Dodgers Failures Go Right to the Top

From Bill Plaschke, at the Los Angeles Times, "There's enough blame to go around for this Dodgers debacle":

From ownership on down, the Dodgers failed their fans and themselves...changes, big changes, are surely coming...

— Bill Plaschke (@BillPlaschke) October 8, 2014

For the 26th consecutive Dodgers season, the World Series won't be coming to town, and something needs to be said, and those words need to intially be about Walter and the ownership group, for this massive failure begins with them.

Guggenheim [Baseball Management] shamelessly hid the Dodgers from their fans this summer with a money grab from Time Warner Cable that prevented the team from being on television in 70% of Los Angeles households. Yet, for all the riches of that $8.35-billion contract, they refused to allow the trading of prospects for one simple arm that could have saved the Dodgers in October.

An effective starting pitcher would have prevented Kershaw from throwing Tuesday on three days' rest in a game in which he wearily gave up Matt Adams' three-run home run on his 102nd pitch.

An effective middle reliever would have allowed Manager Don Mattingly to relieve Kershaw not only before Adam's home run, but also before Matt Carpenter's three-run double sank Kershaw in the seventh inning of the series opener.

The team with the richest payroll in baseball history turned out to be a beautifully detailed Cadillac without any tires, a $240-million clunker that couldn't even finish the first October lap.

The failure continues with the baseball people, and that means General Manager Ned Colletti, who sat on a couch in the clubhouse early Friday evening and winced.

"It's always hard when you don't win,'' he said. "It tears me up.''

Colletti will take most of the heat here for failure to work within his bosses' philosophical constraints to somehow put together a group of decent relief pitchers. He is the one who rested the bullpen's future in the veteran arms of former All-Star closers Brian Wilson, Brandon League and Chris Perez, yet only two of the three even made the postseason roster, and neither Wilson nor League were trustworthy enough to use.

"It wasn't our bullpen that cost us this series," Colletti said. "Could they have been better? Sure, but when you have left-handed Cardinal hitters doing what they do, that's unreal.''

More.