Dodgers Lacking a Vision Quest

The Dodgers paid $10 million for him to take off their uniform.

That’s more money than they will pay all but one player to wear their uniform.

The Dodgers could have paid an extra $6 million to keep him.

That’s barely half as much as they will be paying J.D. Drew, who had eight fewer homers and seven fewer RBIs in the second half of last season.

Shawn Green finally left town Tuesday after thrice being stuffed into Paul DePodesta’s back seat and driven to the city limits and dumped, and you wonder: What on earth did he do to make the Dodgers so mad?

Did he spill eggnog on Frank McCourt at the team’s annual kids holiday party?

A party in which he was the only player in attendance?

Did he take too long to return to the dugout after homers? Because he was giving his batting gloves to kids in the stands?

Shawn Green was shoved to Arizona on Tuesday in the clumsy manner of a sweating bartender shoving a loutish patron to the curb -- “Don’t come back, and I mean it!” -- and you wonder: Did he really deserve this?

He may never have consistently reached his promise in five seasons here but, goodness, he is no Hee-Seop Choi.

(Choi, who makes about $15.5 million less than Green would have with the Dodgers, is taking his place at first base.)

He may not have been the most powerful clubhouse leader but, heck, he was no Milton Bradley.

(Bradley, who makes about $14 million less than Green would have with the Dodgers, will take his place in right field.)

Knowing how the McCourt regime squeaks when it walks, one would immediately assume Green was traded purely for money, and that’s part of it.

If they don’t dump him, they say, they couldn’t make a long-term commitment to pitcher Derek Lowe.

“It’s not about getting rid of Shawn Green, it’s about being able to add other things ... it’s about doing more with our starting pitching,” acknowledged DePodesta.

To accept this notion is to accept the truth that the Dodgers have become the second team in the L.A. market, unable to purchase the right players and win at all costs as they do in Anaheim. That’s scary.

Scarier still is that, because the Dodgers were willing to pay $10 million of his Arizona salary, the Green deal is about more than money.

It’s about vision.

The new Dodger regime did not see Green as a contributor.

It’s because, once again, the new Dodger regime wasn’t looking close enough.

DePodesta, a stranger to the players, didn’t hang around the batting cage enough last year to understand that maybe Green had finally figured it out here.

Uncomfortable for four years under pressure, Green hit 18 homers in the second half of the season, capped by a ninth-inning, two-out, two-strike, two-run game-winning homer in Colorado that pushed the Dodgers toward the NL West title.

Unsettled for four years in the spotlight, he hit three homers in four playoff games.

And next year being the final year of his contract, well, the last time his deal was winding down, he hit 42 homers with 123 RBIs in Toronto.

Green does not have the personality to function as the team’s star. But finally, with the addition of Drew and Jeff Kent, he could have receded into the shadows from where he does his best work.

As with Adrian Beltre, the Dodgers invested much time and money into Green. Couldn’t they have waited one more year? For $6 million? Less than the average contact value of, gulp, Odalis Perez? Because of, double-gulp, Choi?

Everyone in town jokes about it, but, really, is DePodesta willing to stake his reputation on a man whose best plate appearance last season was a walk?

“The Dodgers were in the process of doing a complete overhaul,” said Green in a conference call Tuesday. “Paul Lo Duca, Adrian Beltre.... I fit into that group.”

I later spoke by phone to another member of that group, Alex Cora, who was disappointed that three-fourths of the National League’s best fielding infield had been hacked away.

Even though Cora had been the longest-tenured Dodger last season, DePodesta never bothered to call him with the news that he was being cut loose, instead delegating the task to assistant Kim Ng.

“We were all pretty young, and we thought we’d be together for a couple of more years,” Cora said. “I guess we were wrong.

I also spoke this week to members of the team’s coaching staff, who finally agreed to new deals Tuesday. They are baseball’s last coaches to sign because of -- surprise, surprise -- disagreements over their value.

Being the loyal employees that coaches usually are, they didn’t want to complain, but most will be paid well under baseball’s $125,000 median salary for coaches, most having received minuscule raises despite the division title and the reputation as one of the best staffs in baseball.

Green spoke to McCourt once about his contract, an hour-long conversation after that holiday party.

“I left there thinking they could go either way, that it would be OK for them to have me back,” he said. “I don’t know if things changed but, obviously, the focus was to trade me.”

It was just like when DePodesta said he wasn’t planning on trading Green, and then did.

The chemistry problems that had long infected the Dodger clubhouse have apparently moved upstairs to the front office, where today’s introduction of new pitcher Lowe will cause more confusion.

He is an outstanding groundball pitcher, but, um, with the infield decimated, who exactly will be catching his ground balls? J.D. Drew?

Dioner Navarro might eventually be a great catcher, but for now, he will work in triple-A while the Dodgers will go with a David Ross-Paul Bako rotation that, if possible, is even more suspect than last season’s.

And so as the Dodgers’ rot stove league finally ends, the truth becomes clear.

When Frank McCourt and Paul DePodesta took over this team last winter, they fashioned themselves the brilliant saviors of a group of losers with no hope, no future, no chance.

They have finally rid themselves of everyone who had the audacity to prove them wrong.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.