Dodger Thoughts

Gary A. Vasquez/US PresswireAndre Ethier might not have hit for power in 2011, but he’ll earn for power in 2012.

So, you were maybe expecting some payroll relief for 2012?

So long Casey Blake, so long Rafael Furcal, so long Jon Garland and Vicente Padilla and maybe Hiroki Kuroda and James Loney, hello dollars to spend?

Well, hate to break it to you, but …

Because several Dodgers from Clayton Kershaw and Matt Kemp to (gulp) Juan Uribe are getting huge raises next year, the Dodgers already have approximately $100 million committed to next year’s roster. And if they don’t surrender exclusive rights to Loney, you can bump that total even higher.

This is a $100 million team even without Prince Fielder, Albert Pujols or Henry Aaron. This is a $100 million team even with Dana Eveland and Nathan Eovladi in the starting rotation, even with A.J. Ellis, Dee Gordon, Justin Sellers and Jerry Sands in the starting lineup, even with a bench in which the highest-paid, most experienced reserve is Trent Oeltjen.

Blame Kershaw (if you dare blame the greatest lefty pitcher in a Dodger uniform in the past 30-to-45 years) for the biggest payroll hike. After making $500,000 this season, Kershaw is eligible for arbitration for the first time this winter. Tim Lincecum, at a similar point in his career, asked for a $13 million in arbitration while the Giants offered $8 million; the parties agreed to a two-year contract averaging $11.5 million. I originally estimated $11 million for Kershaw in 2012, but others online have suggested that he won’t get more than the $8 million that was actually Lincecum’s base salary in 2010. So I’m compromising with a $9 million estimate for Kershaw – and if that’s too high, it’s not going to be too high by much.

You can also blame MVP candidate Matt Kemp, who earned just shy of $7 million in the second year of his two-year deal. Having missed their chance to lock Kemp up for a lower figure longterm, the Dodgers probably will have to double his salary in 2012, give or take a few bucks, based on what’s happened to players of similar esteem. And Andre Ethier might end up making almost exactly as much, because he is coming off a salary of $9,250,000. Though his season was unfulfilling in some respects, a raise of at least 50% into the $13 million range is much more likely than not. (Last year, Loney got a 57 percent raise for a season considered a disappointment.)

And then, the backloaded contracts of Uribe and Ted Lilly move to the fore. Uribe, who earned $5 million while reaching base 78 times in 2011 with a .557 OPS, will get direct deposits totaling $8 million in 2012 as he aims for the Comeback Prayer of the Year Award. Lilly, with a 2.32 ERA since August 1, jumps from $7.5 million in 2011 to $12 million in 2012, including a deferred $1.5 million of his signing bonus.

Oh, by the way, middle reliever Matt Guerrier can also increase his 401(k) allocations, his salary bouncing from $1.5 million to $4.75 million, while Chad Billingsley’s three-year contract extension launches with a $9 million rate for 2012, up from $6.275 million this year.

For seven players – Kershaw, Kemp, Either, Uribe, Lilly, Guerrier, Billingsley – the Dodgers will pay $69,250,000. Maybe more.

Then there’s the deferred money going to players no longer on the Dodger roster. This causes great handwringing every year, and all I can say up front to the handwringers is, you need to get over it.

Yes, the $8 million-plus going to Manny Ramirez is painful, but at least Ramirez helped the Dodgers reach the National League Championship Series twice. Yes, the $3 million-plus going to Andruw Jones underscores the need for “root canal” to come in adjective form, but without restructuring Jones’ contract or an alternate reality in which the McCourts weren’t such avid homeowners, the Dodgers don’t get Ramirez in 2008.

These and other payments, such as the $1.25 million expected buyout of Blake’s 2012 option, add up to more than $21 million for 2012, according to the information compiled by Cot’s Baseball Contracts and True Blue L.A. It’s unfortunate, and exceedingly problematic for the coming year. But teams across the country have bad contracts. The Dodgers, while perhaps elite in this respect, are not unusual.

In any case, add in the non-Dodger payments to our original seven, and Los Angeles is now shelling out roughly $91 million with 18 spots on the active roster to fill.

The good news is that several of those spots can be filled cheaply with some promising players. For example, pitchers Eovaldi, Kenley Jansen, Javy Guerra, Scott Elbert, Josh Lindblom and Rubby De La Rosa (paid while he’s on the disabled list) should each make below $500,000. (The last thing the Dodgers should do is spend money on an overpriced veteran reliever.) Same with guys like Dee Gordon, Jerry Sands and A.J. Ellis.

But if, for example, the Dodgers plan an upgrade over Justin Sellers in the infield, or Eveland in the rotation, that’s going to cost.

