With deck stacked, Colletti reshuffled

Shifting gears from Alfonso Soriano to Juan Pierre on the Hollywood Freeway.

Negotiating from the Coliseum against the backdrop of 91,000 screaming football fans.

Fielding a tinny call from an agent whose refuge from the winter meetings media horde was a hotel stairwell.

Steering clear of another agent, Scott Boras, whose opening gambit signified game over.

For the second year in a row, Dodgers General Manager Ned Colletti was widely lauded for his off-season roster reconstruction. But the moves that produced the team that will assemble this spring in Vero Beach, Fla., involved a four-month odyssey fraught with as many stops as starts, as many hairpin curves and dead ends as green lights.

The Dodgers retained first baseman Nomar Garciaparra and signed catcher Mike Lieberthal, pitchers Jason Schmidt and Randy Wolf and outfielders Luis Gonzalez and Pierre, the unifying theme among them being a strong desire to wear blue.

They lost J.D. Drew to a signature Boras maneuver and didn’t re-sign the agent’s other clients, Eric Gagne and Greg Maddux. Yet because Boras represents veteran pitcher Derek Lowe and new addition Chin-hui Tsao, the Dodgers aren’t completely Scott-free.

And they’ve been unable to acquire a power hitter through a trade, preferring to retain the collection of talented, inexpensive young players that should form the foundation of Dodgers baseball for years.

The following is a behind-the-scenes look at an off-season that began unpleasantly and ended with optimism and a surplus of pitching. Sources included several baseball executives, players and their agents.

A sour taste

Moments after being swept by the New York Mets in the playoffs, the Dodgers weren’t comforted by their 17-win turnaround in the team’s first season under Colletti and Manager Grady Little.

“We thought we were a World Series team and we weren’t happy about losing,” Garciaparra said.

Colletti toured the gloomy clubhouse and vowed that he would do everything possible to fill the holes that kept the Dodgers from advancing.

“Whether it was a rookie or a veteran, to a man they were sick we got beat and sick the season ended,” Colletti said. “As tired and as nicked up as they were, they exhibited to me they could not wait for the 2007 season to begin.

“I took that to heart, their words and the look in their eyes. They know there is more to accomplish and more to prove, and I had to help that along by improving the club.”

He set out to bolster the pitching staff and add a power hitter. But before the Dodgers could take a step forward, they were knocked on their heels during a meeting between Colletti and Boras in early November.

Boras informed Colletti that Drew would exercise a clause in his contract -- negotiated two years earlier when Paul DePodesta was Dodgers general manager -- and walk away from his remaining three years and $33 million.

By the way, Boras added, Maddux wanted a two-year, $21-million deal.

The meeting caused the Dodgers to abruptly change course. Earlier they had contacted left fielder Andre Ethier to let him know he might move to center field in an outfield that would include Drew in right and, they hoped, Soriano or slugger Carlos Lee in left. But Drew’s departure meant Ethier would become the right fielder and the Dodgers were in the market for a center fielder as well as a left fielder.

Furthermore, re-signing Maddux became less of an option, and Colletti began pursuing Schmidt in earnest while crossing the top free-agent pitcher -- Barry Zito -- off his wish list.

Zito’s agent? Boras.

Homecomings,

football and freeways

With Drew gone, the Dodgers began to look at Garciaparra in a more appreciative light. He’d been willing to change positions. He played hurt and hit well in the clutch. He wanted to remain a Dodger and continue to live in L.A., his hometown.

Agent Arn Tellem invited Colletti to his house and left him alone with Garciaparra, who knew the Dodgers were considering letting him sign elsewhere and handing the first base job to rookie James Loney.

Garciaparra spoke first: “You make a commitment to me and I’ll make a commitment to you and play wherever you want me to play. I just want to stay with the Dodgers.”

The parameters of a two-year deal were struck then and there. Before Colletti left the house, Tellem mentioned that two other free agents he represented -- Wolf and Lieberthal -- had grown up in Southern California and wanted to play for the Dodgers.

“This was a case of veterans having a clear idea where they wanted to play and of the club having the need for them,” Tellem said.

Colletti had responded to Drew’s departure by saying he’d find players who wanted to become Dodgers. He hit the mother lode with Tellem, who, in a repeat of his strategy with Garciaparra a year earlier, had Wolf visit Dodgers brass at their offices.

“I learned a lot about Randy Wolf that day,” Colletti said. “It intrigued me to give this kid a chance. He was a lot like Nomar, the kind of player I have a great affinity for.”

Even before finalizing deals with Wolf and Lieberthal, Colletti’s attention turned to shoring up the outfield. He arranged a meeting with Soriano -- considered the top power hitter in the free-agent market -- at the general managers’ meetings in Naples, Fla., in mid-November. Dodgers owner Frank McCourt was there, and the Dodgers brought in longtime coach Manny Mota so that Soriano would have a Dominican Republic countryman at the table.

Soriano, for his part, was accompanied by half a dozen representatives from the agency that represents him, SFX. Later that evening, Colletti met with Pierre, who expressed his admiration for the franchise that broke the color barrier.

