Better?

Now that the baseball season is largely over (and let’s face it, for the Dodgers it has been over for a long time, though they remain mathematically in contention), it’s soon enough to evaluate some of the moves the bonehead general manager Paul DePodesta made with this team over last year’s offseason.

Let’s start with Adrian Beltre. Here’s a guy who played on a bum ankle all season last year and finally put up the kind of numbers the Dodgers had been expecting of him since he arrived in 1998. He led the majors in home runs while hitting .334.

The Dodgers, however, didn’t want to give him a long-term deal based on one year’s numbers, and let him go to Seattle. Admittedly, he hasn’t exactly been Mike Schmidt. His .257 average and 18 home runs make him look more like Mike Pagliarulo. But his 79 RBIs is more than any Dodger except Jeff Kent. And that’s on a Seattle team, where even Ichiro is batting a mere .302, that isn’t exactly putting a lot of runners on base for Beltre to drive in.

Beltre has also played in 138 of Seattle’s 144 games this year, something no 2005 Dodger can say. Meanwhile, the five guys named Mo who DePodesta slotted to fill Beltre’s role are hitting a combined .258, a percentage point above Beltre in fact.

And if you add up the RBI totals for Robles, Antonio Perez, Mike Edwards, Jose Valentin, and Norihiro Nakamura, you get 79, the exact same total as Beltre. Except that those 79 RBIs came in 914 at bats, compared to 536 for Beltre. Beltre therefore has 1.7 RBIs for every run driven in by a Dodger third baseman.

J.D. Drew was the guy who was supposed to replace Beltre’s big bat in the lineup. He played 72 games and hit a whopping .286 with 15 homers and 36 whole RBIs before getting injured yet again, as he has done every single year of his career. Even if you double his half season stats, he would have all of 72 RBIs, but also 100 strikeouts.

Meanwhile, the guy he replaced, Shawn Green, (whose salary the Dodgers are still paying), is hitting .299 with 22 homers and 73 RBIS, while playing 141 games for the Diamondbacks. It’s nice to double a player’s statistics and say that’s what he would have hit if he hadn’t gotten injured.

But Drew is on the DL more than George Bush is on vacation. When a player is as on the DL as often as Drew, you can’t assume anything. Everybody in baseball, except, it seems, Paul DePodesta, knew that Drew was a guy who was injury prone, didn’t try very hard, and was a clubhouse killer. And that’s exactly what he has delivered for the Dodgers in 2005.

Let’s look at the lineup DePodesta intended to put on the field at the beginning of 2005:

Hee Seop Choi at first. If you’ve been reading my blog or anything Jim Tracy has to say about this guy, you know my feelings about him.

Jeff Kent at second. Good move. Kent is the core of this horrible club, putting up his usual Hall of Fame numbers. He’ll end the season with 30 homers, .300 average, and 100 RBIS. I wasn’t a huge fan of this acquisition when it was made, but he has performed admirably.

Cesar Izturis at short: He started strong, then faded, perhaps because of injury. His excellent defense makes him worth keeping, though he probably shouldn’t be batting leadoff.

Jose Valentin at third: If you’re going to let Beltre, the team leader and offensive sparkplug, leave, you’ve got to replace him with more than a .174 hitter. Especially when guys like Troy Glaus, Corey Koskie, even Joe Randa were available.

Jayson Werth, Milton Bradley, and J.D. Drew in the outfield. Three guys who all wanted to play center field, probably so they wouldn’t have to hit like a corner outfielder. All three spent time on the DL this year. Bradley was the best of this bunch on the field, but his off-the-field problems mean he assuredly won’t be back next year.

David Ross, catcher. David Ross? Are you kidding? How do you trade away Paul LoDuca, get nothing for him, and think David Ross is going to solve your problems. Luckily for the Dodger, Jason Philips fell into their lap, and he did a great job at catcher, except when it came to throwing out baserunners. He’s third on the team in RBIS.

Derek Lowe, Brad Penny, Jeff Weaver, Odalis Perez, and Scott Erickson, starting rotation. Scott Erickson? Puh-leeze. A guy who was washed up three years ago. DePodesta seems to think catching lightning in a bottle is as easy as playing against the 49ers.

Moreover, where’s the ace? Who’s the guy you’re afraid of in a big playoff series? Who’s the #1 starter? Jeff Weaver? Big game loser Jeff Weaver? Now maybe no aces were available in the off-season. But in that case, you have to go out and get five #2 starters, not hire some other team’s retreads.

Injuries hurt, for sure, but this Dodger team was poorly assembled from the start. The 12-2 start masked serious flaws.

Looking forward to 2006, who would you build around? Kent, a 37-year-old guy in the last year of his contract? Izturis, who’s going to recovering from Tommy John surgery? Dioner Navarro, a decent catcher who hasn’t played a full season? Elmer Dessens, the only pitcher with an ERA under 3.00? Drew?

If they traded every single one of the guys on the roster today and replaced them with the Milwaukee Brewers, would anybody even notice? The Brewers are playing .500, something the Dodgers haven’t done since May. They’d be an improvement over the current club. In fact, if the Brewers were playing in the NL West, they’d be a playoff team.

It’s hard to believe that less than a season after a division championship, it’s ttime for the Dodgers to clean house. But there isn’t a single irreplaceable part of this team.

The best place to start would be with DePodesta.