James Loney

SAN DIEGO — Based on his conversations with the Dodgers' new owners, General Manager Ned Colletti expects to have more financial flexibility at the July 31 nonwaiver trade deadline than he's had in recent years. "If we have a chance to improve our club, they're open-minded to doing it and everything that it entails," Colletti said. That could mean making significant additions to the payroll. President Stan Kasten recently acknowledged the Dodgers "don't have the warehouse of prospects we wish we had. " Without prospects to trade, the Dodgers probably won't be able to make any meaningful acquisitions unless they agree to inherit millions of dollars in salaries from non-contenders looking to shed payroll.

PHOENIX - If this were spring training, the Dodgers would have been fined for that lineup. But, in this magical regular season, the Dodgers won with that lineup. No Matt Kemp? No one named Ellis? No matter. The Dodgers dumped the Arizona Diamondbacks on Monday, 6-1, dropping the defending National League West champions a staggering 101/2 games back barely six weeks into the season. In spring training, the commissioner's office can fine teams that field a lineup with fewer than four significant players.

Well, maybe not five games into the season but still … It's not helping the James Loney cause that he's started the season 0-for-14 with a pair of walks. Sixteen plate appearances is nothing over the course of a season, but there's no denying that Loney's start is going to be watched with more scrutiny than most. He's one of three designated linchpins, three question marks, to the success of the Dodgers' 2012 season. Since nothing came in the way of offensive cavalry over the winter, the Dodgers have looked to three players coming off disappointing seasons to invigorate their offense - Andre Ethier, Juan Uribe and Loney.

SAN DIEGO — Based on his conversations with the Dodgers' new owners, General Manager Ned Colletti expects to have more financial flexibility at the July 31 nonwaiver trade deadline than he's had in recent years. "If we have a chance to improve our club, they're open-minded to doing it and everything that it entails," Colletti said. That could mean making significant additions to the payroll. President Stan Kasten recently acknowledged the Dodgers "don't have the warehouse of prospects we wish we had. " Without prospects to trade, the Dodgers probably won't be able to make any meaningful acquisitions unless they agree to inherit millions of dollars in salaries from non-contenders looking to shed payroll.

A third of the way through the season, James Loney is on pace to drive in 123 runs. The last Dodger with that many RBIs was Shawn Green in 2001. But with only two home runs before Wednesday's game, Loney is also on pace to finish the season with six.

Back in Phoenix, some of the players who weren't forced to board the 7:45 a.m. team bus expressed their relief of having avoided a four-hour round trip to the Cactus League's easternmost outpost. Only one projected starter was forced to make the trip here on Tuesday: James Loney . But Loney being Loney, there were no complaints from the first baseman, only the usual variety of quirky comments and smiles. A player once called "very left-handed" by former teammate Randy Wolf , Loney pointed out the positives of making the trip, among them that he was named the Dodgers' honorary captain by bench coach Bob Schaefer . Loney later learned he was a part of history.

The Dodgers settled the last of their pending arbitration cases, agreeing with first baseman James Loney on a one-year, $4.875-million contract. Loney's salary will fall $100,000 short of the midpoint of the figures he and the Dodgers exchanged last month. Loney asked for $5.25 million and the Dodgers countered at $4.7 million. Loney will not be eligible for free agency until after the 2012 season. He earned $3.1 million last season. Had the sides failed to reach a settlement, they would have pleaded their respective cases in front of an arbitration panel Feb. 18. Teams generally prefer to avoid arbitration hearings, fearing they could damage their relationships with players by arguing why they are not worth as much as they are asking for. The Dodgers also avoided hearings with their two other arbitration-eligible players, Chad Billingsley and Hong-Chih Kuo . ?

From the way James Loney nonchalantly walked across the clubhouse to the way Manager Don Mattingly talked, nothing indicated the problem was serious. But the Dodgers couldn't be sure enough. Saturday night, the Dodgers received the confirmation they wanted, as team doctors determined that Loney would be sidelined for only a couple of days by his swollen left knee. Loney underwent an MRI exam earlier in the day, the result of his complaining of stiffness after playing on Friday night.

Arizona's magic number to eliminate the Dodgers from National League West contention is 30. It's 42 games before James Loney is officially a goner. Loney's best chance of returning to the Dodgers next season is agreeing to pay the monthly rent on the seven houses Jamie McCourt owns so Frank doesn't have to pay as much to support her. Loney's suggestion the other day the Dodgers could still win a division title is funny now. He's the very last guy to be talking about making a strong run, hitting a combined .210 with five home runs and 30 RBIs after the All-Star break the last two seasons.

It's Tuesday night and I'm supposed to be sitting in Staples Center, the Lakers and Oklahoma City going at it in a playoff opener. But instead I'm talking to James Loney . Life just isn't fair. The Dodgers are already eliminated, but they get to keep playing. By the way, would someone tap Loney on the shoulder and tell him the Dodgers still are playing. I never watched the TV show, but "Lost" pretty much describes James Loney. So does "automatic out" or "first base flop.

