It’s Time to Change Ways

New day, new scapegoat.

That’s the way it goes for the Dodgers.

They’re less adept at accepting responsibility than at tossing aside whatever ballast they can to keep the hot-air balloon afloat.

The latest thing is benching Eric Young, who apparently hasn’t been getting it done defensively. The last straw was his failure to complete a double play, which contributed to a five-run inning in a loss to Arizona on Friday. They didn’t want to put him on the disabled list because then they wouldn’t be able to trade him. They can’t trade him easily because of his $4.5-million salary.

So they take him out of the lineup, and now all he’s doing is taking up space on the roster.

Yet it didn’t change anything.

As if on cue, Jose Vizcaino took Young’s place at second base and turned an unexceptional ground ball into a play that could have cost Kevin Brown the victory in a very well-pitched game Sunday in Arizona. Vizcaino’s throwing error to first on a two-out grounder by Tony Womack enabled Andy Fox to score from third and make the score 1-1.

Although Vizcaino did make two great defensive plays, it just went to show that the quick, knee-jerk reactions don’t necessarily answer the problems.

Ultimately it didn’t cost the Dodgers the game, because Eric Karros hit a solo home run in their next at-bat. That will probably only encourage the Dodgers into thinking their way is right, because they haven’t learned yet.

After Dodger pitchers were roughed up in the first two months of the season, the team fired pitching coach Charlie Hough. Two months later, poor starting pitching remains a fundamental flaw, with a team earned-run average of 4.66 before Monday.

The important thing, apparently, was to at least make the appearance of change. It was too early to fire Manager Davey Johnson, too early to fire General Manager Kevin Malone.

In truth, neither should be fired now or later this season or even in the winter even if the team hasn’t performed up to expectations. This organization needs some stability, it needs some relief from the chaos that has engulfed it the last two seasons and another round of job searches won’t accomplish anything toward that end.

But there’s this perception that when things go wrong, somebody must pay for it.

The whole thing reeks of the foul situation in Madison Square Garden earlier this year, when the New York Knicks were stumbling to the finish line and MSG President Dave Checketts fired General Manager Ernie Grunfeld. It was a move that had no impact on the season--it was past the trading deadline, too late for any significant roster decisions at all, so big deal.

All it did was send a message. But once the message was decoded it said that Checketts looked really foolish and overly panicky, because the team of players Grunfeld had assembled went on to reach the NBA finals.

The Dodgers don’t need heads placed on the guillotine, they just need some accountability. More mea culpas.

They keep talking that they have so much talent and things should be better without realizing they’ve backed themselves into a corner. Not only do the Dodgers lack players who can help them, they lack players who are easily tradable.

Not that teams love to help the Dodgers in the first place, but right now there’s nobody who would even think of bailing them out by taking some of the high-priced players off their hands. (And no one would even think of taking Carlos Perez, even if he didn’t have $12.6 million coming to him over the next two seasons).

Here’s how bad it is: Even if they wanted to trade their best pitcher and best player and just try starting from scratch, they’d have a tough time finding takers for Brown at $15 million a year and Gary Sheffield at $9.5 million a year.

When you go back and look at this team, it’s like examining the blueprints of an old building and realizing it wasn’t designed to withstand an earthquake.

There’s no contingency plan for this team, no easy out.

That has left the Dodgers to try the cheap approach and make changes simply for the appearance of change.

Benching Young won’t accomplish anything, just as firing Hough didn’t accomplish anything.

Same old new Dodgers.

J.A. Adande can be reached at his e-mail address: j.a.adande@latimes.com