DePosed

Yup.

I'm officialy starting of the "Tommy Lasorda" for GM campaign. Heck, trade them Felipe ALou as well.

I don't know nor particularly care about Paul DePodesta as a baseball man; I certainly loathe the Dodgers.  What bothers me about DePodesta is that media hacks started to destroy him before he even started.  Then, in effect, he wasn't give a chance to do anything.  Two years?  He made some good moves and some bad moves...it's not like he dumped some guy named Konerko to keep some worthless guy named Karros.

Watch because we'll all be reading about how DePodesta didn't focus on "team chemistry" and signed "bad guys" and made 'all these" errors in his short tenure.  Oh woe is me!  Good riddance to that franchise and I hope that baseball people and players begin to (if they haven't already) say, "I'm not going there."

Anything that leads to disruption in the land of Mordor and has the potential to give Lasorda heartburn works for me.  

Dodgers have fired DePodesta, only 2 years into the 5-year DePodesta plan.   I was worried that the Dodgers would become a stat-oriented organization but with this move, as with most human moves, it could swing the pendulum towards the other way.  Which, based on recent drafts, does not seem like a bad idea, they have had a number of highly regarded drafts, though, so far, high only in potential and not in results thus far.

The speculation in the MLB article suggests that Lasorda might have led to the coup d'etat and that his influence could lead McCourt to hire Pat Gillick as GM and Bobby Valentine, Lasorda's longtime protege, as manager.   Gillick would not fit into the non-saber mode;  in an interview I read, he looks like he tries to be inclusive of both stats and scouting.  He has been successful everywhere he has gone, somehow improving Seattle even while letting go of A-Rod, Junior, and The Big Unit, and previously leading Toronto to World Series victories.  So he could prove to be a huge improvement for the Dodgers, both in current ability and influencing their future directions.

At minimum, this is good in that the Dodgers will be paying for 2 GM salaries over the next three seasons when the owner is in hock to his neck after buying the Dodgers;  MLB does not look too kindly on a lot of debt, so this could mean less budget for the Dodgers in their player payroll budget (money gotta come out of somewhere).   In addition, any GM coming in will have to question Tommy influence over McCourt and wonder if the Sword of Damocles hangs over him.   Most people do not work well having to watch their back and wonder if their every move is questioned, even someone hand-picked by the person, unless they are close personal friends - as far as I can tell Gillick and Lasorda are not that close.  Furthermore, if Gillick and Valentine are the picks, they will not be cheap either, perhaps soaking up $5M+ together that would otherwise be used for player payroll (again, assuming he is severely debt-ridden, he must handle all changes in payroll within his revenues).

Perhaps the best thing is that this is a sign that McCourt is a highly impatient novice owner with a little George Steinbrenner in him.  DePodesta had one bad year marred by a lot of injuries.  Of course, one could say that signing Drew is kind of inviting that, but I digress.  He had a beauty of a year in 2004, with the Dodgers winning their first division title in many years, a situation that used to be reverse with the Giants.   But it was helped by contract year drives, especially by Adrian Beltre.  He did the right thing by not re-signing him but the wrong thing by signing Drew.   But I thought he hasn't done anything egregriously wrong to warrant a firing.  Therefore, this was a move because of a difference in opinion over how the team is general managed.  And perhaps this is a sign that McCourt is one of those guys who think he knows it all.

However, this could work out well for the Dodgers.  Gillick is well respected and has worked miracles everywhere he has gone, even in Baltimore where he admitted that he didn't work very well with a micro-managing owner;  hopefully McCourt proves to be a hands-on owner, whether it's Gillick or someone else hired as GM.  Valentine did very well as manager for the Mets, with a .534 winning percentage (which works out to averaging an 87+ win season over his 6 full seasons with them).

Obviously you know which way I want it to go.

Silly move by the Dodgers that, based on very early returns (and those are the only returns we'll ever get now), should help every other team in the division including San Francisco.

The stereotype of "laptop DePodesta" was clearly overstated. He didn't fire scouts willy-nilly, nor did he trade away highly-touted toolsy Dodgers prospects.

Nearly all the moves he made were pretty reasoned and canny. I didn't really understand the Derek Lowe signing, but it worked out reasonably well. The LoDuca/Mota/Encarnacion trade for Choi/Penny seems pretty clearly a win for LA, despite the LA media's irrational hatred of Choi. Letting Steve Finley walk was clearly a smart move. Getting rid of Green's absurd salary was a nice bit of magic. JD Drew was obviously injury-prone, so his losing time to injury was not unexpected, but the nature of his injury was flukish and he missed far more time than even his history predicted (he's played an average of 114 games per season and only got into abour 74 for LA).

But nothing sums up the LA media's idiocy and hypocrisy more than the case of Adrian Beltre. After his career year in 2004, the LA media and fans fell head-over-heels in love with him, despite the unlikelyhood that this was Beltre's new level of ability. DePodesta clearly felt that Beltre was unlikely to justify a huge salary and let him walk. The media flayed him for it, claiming he let a homegrown "superstar" walk. What happened? Adrian Beltre failed to justify a huge salary. So DePodesta was right...right? Nope. Amazingly, the LA media [i]continues[/i] to hate DePodesta for letting Beltre go, insisting he would have remained great [i]had he remained a Dodger[/i]. Constantly shifting the debate to unproveables in order to avoid admitting being wrong pretty well says all one needs to know about how seriously to take the opinions of such writers.

And yet, McCourt treated them like wise, trusted advisors and let them berate him into firing a guy who had pretty much been right again and again.

The Giants dodged a bullet. The specter of a huge payroll team with a great farm system run efficiently and creatively conjured the possibility of a division dynasty. That possibility is, thankfully, gone now.

The other benefit of this is that perhaps useful players like Hee Seop Choi are now available for a song. Choi's entire reputation in LA is based on his post-trade performance in 2004. Before that, he had a great track record in the minors and majors. This year, he had something of a bounce-back season, posting an .800 OPS in an extreme pitcher's park (though he was maddeningly up and down). His numbers against lefties also improved.

Choi is a good young hitter, with plate patience and a lot of power. He also seems like a decent prospect for a break-out season. And the LA media hates him and considers him a symbol of all that is evil about DePodesta.

I'm thinking he'll be available for haul-away costs.

I have to admit, I was having a more difficult time rooting against the Dogs when Depo was running it. The fact that this should set them back a year or two, and should lead to an inferior man leading the team for the next five years, and could very easily lead to Juan Encarnacion back in blue, doesn't bug me at all.

I just read this article linked in the Baseball Musing blog:  http://www.sheriffsully.com/2005/11/01/a-few-bad-men/

It gives a great lowdown into the whole BoSox/Epstein mess, how each side was playing it.  I cannot believe that Boston would allow the GM who built their World Series winner to go over money;  BoSox fans must be beside themselves right now.  The author also speculated that perhaps Theo might get a 5 year/$10M contract with the Dodgers. (Yikes!?!?)

Could make sense, the owner is a Boston native, so he could be hoping the luck of the Boston's first W.S. championship in 3-4 generations would rub off on him via Theo.

I'm not sure exactly what to think of this, I don't know much other than he did GM the BoSox to the promise land.  So this would be a negative to me because I want the Dodgers down in the celler, where they belong, and Epstein could help improve them.  Whether that was fluke or plan or just $$$, though, I'm not really sure.

I would think that Lasorda would be against this and would advise against it because Epstein and DePodesta are cut from the same cloth.  But the Boston connection might do it for McCourt, loudmouth fat man whispering in his ear or no.  What do you all think of this possibility?