On May 13, the Los Angeles Dodgers boasted a 21-14 record, sat a game up in first place, and had managed to at least muffle the legions of critics who had been taking aim at General Manager Paul DePodesta for months. In just over two weeks, they’ve gone 5-12 and sunk into third place; not surprisingly, the L.A. press is again clamoring for DePodesta’s head.

The DePodesta bashing dates back to last July, when he made a fantastic trade with the Marlins, acquiring Brad Penny,an excellent young power pitcher; Hee Seop Choi, a young, slugging first baseman; and a pitching prospect. In exchange, the Dodgers gave up a terrible right fielder, Juan Encarnacion; a fine reliever, Guillermo Mota; and Paul Lo Duca, an aging and overrated catcher. The move filled several holes for the Dodgers and made them younger and cheaper. Though Penny was injured right after the trade and Choi did nothing down the stretch, Los Angeles still made the playoffs.

This year Encarnacion has hit well, though no better than his replacement, J.D. Drew. Lo Duca has hit well, though no better than his replacement, Jason Phillips. Mota has been injured and ineffective. Penny, meanwhile, has started eight games with an ERA of 3.18, while Choi has swung a reasonably solid bat at first. All told, the move looks to have been wise from the Dodgers’ perspective.

None of that really matters to DePodesta’s critics. The trade was taken at the time by many as proof of DePodesta’s incompetence and soullessness. Trading away team leader Lo Duca in the middle of a pennant drive, many argued, was the sort of move only a technocrat drunk on Microsoft Excel would make. Even the fact that in retrospect the move was a good one doesn’t change that. After a miserable May, many Los Angeles writers are comically blaming the team’s downturn on a lack of clubhouse chemistry dating back to last year’s trade.

L.A. Times columnist T.J. Simers, for instance, suggested yesterday that team owner Frank McCourt and DePodesta are too obsessed with computers to put together a good team.

“This season DePodesta took away Adrian Beltre and Alex Cora, two of [manger Jim] Tracy’s favorites along with Paul Lo Duca,” Simers wrote, “while bringing in loners such as Jeff Kent and J.D. Drew, who don’t even shake hands after crossing home plate on the same play. I sometimes wonder if they have been introduced to each other.”

Beltre, whom DePodesta declined to re-sign after his monster 2004, is currently hitting .236 with five home runs for the Mariners and looking like one of the worst free agent busts of all time after signing a five-year, $64 million deal; Cora is hitting .230 with one homer for the Indians. DePodesta has made mistakes running the Dodgers. But choosing to pay Drew and Kent, established stars who are having good seasons, rather than Beltre and Cora did not seem at the time to be a particularly bad idea, and certainly does not seem so now.

What’s puzzling about blaming the Dodgers’ fall from first place on these smart moves is that it’s perfectly fair to blame it on several clearly idiotic decisions DePodesta has made.

The real reason the Dodgers have fallen 6 1/2 games back isn’t chemistry, it’s that the pitching has been horrible. Playing in a good pitcher’s park, the team is third in the league in runs scored – and their opponents have scored seven more runs. Their ERA is fourth-worst in the league. A great deal of that is DePodesta’s fault.

Take Scott Erickson, for instance. The team’s fifth starter had a 7.87 ERA in 2000, 5.55 in 2002, and 6.67 in 2004; he missed 2001 and 2003 entirely. He’s 37 and doesn’t break 85 mph on the radar gun. There is no possible reason a contending team should be content to give him the ball – and yet there he is, with eight starts under his belt this season and an entirely predictable 6.75 ERA.

Erickson is the worst of a number of failing pitchers who reflect a flaw in the way this team is built. No-names like D.J. Houlton (7.41 ERA) and Buddy Carlyle (8.36) are given chance after chance to earn a spot in the bullpen even though there’s no particular reason to think they’re any good. It seems at times as if the Dodgers are more interested in proving the theory that good bullpens can be built out of literally whatever pitchers are lying around than in actually building a good bullpen.

Or take the third-base situation. The Dodgers’ rotation is built around groundball pitchers like Derek Lowe, Odalis Perez, and Jeff Weaver. The idea is that in Dodger Stadium, which severely cuts down batting average but not power, groundball pitchers are worth more than they would be elsewhere. This is a sensible theory, but to cater to a groundball staff you have to have an infield that can catch the ball.

The Dodgers have the wonderful Cesar Izturis at short, the unremarkable Choi at first, and the underrated Kent at second. What they don’t have is a third baseman. Six men have played the position this year, none racking up more than 63 at-bats. Jose Valentin, an aging slugger with the range for shortstop but not the hands for third, was installed as the starter and made five errors in 24 games, during which he hit .194, before being injured. In the month since, the team hasn’t even settled on the most reliable gloveman available, instead shuffling through a mix of inept minor-league and Japanese veterans, along with first baseman Olmedo Saenz.

It should not surprise anyone that a team willing to play Saenz at third behind a groundball staff is having a problem preventing runs. That is, in a nutshell, the real problem with DePodesta’s Dodgers. Knowing how to evaluate players against the market is great, but it doesn’t matter if you don’t do the follow-through work.

I picked this team to win the pennant before the season, and it won’t surprise me if they manage to pull it out. But De-Podesta will have to get a real third baseman and some real pitchers, and stop relying on whatever theory it is that makes him think that Scott Erickson or Jose Valentin can make meaningful contributions to his team. That, and not the common sense that tells him that Jeff Kent is better than Alex Cora, is the real problem in Los Angeles.