ROOT OF THE PROBLEM?

Kevin Malone is right.

Everyone should stop talking about the future of Davey Johnson.

It is time to start talking, seriously, finally, about the future of Kevin Malone.

This is a genuinely nice man and hard worker who, charged with plugging a leaking boat, has capsized it.

After rowing five miles offshore.

And selling the life rafts.

This is not being written because the Dodgers have underachieved to three games over .500.

This is being written because the Dodgers have overachieved to three games over .500.

Their past is invisible, their future indiscernible.

This is being written because the Dodger situation is as bleak as it has been since the desperate 1930s, in Brooklyn, when Casey Stengel was the manager and Frenchy Bordagaray was an outfielder who once refused to slide at home plate for fear he’d crush his cigars.

That hasn’t happened this season, but there are still six weeks left.

In two years, Kevin Malone has spent millions building a team that is not suited for Dodger Stadium, not fit for the National League, and not much fun to watch.

When Malone arrived in September 1998, he announced that the Dodgers were a “diamond that just needs to be polished.”

Today they are baseball’s biggest lump of coal, arguably the most poorly operated team in the major leagues.

Small-market losers such as the Minnesota Twins at least have an excuse.

Big-market disappointments such as the Baltimore Orioles at least have a plan.

The Dodgers clearly have neither.

Their answer to pitching problems has been to trade pitchers.

Their answer to defensive problems has been to sign sluggers.

They say they have no farm system, yet they trade one of their top prospects for a leadoff batter who has struck out more than any other major leaguer with 10 or fewer home runs.

They complain about the way the team is being run on the field, yet last fall they fired a Dodger cornerstone who has since become the hottest young manager in baseball.

This is the first Dodger team in recent memory with no immediate help in the minor leagues, no money left in the wallet and no clear vision of where to turn next.

The brilliance shown by Malone in previous jobs as a talent evaluator has not translated into the vision and leadership required of the general manager of this city’s most important and enduring sports franchise.

“I don’t know what more I can do as a general manager,” Malone said when told of this column. “I’m even up some nights trying to work this out. We will win here. It’s just a matter of when.”

This is not to excuse the often-weary managing of Davey Johnson, who knows a lemon when he sees one and probably won’t mind so much this winter when he is pushed out at the curb.

But dismissing Johnson while failing to examine Malone would be like locking up Bonnie while ignoring Clyde.

Bob Daly, the team’s chairman, said he supports Malone’s contributions and stands firmly behind him.

We wonder if that is really Bob Daly talking.

We wonder if that isn’t, instead, a Fox suit talking, ordering Daly to defend an important Fox hire.

Daly says he is a Dodger fan while supporting the organization’s current direction.

But isn’t that like saying you are a gourmet while devouring Big Macs?

We remain under the assumption that Daly is smarter than that.

We are guessing that, surely, Daly has a list. Everyone in town has a list, right?

We refer to a compilation of all the unfortunate things that have occurred during the stewardship of Kevin Malone.

We hope Daly today is not only making that list, but checking it twice. The 10 worst moves of the Malone era, in order of lasting importance:

1. Firing Mike Scioscia. (See accompanying story.)

Dodger fans spending any time in the Angel dugout today would weep.

With Scioscia as manager and his former Dodger teammates as coaches inspiring respect and heroics, the place has the winning feel of an old Dodger dugout.

It’s bad enough that Malone’s Dodgers have never understood that feel.

But it was unthinkable, without ever really knowing Scioscia, to banish the one man clearly best suited to pass that feeling on.

2. Trading Charles Johnson for Todd Hundley.

Dr. Frank Jobe warned the Dodgers against doing it because of Hundley’s elbow problems.

The two laws of Dodger Stadium should have been even more convincing.

* Never trade defense for hitting.

* Never make a move without asking how it affects the pitching staff.

This move devastated the pitching staff.

3. Firing pitching coach Charlie Hough.

See the second law of Dodger Stadium.

And put it in all capital letters when your staff contains young pitchers.

4. Signing Devon White.

So you sacrifice defense behind the plate, then you sacrifice it in a different way in center field. . . . What was that about winning games up the middle again?

But perhaps the worst thing about this move was that it eventually resulted in . . .

5. Trading Randey Dorame, a double-A left-hander, to Colorado in a deal for Tom Goodwin.

You moan that you cannot acquire good pitching in July because you don’t have any prospects to offer.

Then you trade one of your best prospects, the California League pitcher of the year, to cover up the mistake you made with White?

Scouts say Dorame is the real thing. And even if he isn’t, can an organization that hasn’t had a decent left-handed starting pitcher in years afford to trade young lefties?

To say nothing of Goodwin’s frequent strikeouts and his .208 batting average away from Coors Field.

6. Bringing back Ismael Valdes.

Maybe you do it if he had been sent to the minors.

Perhaps you do it if he had retired and changed his mind.

But under no circumstances do you bring back a player so soon after he has been not only traded, but ripped and ridiculed by virtually everyone in the organization.

If Valdes ever shows his heart, human nature tells you that it won’t be in a roomful of self-professed enemies.

7. Trading Eric Young.

This is a mark against not only Malone, but Davey Johnson, neither of whom liked the guy.

Which brings up a third law of Dodger Stadium.

When you don’t have anyone else to bat leadoff, you learn to like somebody like Eric Young.

8. Paying too much for Kevin Brown.

It’s not that he hasn’t pitched well. But it took the rest of baseball 14 months before somebody else equaled his $15-million annual salary.

For that extra money, the Dodgers also could have signed a couple of other players.

And maybe if Brown isn’t the highest-paid player in baseball, the Dodgers don’t tiptoe around him and his injuries and eccentricities as if he were their boss, instead of the other way around.

Just wondering, but do you think Atlanta’s John Schuerholz lets his pitchers diagnose themselves and decide whether they will pitch in the All-Star game despite tenderness, and whether they will not pitch in the last game of the season if they can’t reach 20 wins?

9. Signing Orel Hershiser for the bullpen.

Bringing Hershiser back into the fold was a good thing, and hopefully he’ll stay.

But moving him to the bullpen was like putting an old first baseman at shortstop.

Hershiser agreed to it because he wanted to end his career as a Dodger. But the Dodgers never should have done it if they weren’t going to give him more than a couple of consecutive starts.

His presence here was a distraction and hindrance.

10. Signing Carlos Perez.

You know things are bad when this most celebrated of Malone’s mistakes--giving $15.6 million to a guy who was carefree, inconsistent and not eligible for free agency for two more years--is actually the least of his problems.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at his e-mail address: bill.plaschke@latimes.com.