THE DODGERS ARE DEAD: Are you kiddin' me? The Blue mail it in against the Nationals.

Yesterday on Mason & Ireland, I argued that the Dodgers are dead, through, finished, over, done. Now I'm more sure than ever after LA completed its 4-game flop at Washington with an 11-2 loss. C'mon. Is that all you've got Dodgers? This team is an embarrassment.

Los Angeles is on a staggering 7-game losing streak and they have lost 9 in a row on the road. Yesterday, Clayton Kershaw got roughed up as the Nationals hung a very crooked 5 in the first inning, and Christian Guzman hit for the cycle and Elijah Dukes hit a pair of bombs.

Now it's 3 games at Arizona this weekend, and they start the series with Hiroki Kuroda on the mound. The Japanese hurler is in a very good groove with allowing just 1 earned run in 4 of his past 5 starts. He matches up against cancer survivor Doug Davis, who has 3 straight quality starts. Saturday, it'll be Chad Billingsley versus Dan Haren and Sunday Derek Lowe throws against Brandon Webb. Trailing the D-Backs by 3 1/2 games, this series is do or die, but there's no reason to expect LA to do anything but die.

I like Ned Colletti. Good baseball man. He's been very forthcoming about his plans and decisions. Ned has been very transparent, which was necessary after Paul DePodesta who treated everything like a "black bag operation." He has kept all of LA's young players, which should will be the foundation of this team going forward. The problem is that he has picked the wrong veterans to go with them.

Signing Juan Pierre, Jason Schmidt and Andruw Jones and re-signing Nomar Garciaparra  were all colossal errors. As LA swoons down the stretch, Jones ($18M) is at AAA, Schmidt ($12M), Raff Furcal ($13M), Brad Penny ($8.5M) and closer Takashi Saito ($2M) are all on the DL. That's about $55M in payroll on the sidelines.

There's some bad luck here. If Furcal, the spark plug at the top of the line up, and Saito weren't hurt, this would be a very different team. In fact, they might be in first place with just one of those guys healthy.

Ireland complained that the Dodgers can't fire another General Manager. DePodesta, for all his eccentricities , he never got a fair shot, but Coletti has 3 years in the books. That's enough time to see that it's not working. The only move for the Frank & Jamie McCourt here is to go a different direction.

There are some big decisions coming up. LA can buy out Jeff Kent for $500,000, and he is a malcontent whose got to go. They also get rid of Nomar's $8.5M. They've got decisions to make about both Derek Lowe and Furcal, who both become free agents.

The only big contracts locked up for next year are Andruw Jones at $18M, Jason Schmidt at $12M, Hiroki Kuroda at $10M, Brad Penny at $9.75M, Juan Pierre at $10M and Angel Berroa at $5.5M. Guys like Matt Kemp, James Loney, Chad Billingsley, Jonathan Broxton and Clayton Kershaw are all cheap.

One of the biggest reasons to blow out Coletti is that Russell Martin, the cornerstone of the franchise, doesn't have confidence in the Dodgers ownership and front office. LA would love to buy out his arbitration years, but he, so far, is not interested in signing long term.

Priority #1 for the new GM should be signing Russell Martin, who should be an All-Star for the next decade. Priority #2 should be re-signing Manny Ramirez, and the McCourts will need to bite the bullet and sign him for say 3 years - $65M. Then, the job will be to carefully select the right veterans to fill in the roster. In a weak division, there's no reason why this cannot be a playoff team next season, but this year, it's not going to happen.

Comments

[Vail Beach]

You're right and you're wrong.

You're wrong that the Dodgers are "dead." Just speaking objectively, 3 1/2 games with three games with the team in front of you, in August still -- definitionally, that's not dead. This is a streaky team. As discouraging as the season has been so far overall, they have gotten red hot a couple of times.

But you're right -- Colletti's made too many mistakes. I realize we've got a bad track record with revolving door GMs, but I don't think Colletti is the guy to decide to be all stable for.