A great take on the last near-decade of Blue

See, the Dodgers aren’t one team. They’re three teams, glued together by three men over a period of seven years. The first team, and the best one, is the Logan White Dodgers. White, the Dodgers’ assistant general manager in charge of scouting, is the man responsible for drafting and overseeing the development of stars Russell Martin and James Loney, as well as lower-profile, high-production players such as Chad Billingsley, Jonathon Broxton, and Matt Kemp. Former Dodger GM Dan Evans also deserves a share of credit for this group; it was Evans who hired White, and it was Evans who was in the GM’s chair for the team’s ridiculously productive 2002 and 2003 drafts.

Evans was unjustly fired in the winter of 2004 by new owner Frank McCourt and succeeded by Paul DePodesta. Largely due to the talent he inherited, DePodesta was the the GM for a playoff team in '04. However, already held in ill-regard by the local media—a group McCourt effectively regards as a consultant—DePodesta was an easy target after the Dodgers failed to make the postseason in '05, being fired that October. Despite his brief tenure and the manner in which he was treated, his impact on the Dodgers lingers; three players he acquired—Jeff Kent, Brad Penny, and Derek Lowe—have been among the team’s most valuable players in the three years since his firing.

DePodesta’s successor, Ned Colletti, is the third architect of the current roster. Colletti earned his stripes working under Brian Sabean in San Francisco, and unherited Sabean’s approach to team-building. That means favoring veterans and using the farm system as a tool to acquire experience. Given a much larger budget to work with in Los Angeles, Colletti set to spending it, signing Rafael Furcal, Nomar Garciaparra, and Kenny Lofton in his first offseason, and subsequently investing in Juan Pierre, Jason Schmidt, Randy Wolf, Luis Gonzalez, and Andruw Jones.

You can see where this is going.  Sheehan writes that the "Logan White Dodgers" comprise the most valuable parts of the roster with the least amount of dead weight.  Sheehan gives Colletti credit for Takashi Saito, Andre Ethier, Rafael Furcal, and Hiroki Kuroda, and admits he (like a lot of us) liked the Andruw Jones signing, it's clear he's not a fan of the GM's body of work:

I’ve said this before, but I don’t think I’ve ever written it: had the Dodgers sent Colletti on a six-month cruise starting November 1, 2006, they would have won the NL West in 2007.

This based on the lack of contributions from the vets he signed, along with the tension they caused, as I gather.  I tend to disagree on that point, since it wasn't the clubhouse tension but a lack of pitching down the stretch that hurt the Blue more than anything.  But that's not really the point.  It's interesting to look at how the team is constructed, and where the value is coming from.  Obviously the Logan White crop are a core group and critical to the team's success, and it's also fair to say that Colletti's big ticket signings haven't paid off.  I didn't like the Pierre deal when it happened, was wrong about Schmidt (should have seen it coming), and early evidence says the same about Jones, too.

One thing, though, is that it's a little unfair to knock Colletti and say, as Sheehan does, that he seems to be in over his head because some of his pickups have been less productive than the developmental players they've brought through the system.  Well, of course.  You're talking about the best players from entire draft classes.  They ought to be good, and the one's that aren't don't make the Majors.  Some of Colletti's work has been filling around the edges.   Beyond that, the context of Colletti's trades trades and FA signings, has generally centered around the preservation of the team's youth.  Colletti underestimated how long they'd take to be big league ready, but aside from Pierre, hasn't put long term contracts in their way.   He's generally sacrificed nothing but money, which is a far better thing than giving away players.   

No doubt Logan White deserves a place on the Mt. Rushmore of Dodger development people, and if the Blue stay competitive over the next half decade, it will be in large part due to his contributions.  And there's certainly no shortage of things to complain about in terms of Colletti's personnel decisions.  In this case- and really, you have to go read the article (I apologize in advance to those who can't/don't, and therefore don't really understand the full context of what I'm talking about)- I think Sheehan has set up a test that Colletti was almost destined to fail.

MORE FROM BP:

Will Carroll on Clayton Kershaw:

Is there any logic to the "Kershaw Decree" the Dodgers are employing with their young lefty? It's a marketer's version of the "Joba Rules", a limit of 25 innings per month limit designed to have him ready for September in the big leagues. Apart from that long-term goal, I guess this would also hold true if he was needed before then, but I'm not sure how exactly this is intended to work. Minor league starters average about five starts per month, meaning Kershaw would only get five innings per start; on the other hand, if he was skipped once, the workload goes up to six innings per. Of course, Kershaw threw 26 innings in April, so maybe the decree is new. Wait, no, he threw 6 2/3 in his last outing, leaving him only 18 1/3 to spread over an expected four starts, something that would nearly necessitate a tandem arrangement with somebody else on the staff. In that last outing, he threw an estimated 96 pitches, so even being low on the estimate—and I'm sure someone has the actual count—wouldn't make that a terribly taxing arrangement. If the goal is to keep his seasonal totals around the 150 mark, I can at least grasp that, though I'm sure that following some sort of logical program would be better than seemingly arbitrary edicts.

BK