Marketing Campaign Isn’t Worth the Cost

It’s not worth the fight.

Or the prospects.

They canceled the final minute or so of Sunday night’s fireworks show -- and everybody booed -- because one small brush fire made the fire marshal nervous, so one can imagine how Paul DePodesta feels this morning.

DePodesta has an inferno going, and he’s packing a spritzer.

In this buy-or-sell world of parity and wild cards, with four weeks left before the non-waiver trading deadline and three months left before reset, the Dodgers ought to turn the hose on themselves.

They’re done.

I’ll admit, they had me going for a while. Not World Series going. But capable going. I liked the pitching and I liked Jeff Kent and I liked J.D. Drew. I liked the bench when it wasn’t starting every day. I hated having Adrian Beltre go, but I can respect baseball people making baseball decisions, assuming it was a baseball decision and not a finance-the-place-in-Holmby-Hills decision.

And mostly I liked them in the National League West. But then I’d like just about anything in the National League West that played its home games close to sea level.

Only, not the Dodgers. Not now.

Drew’s wrist was broken by a pitch Sunday night, then he played a half-inning as it swelled and throbbed before he sat down for most of the summer if not all of it, and as his teammates trudged off to Colorado, one stopped in a hallway outside the clubhouse.

“Hear about J.D.?” he said. “Out.”

Eric Gagne, out. Milton Bradley, out. Cesar Izturis, out. Jose Valentin, out. Ricky Ledee, out. Odalis Perez, out. Wilson Alvarez, out.

Drew, out.

The expressions on the faces of the men still standing downstairs afterward, from those in the manager’s office to the clubhouse to the laundry room, were as splintered as the latest X-ray. It’s not that Drew carried them. But he could. He had the talent. He had the body of work. And how many are left you can say that about?

The Las Vegas 51s ought to move their front-office staff to Dodger Stadium, because that’s where all their players are.

So now some Cody-or-other will dress about where Drew did, and Dr. Frank Jobe will show up in the late afternoons a little more often, and Manager Jim Tracy will decide whether Mike Edwards should protect Jason Repko in the order, or vice versa.

“It [really stinks],” Jeff Kent said. “That’s my reaction.”

Meantime, up on the fifth floor, DePodesta has a very difficult decision to make. Actually, not so difficult.

His ballclub is 5 1/2 games out of first place, and fortunate to be so.

He has seen a lot of the San Diego and Arizona clubs recently, and can’t be impressed. He has seen more of his team and can only arrive at the same conclusion; the work required here will take more than four weeks and a couple trades that would come at the expense of next year and the year after.

With a healthy Drew and a recovered Bradley and a productive Kent, the Dodgers were perhaps a player from collapsing across the finish line just ahead of their similarly flawed division foes. Now they are two or three. And, by now, other general managers are saying the names so often, DePodesta is hearing “Andy LaRoche, Joel Guzman, Chad Billingsley, Jonathan Broxton, Russell Martin” as one long, painful word.

One day, that whole Double-A Jacksonville roster could arrive at Dodger Stadium on the same bus. One day, a few parts of it could bring the Dodgers a big league player or two, and with them a real chance to win.

Neither is likely in the next couple of weeks, however.

In the moments before that fastball struck that wrist, the Dodgers were still waiting on something like professional consistency, like personal composure. They were running into outs at third base in five-run deficits. They were overrunning balls in the outfield. They were heaving balls past cutoff men. They were balking home runs and grooving early fastballs.

The schedule won’t send them the NL West forever. Then we’ll get 2-11 again, and no rush of Lyle Overbays and Mike Camerons and Carl Everetts -- for the prospect LaRocheGuzmanBillingsleyBroxtonMartin -- will make it 11-2.

Too much has happened, so little of it good. So, build for next year, not next month. Rest Izturis another week or two. Give Kent a day here and there. Allow Bradley his time. Mother Drew and Gagne.

It’s July, and the Dodgers don’t sell. But neither do they become foolish. They plan. They execute. They heal.

Let other people get desperate and overpay for Adam Dunn and Joe Randa. For that matter, let them get desperate and overpay for Giovanni Carrara, or Jeff Weaver, or whomever.

In the meantime, get the photographs and important papers and get out.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Three’s a crowd

Center fielder J.D. Drew was lost to the Dodgers after suffering a broken left wrist Sunday. He is one of three sidelined Dodger outfielders. The statistics for the three this season:

*--* Player AB OBP HR RBI Avg. SB J.D. Drew 252 412 15 36 286 1 Milton Bradley 188 345 10 26 298 5 Ricky Ledee 129 343 2 16 279 0

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