I keep wondering whether it’s worth posting links to stories written on dodgers.com, as I assume those of you coming to this blog are already reading all the articles on our site. But, in case you missed it, Jesse Sanchez wrote a great piece on Manny Mota’s influence on Placido Polanco over the years. Check it out.

The first two weeks of the season unfortunately brought about a rash of injuries which has severely tested our depth as an organization. I am always asked by people how the people in the front office feel when injuries occur, especially to established star players such as Eric Gagne and Nomar Garciaparra. Naturally, you get disappointed and feel a sense of frustration. However, one thing that this game teaches you is to expect the unexpected. The feeling of frustration really doesn’t last that long because you know that there is a game to play the following day.

Immediately your mind shifts to what are the team’s options, who is doing well in Triple-A, and what players are available on other teams that can be traded for. When Kim Ng and I recruit six-year minor league free agents in the off-season, often it is with a worst case scenario in mind. We ask ourselves constantly what our options are if certain players go down with injuries. Which of our young prospects do we think will be ready early in the season? If we feel we are not covered in a certain area, we try and sign players to cover that hole. The replacement players can’t be expected to be as good as a star player, but you hope that it is a talented young player or a veteran who has previous big league experience.

Already we have brought up one of our off-season acquisitions, Takashi Saito, who was purchased from Las Vegas when Yhency Brazoban went down. In Nomar’s case we brought one of our young players who we signed originally in James Loney. Injuries are an accepted part of the game and must be factored in during off-season planning. While you may leave Spring Training with 25 players, in your mind the roster hopefully extends to the low to mid thirties if you include players in the minor leagues whom you feel can help at the big league level, at least in an emergency situation.            

Today’s lineup is the same as yesterday’s (see below), with Seo in place of Perez.

Also, Brad Penny called me an hour ago and said that his friend, Tim Sylvia who just won the Ultimate Fighting Championship title was going to be at the game today, so we’re going to have him throw out the first pitch, in case that makes you want to come to tonight’s game (you never know).

A lot of the players are into this UFC gig…Alomar works with the trainer for Andrei Arlavski and Jayson Werth is buddies with another one of the guys. Who knew this stuff was so popular?

Tonight is what Dodger baseball is all about. A sellout crowd – 55,000 vocal, screaming, chanting fans going home with a Dodger victory. I feel like I’m back in my days as a reporter, as I can seek the brake lights in the parking lot while I write from the press box. I can’t say I miss those days…

What I do miss is hearing "Welcome to the Jungle" in the ninth inning, but Danys Baez (pronounced Danny BI-ez, for the fan who asked) has been just as impressive as Eric Gagne, to date. He followed a stellar outing by Odalis Perez with a scoreless ninth for his third save of the season.

Kenny Lofton answered any questions about the health of his leg, flying around the bases on a stand-up triple for his first Dodger RBI.

Tomorrow the Giants will pitch Brad Hennessey, who they’re calling up for the start. Taking two out of three from the Giants sure would be nice and it would give us seven wins, which is what Grady had hoped for.

There was one question on the blog as to why he said he’d be happy if we started 7-7 and the main reason is simply that there are so many new guys, injuries, etc., that getting through the first couple weeks of the season at .500 means that you’re staying afloat and not falling too far behind. Of course, that doesn’t mean he’ll be happy if we finish 81-81…far from it. But he understands that this is a very long season and as we all remember, 12-2 last year didn’t translate into an ideal season.

Heading home happy…

Furcal, SS

Lofton, CF

Drew, RF

Kent, 2B

Cruz, LF

Mueller, 3B

Loney, 1B

Navarro, C

Perez, P

It’s getting closer to the projected lineup…just missing Nomar, now.

Despite the loss last night, it was great to hear the crowd as vocal as it was. A few of us were saying in the press box that we’re amazed at how many fans waited out the rain and stuck around to see an incredible pitcher’s duel. And, I’m glad that we decided to reward those fans with free tickets to another Dodger game for their loyalty.