That makes what happens with three players particularly intriguing: Loney, Hiroki Kuroda and Hong-Chih Kuo. Loney has made the case for his return with a strong final push, but do the Dodgers think he’ll be worth $6.5 million or so in 2012?

Kuroda has become like Vin Scully in making us wonder every year whether he’ll return. Kuroda, who earned $8 million plus performance bonuses in 2011 but is owed another $1.5 million next year no matter what happens, is a year older but coming off his best season as a Dodger. If he comes back, expect him to earn a similar salary. But will he come back?

As for Kuo, despite his difficult 2011 season, he would easily go up from $2.725 million in 2011 if the Dodgers didn’t release their exclusivity on him. But it seems more likely that Los Angeles would non-tender him and then try to sign him as a free agent at a lower rate, if he doesn’t retire and open a restaurant first.

And if they go without any of these guys, will it be to save money to fill the rotation, save money to get the big-fish infielder like Pujols, Fielder or Aramis Ramirez, or to save money, period?

Would they consider validating Ethier’s worst fears and moving him for salary relief? As much as Loney’s worth has been questioned, Ethier stands to make about twice as much as Loney in 2012 despite a 2011 OPS that is only .042 higher than Loney’s.

It’s difficult to say what the bottom line is, given that we don’t know what the Dodgers’ top payroll limit is. If Frank McCourt wins in Ownership Court anytime soon, anything’s possible. But if he loses, or if – as is most likely – the saga remains “to be continued,” the Dodgers are in for some hard decisions.

Sometime in the summer – I’m not going to try to figure out the exact date, because it doesn’t matter exactly when – my despair for the Dodgers reached a new and perilous level.

It wasn’t anything new about ownership – those misgivings were long-established and steady. It wasn’t a sudden realization that they wouldn’t make the playoffs – without giving up hope entirely, I had settled in with that belief since May.

It was the fear that the remaining 50-or-whatever-it-was games would be just punishing, that the bright spots would be too few and far between, that watching the Dodgers would become tiresome and writing about them an absolute chore.

There would always be something to write about, but that was part of the problem. I wouldn’t be able to hibernate, to pull a summertime Groundhog Day and declare six more weeks of winter in August. I’d have to pay attention to a team from which I might want to take a long vacation.

Instead, just about the opposite occurred.

While the specter of McCourt, a lost season and an uncertain future still hang over the team, the final weeks of the Dodger season have been nothing short of fun.

We have been treated to …

• the climactic finishes to brilliant seasons by Clayton Kershaw and Matt Kemp.
• the Dee Gordon Experience.
• the “Kenley Jansen Now You See the Ball, Now You Don’t” show.
• the classy and brassy pitching of Hiroki Kuroda.
• the resurgence of James Loney.
• the surgence of Jerry Sands.
• the relief of a semi-productive, beggars-can’t-be-choosers cleanup hitter in Juan Rivera.
• the ahead-of-schedule brightness of “U-less” Nathan Eovaldi.
• the productive determination of A.J. Ellis.
• the steady reliability of Javy Guerra.
• the quiet blossoming of Scott Elbert and Josh Lindblom.
• the brief moments in sunlight of Dana Eveland.
• the persistence of Hong-Chih Kuo.
• and last, and yes, least – but not insincerely – the mystery and intrigue of Eugenio Velez.

That’s a lot to be thankful for — with more that I’m leaving out — when I’m not sure I could reasonably have expected very much at all.

Most of all, we have been treated to winners in sheepish clothing. We have gotten the salve for some deep wounds.

There are some long-term problems that need to be solved, but those would have been there anyway. In the meantime, I’ve gotten more pleasure than pain from the final weeks of the 2011 Dodger season. And I am grateful.

With the Dodgers sitting at 48-59 (.449), they need to go …

• 52-3 (.945) to reach 100 wins.
• 42-13 (.764) to reach 90 wins.
• 33-22 (.600) to get to .500.
• 25-30 (.455) to avoid 90 losses.
• 24-31 (.436) to avoid 91 losses and their worst season since 2005.
• 16-39 (.291) to avoid 99 losses and their worst season since 1992 and ever in Los Angeles.
• 15-40 (.273) to avoid 100 losses.
• 11-44 (.200) to avoid 104 losses, the most in franchise history.
• 4-51 (.078) to avoid the worst winning percentage in franchise history.

Stephen Dunn/Getty ImagesA beautiful stadium, even in darkening skies.

Can you stop the sun from setting?

Following their two remaining home games with the Mets, the Dodgers bridge the All-Star break with nine games against three division rivals: Friday-Sunday against fourth-place San Diego, July 15-17 at second-place Arizona and July 18-20 at first-place San Francisco. If the Dodgers continue to play losing baseball over that stretch, they should drop far enough back in the National League West race to convince even Dodger general manager Ned Colletti to concede 2011.

