November 7th, 2014 at 3:29 pm 
by Ron Cervenka Some enormous shoes were filled in the Dodgers front office today – those of former Director of Player Development DeJon Watson, who left the Dodgers last month to take the job of Senior Vice President of Baseball Operations with the Arizona Diamondbacks, and former Director of Amateur Scouting Logan White, who left the Dodgers last week to take the job of Senior Adviser to the General Manager and Pro Scouting Director with the San Diego Padres.
Dodgers President of Baseball Operations Andrew Friedman announced on Friday that former MLB outfielder Gabe Kapler will fill Watson’s position and Padres former Director of Scouting Billy Gasparino will take over for White.
Kapler spent 12 seasons in the major leagues with the Tigers, Rockies, Red Sox, Brewers and Rays. He was given a non-roster invitation to spring training by the Dodgers in 2011 but never made it back to the bigs and retired from the game. He worked as a baseball analyst for Fox Sports 1 where opened a lot of eyes with his baseball knowledge. Kapler attended Taft High School in nearby Woodland Hills where he earned a scholarship to Cal State-Fullerton. He later transferred to Moorpark College from where he was drafted by the Tigers in 1995.
Kapler actually left the game in 2006 but made a comeback in 2008. He tried a second comeback in 2011 with the Dodgers but was unable to do so. He has always had a reputation as a very hard worker and a great teammate.
(Photo credit – Harry How)
Gasparino spent four seasons with the Padres serving as their Director of Scouting and National Crosschecker. Prior to that he worked for the Toronto Blue Jays as an area scout covering Southern California and later served as the Jays crosschecker in 2007. Gasparino was originally drafted by the Colorado Rockies as an infielder in 1999 out of Oklahoma State University spending one season with the (then) Low-A Portland Rockies. He got his start on the administrative side of the game in 2003 serving as an intern with the Cleveland Indians.
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I read that earlier. It seems the Dodgers are raiding the Padres’ pantry. Who knew that would happen?
I can’t see that Gasparino will do a better job than Logan but among them the new “LA Five” looks pretty awesome. I think they have a balance with the “geek” stuff and real baseball instincts. Like love and marriage you can’t have one without the other.
If Kapler can instill some of his player characteristics in players he will indeed be useful.
Even though I very much appreciated Logan and De Jon I think it was time for change. It is good for them in their careers to re-energize and good for the Dodgers to go in even a slightly different direction.
I think among them they will make the hard decisions which is easier with new guys on the block.
I liked Farhan Zaidi’s plan for building a roster. That is, anyone can build for 75 wins but after that the top has to be added and the bottom if not productive has to be shaved off. That means taking some difficult player decisions as he’s talking about building a 25 man roster with addition and subtraction.
I find it nice to know that White & Watson were not fired and left on their own. I’m assuming that they might’ve been asked to make some changes and didn’t care to make them or something of that nature. Knowing no one has been fired shows, to me, that the team was satisfied with who they had and just wanted to make additions. Although they failed to go further in the postseason they did win two division titles in a row.
Call it what you want, Joe, but Colletti was fired as the GM and given an insignificant role within the organization.