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Spring comes early for baseball fans and the cold weather should be replaced with healthy skepticism. Instead, every year they’re expected to believe that since their players hung ‘em up in September, magical things have happened to them over the brief winter, allowing them to transform their games for the better. Until now, it’s been all talk. Now that everyone is in camp, things will start happening, accompanied by a lot of grandiose comments from scouts, coaches, agents, players, and management. Here is just a quick sampling of things we’ve heard after only a few days in Vero, along with some predictions as to how they might play out:

-Greg Miller has figured out what his problems are and that they are all behind him. I don’t think he learned how to throw strikes since November while wondering what happened to his promising career.

-Jason Schmidt proclaims that he’s pain free. Said the same thing last spring while throwing softballs before we found his shoulder had exploded. Maybe he’s finally right physically, but let’s wait for the results and not bank on the words.

-Raffy Furcal claims to be completely healthy. So far in his brief Dodger career he’s twice been hurt by the time his season started, once because he was slow to recover from winter surgery and the other because Jason Repko decided a fly ball was more important in a pre-season game then safeguarding our season. I really don’t care how Furcal feels on Feb 20th; All I care about is how healthy he is on April 1st. If you’re not healthy on Feb 20th after four months off, your not doing something right. I’m just glad he got through his terrific winter season unscathed. (Note: Yes, that was a cheap shot at Repko. That is how he plays, but if he wants a major league career he is going to have to learn to pick his battles. Spending every year on the DL when you’re a fringe player is not the way to go about earning a major league pension.)

-Juan Pierre did not learn how to take a walk while Christmas shopping.

-Matt Kemp lost 20 lbs and is in the best shape of his career. I expect to hear this off and on over the next five years as he goes from losing weight to gaining weight. Will he end up looking like Dave Parker or Andre Dawson?

-Russell Martin goes on a stringent off-season work out program so that he can play more effectively later into the season. Paul LaDuca used to say the same thing after tanking every Aug/Sept. The only thing Russell Martin needs to do is take a day off. Then again, with Gary Bennett as his backup, maybe not.

-Some NRI will turn heads early in camp and platitude upon platitude will be heaped upon him, but by May the NRI will not even be in the organization. Does anyone even remember Larry Bigbie? Even worse some NRI like Scott Erickson flim flams his way into a spot in the rotation even though he hadn’t pitched effectively for years. The flip side is Carlos Pena, who was a monster in Tampa Bay last season after washing out in Texas, Oakland, Detroit, and Boston. Hey, maybe I shouldn’t be so quick to judge an NRI by his cover.

-Even though only Luis Gonzalez is gone from the veteran group who openly rebelled against the young players, everything is going to be just fine between the veterans and upstart kids because Joe Torre is now the manager. After a winter of dwelling on it, I’m sure James Loney is ready to make nice with D-Lowe, who openly lobbied for the Dodgers to trade the future (Loney and others) for the man with to many vowels to play 1st base. Matt Kemp is now ready to get advice on how to run the bases from the guy who made the biggest base running blunder in Dodger playoff history.

-Jeff Kent now says he has no problem with anyone as long as they want to win as much as he does. Well, the kids didn’t blow the 2002 World Series and he’s now running out of time with likely only one more year to blame someone else for his lack of a world championship. The Dodgers better hope they win, because a simmering Kent in a losing clubhouse is begging for trouble no matter the manager. If he thinks the kids don’t have the urgency he wants, it would be great if he had a better way of communicating that urgency, instead of alienating his teammates.

Don’t get me wrong, I love spring training, I just don’t put any stock into what happens or what is said there.

It is a place for everyone to get into baseball shape and only fringe decisions should be made. Andy LaRoche or Nomar will be the 3rd baseman. How they perform during a few games in March should have little to do with the ultimate outcome. Either they’re ready to give LaRoche the job based on his resume in the minor leagues or they’re not. Spring is a tough world for prospects trying to win a job. They are held to higher standards then the veterans. The Red Sox handled this sort of thing better then anyone I’ve seen in recent memory. Before the spring of 2007 they said that Dustin Pedroia was their starting 2nd baseman and they stuck with it, despite his poor spring and dreadful April. But once Pedroia found a groove, though, the Sox were rewarded with an excellent season where many teams would have benched the youngster because they didn’t trust their initial judgment.

Spring training is a world of noise.

As this spring progresses we will take a look at the noise and try to see if anything meaningful can be found after it has been filtered.

Phil Gurnee, co-author of True Blue LA, takes a look at the current, past, and future of his Los Angeles Dodgers. Mixing a totally subjective viewpoint with statistical analysis, he looks at baseball from both sides of the mirror.

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