Make Room for Repko

When Jayson Werth returns from the disabled list in the next few weeks, the Dodgers will have an interesting problem in Jason Repko. The kid who wasn’t supposed to make the club snagged the last flight out of Vero Beach and has played himself into the everyday lineup (well, given Jim Tracy’s penchant for working every player into the lineup at least once a week, it’s hard to call anything the Dodgers put on the field an everyday lineup). But he has written Repko’s name on the scorecard most days.

Repko has impressed me not so much with his hitting or on base percentage (both are lower than that of Ricky Ledee, who has shared the left field platoon with Repko in Werth’s absence. But his youthful enthusiasm brings an electricity to the team that has been lacking since Dave Roberts was sent off to Boston. Roberts, 32 certainly wasn’t young like Repko (25), but his hustle and his knack for taking the extra base made the rest of the team pick their game up. It’s the same with Repko. His contributions don’t always show up in the box score, but I find the games more enjoyable to watch when he’s playing. He also plays excellent defense and has a right fielder’s arm.

He’s still making rookie mistakes, but he seems to be learning from them. And as long as he has the luxury of a big league roster spot from which to learn on the job, he’s only going to get better. When Werth comes back, the temptation will be to send Repko down to AAA so that he can continue to play every day. But it might be worth keeping him around to inject a jolt into the offense whenever it becomes lethargic.