Dodgers Not Interested In Inge?

oh man the Dodgers have just gone insane at this point.

First off... The Indians didn't get "impatient" with Kouzmanoff. They felt, as did many other teams and prospect rankings/websites that Andy Marte was higher ranked. Has that panned out right now, no... but time will tell. Thats a story for another day.

What I'm curious about is why are the Dodgers so sour on Andy Laroche? He's been touted fairly high throughout major league baseball and it seems like every year they are searching for someone to play third, other than Laroche.

If they aren't going play LaRoche trade him. What good is a highly touted rookie if you don't have confidence in the kid? If you don't believe he is going to pan out then let him be someone elses mistake.

I'll go on the record and say that if the Dodgers sign another 3B it will hurt LaRoche's trade value. Teams are going to look at the situation and say, "You gave up talent plus took on a contract of a mediocre player. Now you are telling me that LaRoche is the real deal?".

Nobody is going to buy that garbage. Move him now while he still has value. Then go after your crummy 3B options. Not like Uribe/Crede/Mora/Inge are going anywhere.

Laftw,

I didnt say the Dodgers were going to trade LaRoche for Inge ~ I said they would be "burying LaRoche" because he would be under another pointless 3B guy making big cash.

But your second part is kind of the point. They dont want to trade these young studs for real impact MLers, but want to bring in high-priced stop-gaps to play their positions. Guys like Pierre, Nomar, etc with talk about guys like Tony Clark on top of it is just stupid when you have kids that are ready and better then what you can get from those guys anyway.

But Laftw, the problem comes in when the kids will actually ever get to play with all those vets around on large and sometimes long contracts. Looking at the OF alone there are 3 young guys who probably deserve a good chunk of playing time in 2008 (Kemp, Ethier and Young) ~ but the problem is that Jones and Pierre will be clogging 2 of the starting jobs for atleast the next two years. That leaves one starting job for 3 kids to fight for. If they were planning on playing them in the future, why are they blocking the future positions as well? The interest in Inge is even worse ~ he is signed for the next 3 years at more than 6.5M each season. So if they are planning on using LaRoche in the future, that future looks like 2011.

The Clark interest was actually rumored to be on a 2 year contract as well. I know he wouldn’t be starting over Loney, but you know he would be taking playing time away from him just the same. Why even ponder a guy like that though when its flat out not needed? Why even ponder guys like Inge? They might as well trade the kids if they aren’t going to have ML jobs with real playing time the next 3-4 years anyway ~ holding onto them on the 40-man roster but not giving them real ML jobs just means more youngsters following in the pipeline are stunted as well and end up being exposed to the rule-5 draft yearly. Their 40-man problems already cost them Wesley Wright this year and it will continually be more and more talent being lost in this manor unless they stop blocking all the kids trying to crack the roster at this time…

DS,

Although the Dodgers seem to have young prospects to fill in for every position, signing guys like Jones or re-signing guys like Furcal are sometimes necessities. Jones was signed to provide power (his 26 homeruns and 94 rbis would've lead the team last season). And although it's nice to have a young talented cheap outfield of Ethier, Young, and Kemp - it doesn't necessarily equal wins. Sometimes free agent signing are necessary to fill a team's certain needs, in Jones' case it's power. Obviously the Juan Pierre signing was terrible but at the time JD Drew had just opted-out and Ethier was the only major league ready OF on the team and he had less than a season under his belt, so Colletti paniced and now the Dodgers are stuck with him.

I know by signing Jones and having Pierre (who seems untradeable) it blocks guys like Ethier and Young and sometimes you can't hold onto all your pieces and I agree it could be for the better if Young or Ethier are traded to bring in something nice like another starter, but they managed to hold onto their most talented young players and prospects like Loney, Kemp, Billingsley, Broxton, and Kershaw. And it's not like everyone is being blocked, Loney is a lock at 1B, Kemp will likely be the RF, Billingsley earned a spot in the rotation after he had to start out the year last season in the 'pen, and LaRoche and Nomar will have to battle it out for 3B. So the only player who is truely being blocked by a vet here is Ethier, and he isn't as talented as Kemp and Loney and isn't a highly touted prospect like LaRoche. After playing the majority of 2 seasons everyone already knows the type of player Ethier is and the type of production you'll get from him, which is different from LaRoche's situation cause he is a highly touted prospect and that's the intriguing thing about him cause he could end up surpassing expectations. So to sum it up the only player being blocked here is Ethier. LaRoche will be battling it out with Nomar for the 3B job and with the high possibility of Nomar getting injured, LaRoche will eventually get some regular playing time on an everyday basis - if he does well he'll likey lock up the 3B job for good, if he doesn't impress all that much then I could understand why the Dodgers would be eyeing a guy like Inge, but for now I don't see the rush in getting Inge and I think the Dodgers are holding off of going into serious trade talks with the Tigers about Inge untill they see how LaRoche performs and how the 3B job pans out after all the article only says that the Dodgers inquired about Inge...