The Dodger's Outfield

Everyone from Steve Phillips, to LA Beat writers, to me have assumed they know what to do with the Dodgers. Many say that they have a "crowded" outfield because they have 5 outfielders with the acquisition of Manny Ramirez. I tend to disagree because from what I see they have only three outfielders and two people who are stealing money. Of course I don't have the gift of seeing grittiness, determination, and leadership so I may be missing something. Just for kicks I decided to see what the production has looked like, and what would make the Dodgers the best team going forward. I decided to use WARP as my go to stat for this exercise.WARP (Wins Above Replacement Player) for those who are not familiar is an advanced baseball statistic that judges how many wins a person has earned his team over the average AAA replacement at his position. Many people have heard of VORP or Value Over Replacement Player, WARP is similar but defense is applied where VORP is purely an offensive stat. Here are the lists of WARP for the Dodgers outfielders this season.

Manny:4.9
Kemp:4.2
Eithier:2.4
Pierre:1.3
Jones:-.1

Negative WARP means that Jones is roughly 1/10th of a win worse than the average AAA outfielder that would replace him. Judging by this it is clear that Kemp and Manny should never come out. Eithier is roughly a win better than Pierre, and going forward that gap will undoubtably get larger because he is five years younger than Pierre. By replacing Andruw Jones in the outfield with Manny Ramirez they are getting an above average outfielder to replace basically a AAA player at this point.

There is just under 1/3 of the season left so the numbers need to be prorated over the rest of the season. Manny should contribute about 1.5 wins over Jones the rest of the season, and if they play Eithier and Kemp they should gain 2.19 wins over replacement player the rest of the season. Pierre is expected to contribute about 8/10 of a win.

It should be said as far as Jones goes that a team full of replacement players would be expected to be a horrible team, a last place team. It is clear to me that the acquisition of Manny allows them to play three good outfielders every day and if they do so they will gain about 3 games over playing Pierre and Jones. They are currently 2.5 games back of The Arizona Diamondbacks. Here is hoping for the Dodgers sake that they have someone in the front office who sees it like this.