Four Choose Three

The Dodgers have not started anyone other than Ethier, Pierre, Kemp or Jones in the outfield this year. Since three of those four are always in the starting lineup, a simple and revealing way to show the Dodger starting outfield game by game is to list the outfielder who has not started each game.

Here they are, the starting benchwarmers so far this year:

Pierre
Kemp
Pierre
Pierre
Kemp
Kemp
Kemp
Pierre
Jones
Kemp
Kemp
Kemp
Pierre
Pierre
Ethier
Pierre
Pierre
Kemp
Pierre
Jones
Pierre
Pierre
Kemp
Ethier
Pierre
Pierre
Pierre
Jones
Ethier
Ethier
Jones
Ethier


Here are the number of starts each player has missed of the 32 Dodger games so far:

Pierre -- 14
Kemp -- 9
Ethier -- 5
Jones -- 4

I will give Torre some credit here --- Pierre does have the most non-starts in the first 32. I don't expect that Kemp will add many more to his too-high total of 9 non-starts this year. But --- if we have learned anything about Torre the manager in the first month and change of this season it is that he loves to fiddle and adjust, like Nomar in the batter's box. No one should ever feel too safe in that outfield.

Instead of looking at the Dodger outfield situation as simply four players competing for 3 slots, we can both simplify and complicate things by attempting to isolate one-on-one battles. It's simpler because now we only have to look at a straight up comparison between two players --- and it's more complicated because it's hard to know which ( if any ) one-on-one competition is really important at any given time. Among the four outfielders there are six possible one-on-one competitions for playing time; I'll examine each one below.


Ethier v Pierre

This was the competition that dominated outfield talk during the latter weeks of Spring Training, and the one that most people thought would dominate the regular season as well. But it hasn't worked out that way. There has been no stretch of the season when Ethier and Pierre have alternated starts and non-starts. When Ethier beat out Pierre to open the season, it appears in retrospect that he leapt over Kemp as well in the depth chart. This probably had something to do with Kemp being right handed: one can have a quasi-platoon situation between Kemp and Pierre, but not between Pierre and Ethier who are both lefties.

Ethier demolishes Pierre in every category of performance except speed. Unfortunately speed is what Torre seems to have fixated on as a major cause of the Dodgers' offensive turn-around, so if the battle for outfield playing time really does come back to being Ethier v Pierre then Ethier is in trouble. It's incomprehensible and maddening because Ethier has been the most complete hitter of the four, with patience, power and a high batting average. Ethier handily beats Pierre in the field as well.


Jones v Kemp

This competition figures to exist in theory only. These are the two center fielders on the club now that Pierre is permanently exiled to left. I think Jones is still the better defender, though it does appear to me that Matt Kemp's ball tracking skills have improved a lot. Kemp is by far the better hitter. Just compare Kemp's opposite field home run and single last night with Jones' mania for trying to pull everything. Jones does have 15 walks to only 5 for Kemp, but when you're hitting 0.330 who cares about walks?


Ethier v Jones

This is the oddball competition of the group, and yet --- over the last five games this appears to be determining battle for who plays and who sits. That doesn't figure to last, but if Pierre is untouchable because of his speed and Kemp is untouchable because of his scorching hitting and all-around awesomeness then it will last, I guess.

Ethier is obviously doing a lot more than Jones right now, but Jones wins since Torre is convinced that he needs to play nearly every day so he can break out of his slump and hit 0.220 again like he did last year. And to be serious about it I'm not sure that I disagree with Torre about Jones needing to play most of the time to see if he can get on track. But not at the expense of Ethier! Why bench a productive outfielder to make a different crappy outfielder more productive?


Kemp v Pierre

It was a kick in the stomach to me when this became the controlling competition at the start of the year. In the first twelve games these two battled for playing time with Pierre winning more often than now --- in the darkest stretch Kemp was on the bench for 6 of 8 games.

Kemp does everything better than Pierre, with the possible exception of tracking down fly balls. But even there I think Kemp has at least drawn even with Pierre this year. There has just never been any good reason to favor Pierre over Kemp. And yet Torre did for awhile, whether based on the platoon advantage, or Pierre being a veteran, or Pierre being paid more, or because Kemp stole Torre's iPhone.

It does appear that this competition did turn. After the first dozen games Kemp has more or less played every day; and for a glorious 15 game stretch Pierre only started 5 times.


Jones v Pierre

This is the competition a lot of people want to see; it's the one I want to see. Let the good hitters Ethier and Kemp play every day while Jones and Pierre battle for the crumbs. Unfortunately there is no indication that this will happen. Torre's own words suggest this won't be the controlling competition.

Jones is better than Pierre defensively, and Jones is at his average a much better hitter as well, unless he's just fallen down a trench and what we're seeing is close to the new Andruw average. Pierre is hitting better right now. If these guys were hitting as they are now in July then I would probably say that Pierre should start most of the time. Right now I think Jones should get two thirds of the starts and Pierre one third of the starts, while Ethier and Kemp start every day. If Jones never breaks out of his extended slump then slowly increase Pierre's playing time.


Kemp v Ethier

This is the nightmare competition. If the shape of the Dodger starting outfield becomes about who will sit between Kemp and Ethier, then all hope is lost. I'll move to somewhere far away from Dodger Stadium and become a monk. It would be contract over performance, veteranship over skill, insanity over reason. This is what we all feared in spring training, and mercifully, miraculously it has not happened yet this season.

There is no indication yet that this will become the controlling competition. And yet, if Torre decides that Pierre must play every day because of how he disrupts the opposing pitcher, and that Jones must play every day to get him going, then won't this become the competition by default?

Who should win between these two, if it comes down to them? I refuse to contemplate the answer while this horrible question is still hypothetical. And if the question moves from hypothetical to real, I will have taken a vow of silence so my answer will be known only to me.