I’m also really glad that this blog is starting to get a lot more comments and insightful posts from fans. Our intention from the start has been to have a direct connect to our fans and so far, it seems as though it’s working.

I agree with one of the comments that I’m hopeful this blog "doesn’t just become a place to gripe." Debate is a huge part of baseball, so please do as much of that as you want and in the meantime, I’ll do my best to answer some of the questions that are posed.

Please know that anytime I answer a baseball-related question, I am not speaking on behalf of Grady or Ned, but that I am trying to explain some of the things that they have already told the media. Roy Smith, who posts here from time to time, can answer a lot of the baseball questions and is far more suited to do so, given his playing career and years in baseball ops.

But, in response to what Grady is trying to do with the outfield and rotation, hopefully this provides a little clarity. With the rotation, he seems to be pretty set on Lowe, Penny, Perez, Tomko and Seo, unless performance dictates a change. In the event that we have an off day that will allow him to use Lowe on his regular four days rest and use Penny, Perez and Tomko a little more regularly, he might be inclined to skip Seo. But anytime we have five games in five days, you can probably expect to see those five guys out there, barring any changes.

With the outfield, Grady has taken a very smart approach to trying to maximize the potential of all the guys out there. J.D. Drew will be in the lineup almost every day, but Grady is also trying to make sure that we don’t wreck him physically, as he has endured some injury problems in the past. In center field, the hope has been to let Kenny Lofton play somewhere around 100 games, with Jason Repko filling in against lefties and whenever Kenny needs a day off. Jason’s hot start has probably earned him a few more looks, but only time will tell whether Grady uses his more often or not.

In left field, Jose Cruz and Repko will get the bulk of the starts, with Cody Ross filling in every once in a while in left or right field. Ricky Ledee will mostly be used as a pinch-hitter, with spot starts to keep him fresh.

In regards to Cesar Izturis, the only thing that matters right now is getting him healthy. The thought of him playing the outfield was raised as a way to get him in the lineup on a regular basis once he’s back and playing. I don’t believe anyone is planning on taking a Gold Glove shorstop and making him an everyday outfielder. But if he could become something like a Chone Figgins, who can play almost anywhere on the field on any given day, think about what an incredible asset that would be the team. If Kent needed a day off, Izzy could play second. If Nomar needed a day off, Kent could move to first with Izzy at second. If Furcal needed a day off, Izzy could play short and possibly even third if Mueller needed a day off. And, if he can learn to play the outfield, he could probably see time five to seven days a week, somewhere in the lineup. But right now, the only important thing is that he gets healthy, as there are tons of things that can happen between now and then.

Finally, I truly don’t believe that Grady is playing Cruz or Lofton to keep them happy, as it was suggested. Every day, he looks at the opposing pitcher, the batter’s history against that pitcher and that type of pitcher, the weather conditions, the type of ballpark we’re playing in, the physical conditions of all the players and the number of days in a row that each guy has played before formulating the lineup he thinks will have the best chance to win that day.  He’s not in the business of making players happy – he’s in the business of winning.

Cody and Jason have both impressed a lot of people lately and from a personal standpoint, I hope both guys succeed because they’re two of the nicest guys on the club. But you can’t ignore the long histories of Lofton or Cruz just because Cody had seven RBI in a game or Jason has impressed in the early going. It’s a huge puzzle with lots of pieces and Grady tries to make them all fit every day he and his coaches put together a lineup.

With the weather back to rainy, Lofton is out. Cruz bats second, Loney fifth and Repko back in center batting seventh.

Furcal, SS

Lofton, CF

Drew, RF

Kent, 2B

Cruz, LF

Mueller, 3B

Loney, 1B

Navarro, C

Penny, P

Originally Kenny Lofton wasn’t going to start because of the wet grounds, but it seems like the field is in great shape, so he’s in the starting lineup.

