Mike Scioscia's tragic illness

All I Want For Christmas…

…is a little honesty from the front office and ownership. And for once, I don’t mean Ned Colletti, since we all assume that his hands are completely tied by his overlords.

Come on, guys. We’re not stupid. We know that you’re cash-poor. So don’t tell us, as Dennis Mannion did to Bill Shaikin in today’s LA Times, that “baseball and business decisions have not been impacted by the proceedings”. Really? Then how is there enough content for an entire site to be populated entirely by the bullshit that’s coming out of this? Don’t tell me that you’re not in on the market because you’re so fantastically confident in Colletti’s ability to scout the bottom of the market. Don’t tell me that when you’re completely sitting out while Cliff Lee, Roy Hallday, and John Lackey land elsewhere. Not when you have to defer salary on the puny $3.85m contract Jamey Carroll just signed. Especially, don’t tell me that the decisions to not offer arbitration to Randy Wolf and Orlando Hudson were “baseball choices” when we all know that you’re paying more than half a million dollars a month in legal fees. And for chrissakes, never talk about how much you want concession stands. Remember the shitstorm Jamie brewed up last year when she mentioned building fields for kids being more important than getting winning players? We like kids, and we still killed her on it.

Even before the divorce was official, you were already making ridiculous baseball decisions just to save a few bucks. Do we really have to go through the whole “trading Carlos Santana to save $2m in the Casey Blake deal” again? Giving up Josh Bell for George Sherrill just so Baltimore would eat salary (okay fine, not this one, I guess I got overzealous)? Or the same thing with Arizona on Tony Abreu for Jon Garland?

By all accounts, this is only going to get worse, as Jon astutely notes at Dodger Thoughts:

People are caught up in “all we got for 2010 is Jamey Carroll” talk. Folks, 2010 is not the problem.  The Dodgers will add a fourth starter that is the same mediocre fourth starter most teams have, play around in the No. 5 spot like most teams do, return nearly all of the top offense in the NL, and compete.  I’m telling you, 2010 is just a speed bump compared to what’s going to happen in future years if the Dodgers try to skate buy without investing in the farm system.

Look, everybody already hates you. Your poor management and personal disputes are driving this team into the ground, and some, like Rob at 6-4-2, even had the foresight to doubt your viability since as soon as you arrived.

So we get it. You’re screwed, and we’re the ones suffering for it. This isn’t news. If you were to be honest and admit that the divorce is having a huge impact here, it wouldn’t change what happens on the field. It wouldn’t change that every Dodger fan desperately wants you out. But it might, just might, buy you a tiny bit of respect back for at least being honest instead of blowing smoke up our asses.