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Updated: March 1, 7:53 PM ET Dodgers hope price is right By Jayson Stark ESPN.com | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Note to readers: We interrupt our round-the-clock coverage of Gary Sheffield to bring you an actual baseball column from Dodgertown. Our regularly scheduled Gary Sheffield coverage will resume shortly.
VERO BEACH -- What can you buy with $50 million these days? Let's see.
You could buy 25,000 43-inch HDTV projection TVs. You could buy 926 Lexus LS430s. You could buy 166,666 Sony Play Station 2s. Or you could buy yourself one big-league starting rotation. Assuming it was the Los Angeles Dodgers' starting rotation. Eleven teams didn't spend $50 million last season on their entire rosters. The Dodgers this year conceivably could spend $50 million just on their rotation, depending on how their accountant figures these matters. There's Kevin Brown. His still-unfathomable salary for each of the next six years: $15 million. There's Chan Ho Park. His salary for this season: $9.9 million. There's Andy Ashby. Average annual value of his new three-year contract: $7.5 million a year. There's Darren Dreifort. Average annual value of his mind-boggling new five-year contract: $11 million a year. And, if all goes perfectly, there's Ramon Martinez in the No. 5 slot. If he stays in the rotation all year, he stands to make $5 million. Total price tag for that group: $48.4 million. But add in Cy Young incentives that could easily be paid out to Brown and/or Park, Brown's eight season tickets in Dodger Stadium's "premium" seating section (a $25,000 perk) and, of course, the Brown family's eight rides a year on Rupert Murdoch Airways, and we're right there at 50 million bucks.
Maybe no one noticed, since he won only 14 games, but it wasn't Randy Johnson who led the league in ERA or lowest batting average allowed last year. It was good old Kevin Brown. There's no telling how many games he would have won if he hadn't had 11 starts in which he left with either one or no runs scored by his own team. "Offensively, we've got to work better in conjunction with a guy like that," said manager Jim Tracy. "When you've got someone that good out there, you should know you're not going to need a lot of runs. So if a situation comes along where, say, we've got a runner on third with less than two outs early in the game, we've got to take advantage of those situations. Then we can let that guy go to work. To me, that's something we've got to be more cognizant of." For $50 million, you ought to have at least one legitimate ace. And Brown fits that definition in anybody's dictionary. Beyond his ridiculous, unhittable stuff, he has maybe the scariest "look" in his eye of any pitcher alive. "Oh yeah. He's got that look, all right," Tracy said. "I've often said that when it's his turn to go, if you think you want to say hello to him ... save it for the following day -- then do it twice." Park People have been waiting a long, long time for Park to start ascending toward acehood himself. Finally last year, at 27, he did that. Right-handed hitters hit just .200 off him, lowest of any starter in the NL. And with men in scoring position, the batting average against him was an absurd .159. The only starter in baseball to do better was that Pedro guy (.133). Park went 18-10 -- including a 7-2, 1.79 finish over the last two months. Now enornmous things are expected of him, especially since he's pitching for a Dreifort-esque contract. But everyone has known for years that all Park needed to be that kind of pitcher was to trust his stuff. And thanks to his personal catcher, Chad Kreuter, he's begun to do that. "Slowly but surely," Tracy said, "you started to see that evolve. And it evolved in great part once he put his trust completely in Chad, that he was taking him in the right direction." Nevertheless, for Park to take that next jump up to the ranks of the dominators, the final hurdle he needs to clear is control. "He issued the second-most walks (124) in the league a year ago," Tracy said, "and he still won 18 games. For him to get better, he's got to get himself into fewer taxing situations, where every pitch he makes could beat him." Dreifort Speaking of potential ... here's a man who got a $55 million contract based on not much more than potential alone. Darren Dreifort is 39-45 lifetime. He has never pitched 200 innings in a season. He'd never even had back-to-back winning months as a starter until last year. And even in the best season of his career, Dreifort spewed out 17 wild pitches, 12 hit batters and 31 gopherballs. But he definitely picked a heck of a year to spring a big second-half (8-2, 3.14, after a 4-7, 5.14 first half). "Darren Dreifort, to me, is a guy whose improvement wasn't just for half a year," Tracy said. "It started at the midway point in '99. That's when Darren became a student of what's going on between the pitcher's mound and home plate." Tracy has nothing but praise for Dreifort's preparation and work ethic. But he