Dodgers Retrospective - Week 10

So ... that was an odd week.

If I were to tell you at the beginning of the week that the Dodgers would go 3-3 in three games sets versus the Cardinals and Angels, would you guess a sweep of the Cardinals and then a sweep by the Angels? Would you?! I think not. The results this week were not necessarily odd, just unexpected.

No, no. The odd this week seemed to come more from off the field than on it.


Draft Dodgers (SEE WHAT I DID THERE?!)

The annual amateur draft was held this week, and the Dodgers made a couple picks that might be considered odd.

First, they drafted an 18 year old pitcher who almost everyone feels is "unsignable." You can read my thoughts here ... as if you didn't already.

But, here's just a couple other things I noticed.

Logan White seems to have something against the coaches at LSU because he's trying to steal all their players.

First he drafts Zach Lee in the 1st round, who has a strong commitment to LSU.

Later, in the sixth round, White drafted Kevin Gausman, another high schooler with who seems committed to LSU.

But White didn't stop there. Before he drafted Gausman, he drafted LSU's center fielder Leon Landry in the 3rd round, and after, in the 8th round, he drafted LSU's 1st baseman Blake Dean.

In an ideal world, the Dodgers would take both of LSU's top pitching recruits, their center fielder, and their first baseman.

Lucky for LSU, the Dodgers will probably sign neither Lee nor Gausman, so at least their rotation will be ok next year.

The second thing I noticed was the Dodgers drafted (and signed) someone who already has my support because of his facial hair.

"What?" you ask. I'll tell you.

In the 28th round, the Dodgers drafted Mike Drowne out of Sacred Heart University. Now, I like to look up a little bit of info on the players the Dodgers draft so I went to Sacred Heart U's website and navigated my way to the athletics page and then to Drowne's page, where I found this amazing profile pic.

They look like vertical parenthesis for his mouth!

Immediately, I was intrigued. I mean, it's fantastic! He looks like a villain from the 1800s. A train magnate who wants to demolish a small town to build his railroad empire ... and yes, he's wearing a tophat in this scenario.

However ... I was disappointed when I visited the website a few days later to see an article talking about Drowne being drafted. Accompanying said story was this picture of Drowne.

Suddenly, heart-breakingly mustache-less.

Admittedly, this soured me on Drowne just a bit.

I later realized, though, it does take a certain kind of bravado (or stupidity) to take a profile picture of yourself with a crazy set of fake facial hair and allow it to go up on a website that's going to be visited by a good amount of people.

So, Mike Drowne, if you are reading this, and I'm sure you are, I'm not mad at you for the fake facial hair, and I'm telling you this: if you grow back that facial hair and keep it through your trip in the minors, and you have my full support.


The McCourts Did Something Crazy, Though Really, Not Totally Surprising

Ok, seriously, at this point, is there anyone left in the McCourt camp?

I mean, is there any Dodger fan who's been following the events of the past year or so who still fully supports either of the McCourts as owner of this team?

If so, this one is for you...

The McCourts hired and paid a six figure salary to an old Russian to send positive vibes, or "V Energy" to the Dodgers.

This has already been sufficiently discussed/made fun of on various blogs (like MSTI, MoKM, and SoSG) so I'll just add one thing, the thing that makes me most sad about all this.

Yes, this whole thing is impossibly stupid/incredibly insane/a tremendous waste of money ... pick your choice.

The real sad thing about all this is this question: were you really shocked? To be honest, I wasn't.

Sure, I was surprised. It's hard to see something like this coming. But at this point, did anyone read this article and react with disbelief. "Noooo ... the McCourts couldn't have done something so irrational ... they wouldn't have paid all this money to some crazy Russian guy who knows nothing about baseball! Impossible!"

I think, at least for Dodgers fans, the McCourts have entered the Tyson Zone. For those who don't know, the Tyson Zone (described here) was created by Bill Simmons as a way to describe an athlete (or in this case, team owner) whose behavior is so odd that any story you ready about them, no matter how bizarre, is believable.

For example, if you were to read tomorrow that the McCourts spent a million dollars two seasons ago to uproot the grass in the outfield and replant it with special Australian fertilizer that would bring good fortunes to the team, would you blink an eye? Oh, and by the way, to pay off the dirt, parking is being raised to $25 a car.

Or, say you read tomorrow that the McCourts were fighting for custody of Reed Johnson. Would you faint from surprise?

It's really unfortunate that it has come to this. The Dodgers are one of the most historic franchises in baseball, and right now the McCourts are making them a laughing stock. I mean, how many pre-season predictions did you read this Spring Training that had the Dodgers not finishing in first in the NL West because of distractions with ownership?

Luckily, at least so far, the Dodgers have been able to avoid front office issues. I mean, hey, they were in first place at one point this week before finishing the week a game behind the Padres.

