LOS ANGELES—How quickly the perception of a team’s season can change.  After another successful regular season the Dodgers ran smack dab into their nemesis – the Phillies – and promptly folded faster than their owners’ marriage.

After rolling through the NL West until a hiccup in the last two weeks, the Dodgers will head into the offseason and next year with more questions than a curious 9-year-old.  After failing to acquire Cliff Lee or Roy Halladay at the trade deadline to bolster their starting rotation, the Dodgers paid for it in the playoffs by getting trounced for the second straight year by the Phillies.  Yes, the Phillies and their new “ace” Cliff Lee. 

Some would argue it was the bullpen that cost the Dodgers against the Phillies and obviously Raul Ibanez’s three-run-homer off reliever George Sherrill in game one didn’t help, but when Vincente Padilla is your ace in the postseason something went neglected at the trade deadline.

The question for the Dodgers and newly re-upped general manager Ned Colletti this offseason is whether the Dodgers are really any good at all.  Looking closer at the roster one has to wonder if this isn’t just a good regular season team that does most of its damage against a weak division and falters as the season goes on.  Getting to play San Diego and Arizona 18 times doesn’t hurt and although Colorado won the wild card and 92 games, the Dodgers only faced them six times after July 1.

The fact is the starting pitching staff is a mess, the bullpen is still unproven and the soap opera that are the owners is in worse shape than the pitching staff.  GM Colletti has been accepting accolades all season and now will, no doubt, have to answer to no one in the off season with an ego that could prod him to make some hasty decisions.  That is, if the owners can keep the team and who controls it out of the courts.

All this and we haven’t even gotten to Manny Ramirez yet.  After what was considered to be a masterful job of holding out on signing Ramirez, Colletti now might be hoping Manny elects to opt out of his contract this winter.  His production never returned after he did from a 50-game suspension in early July.  To be blunt, the Dodgers were a better team without him and with Juan Pierre in left field.

On the positive side there is no shame in losing to the Phillies.  With the addition of Lee the Phillies have as good of a starting pitching staff as there is in the league.  Why didn’t someone suggest the Dodgers go after him at the trade deadline?  Oh wait, some of us did.  Anyway, as good as the Phillies pitchers are, there lineup may be the best in baseball.  Ask any starting pitcher and they will tell you there is not a hole in it and they run the same lineup out there every day with everyone’s role clearly defined.  The Phillies’ bench players know they are on the bench and, in turn, prepare for that one possible at-bat like professionals. 

More disturbing than the Dodgers collapse is the way they seemed to be in denial after the Phillies ended their season again.  Manager Joe Torre sounded as if he had gone over “talking points” with his team prior to meeting the media after being eliminated.  “They were better than us this week,” sounded weak and petty considering they (the Phillies) have been better than the Dodgers for two years now.

It will be interesting to see how the 2010 season shapes up because the Dodgers seem to be at a fork in the road organizationally.  With all the front office turmoil regarding the owners’ divorce and the underlying turmoil of not getting it done again in the clubhouse this team could easily find next season nothing like the last.  With the Rockies and Giants going nowhere, the Dodgers will find winning their division not quite so easy unless the newly crowned prince (Colletti) can find some ballplayers.

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