If they tread water or make any gains while coming out of the All-Star break against the division’s two leading teams on the road – and believe me, I’m not predicting they will, just offering up the possibility – the Dodgers will follow a July 22-24 series against Washington with three games against Colorado (July 25-27) and three more against Arizona (July 29-31) in the final week, all at home, before the July 31 non-waiver trade deadline.

Not much has gone right for the Dodgers in 2011, and so there’s limited reason to think that will change. However, 15 games inside the division between now and the end of the month provide this last-place team with one more chance to hold off next year – or extend it an early invitation.

I stared at the Major League Baseball standings this morning, and stared, and stared.

Gene J. Puskar/APJerry Sands and Aaron Miles during Monday’s Dodger loss.

The Dodgers produced a feel-good win Tuesday night. The hitters hit, the pitchers pitched and a good time was had by all.

If only it didn’t feel so unusual.

The victory showed what the Dodgers are capable of on a given night, but it didn’t really change how capable they look this season.

Los Angeles entered the season riding a thin line. The pitching was going to be good if not great, but the hitting was the opposite, and the depth, outside of Vicente Padilla, almost non-existent.

And so while it seems crazy on the one hand to get down a team that is only three games below .500 and 3 1/2 games out of first place in the National League West, the weaknesses remain almost overwhelming.

How do you win without a decent on-base percentage, power or relief?

The hitting was always going to be borderline at best, and this is not best. Outside of Andre Ethier and Matt Kemp, the rest of the crew hits like Olive Oyl. James Loney has no power. Dodger left fielders are slugging below .300 this season with not a single home run. (Marcus Thames hit two as a pinch-hitter.)  Jamey Carroll and Aaron Miles are on hot streaks, but that’s not a dependable offense.

It’s reasonable to hope Loney will get an extra-base hit again sometime in his career, but the actual growth the Dodgers were counting on just doesn’t seem to be coming.

Rafael Furcal’s going to save this team when he comes off the disabled list? Furcal can be wonderful — an All-Star last year — but I don’t think Furcal physically can be that big a difference-maker over the long haul any more. Nor is Casey Blake capable of hitting like he did at the outset of the season for any sustained period of time.

Meanwhile, if the bullpen can’t protect the starting pitchers, day after day, there’s not much hope one can offer. The pitching needs to be as reliable as the offense is unreliable. It needs to be stone-cold bulletproof. And for some reason, Hong-Chih Kuo and Jonathan Broxton have had the roof cave in on them in the same year.

But I don’t know how you make changes to that bullpen without making things elsewhere on the roster worse. Call up Rubby De La Rosa, switch him to relief and expect him to be perfect? I bet he’d be good, but I don’t think he can be that good. And he’s still only one guy.

Short of a reversal of fortune in that pen — Kuo and Broxton get healthy and effective again — I don’t think anything turns the Dodgers into a serious playoff contender at this point unless they trade prospects for a big bat. And while there are some trades I’d be willing to make, I’m not sure that the ones that aren’t flat-out depressing are realistic.

I’ve seen teams have bad seasons — I’ve seen the 2005 Dodgers, who went 71-91 — and you’re going to have to convince me this team isn’t worse. You want to bring up guys like Mike Edwards? Edwards’ 2005 OPS is higher than that of Loney, Miles, Juan Uribe and Jerry Sands/Tony Gwynn Jr.

The 2005 Dodgers were 19-12 on May 9 and had a 38-43 record until their best hitter, who happened to be their right fielder, was hit by a pitch and lost for the season. Imagine how the 2011 Dodgers would look if they lost Ethier for that long.

This year’s team is looking more like the 1992 Dodgers, who lost 99 games despite a 3.41 team ERA that was sixth in the National League, because the lineup had become so decrepit.

If it were only a matter of health, or only a matter of the bullpen, or only a matter of the offense, I’d hardly sweat the current 3 1/2-game deficit in the NL West (five games in the wild card). The Dodgers will win their share of games, enjoy their occasional night where things go right instead of going wrong. But short of a major trade (or bad mojo for their rivals), I’m just not seeing how they put together a sustained run that surpasses both Colorado and San Francisco unless the bullpen reverses itself, with its two best relievers returning to form by the second half of the season, or the offense performs above its grade. For that, all one can do is hope.

I don’t write these words lightly. It’s been nearly 20 years since I felt this pessimistic about a Dodger team in May. With each first pitch, I hope I’m proven wrong.

Dodgers at Pirates, 4:05 p.m.

Andy and Brian Kamenetzky, ESPNLosAngeles.com’s audio-visual-bloggal gurus, hosted a podcast with me talking all things Dodgers. Check it out.