But that's not to say the Dodgers haven't been affected. Just this week, the Dodgers most likely forfeited a first round pick on a player that was always going to be too expensive to sign. And this comes after they forfeited two other early picks when they didn't offer arbitration to Randy Wolf and Orlando Hudson this offseason.

... What do you believe an owner's role should be with a team? I see it as this: First, the Owner should pony up the money. The Owner should never be afraid to put money into their team. If they don't want to spend, then they shouldn't be an Owner. Two, the Owner shouldn't embarrass the team. That doesn't mean they necessarily need to be the face of the team (see Arte Moreno), but if you aren't going to put on a good front, then just disappear into your Owner's box. Be a silent owner. Show up to hold up the Championship Trophy and then go away. The last thing you should be doing is filling newspaper headlines with your divorce hearings or doing things like hiring Rasputin for a six figure sum to send brain waves and advise you on team decisions.

Mike Drowne: this facial hair is also acceptable...

Look, McCourts, if you guys are fans of the game like you've always purported to be, then you should understand that you are making a mockery of one of the storied franchises.

If you were really fans of baseball, you'd sell the Dodgers or step down as owners.

Because at this point, you are not just embarrassing yourselves, you are embarrassing all of us.

Dodgers Draft Zach Lee And Raise Questions

So, I was watching the first round of the MLB draft on MLB Network earlier today, and the Dodgers were on the clock.

Now despite the fact that I know almost absolutely nothing about the kids being drafted except the most basic of information (I've heard good things about #1 pick Bruce Howard ... he's going to be the next Steve Strasman) I still get pumped for the draft.

Horrible, insane looking Strasburg picture courtesy of Yahoo! Sports.

So even though I had to sit through Bud Selig pronounce Los Angeles as "Los Angeleees" several times, I patiently awaited the announcement of the Dodger pick.

The time came, and Bud Selig stepped to the podium in all his wrinkly glory and proclaimed the Dodgers had selected Zach Lee with the 28th pick.

And almost immediately there was some negativity. The Twitter-sphere was confused. The MLB Network guys already started talking about signability issues. And then, oddly enough, in the space where the MLB Network guys had been showing scouting footage of other players all day, they began showing clips of Zach Lee playing high school football.

And that was it. They showed some grainy footage of Lee completing a pass in some football game then went immediately to an interview with an unrelated old guy.

It was all very ... different.

I mean, seriously. Google Image search "Zachary Lee baseball" and you get mostly football pictures.

Response continued to pour in, most of it confused or unfavorable.

Jim Callis chimed in with: "WOW. LAD was about the last team I would have expected to take Zack Lee. Can they really sign him?"

Joe Sheehan felt that the Dodgers were "blatantly pushing [their] pick into 2011."

The more I read about, the more it started to seem like the biggest question was not whether Lee would be signed or not, but rather: is the best analogy for what the Dodgers did in the first round a punt or a fold?

I mean, this kid seems all ready to go play two sports as LSU next year. Some reports say he was asking for at least $5 million before considering not fulfilling his commitment to LSU (although others have said it's all a ploy to get more money at the bargaining table).

Basically, a big part of the picture being painted here is something like this: Lee is going to need a lot of money to sign. A lot. (Lest you forget that Matt Kemp is only making $4 million this year.) The rest of the picture is two words: Frank McCourt. As a whole, the picture looks pretty bleak.

But I started giving it some thought.

First I read the article on Dodgers.com. Logan White was optimistic, saying:

"People can think what they want, he was the best talent available and I want to sign him, absolutely ... I didn't take Zach to not sign him. You'll see as the summer goes along we'll make every effort to sign him, and I want to sign him. I know it won't be easy, but hopefully we'll get it done."

Now sure, this is probably just a PR job, and White said almost the exact same thing after the Dodgers picked a similarly unsignable Luke Hochevar in 2005:

"We took him with the intention of signing him. I talked to Scott a couple days ago. I feel he's signable. He wants to play. As long as the family thinks we're fair, I think the kid will sign."

I and my 5.35 career ERA demand 40 million dollars!

Still, despite all the evidence mounting against actually getting this signing done, I kept thinking about it and finally I came to this peace:

What's the worst that could happen?

Well, I mean other than spending millions of dollars on Lee to have him be a total bust.

There's really two scenarios to what happens here:

1. McCourt shells out the money, the Dodgers sign a good young pitcher.

2. The Dodgers don't sign him, he goes to college, and the Dodgers get another high pick in next years draft, which is expected to have a higher quality of amateur talent than this year's draft.

The key to all this is the fact that Lee is a quality prospect and as such, I think I can appreciate this technique. White didn't draft a more mediocre prospect who might sign for less. White went for broke.

I guess, ultimately, there's two ways to look at this: either the Dodgers punted/folded a first round pick in an act of cheapness/insanity or ... or the Dodgers made a shrewd pick at number 28 that's a possible win-win.

Of course, I might just be trying to talk some sense into a first day of the draft that didn't seem to have much.