A Disturbance in the Force in the Dodger Nation. General manager Ned Colletti said some snippy things about outfielder Matt Kemp on Tuesday, as the Dodgers were on their way to being swept in New York and falling to 8-13.

Now, 8-13 isn’t very meaningful in the context of “162”, but when you’ve been to the NLCS in consecutive seasons and you have a large and passionate fanbase, well, the heat gets turned up quickly.

In the blogosphere, which is overcrowded now with stat-spewing geeks who don’t believe what their eyes tell them until whatever metric they currently are fondling produces “truth” … the consensus seems to be that Ned is an idiot for going after his best player, Saint Matthew of Chavez Ravine.

A few wary souls, worried about being cudgeled by stat-wise and baseball-illiterate wonks, have suggested that, uh, maybe Matt Kemp hasn’t been All That so far. Shaky in the field and on the basepaths. Dangerous opinions, my friends. Dangerous! Because the Sons of Bill James have 28 metrics, including a few they just dreamed up, that will indicate otherwise.

What this debate is lacking is any attention paid to the Elephant in the Dodger Blue room.

If you want villains, if you want to place blame … start with Frank and Jamie McCourt.

Ned Colletti, Matt Kemp and millions of Dodgers fans are being held hostage in a McCourt World,  and those reptilian monsters must chortle every time they see the inmates fighting amongst themselves.

Big picture, folks! Big picture!

Some background, before we move on to the real issue.

–Ned is no rocket scientist. He is not about to replace Branch Rickey in the GM pantheon. But he also is not an idiot. I imagine he falls somewhere in the middle of the GM spectrum.

He has made several blunders of significant proportions. Specifically, the contracts he awarded to Jason Schmidt ($47 million), Andruw Jones ($36.2 million) and Juan Pierre ($44 million).

He got nothing from Schmidt, less than nothing from ‘Druw (the guy played enough to hurt the club) and not much at all from Juan other than singles and some stolen bases — or exactly what Juan Pierre gives you, which doesn’t really help you win, even if he’s a good guy. At least Ned cut his losses on Juanster by foisting him on the White Sox over the winter and saving, apparently half of the $18.5 mill the Dodgers still owed him.

But Ned has gotten some things right. He got Manny Ramirez for the final months of the 2008 season when (pre-drug-bust) Manny crushed the ball and became a fan favorite — even while the Red Sox were paying him. That was brilliant, in the short-term. Ned also refused to break up the young core of players that should make this team at least competitive for the next few years. And he signed Randy Wolf and Orlando Hudson to one-year contracts that helped the team get to the 2009 NLCS. Again, well done.

So, Ned may not be the answer, entirely. But he ain’t the real problem, either.

–And what about Matt Kemp? Great talent. No question. Power, speed, youth. The club’s best hitter as long as they can keep them, and he’s here at least through 2011 after he signed for two years and $11 mill before this season.

But, Matt Kemp has issues that guys who have never been in a major-league clubhouse, let alone the Dodgers’ clubhouse)  couldn’t know about.  (And one semi-prominent Dodgers blogger of clearly high self-regard lives in Manhattan and apparently has been in Dodger Stadium twice in his life; now there’s a guy who really knows the team on a personal level, who shares the pain of Dodgers fans.)

I have not been in the Dodgers clubhouse in nearly a year. But Matt Kemp has been around since pretty much since 2007. I saw a lot of him.

He can give the impression that he isn’t particularly interested in what he is doing. And that apparent nonchalance can be transferred to the field, too. Dodgers fans remember Jeff Kent, yes? Crabby, misanthropic Jeff Kent. He was at the center of the “vets vs. kids” tensions during the final days of the 2007 season, and the kid who ticked off Jeff Kent most was, yes, Matt Kemp. Kent didn’t seem to care about anything but his numbers, but oh my gosh, he did. And I believed then (and I do now) that he thought that Matt Kemp could nonchalant himself right into a career far less significant than it could be. Think (Dodgers fans) of Pedro Guerrero or Raul Mondesi. Yes. That bad.

