All the News Is Fit to Print About Dodgers

I’ve got good news and bad news about the Dodgers.

The good news: Dodgers scouts and Ned Colletti have put together an amazing team of grizzled veterans and untried rookies. If it hadn’t been for their miserable start, they’d be running away from the rest of the division.

The bad news: Beware the ides of August. By then, National League pitchers will have deciphered Willy Aybar, Andre Ethier, Russell Martin, maybe even Matt Kemp (the best prospect they’ve had since Paul Konerko) and the old guys who aren’t on the disabled list or out for the season will surely be hobbled by the stress of the summer heat.

Oh, well -- let’s enjoy the good times while they last.

JOEL RAPP

Los Angeles

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Ever since Odalis Perez joined the Dodgers, all he has done is make excuses. Now he has done it again.

“I know you saw how many broken-bat bloopers they hit off me. When you go out there and that happens, what can you do?” he said after Wednesday’s game.

Yes, Odalis, what can you do when batters are hitting about .352 against you? What can you do when you have blown leads of 5-0 to the Braves, and 6-0 to the Diamondbacks? What can you do when you have given up 65 hits in 42 innings?

And for all that, you are the highest-paid pitcher on the Dodgers’ staff, making $9.5 million this year. Bad luck? I don’t think so. I see a soft-tossing lefty who gets paid ace money to have a 7.02 ERA.

ADRIAN DORSEY

Hacienda Heights

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While reading Bill Plaschke’s column on the Dodgers’ Russell Martin last Sunday, I had to wonder why a 23-year-old kid making over $300,000 a year who is living at a friend’s house and doesn’t own a car needs to be “saving” money to put his dad on a flight to L.A. to see him play.

PAUL BURNS

Granada Hills