Who's on third? It could be a long season if Adrian Beltre doesn't have a big year

By Stephen Cannella

There's no substitute for a healthy Beltre, whose replacements were dreadful in his absence last spring.  Al Tielemans ENEMY LINES An opposing team's scout sizes up the Dodgers "Centerfield is death valley for this team. McKay Christensen had a nice spring, but he's very ordinary. ... Shawn Green is a star, but he's going to miss Gary Sheffield in a serious way. Green doesn't have the protection anymore, so all those fastballs he saw will disappear. Sheffield was the most fearsome hitter in baseball. I like Brian Jordan , but he's just a hard-nosed guy who'll play hard every day. He'll bring production but nowhere near Sheffield's level. ... Eric Karros is the most putrid spring training player I've ever seen. He never runs hard, and he just mails in at bats. Yeah, he puts up O.K. numbers, but have some fun. ... I'm convinced Paul Lo Duca is legit. He puts the ball in play hard, runs his tail off and does a decent job behind the plate. ... Cesar Izturis is an upgrade defensively over Alex Cora , but he's weak with the bat, too. ... Hideo Nomo is a valuable fourth starter. His splitter still works, and he can hit 90 mph. When he stays out of the middle of the zone he's strong. ... Odalis Perez has one of the better arms around, but he's never been given a long look as a starter. I think he'll win 12 to 14 games. ... Omar Daal was a steal; he changes speeds real well. ... Matt Herges has good makeup and good stuff, but he lacks the swing-and-miss pitch that closers need. They'll miss Jeff Shaw. Had they been able to find a good closer, they would have had a good bullpen with Herges and Paul Quantrill . Quantrill still baffles hitters, and he hits his spots consistently. Crafty."

After a Dodgers workout this spring the topic of third basemen -- specifically, the parade of players that manned the position for injured regular Adrian Beltre last year -- was raised with manager Jim Tracy. "Let's see if I can remember them all," he said, propping his elbows on his desk and burying his face in his hands. "There was Chris Donnels on Opening Day. There was [Jeff] Reboulet, [Dave] Hansen, [Phil] Hiatt, [Hiram] Bocachica, [Jeff] Branson. I think there's one more. Help me out, I know there's one more." After a few moments he got a hint from a club official standing in the doorway of his office, and Tracy said, "Tim Bogar. That's it. Thanks."

The mess at third came about when Beltre was sidelined most of spring training and the first six weeks of the regular season because of complications from an emergency appendectomy in January 2001. Forgive Tracy his memory lapse. The performances of Beltre's replacements were so forgettable -- in 33 games, five fill-ins combined for two home runs, 12 RBIs and a .346 slugging percentage -- that Beltre was rushed back to the lineup on May 12, even though he hadn't regained all the 35 pounds he had lost during his illness. "They told me I had been so sick I was close to dying," says Beltre. "But I wanted to play so much that I rushed myself, too."

Though he felt nowhere near full strength until the last month of the season, the 22-year-old Beltre, a budding star who had hit .290 with 20 home runs and 85 RBIs in 2000, cracked 13 home runs and drove in 60 runs in 126 games. In the off-season he retreated to his mother's house in Santo Domingo, D.R., and, thanks to a steady regimen of weightlifting and hefty portions of Mom's cooking, he's back to his regular playing weight of 180 pounds.

L.A. is counting on a hale Beltre to blossom into an All-Star and help fill the void left by the trade of disgruntled outfielder Gary Sheffield (36 homers, 100 RBIs) to the Braves for Brian Jordan and two pitchers. Other than Jordan, rightfielder Shawn Green and catcher Paul Lo Duca, no other player on the team drove in more than 63 runs in the majors last season. Another concern: The team's leadoff hitters had the league's second-worst on-base percentage (.306) in 2001, and McKay Christensen, the leading candidate for the job this year, has a career OBP of just .341 in six minor league seasons.

The rotation could be one of the league's deepest, assuming everyone is healthy. Ace Kevin Brown made only 19 starts and is trying to bounce back from September surgery to repair a torn flexor muscle in his pitching elbow. Andy Ashby made two starts last year before having surgery to repair the same injury. Brown has looked impressive this spring, while Ashby has struggled with his control. Japanese import Kazuhisa Ishii (78-46, 3.38 ERA in 10 seasons with the Yakult Swallows) has impressed the Dodgers with his velocity and hard-biting slider. If he's as good as advertised, L.A. will have the effective lefthanded starter it lacked last year when righties started all but four games.

"You can't win in our division without lefthanded pitching," says new general manager Dan Evans, the former assistant G.M. of the White Sox who has also added southpaw starters Omar Daal and Odalis Perez since taking over in October. He also revamped the player development staff, hiring a new scouting director and a new farm director and luring Kim Ng, the Yankees' assistant G.M., to be his assistant. The task is daunting: rebuild a minor league system that doesn't have one prospect ready for the majors.

Beltre, in fact, is one of only three homegrown players (Lo Duca and first baseman Eric Karros are the others) in the Opening Day lineup. And the third baseman's play may determine whether this team stays in the playoff hunt to the end.

Issue date: March 25, 2002