Hey Dodger fans, Owen here.

I’m one of you. I wasn’t the happiest when Zack Grienke left for Arizona.

Why didn’t the Dodgers match the offer? How could they give up one of the best pitchers in the game?!

LOUD NOISES!

It’s only one game, but calm Dodger fans have to be feeling pretty good about the team’s conservative approach to giving the lovable righty big money. I still like Grienke. I still think he’s a good player. But when some combination of Julio Urias, Jose DeLeon, Frankie Montas, Grant Holmes, Jharel Cotton, and maybe others are contributing at the major league level in the next 1-3 years, the Dodgers’ free agent chastity this past offseason will be lauded.

In fact, I’m going to make a prediction here: After a quiet offseason for free agents in 2015-16, the team will spend BIG money this upcoming offseason. As some of their young players come into their own, the team will make a concerted effort to build it into a true dynasty.

In case you’re worried that the team might not have a chance at the World Series, think about this: This time last year, I felt way better about the overall makeup of the roster, and look where it got them! The Royals didn’t look like a World Series team before either of the past two years, and look where it got them. There isn’t any reason to think this year’s Dodgers can’t get a little better, a little luckier, and make it to the World Series.

I know they won’t win 15-0 every game, and yes, the generalization of what I saw in one game to an entire season is ridiculous, but honestly — we need to stop being mad about Grienke. This is a playoff team again. To be honest, even with Grienke, that’s all it was the past few years too.

Zack Grienke is going to the Diamondbacks. On Friday night, Ken Rosenthal broke the news via Twitter. My Dodgers/baseball-related twitter feed responded.

Sources: Greinke in agreement with #DBacks, pending physical.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) December 5, 2015

Dave Stewart: pic.twitter.com/ZBW18XTmrp

— Craig Calcaterra (@craigcalcaterra) December 5, 2015

#Dodgers home opener next year is against Diamondbacks. Should be fun.

— Bill Shaikin (@BillShaikin) December 5, 2015

Well the Dbacks certainly found a solution to me always forgetting that they exist.

— Stacey May Fowles (@MissStaceyMay) December 5, 2015

They took on $100 million for Carl Crawford and gave Ethier $85M… https://t.co/mz0W5FaHR9

— Molly Knight (@molly_knight) December 5, 2015

Again: Greinke deal is six years, $206M with deferrals, per sources. Deferrals will lower present-day value of contract.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) December 5, 2015

I'm still in disbelief about Greinke to Arizona, but losing him is a torpedo below the waterline for LA.

— Michael Baumann (@MJ_Baumann) December 5, 2015

I want to have a giant mutliplayer Halo team up, in which I piss everyone off by team killing while debating what the Dodgers next move is

— Doctor Eephusblue (@EephusBlue) December 5, 2015

Dear Diamondbacks: Ok, you're even for that pool thing.

— Sons of Steve Garvey (@sosgsosg) December 5, 2015

I'm told Dodgers never got comfortable with guaranteed 6th year to Greinke.

— Bill Shaikin (@BillShaikin) December 5, 2015

I'm online and I need a new avatar.

— Chad Moriyama (@ChadMoriyama) December 5, 2015

@Dodgers The Howard chimes in. #Dodgers #GreedIsNotGood. https://t.co/8TZAR4SBa3

— Howard Cole (@Howard_Cole) December 5, 2015

Sooooo the Giants are still out there w $ to spend too. Dodgers will still be bidding against them.

— fansmanship (@fansmanship) December 5, 2015

Just woke up from a nightmare that the Dodgers wasted Kershaw's prime.

— Molly Knight (@molly_knight) December 5, 2015

The thing about Grienke for me is that he was both reliable and fun. He pitched inside when he needed to. He stood-up for his teammates on the field. He was a pitcher who could hit, and who flipped his bat like nobody’s business. Aside from Clayton Kershaw, he was one of the easiest Dodgers for me to root for in the last decade. Part of it was that he didn’t fit the mold of someone trying to fit in with Los Angeles. He was different. He is the kind of guy fans of other teams are lucky to be able to root for.

It’s not that it wasn’t the right move for the Dodgers to let a pitcher in his 30’s walk to the tune of 6 years and $200-plus million. These are the kinds of moves other teams make and are happy about it in the end. Those teams are just not usually the Dodgers.

Teams like St. Louis let players like Albert Pujols go and get to the World Series despite that. The Dodgers haven’t made it to the World Series since 1988.

Now, they’ve let Grienke move on, to sign with a division rival. One of their most dependable guys is gone, and him not being in Dodger blue next season makes me (maybe more than) a little sad.

