A lot of heads have rolled in the last few months for the GMs in the NL with the Padres, Diamondbacks and Rockies all making changes in their front office. It looks like a toupee-adorned head is about to be added to that bunch.
Feeling among number of #Dodgers people is that GM Colletti is on hot seat, and that ownership has softer spot for Mattingly. We shall see.
— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) October 8, 2014
Yeesh, you build a roster with the highest payroll ever seen in professional sports and don’t make it out of the LDS and suddenly you job is on the line. What’s a guy gotta do?
If the reports are to be believed, Colletti isn’t going to get the chance to find out. It is hard to blame the Dodgers owners for feeling that way. All that their $229 million managed to buy them was a roster that functionally had two and half starting pitchers, the world’s most expensive collection of underachieving outfielders and a trainwreck of a bullpen. They still managed to win 94 games and eek out a division title in the weakest division in baseball, so that has to count for something, but probably not much when the owners, for the second season in a row, were expecting a World Series winning juggernaut of a team.
With $181 million already on the books for next season, Dodgers ownership is going to be looking for someone more capable of delivering the championship they are trying so hard to pay for. That is someone who is going to be able to make some big decisions that are facing the Dodgers this offseason. For example, deciding whether or not to re-sign Hanley Ramirez or seek out a replacement, clearing out the outfield logjam once and for all, rebuilding the backend of the rotation and finding something resembling a major league bullpen. You know, just a few minor things like that.
While Colletti has certainly had some success during his tenure with the Dodgers, especially during the darks days of the McCourt ownership, he’s just fallen into too many bad habits and made too many mistakes for the the organization to have much faith left in him. He had shown an ability to be creative under budget constraints with McCourt, but with the bottomless pit of money the Guggenheim Group has given him, Colletti’s team-building philosophy has devolved into “hey, there’s a veteran with a name I recognize, let’s give him a bunch of money” and making an annual effort to trade Andre Ethier’s bad contract while at the same time pretending he wasn’t the guy who gave him that contract.
Of course, it might not just be Colletti who ends up looking for work. The Dodgers admitted that they were within days of firing manager Don Mattingly last season only for him to turn things around. However, after his perceived bungling of Clayton Kershaw and the bullpen in the NLDS, Mattingly might find him back on ownership’s bad side. That may not even matter though if Colletti is fired and his replacement decides that he wants to hand pick his own manager regardless of ownership’s feelings for Mattingly.
The demise of Colletti is only a rumor at this point, but after a somewhat embarrassing exit from the playoffs, it sure makes sense for the Dodgers to want a scapegoat. It makes even more sense to make Colletti that scapegoat when his recent job performance doesn’t exactly suggest he worth keeping around.
