17 June 2007

Outfield Disaster, Again

I'm about as angry as I've ever been, and it has nothing to do with the score. I'm not sure who to blame, and frankly that's not the point. But for the love of God Dodger management, do two things. Put padding in the entire outfield wall before another young Dodger player gets hurt, and stop playing young players out of position because you don't have the courage to bench an over-rated under-producing vet.

There were so many ways to avoid this injury to James Loney. Maybe the best thing for Loney would be for the Dodgers to just trade him to save him from their own incompetence.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I couldn't agree more. I have been watching Loney for a long time and I think he is so promising, yet the Dodgers treat him like crap. He is not a outfielder he is a gold glove in waiting at first.And with the decline of Nomar I think we could get the same production at the plate with this kid. I hear them compare his bat to a Mark Grace type hitter, so what is wrong with that. Nothing against Kemp but it seems everyone is in love with his "power" well until he learns to hit an off speed pitch I would rather have kids like Either and Loney in the line up than a Billy Ashley type. I hope I am wrong about Kemp but to me he hasn't earned the spot away from Either.

Joshua Worley said...

I agree and disagree about Kemp. Agree in the sense that it's not certain yet he will put up better numbers than Ethier over the long haul. But Kemp just has a much higher ceiling than Ethier, and he has actually played better than Ethier in limited playing time this year. Ethier had a great batting average last year but he just hasn't shown much this year. I don't want Ethier to be completely forgotten, though. I'd like to see Ethier play a bit of center and give Pierre a rest sometimes. One area where I will give Ethier a much hither rating than Kemp is in outfield defense, though both have very good arms.

I could deal with Loney playing in the outfield if that was the only place for him. But Nomar hasn't done much since the all-star break last year and Loney's time is now.