Padres take bold steps while Dodgers talk
LOS ANGELES – As motivational devices go, the team meeting traditionally sits somewhere between stale and desperate.
Yet Joe Torre stood in front of his Los Angeles Dodgers on Monday afternoon and took a whack at it anyway. The Dodgers were eight games back and in fourth place in the National League West. You can guess on which end of the stale-desperate-ometer this gathering was.
A four-game series against the San Diego Padres ahead, Manny Ramirez(notes) on the DL and everybody riding a five-game losing streak, Torre cleared his throat and filled the clubhouse with go-get-ems, we-believe-in-yous and other sage stuff.
The general manager, who was in the room, had nothing to add.
"No," Ned Colletti said. "I gave them a message the other day when I got four new players."
Managing game No. 4,273 (not all of them this season), Torre kept his expectations low.
"Managers always have meetings for themselves," he said wryly. "If somebody benefits from it, that's great."
One inning into go-get-em and we-believe-in-you, the Dodgers strung together three hits and produced no runs because James Loney(notes) made the final out sliding headfirst into third base before Matt Kemp(notes) could drag himself across home plate. When the first two batters in the second inning singled, the Dodgers had themselves five consecutive hits and still hadn't scored. That sort of bad luck, poor judgment and disinterest trumps team meetings, no matter how rigorously delivered, and also represents exactly how the Dodgers got themselves here.
"We need to go out there," Torre said, "and re-establish who we are."
Scarily for them, the Dodgers might already have settled that, not because their players aren't good enough, but because too many of their good players don't compete enough. You're Matt Kemp, you probably should cover 180 feet (with a rolling lead off second) before James Loney does. Between stale and desperate, the meeting had landed on inconsequential, in part because the Dodgers' most talented, in-his-prime player – Kemp – has played a distracted game. He gets a career-best five hits against the Padres, but doesn't always play to win, or so it appears. So, when Ramirez blows a calf and loses his home-run swing, and when Andre Ethier(notes) cools, where does that leave the Dodgers, whose greater affliction might still prove to be pitching?
The Padres held no pregame team meeting. They watched a baseball game on television, stretched, took batting practice and won a baseball game. The Padres don't have team meetings, but they're a carrier.
In the annual re-sorting that comes in the days following the non-waiver trading deadline, the Padres had positioned themselves smartly. While the Dodgers cleverly acquired numbers – Ted Lilly(notes) for the back of the rotation, Scott Podsednik(notes) to cover for Ramirez, Octavio Dotel(notes) to fill out the bullpen and Ryan Theriot(notes) to duplicate Jamey Carroll(notes) – the Padres meticulously surrounded Adrian Gonzalez(notes). On Monday night, Miguel Tejada(notes) batted third (in front of Gonzalez) and Ryan Ludwick(notes) batted fifth (behind him), the first time all three had been in the starting lineup together.
Ludwick is a rare player to be traded at the deadline from a first-place team to a more-in-first-place team, from a lineup that needed offense to a lineup that needed more offense.
"I'm lucky," said a grinning Ludwick, who in his career has now been entrusted with forcing strikes to Albert Pujols(notes) and Gonzalez. "If you're going to be traded, that's how you want to do it. The energy around this ballclub is kind of amazing. It's no wonder they've won so many games. … Reminds me a lot of the Rays a couple years ago."
He arrived in San Diego in time for two at-bats Sunday and started in right field Monday. In those two games, the puffed-up Padres scored 15 runs. Tejada had two hits Monday night, Ludwick had two hits, Gonzalez had none, and the Padres scored 10 runs.
"He fits the bill of the player we've been looking for," manager Bud Black said of Ludwick, and he might have added "for years."
Beyond that, Black said, it has been the usual business for the Padres, who are still a little hard to get used to, considering what they were expected to be. Their players walk the clubhouse wearing gray T-shirts, the word "BELIEVE!" in blue letters across their chests.
"I think our team from the outset of the season has had to prove what we are," Black said. "We haven't had the luxury to even relax or do anything but play ball. And that's the way we approach every series. Part of what we've done is consistency."
While consistency brings many outcomes, team meetings generally are not one of them. Maybe it only proves that it's better to be done with the team-splintering divorce than be in the middle of it.
By the end of the day, the Padres were still in first place, ahead of the San Francisco Giants by two games. The Dodgers had fallen nine games behind the Padres. Their wild-card deficit is seven games. They'd lost six in a row, all to teams ahead of them in the West. And it's August.
And while none of that might have sounded any good, at least it would give them something to talk about Tuesday.
