Dodgers Slump Continues

• Their aging veterans are either slumping (e.g. Nomar Garciaparra hitting .185 over the last week, J.D. Drew hitting only nine home runs all year long) or slumping and on the DL (I'm talkin' to you, Jeff Kent and Bill Mueller, and Mueller likely involuntarily retired thanks to an inoperable knee condition).
• Aaron Sele, a known first-half performer, has started his second-half slump right on cue, giving up five runs in an 8-3 blowout against the Diamondbacks and another five-spot in a lopsided 6-1 loss to NL Central division favorites St. Louis.
• Kenny Lofton just can't take good routes to the ball anymore. Maybe it's being in a new stadium, maybe it's age, but when Vin Scully called him out in Friday's game for his inexplicably bad fielding, you knew something was terribly, terribly wrong. Advanced fielding statistics back that up. According to his Baseball Prospectus's Rate2 fielding statistic, his 86 score rates him among the worst centerfielders in baseball; his .833 zone rating from ESPN ranks him as the worst everyday centerfielder in the league. Lofton still has speed, but his brain seems to have gone haywire.
• While the offense has gone on vacation, the only two semi-functional parts of the starting rotation that could mostly be relied upon, Brad Penny and Derek Lowe, haven't been able to collect wins. In Penny's case, it's a simple matter of no run support. But Lowe hasn't pitched well: he hasn't had a quality start since his June 22 complete game against Seattle.

Another problem for the Dodgers: they just don't hit homers. They're presently dead last in the NL in home runs. About the only thing working well for the Dodgers lately has been the bullpen, but that doesn't help you if Chad Billingsley can't hold down the opposition, Aaron Sele gives up five early, or Brad Penny can't allow negative runs scored.

So the wounded Dodgers crawl back to Chavez Ravine to face Padres for three, an opponent with whom they ought to have approximate parity. The absence of wins hasn't made owners Frank and Jamie McCourt any less brittle, something they recently proved in a brutal Times interview on Sunday. As Jon Weisman observed,

As professionals, they will only be as popular as the team is successful. When the team isn't successful, they will only be as sympathetic as they are honest, including being honest with themselves. As long as they go around claiming that everyone else is underperforming but they're just misunderstood, as long as their theme song remains, "Why doesn't everybody like us?", they're not going to get anywhere.

The McCourts have made improvements to Dodger Stadium, have for the most part allowed the rebuilding of the farm system to continue, have presided over a division title. We can see it. They have also made a series of management decisions that flew over the cuckoo's nest. Can they see it?

The McCourts' list of firings is a long and ponderous one; unlike Jon, it strikes me that Pat Jordan's interview is wry in the extreme, letting the McCourts hang themselves with their George Bush-like reluctance to even admit there are problems with they way they operate. The team may not be interesting at the moment, but the ownership will always be.