Dodgers Incompetence

While I've criticized the Mets here of late for what I feel is a flawed long term strategy, at least they have a clearly identifiable strategy and vision. That's more than can be said for the LA Dodgers, a truly inept organization by this point. The way they handled the release of their GM and Manager weeks apart reflected ownership that doesn't know what it wants. This is a trend. The signing last year of JD Drew to a big money, long term deal made no sense given his injury history, except for the fact the Dodgers were being skewered in the media for letting Adrian Beltre go. That felt like a move mandated by ownership, and signing Furcal this year has a similar feel of desperation and need to do something. Rafael Furcal might be worth a 4 year, $40M deal. I emphasize might, because he's never hit over .300, never hit more than 15 HR, and never driven in more than 65 RBI. But a 3 year deal for that amount of money (well, $39M), is crazy. This is a truly disastrous contract. That's a higher annual salary than Miguel Tejada signed for just two offseasons ago. The Dodgers have a real dearth of quality players signed to reasonable contracts. Adding Furcal doesn't solve any of their problems, and is a real head scratcher. It makes some of the signings I criticized earlier look much better.

In defense of the Dodgers, though, the inflated salaries this offseason have made me suspicious of most signings. It just doesn't feel like the teams are giving out wise contracts, as opposed to two years ago when it felt like more teams should have been active with a quality free agent class and not a tremendous amount of demand. I think teams in general should be more cognizant of how to build a winning team long term than on small differences in money year to year. That said, the Dodgers are getting less bang for their buck than the Jays (Ryan), Mets (Delgado, Wagner) and White Sox (Konerko, Thome).