The New Dodgers

While we all look forward to this upcoming season after an NL West title and a postseason victory, this year’s Dodger team is going to look a little different than we’ve come to expect over the past few seasons.

First of all, we’ve lost 2 of our starters in Derek Lowe and Brad Penny, as well as mid-season acquisition Greg Maddux who finally hung up his cleats.  Our bullpen also took a hit losing the likes of Chan Ho Park, Takashi Saito, Scott Proctor.  We also released CF Andruw Jones and long time 2B Jeff Kent retired.  So, there are a lot of people we’re used to seeing in Dodger Blue who won’t be here anymore.

We also do have several who we may or may not be losing, as they’re still free agents.  The biggest one would be Manny Ramirez, who we’ve made several unsuccessful offers to, but I really think will be wearing Dodger Blue by the beginning of the season.  Some others who I’m not so sure about are Nomar Garciaparra, Joe Beimel, and Mark Sweeney.  All three of them kinda suffer from the “odd-man out” though I know a lot of fans who wouldn’t mind seeing Nomar back, and Beimel could help out our bullpen, but not really sure if Ned plans to even negotiate with them.

With all those departures, we have some new people coming in, mostly pitchers.  Recent signings of ex-Dodger Jeff Weaver along with Shawn Estes, Randy Wolf, Eric Milton and Claudio Vargas will be competing for roster spots.  Wolf will likely be our 4th starter and Estes will likely try to compete for the 5th spot or maybe a bullpen spot along with Vargas.  Weaver was signed to a minor league deal along with Milton, but I’d expect both to be in LA at some point in the season.  In addition to career starters, we’ve also signed ex-Dodger reliever Guillermo Mota to sure up the pen.  So we have a lot of pitching to compete for the open slots and I’m excited to see how they all perform.  As for our offense, it will be the same lineup we’ve been used to (assuming Manny re-signs) but we have added a few reserves to help out in backup catcher Brad Ausmus and utility infielders Mark Loretta and Juan Castro. 

So, there have been a lot of moves that the Dodgers have made, and it’s going to be an interesting season, hopefully ending with another NL West crown. 

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