Dodgers Add To Scouting Department

Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

This offseason has been pretty bland so far. You have the usual non roster invitees and AAA fillers that are signed every year. Make no mistake, Dan Haren, Brian Wilson, J.P. Howell, and Juan Uribe aren’t anything to sneeze at, but it definitely feels a bit underwhelming, considering how active the team was last year, Brandon League (heh), Zack Greinke, Hyun-Jin Ryu were all signed by this time. But there has been some significant activity going on within the organization. In fact, i’m going to argue that the moves they made today, are going to have a bigger impact on the organization than any player the Dodgers could hope to pick up this offseason, or even next offseason.

You’ll may recall the Dodgers signing  Roy Clark earlier last month. Clark is excellent, the guy drafted/signed Brian McCann, Adam LaRoche,  Kris Medlen, Jason Heyward, Freddie Freeman, Matt Harrison, Craig Kimbrel, Mike Minor, and Adam Wainwright. Those are impressive talents, and this is an impressive guy to have as your “national crosschecker”. Well the Dodgers weren’t done upgrading in that aspect. Tuesday the Dodgers scouting department got a bit bigger. If you take a look at the article, that’s a lot of names, Gary Pellant, Chris Smith, Ron Mahay, Peter Bergeron, Greg Booker, Josh Bard, Aaron Sele, Hidenori Sueyoshi, Rafael Colon, and Juan Garcia-Puig (who instantly becomes my favorite scout ever).  Of course they all have different roles ranging from “advance scouts” to “International Player Performance”. You want scouts who are good at finding talent because the players they sign turn into prospects, these prospects turn into solid, cheap, young major league players which is the way to win nowadays (notice the power shift from the Yankees to the Red Sox/Cardinals).

It’s been a pretty slow day for the Dodgers, but at least there’s this bit of good news. In fact, I’d be willing to be that one day, a bonafide superstar will come up through the farm system and it will be because one of the guys they brought into the organization today scouted/signed them. I knew Stan Kasten wanted to get the farm back to a respectable level, but this is impressive.