Interesting words from BP

Joe Sheehan of Baseball Prospectus took a look at the Blue earlier this week as part of his peek into lessons learned from ST, and had some interesting observations on how the Blue might dole out playing time between the vets and kids.  Obviously things will play out over the course of the season, but at least according to Sheehan, early indications will be pleasing to many fans:

"The Dodgers might be all right. Without fanfare, without declarations, and with a minimum of drama, Joe Torre seems to be coming around to what outsiders have been saying all winter: Juan Pierre is his fourth outfielder. As March has progressed, as the three players make it very clear in which order they should receive playing time, Torre has said as little as possible about the situation, but increasingly doled out starts to Andre Ethier and Matt Kemp at Pierre’s expense.

The biggest fear in the Dodgers’ hiring of Torre is that the preference for experience he showed in the latter half of his Yankees tenure would carry over, and lead him to play Pierre over better players. It doesn’t appear that is going to happen, and while the situation will have to be managed, better to manage a personnel situation and play the right guys than solve the happiness issue by making the baseball team worse.

The parallels between Juan Pierre and Luis Gonzalez are interesting. Gonzalez had a longstanding reputation as one of the good guys in the game, and I’ve no doubt that, outside of a baseball uniform, he earns that. In Arizona in 2006 and in Los Angeles in 2007, however, Gonzalez was a divisive presence the moment his playing time was reduced. Pierre, also by acclamation one of the game’s better people, now finds himself in the same spot, and by all accounts, is grousing a bit about it.

To me, it goes to the whole notion of how players get labels, and how worthless those labels are in practice. Regardless, Torre has to put the best team on the field, and he appears prepared to do that. This decision bodes well for a future one on Andy LaRoche, who is a much better player than the current version of Nomar Garciaparra, and should similarly get the playing time ahead of the veteran once his thumb heals."

BK