Unfortunately, he’s been activated because Yhency Brazoban has to undergo Tommy John surgery. He apparently felt something in his right elbow in his last appearance while facing Jeromy Burnitz and today they found a partial tear. He’ll have the surgery next Tuesday and we’ll all be hoping for a speedy recovery, though Stan Johnston, our trainer, has pointed out that with any pitcher, the recovery on Tommy John is at least a year.

To date, this blog has been used mainly to post lineups, interesting notes, historical facts or inside perspectives on the front office. And while it’s starting to get more comments and hopefully a larger following, like many blogs, one of its goals is to provoke thought.

Fortunately, I’m not a big fan of Constantine or The Island, which was what was being shown on the plane back from Pittsburgh. So, once my laptop died and my iPod battery died, I went back to reading a book I started on the last road trip called The World Is Flat by Thomas Friedman of the New York Times. In a nutshell, the book covers how technology, outsourcing, and the last 10 years of innovations have brought the entire world together like never before. Seems like an obvious theme, but his explanations and research are fascinating.

It got me thinking about whether or not baseball would eventually be affected by this so-called "flattening of the world" and it was then that I realized that we were actually way ahead of the rest of the world in that regard. Campo Las Palmas, the Dodgers’ Dominican Academy that opened 20 years ago, was just one example of baseball "outsourcing." That is, we found that it was less expensive and more efficient to search for talent in the Dominican Republic and Mexico and Venezuela and Puerto Rico — even Japan — than it was at home, so we began searching there and soon after, every team followed suit. This was not much unlike GE’s forays into India in the early 90s that Friedman explains have resulted in the outsourcing we see today in the business world.

But what’s funny is that baseball is always charged with being run by an old boys network that doesn’t want to change their ways. Many new baseball theorists have found it hard to break baseball of old traditions and yet, it seems to me that baseball is always at the forefront of new technologies. Take MLB.com for example. While every other league was trying to figure out how to streamline its web efforts, MLB was creating what we see today – an incredible resource of information, statistics, multimedia and even blogging for that matter. And long before web sites were commonplace, when "Internet" was still a word most people couldn’t fathom, the Dodgers had a web site that was winning awards left and right.

Or how about Kim Ng, our assistant general manager? There are plenty of other sports that have yet to figure out that women are just as capable of running a team as men are.

Yet somehow, there’s this belief that baseball is stuck in the past. So, on the eve of the single biggest thing baseball ever did for America, I deem those charges laughable. Fifty-nine years ago tomorrow (Saturday), the Dodgers put an African-American player on the field and the country changed forever. It was not the old boys network that was behind on the times…it was America that was following the lead of Branch Rickey.

On Saturday, we’ll honor the memory of Jackie Robinson at Dodger Stadium and hopefully we’ll have more than 50,000 fans on site to truly take a moment and reflect on what baseball has meant for America. Friedman could be right: the world may be flat, but a baseball is still round and the thoughts it can provoke are truly never-ending.

Given the way a few of the reports came out in the media today, I wanted to make sure that I clarified what took place last night after our loss to the Pirates. When the media went to talk to Brett Tomko after the loss, he explained that he and Sandy Alomar got away from their game plan and that he should have made sure that he executed his plan correctly. When asked who called the pitches, he answered that it was Sandy Alomar Jr., but that it was his responsibility to shake him off and throw the pitches he felt were the right ones to throw to those hitters. Some people took that to believe that Brett was pointing fingers at Sandy and in turn, got some comments from Sandy, who said that he believed it was pitch location, not selection that was the problem.

Nonetheless, Brett was shocked that anyone could have interpreted his intention to take responsibility for the loss for finger-pointing. He and Sandy were laughing about it this morning, so I’m certain there’s no concern between them in the clubhouse and I know that Brett even discussed it with reporters, too. But I felt like this was one instance that fans might like to hear Brett’s side directly from him.

In other news, Cody Ross just hit a grand slam, his second career homer and both have been grand slams. If the Dodgers can hold this four-run lead, we’ll head home with a 4-3 road trip, which is certainly a good thing.