The Los Angeles Dodgers announced Friday Don Mattingly will in fact succeed Joe Torre as the Dodgers' manager, starting in 2011.
I'm suspect of this move for one main reason -- Mattingly has been an assistant under Joe Torre for quite some time. My fear is Mattingly picked up some of Torre's terrible habits, namely the mismanagement of the bullpen and pitching staff overall. That is Torre's biggest flaw as a manager and it'd be easy for Mattingly to follow suit.
I'm willing to give him a chance as Dodger manager, but Tim Wallach, the Dodgers' Triple-A affiliate manager, would have been my No. 1 choice.
It seems the Dodgers are lacking fire from the top. I mean, the last "fiery" manager the Dodgers had was Tommy LaSorda. Glen Hoffman? No. Bill Russell? No. Davey Johnson? No. Jim Tracy? No. Grady Little? Certainly not.
I'm not saying Wallach would be an Ozzie Guillen-like manager (in terms of fire), but at least it would show the Dodgers not being afraid to try something new. However, they are, in a way, trying something new, as Mattingly has no managerial experience at any level. He is going to manage in the Arizona Fall League, so that's a start.
The plan was for Mattingly to succeed Torre as manager when the two came to L.A. three years ago, but my enthusiasm for the move dwindled in that time.
We'll see what happens. The Dodgers have yet to recover from not hiring Mike Scocia when they had the chance.
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Dodgers ship Dotel to Rockies
Octavio Dotel was traded to the Colorado Rockies on Friday for a player to be named later.
What can be said about this? This is flat-out a moronic move. Ned Colletti has made some bad moves in his time, but this one could eventually take the cake.
So the Dodgers traded James McDonald -- a guy who could have done the same, if not better than Dotel in the 18 2/3 innings he pitched for L.A. -- and their 2009 No. 1 prospect in Andrew Lambo for a player to be named later? That's absolutely brilliant. No wonder the Dodger minor league system is so incredibly thin.
Dotel is ineligible for the postseason roster, so the return is going to be quite minimal.
To think, the Dodger roster decisions are going to be made by a guy who made this trade for the foreseeable future. That saddens and infuriates me as a Dodger fan.
The initial trade was baffling, so what does that make this? It's called incompetence.
The Dodgers' ownership issues are a big problem, but the biggest problem may lie right under that Ned Flanders-esque mustache in the Dodger front office.
Forgive me for this rant, but there's really no eloquent way for me to sum up this move.
It's a frustrating time to be a Dodger fan and there appears to be no bright spots in sight.
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