SAN DIEGO - Eleven more days until Matt Kemp is eligible to return from the disabled list. Kemp's absence was of minimal consequence Thursday, as the first-place Dodgers trampled the last-place San Diego Padres, 8-1, to earn a split of a two-game series at Petco Park. The Dodgers improved to 25-13, including 2-2 since Kemp was placed on the disabled list with a strained hamstring. But the void could be a significant factor in the coming days when the Dodgers host the defending World Series champion St. Louis Cardinals in a three-game series that starts Friday.

The list of injured Dodgers keeps growing, with Matt Kemp and Juan Uribe going on the disabled list Monday to join Jerry Hairston Jr. and Juan Rivera, among others. But the Dodgers' pitching staff, including Clayton Kershaw, their ace left-hander, largely has steered clear of injury, a key reason why the Dodgers have kept playing well early this season. Kershaw was stellar again Monday night in a duel with Arizona's Ian Kennedy, holding the Diamondbacks scoreless in seven innings of work as the Dodgers won, 3-1, at Dodger Stadium.

Back when Matt Kemp was hitting the ball the way Josh Hamilton is now, Manager Don Mattingly said the day would come when the Dodgers would have to find new methods to score runs. That day has come and the Dodgers have. Kemp is hitless in the Dodgers' last three games, but the team has won each of them, the latest a 2-1 victory over the Colorado Rockies on Saturday night. The Dodgers improved to a major league-best 22-11, including 14-3 at home, and remained six games in front of the second-place San Francisco Giants in the National League West.

This is tough way to go, not that anyone around Chavez Ravine is complaining. Tim Lincecum keeps pitching very well against the Dodgers and keeps losing. That's a difficult combo to pull off, but the Giants' two-time Cy Young winner has been pulling it off with great regularity. Wednesday night at Dodger Stadium, Lincecum stumbled for one inning, and it led to a 6-2 Dodgers victory before an announced crowd of 33,993. In his last six starts against the Dodgers, Lincecum has a 2.52 ERA -- and is 0-4. Lincecum has been having issues well beyond the Dodgers this season (2-3, 5.89 ERA)

Left fielder Juan Rivera was placed on the 15-day disabled list Wednesday with what the Dodgers described as a "severe" left hamstring strain. "It's fairly major," said Manager Don Mattingly , who was told by the medical staff that Rivera would probably be sidelined for more than two weeks. Rivera's place on the active roster was taken by Scott Van Slyke , who was called up from triple-A Albuquerque. Van Slyke, the son of former three-time All-Star Andy Van Slyke , is in majors for the first time.

Dodgers first baseman James Loney is off to another slow start. Loney went into Tuesday's game batting .198 and was hitless in his last 13 at-bats. Manager Don Mattingly said that if Loney doesn't start hitting, his playing time could be cut. "To me, we're getting to the point where it's just a production thing," Mattingly said. "You have to throw up some numbers out there somehow, some way. ... We have to find production from him. It's kind of that simple now. " The Dodgers have more lineup flexibility than they did a year ago, when Mattingly had no other viable options at first base outside of Loney.

Perception-wise, first baseman James Loney was snubbed when he, Andre Ethier, Matt Kemp and Russell Martin joined the Dodgers in 2006. They had flash. He didn't. He was just steady, productive, dependable. And even as he has stacked impressive statistical seasons on top of each other, perceptions haven't changed much. Flash is still flash. But Saturday at Dodger Stadium, in the 13th inning with the Dodgers' bullpen on empty, it was Loney who flashed, hitting a walk-off home run to give the Dodgers a 3-2 win over the New York Mets.

The run batted in has been denigrated by the sabermetric community. The RBI reflects opportunity more than ability, or so the argument goes. The Dodgers' management does not feel the same way. James Loney drove in four runs to lead the Dodgers to a raucous 9-4 victory over the New York Yankees on Saturday. Rafael Furcal had three hits, Manny Ramirez reached base four times, and the Dodgers delighted a sellout crowd by scoring seven runs in the first four innings. Not that the suspense was over, at least not for Dodgers Manager Joe Torre.

CHICAGO — Reliever Ronald Belisario said he did not have butterflies when he took the mound Saturday at Wrigley Field for his first big league appearance since Oct. 1, 2010. "I was thinking about coming in, throwing strikes and letting them hit the ball," said Belisario, who retired the side in the eighth inning in the Dodgers' 5-1 win over the Chicago Cubs. The Venezuelan missed last season because he was denied entry into the United States after testing positive for cocaine, and he had to serve a 25-game suspension at the start of this season in accordance with baseball's drug policy.

Washington Nationals pitcher Gio Gonzalez was sailing along against the Dodgers, 25 consecutive scoreless innings under his belt, when suddenly he couldn't find the strike zone. The left-hander walked three consecutive Dodgers to load the bases in the sixth inning Sunday, and James Loney then poked a single into left field to drive in two runs. That was all Dodgers starter Chris Capuano and the club's bullpen needed as the Dodgers won, 2-0, giving them a three-game sweep of Washington at Dodger Stadium.