McCourt’s job.

As Buster Olney of ESPN.com points out, the Dodgers were second only to the Yankees in commitments to free agent players this offseason, at $105.9 million, nearly doubling the output of the other four teams in their division. The D-Backs, Rockies and Padres combined didn’t hit $15 million. Even with LA’s questions in the rotation, this is a division where most of the competition is going the wrong way, with lineup problems, pitching problems, or both. Arizona couldn’t score last year, and got worse. Colorado replaces Matt Holliday with Seth Smith. San Diego is selling off everything but the office furniture. Randy Johnson and Edgar Renteria are nice additions in San Francisco, but the Giants won 72 games last year, and .500 would be a nice leap.

It’s likely at this point that like many Dodgers fans, I’ll never warm up to Frank McCourt the person, but once again the evidence shows an owner doing what has to be done to try and field a winner, especially relative to the competition. If he can stay out of his own way, which generally would involve not talking very much and trying to ignore what we media types write about him, McCourt might finally make some headway in the quest for goodwill.

When it comes to the rest of the NL West, he’s not keeping up with the Jonses, he’s Mr. Jones.

-- Brian Kamenetzky