knows there was almost no praise in the baseball community for the contract the Dodgers gave Dreifort this winter. "I just wonder," Tracy said, "what the perception would be, from those same people who say this was not a good signing, if this guy continued to head in the direction he's been heading. And then he won for somebody else, and we'd let him get away from us. What would the perception of us be then? That's what I wonder." Ashby He's the first to admit he was a huge disappointment in Philadelphia last year (4-7, 5.68). And even in Atlanta, Ashby was so erratic he pitched himself out of the Braves' postseason rotation. But after the season, he said, he spent time in Georgia hanging out with Brown, his teammate from the '98 Padres. And they talked about the possibility of reuniting in L.A. Sure enough, $22.5 million later, they did. "I'm back with Brownie," Ashby said, "and I'm excited about it." He should be. Ashby was the opening-day starter in Philadelphia last year. In Dodgerland, he can settle into the comfort zone behind Brown and Park and just be a No. 3 or 4 starter. "He went 12-13 a year ago, and in his mind, he didn't pitch the way he was capable of," Tracy said. "But we tried five or six pitchers to win 11 games from the 4 and 5 spot last year. So if Andy just goes back to being the same pitcher he was in 1998, he should be a heck of a No. 4 starter." The Dodgers have spent the spring trying to get Ashby back on top of his fastball and splitter, to restore the sharp, late movement that allowed him to go 31-20 in 1998-99. So far, so good. Martinez Once, he was The Man on the Dodgers staff. Now Martinez has to pitch his way back into the rotation. But while no one has said so, it's his job to lose. On the one hand, he won 10 games for the Red Sox last year -- including two rise-to-the-occasion wins over the Yankees (who scored only three runs against him in 14 1/3 innings). But overall, Martinez had a gruesome 6.13 ERA. He pitched beyond the sixth inning just four times in 27 starts. He averaged only 4 2/3 innings, and 86 pitches per start -- fewest in the American League. And in seven of his 27 starts, he failed to get 10 outs. Still, though, he's another year removed from shoulder surgery. And he has a remarkable presence. So when asked if he found Martinez an intriguing guy, Tracy replied: "Who wouldn't?" The big picture But they pitch in Dodger Stadium. That will help. And they're all ground-ball pitchers -- especially Brown, Dreifort and Ashby. And in this trot-aholic age, that's a tremendous idea. "Darren, Brownie and I are all sinkerball pitchers," Ashby said. "And that means that every series, when those other guys pitch, it can only help us learn how to approach the hitters when we face them, because our styles are so similar." And whatever their styles, the bottom line is that very few teams will roll five starters out there with this combination of talent and track record. "With that kind of rotation," Orosco said, "we have a chance to let our manager and pitching coach get some sleep once in a while." But Tracy is sharp enough to know that the Dodgers have had good enough pitching to win for years. It's those other details, those other parts of the game, that keep getting in their way. "To have a staff like this is a very, very nice commodity to have, because that's a big part of the game," Tracy said. "But I've said many times that our staff will only be as good as the people who surround it. ... How our players do when that leather's in their hands will be a very important part of our situation. "You look at the Atlanta Braves. They've had a fantastic staff for years. But one big reason is they catch the ball. Look at the Mets. Two years ago, their infield defense was as good as you could possibly imagine. And that's a big, big thing, because most nights, the ball is going to get put in play. Those 13-14-15-strikeout games happen very, very rarely." But aside from letting Kevin Elster walk, the Dodgers made no moves whatsoever to upgrade their infield defense, following a season in which only one team in either league -- San Diego -- made more errors than their 135. That could be a more significant product of their offseason than all the money they spent on arms. "To me," Tracy said, "we need our infield defense to complement our pitching staff, so we don't have to feel like we have to go out and score seven, eight, nine runs to win. That's extremely difficult to do." But what can be just as difficult to do is to meet expectations. And when you're running a $50 million rotation out there, when you're counting on young guys like Park and Dreifort to pitch to the level of their paychecks, those expectations will follow this group around from April to October. "We talk all the time about how guys handle failure," Wallace said. "But how do you handle success?" Good question. And for $50 million, for this group, there had better be plenty of success to handle. Jayson Stark is a Senior Writer at ESPN.com. |
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