Howard Cole’s post in Forbes is probably worth reading if you’re trying to get perspective and calm the anxiety that comes with not having two of the best 5 pitchers in baseball on your roster. But having those guys wasn’t all it took to make it to the World Series. There’s more to it than that. I’m trying to calm myself about it.

Here’s the paragraph whose first two sentences need to become my calming mantra over the next month or two of Dodgers fansmanship:

You either trust the front office men or you don’t. I trust them. Arizona came calling with their cash and their cacti, and Greinke bit. Bully for him.

Farhan Zaidi, the Dodgers General Manager, isn’t feeling the kind of pressure that Dodger fans are right about now.

“We have enough alternatives in free agency and the trade market, that there’s no time pressure on our part to land a starting pitcher,” Zaidi said. 

Everyone who is using their logical mind probably has good points. But Zack Grienke is a great pitcher. Whoever is the number-two for the Dodgers will not be as good. The Dodgers are always looking to make moves. Signing other pitchers is always on the table. There are players on 29 other teams to trade with, too. Like Howard said: you either trust the front office or you don’t. I still do. Yep, I’m going to just keep repeating that… .

My ears are still recovering from Monday night’s Juan Uribe home run. For those of you who have been in a cave or on the moon, here it was.

I have never heard Dodger Stadium so loud. The crowd reaction was an exultation of all the nervous energy that was built-up at the beginning of the year. Hopefully the mood will be just as loud and not as nervous when the team returns home for Game 3.

Whether Andre Ethier comes back will be a big story over the next few days. By Owen Main

Grienke/Kershaw

The Dodgers’ pitching is once again lined-up for this series. Zack Grienke and Clayton Kershaw will start games one and two on the road. This is a best-case scenario for Dodger fans. It’s the reason they signed Grienke. Pitching is a huge deal in the playoffs and the Dodgers have two of the best.

Mark Lemke or Joe Carter?

I am 32 and grew up in the 80’s and 90’s, so “Mark Lemke or Joe Carter” seems like a prescient question to me. When all is said and done, will players like A.J. Ellis, Mark Ellis, John Jay, Daniel Descalso, and Juan Uribe be the heroes? Will any of the bigger stars like Adrian Gonzalez, Hanley Ramirez, Yasiel Puig, Matt Holliday, Matt Carpenter, or Yadier Molina be the names we’re talking about?

We are ’bout to find out.

Will Ethier be back?

Andre Ethier’s bat vs. Skip Schumaker’s bat could make a huge difference in a close series.

How important is Game 1?

REALLY important — Especially for the Dodgers. A scenario where the Cardinals win Game One puts huge pressure on Kershaw and the Dodgers for Game Two. Can you imagine a worst-case scenario where the Cardinals win both games and the weight of the world is on Ryu for Game 3? I don’t want to think about it. Instead, Dodger fans would prefer to put the pressure on the Cardinals by forcing them to have to beat Kershaw in order to avoid losing both games in St. Louis.

However you cut it, Game One of a series shapes all the rest of the games. It’s huge.

It must be really hard to be a Padres fan.

In 44 seasons, the Friars have posted just 14 seasons above .500 and have lost 100 games 5 times. Going into this season, the Padres were 511 games under .500 all-time.

Since moving into gorgeous Petco Park in 2004, fans have been mixed on the team’s ability to keep star players and stay consistently competitive. This Yelp! review is probably indicative of the feelings of a lot of Padres fans. For a city that is comfortable in the shadow of Los Angeles, the fans are decidedly not comfortable with a team that will always play third to the Dodgers and Giants when it comes to National League teams in California.

Carlos Quentin was at the center of the baseball world this weekend — for all the wrong reasons. By Dirk Hansen (Own work), via Wikimedia Commons

This year, the Padres’ outlook is as bleak as ever. They have lost any star power they had over the past few seasons and their roster is markedly bereft of even a single superstar. Adrian Gonzalez, maybe their best player over the past 5-10 years, now plays for the Dodgers. The same Dodgers whose owners have to be the envy of every Padres fan who has been through the ownership tumult that the dads have been through.

Which sets the stage for the travesty that happened last week at Petco.

Carlos Quentin is the Padres’ highest-paid player. He signed a three-year, $27 million contract at the beginning of this year. Quentin, a San Diego native, is a good player when healthy. He has four seasons of 20-plus home-runs and was coming back home to San Diego. The problem is that, mostly due to injury, Quentin has only played over 100 games three times in his seven seasons leading to this year. Part of the reason he gets injured is because he gets hit a lot — the most in the majors over the recent past. For a team that won’t contend this season, a good clubhouse guy with some savvy with Quentin’s credentials might be worth something like the $9 million he’ll average over the next three years.

On Thursday night, though, Quentin proved he is not that guy when he charged the mound on Zack Grienke after being hit by a 3-2 pitch with no outs in a 1-run game. In a situation that nobody would hit anyone on purpose, Quentin took a graze to his armored elbow personally and ended up breaking Grienke’s collar bone.

