I’ve been trying to avoid this topic for a while, simply because it’s so frustrating, but… at some point, we’re going to have to seriously talk about who’s going to hit leadoff for the Dodgers in 2013, right? It’s that seemingly unanswerable question which made all the “hey, let’s trade Andre Ethier and sign Michael Bourn!” rosterbation seem so appealing, even though the extreme amount of moving pieces made it difficult to see happening.

While Bourn hasn’t yet signed, it’s less likely than ever that he’s really going to land with the Dodgers, so the solution is almost certainly going to have to come internally. “Solution” is probably not even the right word, because there’s really no right answer here. Last season’s Dodger leadoff men hit a mere .226/.281/.302, barely ahead of Cincinnati for the worst in the bigs, and while that was largely due to the failures of Dee Gordon, it’s not like Shane Victorino, Tony Gwynn, or Mark Ellis — each of whom started at least 20 times at the top — did much to contribute either.

There’s no shortage of reasons why the 2012 Dodger offense seemed to continually sputter, be it injuries or lack of “gelling” or whatever else you want to attribute it to, but it’s impossible to ignore the simple fact that the top of the order failed at their singular goal, which was to simply get on base. Unfortunately, none of the various moves the Dodgers have made since then have come close to solving this problem.

Or as Don Mattingly said to Ken Gurnick yesterday…

“Not having a true leadoff guy,” he said, “we’ll have to work on that in the spring. Mark Ellis was really good against lefties. Skip Schumaker, Nick Punto. There are different combinations we could hit on top.”

…so you can see how bad of a situation this is.

Ideally, you’d have a leadoff hitter who can get on base regularly and be a plus on the bases after doing so. The Dodgers would settle for someone who could be even passable at doing just one of those things, but that’s easier said than done. Either way, let’s be honest with ourselves and admit that Mattingly values speed at the top more than anything else; after all, it’s the only possible reason to let Gordon lead off so many times.

Let’s start with the process of elimination, shall we? Ethier, Adrian Gonzalez, & Luis Cruz clearly aren’t going to hit atop the order, nor should they. Neither will Matt Kemp, though I bet I could make an interesting case that it’d be fun to have his on-base skills and speed there, nor sadly will A.J. Ellis, simply because we’ve gone over that one a billion times and Mattingly just would never let it happen.

As for Carl Crawford, he’d like you to know that reports that he doesn’t like hitting leadoff are false:

Mattingly said Crawford is willing to bat in the No. 1 spot, even though there is a generally accepted belief in the game that Crawford prefers the No. 2 hole.

“He said he didn’t know where that came from,” the manager said. “He said he heard that on ESPN. He said he would do whatever we want him to do. That said, he’s had his most success in the two-hole.”

Even so, he hasn’t done it regularly since 2005 and even if he could hit lefty pitching, he can’t be counted on to play every day or to contribute until he proves otherwise. Though I could see him being a very imperfect fix to a large hole, he’s much more likely to hit second.

That leaves Mark Ellis, who will be 36 in June and hit an abysmal .228/.313/.299 against righties last year… and Hanley Ramirez, who spent his time with the Dodgers hitting 4th & 5th. Ramirez was once a star leadoff man for the Marlins, starting 403 games there (second-most behind 415 starts hitting third), but he hasn’t done so on a regular basis since 2008 and that leads to some misleading splits. “But he has a career .309/.385/.536 line leading off!”, people like to say. Well, sure. But that was the young Ramirez, the one stealing 50 bases a season and challenging for batting titles.

The current Hanley doesn’t run like that, and he certainly doesn’t hit like that; though he retains good power for a middle infielder, he’s coming off a career-low walk rate and a career-high strikeout rate — hardly what you want to see from your leadoff man, and his .326 OBP over the last two seasons doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.

Still, .326 looks pretty good when compared to what we saw last year, and while Ramirez isn’t going to steal 51 bases again, he’s hardly lead-footed, either. So I’ll take Hanley as a flawed, though acceptable solution. But that causes another problem, if you look to the prospective lineups at right: by taking Ramirez out of the middle of the lineup, things get a bit thin behind Kemp & Gonzalez. (For the purpose of this conversation, I’m showing LF & 2B as strict platoons, though I doubt either will really be that way in practice.)

That’s perhaps not such a big deal against righties, where Ethier fits nicely into the #5 hole — though I did enjoy seeing him hit #2 there late last year — but it really does expose how vulnerable the team could be against lefties, especially in the corner outfield. That’s not news, of course, but the lack of a righty alternative for Ethier is still such a glaring hole that this winter just can’t be considered complete until something is done there — and the options are dwindling.

I don’t think anyone would say they don’t prefer this lineup over the one that prepared to head into last season featuring Gordon, James Loney, Juan Uribe, & Juan Rivera. Still, this is a lineup that has more than a few questions marks, beginning right at the top. If you can’t sort that out, everything else is at a disadvantage.