MLB '10

[Ghoulish Delight]

The deals are done, spring has sprung, and it's time for Dodger baseball.

Man, I had a heart attack when I heard that Vin Scully was in the hospital this weekend. And yeah, I teared up a little yesterday when he signed on to the broadcast and addressed the news of his fall with exactly the kind of humble, classy statement that makes him the best of the best. I've already resigned myself to the fact that he's going to be long retired by the time T's old enough to care about baseball, but I'm not ready for him to be gone just yet.

As for the season, I'm starting out with low expectations for the Dodgers. They definitely have potential to prove me wrong, but they've got 2 huge question marks that I can see. The elephant in the room is pitching of course. I almost wish they'd just stop endlessly auditioning people for the starting slots and instead locked it down and said, "Look, these are our 5. They aren't perfect, but we're going to invest the confidence and training time to improve them." It just feels like they're wasting a lot of time and energy hoping that one of them will get lucky and suddenly become an ace rather than working with a smaller # to improve them.

The less obvious problem is at catcher. It's not getting much attention, but Martin's injury kinda exposes their lack of depth. Not that Asmus isn't a good 2nd option. But there's no 3rd option. I know he doesn't want to admit it, no catcher ever does, but Martin needs more rest than he gets. Asmus shouldn't have to handle that much extra work and, assuming Martin is staying on-form, is an offensive downgrade when he's in there. They need a 3rd option, a fresh young catcher who can come in against an opponent where they can afford a defensive downgrade (Martin and Asmus are both top-notch defensively), but benefit from an offensive spark. And they just don't have it. And that's not even addressing the bind they'll be in if (and when) Martin or Asmus goes down with injury in the middle of the season.

Maybe they'll get lucky and the pitching will click. Manny's going to be fighting for free agent value, Kemp and Ethier are going to be looking to prove that last season wasn't a fluke. Loney needs to step up. If that all comes together, they've got the pieces to be great. But it's a lot of ifs.

Maybe with Manny off the books next season they'll be able to afford a pitching upgrade. Hopefully they'll also be able to retain the rest of the pieces also.