An aside about why it was all Quentin’s fault

I’ve heard many people talk about how Grienke was as culpable as Quentin for his broken collar bone. This is a decent article by Ken Rosenthal about it. Here are a few real comments I’ve heard and here are a few of my thoughts.

Grienke should have turned his back. Or had different body language. If he would have shown different body language, it would have been different.

What kind of backwards psychology is this? Is Grienke supposed to not pitch inside because he’s worried about Quentin’s thin skin and his feelings? I just don’t understand.

And who turns their back? Seriously. I wish Grantland or someone would get a video clip together of every batter who was hit last year and the 3-5 second afterwards. Seventeen of these instances would involve Quentin, by the way. I bet less than 30 percent of pitchers make any move to say “sorry.” I don’t think saying sorry is the norm (whether it should be, like in Japan, is an interesting question). I also believe that most of these HBPs were probably worse than Quentin’s on Thursday. Somebody put that video together already!

He shouldn’t have gone shoulder to shoulder

When I first saw the collision, I didn’t think much of it. I thought that, like most baseball fights, it was much ado about nothing. Clearly, neither guy knows how to fight. I wonder how many times Grienke has been charged. I wonder how many mounds Quentin has dashed toward? These would all help people understand this a little better.

Carlos Quentin is a punk…

OK, those weren’t exactly the words, but I’ll put this here verbatim from a former Pac-10 catcher who played against Quentin while he was at Stanford:

We are playing Stanford and they were smashing us. I’m catching, freshman pitcher on the mound. Coach calls for us to drill him. I give the pitcher the sign, he throws a strike on the inside corner. Give it again, fastball inside, fouled off. 3rd time, jams him, pops him up. My coach was pissed at me because he thought I wasn’t giving him the sign.

Why he was a guy the coach wanted to hit? The response was that he was the cockiest player on a cocky team. I don’t think I’m super on-board with college guys playing bean-ball, or having a specific sign to hit the batter, but the story was interesting. Let me put it this way, it wasn’t the first time Quentin has been hit by a pitch.

In the end, I believe that if you want to assign about 10-15% of the blame on Grienke, fine. He pitches inside, he’s hit the guy twice before. Situationally, I do not believe he meant to hit him this time.

Good Fansmanship should prevail

So I’m going to put myself in Padres fans’ shoes for a minute. I went to college at UC San Diego and spent over a year as an intern at a local sports radio station there, so I don’t think I’m completely guessing here. Somewhat like the Giants and San Francisco

If I was them, I would be embarrassed. I would hate the fact that my highest-paid player tried to settle a score that dates back to a different year in a different league. In a season the Padres almost certainly will not contend, this will be the most publicity the team will get. If I was a Padres fan, I would be somewhat ashamed. I know what shame is — I’ve been a Dodger fan through the McCourt regime.

Here’s a twitter conversation I had with a Padres fan I respect regarding the incident.

@owenmain NO…bothered initially when I heard what happened (his knees) yet when I saw the video – Greinke was showing him up in some way

— Ernie Martinez (@ErnieXtra1360) April 15, 2013

@owenmain Dodgers claim he crowded the plate – that @bat he was not. I don’t condone brawl – good to see Padres react every once in awhile

— Ernie Martinez (@ErnieXtra1360) April 15, 2013

@owenmain I said this Friday – Its like lil bro dunking on big bro – W’s & Ls matter, yet so do other things in the game.

— Ernie Martinez (@ErnieXtra1360) April 15, 2013

I understand that when you think of your team as tough and blue-collar, a little fight isn’t a bad thing to see in them. If I was a Padres fan, I could almost understand that mentality.

Almost.

Baseball is a LONG season. It’s a sport where little victories can feel really great. Maybe Quentin had a little victory in the satisfying sound of Grienke’s collar bone snapping or in getting years of pent-up frustration out. But it wasn’t good for the Padres. It made them look worse than they already do.

To still root for a team like the Padres is admirable. I have respect for Padres fans. They are usually pretty easygoing and good times — a lot like San Diego itself. But do not tell me that what Carlos Quentin did was good for anyone or anything. It wasn’t.

So I’m going to say this and then leave it alone:

If anything happens with the Dodgers or their fans in terms of retaliation, I’ll be embarrassed. I’ll be sad that the team I root for cares more about a petty cockfight than the whole season. I will be ashamed if fans at Dodger Stadium do anything to embarrass themselves. All Dodgers fans should want is for their team to take care of business and beat-up on the Padres on the field.

Because, by the end of the season, everyone else will have. It could mean the difference between making the playoffs or not. Isn’t that the goal?