Salary arbitration.

It’s as engrained into a baseball nerd’s mind as the trade deadline, the draft, and the day that rosters expand. There are four Dodgers who are arbitration-eligible this season. They are listed in Dustin Nosler’s excellent post from yesterday on Dodgers Digest here.

The Dodgers’ front office (Andrew Friedman) has a history in Tampa Bay of going to the hearing stage once arbitration is filed for. If you’re a player, an arbitration hearing is probably not a great place to be, especially if you take things personally. In a hearing, it’s the team’s job to tell everyone why they don’t think you’re worth as much as you think you are. Can you think of any other profession where your employer gets to go on and on about how you’re not really that good, and then you have to follow that up by working for that employer for the foreseeable future? I cannot.

But I digress.

Justin Turner is one of four arbitration-eligible Dodgers. By slgckgc on Flickr (Originally posted to Flickr as “Justin Turner”), via Wikimedia Commons

While slightly less-dominant than 2013, Jansen still put up good numbers for the Dodgers in 2014, posting 44 saves and a 5.32 K/BB ratio while being the only reliever the Dodgers could trust. At all.

Last year, Jansen made $4.3 million while increasing his save totals by almost 60 percent. Beyond Jansen, the Dodgers’ list of arb-eligible players is pretty short. Justin Turner filled-in decently last season all around the infield. Newcomers Juan Nicasio and Chris Heisey (out of Messiah College, BTW) are also eligible, despite being new to the Dodgers’ system.

The trend lately has been for the Dodgers (and most other teams) to settle arbitration cases before they go to a hearing. The last player they went to a hearing with was Joe Beimel, eight years ago. Some teams, however, are well-known for hard stances on arbitration. Players who do not reach an agreement by the deadline in these organizations are not negotiated-with again until the hearing itself.

This was the way the Rays operated under Friedman. Whether he brings that to the Dodgers is one of the many organizational questions we’ll get answers to over the next 12 weeks.

Here we go again… the thoughts in the minds of many Los Angeles fans as they slowly watch the Dodgers play out their season, referring to the lackluster year the Lakers just produced. The Lakers and Dodgers, who are LA’s two premier sports franchises, were poised to have amazing seasons and so far neither have lived up to expectations. While the Lakers season is already over, the Dodgers still have a fighting chance to do something with all the salaries they are paying. Having a $217 million payroll would make you think the team would be a contender, but for the Dodgers it equals a last place spot in their division.

Dodger fans have seen a league-leading 13 blown saves this season. by Erik Becker

The season started out with the Dodgers beating the arch-rival Giants on an amazing performance by Clayton Kershaw. But since the fatal brawl in San Diego on April 11th the Dodgers have gone 21-33, sinking into the bottom of the division. Outfielders Matt Kemp and Andre Ethier have underpreformed. Carl Crawford has been a good addition for the Dodgers when he is actually in the lineup. The same with shortstop Hanley Ramirez. The only consistent players for the Dodgers this season has been Adrian Gonzalez and Kershaw who has a tough-luck 5-4 record given his 1.88 ERA.

The struggles continue for the Dodgers, who have used the disabled list at least 17 times so far this year. Yasiel Puig, a Cuban rookie sensation, has done his part since joining the club, which is 5-4 since his recall. As bad as the Dodgers have played with the hitters struggling and all the injuries, the team could have avoided this if not for all the blown saves by the bullpen. The bullpen has blown 13 saves — tied for the most in baseball — and they just can’t seem to stop the bleeding. Closer Brandon League has been disappointing, especially since he just signed a new three year contract at $ 7 million per year. Manager Don Mattingly has taken much of the scrutiny because of the teams performance and just recently after yet another blown save by League has decided it was time to finally name Kenley Jansen the closer. It is a smart move for a man trying to keep his job, after all, but if Jansen can’t help the Dodgers bullpen woes then nobody can.

Mattingly should have made this move long ago but kept his faith in the more veteran League for far too long. While Jansen hasn’t been dominant this season either, anything is better than League at this point. The bullpen woes are so bad, that Dodger fans must be wondering what 37-yearold Eric Gagne is up to. Luckily for the Dodgers the baseball season is a long one. The team still has some time to figure it all out, but the window of opportunity is closing as we head into mid-June. As Vin Scully would say “It’s time for Dodger baseball”, and its time for them to finally go out and play like they mean it. The Dodgers much like the 2013 Lakers, are a complete mess but they can only go up from here….right?

Clayton Kershaw won the pitching version of the triple crown.

Matt Kemp has been on a tear at the end of the season, chasing the traditional hitters’ version of the triple crown during the final week of games.

As a team, they’ve been really good also — 15 games over .500 (38-23) in the 61 games they’ve played since July 22nd.

For those of us who had generally stopped paying attention, the Dodgers’ performance comes as a huge surprise. James Loney managed to raise his average to over .280 and is in double digits in home runs once again. During the first few months of the season, nobody  would have thought either of those things had a foul ball’s chance of hitting someone at an afternoon game at a mostly-empty Dodger Stadium.

Javy Guerra and Kenley Jansen bounced back and made up for the virtual “no-shows” of Hong Chi Kuo and Jonathan Broxton out of the bullpen.

Ted Lilly and Hiroki Kuroda finished the year with more respectable numbers than I thought and while Kershaw and Kemp have put up all-time great Dodgers seasons.

For a team that was out of the race so early, the numbers will actually look more kindly on the Dodgers than the reality of the situation.

Despite being a Dodgers fan who has rebuked the current ownership, I would be remiss if I didn’t congratulate the players. The players are not the ones that made the Dodgers a joke throughout the league. The players didn’t lead a cornerstone franchise in the second largest media market into inexplicable bankruptcy. The players kept fighting. In the end, this year’s team, the players on the field, should be remembered for doing the best they could.

Despite Ned Colletti’s “logic,” who really expected aging infielders Casey Blake, Juan Uribe, or even Rafael Furcal to have impact seasons necessary for a real playoff run? Did anyone think that a team that planned on a Marcus Thames/Jay Gibbons platoon in left field would be a playoff team? Let’s not go and blame them for getting hurt and not living up to Ned’s sometimes-skewed logic.

The fans took a stand this year against the owner of a team that was more than 10 games back in the division for all but one day since June 28. In a city where getting anyone to care about anything can be a challenge, thousands of people lodged their protests against owner Frank McCourt by not going to games.

But the fans’ protest wasn’t of Kemp, Kershaw, and the players. I hope the players understand that. If not — if Kemp, Kershaw, and other young impactful Dodgers see the fans’ non-support as traitorous and use it as a reason not to be with the team long-term — things could get a whole lot worse before they get any better.

So congratulations Mr. Kershaw and Mr. Kemp for spectacular seasons. The players on the team have turned a completely embarrassing year into one that shows a glimmer of hope for the future with new ownership.

And for that, I say thanks.