The Dodgers made Soriano an offer the next day and Colletti returned to L.A., planning to take a break from the hot stove league for a few hours by attending the USC football game against California.

There was no respite, though, just deafening background noise during his whirlwind of calls.

He spoke to the agent for center fielder Gary Matthews Jr. but thought the price tag was too high. He left his seat and walked to a concession stand to hear the agent for Schmidt counter the Dodgers’ three-year, $42-million offer with three years at $51 million. And he spoke to the agent for Lee, offering a deal similar to the three-year, $39-million contract that the same agent had accepted a year earlier for Dodgers shortstop Rafael Furcal. Lee had no interest, though, and Colletti knew his best chance to obtain power was to pursue Soriano.

Those hopes were dashed a day later. Driving home from a friend’s house in Agoura Hills, Colletti took a call from Soriano’s primary agent, Pat Rooney, who said his client had accepted an eight-year deal with the Chicago Cubs.

Before he hung up, Colletti remembered that Pierre was represented by another agent in Rooney’s group, Mark Peiper, and asked Rooney to have Peiper call him. Peiper did, but to tell Colletti that Pierre was very close to signing a four-year, $36-million deal with another team. Colletti made a similar offer, but Peiper said that ethically he couldn’t change course so late in negotiations unless a new offer was significantly better.

Colletti asked Peiper to wait two hours before giving an answer to the other team -- which turned out to be the San Francisco Giants. He called McCourt and they decided to tack on a fifth year, making the deal worth $45 million for a player who is consistently among league leaders in hits and stolen bases but who has negligible power, rarely walks and has a poor arm.

At least the Dodgers had a center fielder as they headed into the winter meetings.

A starter, a stalemate

and a stairwell

The packed hotel lobby in Orlando, Fla., was crackling about a meeting between Colletti and Red Sox General Manager Theo Epstein to discuss a trade that would send slugger Manny Ramirez to the Dodgers for prospects.

Colletti wouldn’t comment on the meeting, but other sources said the Dodgers did not believe the Red Sox were serious about dealing Ramirez.

“It seemed like a fishing expedition to have us rank our young players,” one Dodgers source said.

Epstein wanted reliever Jonathan Broxton, outfielder Matt Kemp and Loney. The conversation was over.

Talks with Boras about re-signing Maddux and Gagne were no more productive. Colletti was convinced Schmidt would become a Dodger -- eliminating the need for Maddux -- and Boras was intent on taking the highest guaranteed offer possible for Gagne, whose health was in question.

Colletti didn’t even attend a last-ditch meeting with Boras, sending assistants Kim Ng and Bill Lajoie. Boras told them that he’d “have to report to his clients that the GM didn’t show.”

The next day Maddux agreed to a two-year deal with the San Diego Padres for a guaranteed $16 million and incentives that could increase the value to $20 million -- considerably less than Boras had told the Dodgers it would take. In his only conversation with Boras since the winter meetings, Colletti told him the Dodgers would have given Maddux the same contract.

Instead, money earmarked for Maddux -- and a lot more -- went to sign Schmidt, who took $47 million over three years rather than a similar offer from the St. Louis Cardinals or a four-year offer from the Baltimore Orioles.

The last piece of business at the winter meetings was to fill the hole in left field by signing Gonzalez, who at first rejected a Dodgers two-year offer of about $10 million and was close to signing with the Orioles. He instructed his agent, Gregg Clifton, to give the Dodgers another try on the last day of the meetings and Clifton ducked into a stairwell to reach Colletti. A one-year, $7.35-million contract was agreed upon after midnight in the Dodgers’ suite with several reporters sitting in the next room.

Continuing business

Colletti continued to pursue a home run hitter through a trade, dangling starters Brad Penny, Mark Hendrickson and Brett Tomko. He was even willing to include a young player, but power is a prized commodity in the post-steroid era.

Vernon Wells signed a long-term extension with the Toronto Blue Jays, the Cardinals refused to discuss moving third baseman Scott Rolen and the Atlanta Braves couldn’t get enough in return for Andruw Jones.

“Teams I’ve called to acquire players of that ilk are not interesting in moving them,” Colletti said. “Or, we would pay dearly for them.”

Not that he’s giving up. Colletti’s short tenure has been marked by action, and the vow he made the day the season ended continues to spur him.

“We aren’t a perfect team, we continue to be a work in progress,” he said. “The team we take to Vero Beach won’t be the team that ends the season. Every opportunity we have, we’ll make a move.”

steve.henson@latimes.com

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Lineup card

The Dodgers’ projected batting order and pitching rotation for 2007 (newcomers are shaded):

*--* LINEUP 1. Rafael Furcal, ss 2. Juan Pierre, cf 3. N. Garciaparra, 1b 4. Jeff Kent, 2b 5. Luis Gonzalez, lf 6. Russell Martin, c 7. Wilson Betemit, 3b 8. Andre Ethier, rf

*--*

*--* ROTATION Jason Schmidt, rhp Derek Lowe, rhp Randy Wolf, lhp Brad Penny, rhp Chad Billingsley, rhp CLOSER Takashi Saito, rhp

*--*

Los Angeles Times