Matt Kemp also is not the brightest bulb on the team. Now, of course, baseball players don’t need to be very smart. But Kemp stands out. He was the guy who ran, full-speed, into a new advertising sign in right field at the home opener in 2007, landing on the disabled list and losing about half of an MLB season. (Hey, it was a new sign! I hadn’t noticed!) Last year, I wrote on this blog that I believed he was the Dodgers’ biggest dolt because he made such obvious baserunning blunders. (Which infuriated the wonkettes, who sprang to his defense by citing numbers about his going from first to third rather than recalling the indefensible baserunning gaffes he still makes. You know, the ones that we can see with our own eyes. “Anecdotal” stuff we should disregard until we’ve crunched the numbers.

But dumb stuff,  in real time in real games. Of the sort that apparently set off the Ned-St. Matthew dust-up.

To wit (from the L.A. Times’ Steve Dilbeck and Dylan Hernandez):

“Matt Kemp is off to a terrific start at the plate but has misplayed numerous balls in the outfield, and Tuesday reverted back to his earlier baserunning problems — running from second to third on a ball hit to short with no one on first and less than two outs.

Said Colletti to KABC radio’s Peter Tilden: “Some guys, I guess, think that they’re better than they are. They think the opposition’s just going to roll over and get beat by them. That obviously doesn’t happen.

“The baserunning’s below average. The defense is below average. Why is it? Because he got a new deal? I can’t tell you.”

To which Kemp responded, mildly:

“The new deal, that has nothing to do with anything. Of course it’s good to make money, but that’s not why I started playing this game. I started playing this game because I love the game, and I’m going to continue to love this game.”

Though his agent, Dave Stewart, was quite tart:

“What I suggest for Ned Colletti to do is look at himself in the mirror.”

OK. Fine. Interesting stuff. But this needs to stop.

Ned, Matt, bloggers, fans … you all are on the same side of this, even if you don’t realize it.

The other side is Dodgers ownership. Frank and/or Jamie McCourt.

It is the divorce of these cretins that is screwing with this franchise, distorting it and leading to pointless infighting. And the unwillingness for observers to look back at the true source of the club’s issues is, frankly, stunning. Even viewed from half a world away.

Let’s see, married couple who run the team are getting divorced, fighting for control of the club, arguing over how to split up millions of dollars and various mansions — all of it made possible by the annual 3.5-million-plus fans who march into Dodger Stadium and allow the club to shake them down for hundreds of dollars.

I wrote on this blog earlier this month that I Am Done Bleeding Dodger Blue as long as the McCourts (either of them) run this team.

In that post I linked to documents made public that outline their cynical plans to hike ticket prices and retard payroll. The enormous and grandiose plans they have for themselves that pivot on one (and only one) factor: Their ownership of the Dodgers.

For this, I was tarred by numerous readers. The consensus seemed to be that we must separate the team from its ownership.

Which is just plain daft.

These Dodgers are the expression of the McCourts. The Dodgers are the McCourts. Without the Dodgers, the McCourts are nothing. Without the McCourts, the Dodgers could be champions. Or contenders, at the least.

Do you think it was Ned Colletti who decided he couldn’t even offer arbitration to Randy Wolf and Orlando Hudson?

I say no. It was the McCourts (Frank, I suppose) hunkering down for the divorce battle, cutting and slashing payroll since last Fall. Even up the point of rejecting a chance to get four draft picks because of the potential cost involved.

Was it Ned Colletti who chose to sit around as Cliff Lee and Roy Halladay changed teams? Do you think Ned looked at his starting pitching, post-Wolf, and said, “Oh, we’re good with this.” Or was he up against a salary cap imposed by Frank and Jaime’s spendthrift ways, one that hamstrung him to the point that signing Jamey Carroll was The Big Offseason Move? (Unless you prefer Garret Anderson.)

This is a team that plays in the second-biggest baseball market in the country, yet now spends as if Dodger Stadium were in St. Louis or Seattle.

This is a team that had Vicente Padilla, career mediocrity, throwing on Opening Day … who opened the season with poor Charlie Haeger in the rotation. Along with the injury prone Hiroki Kuroda, the suddenly erratic Chad Billingsley and only guy other teams would like to have, Clayton Kershaw.

Oh, and the middle relief, culled from the scrap heap. On the cheap. Which is what the Dodgers are all about since Frank and Jaime went to court. And some fans thought the Dodgers could win with that pitching staff?

I later wrote that the fans ought to buy out the McCourts so we could turn everyday operations of the club to Peter O’Malley.

Now, Peter O’Malley may not be a Man of the People, but his family brought the club to Los Angeles. It genuinely was a family operation when he was here.  He may have run short of cash at the end, but never, ever was something other than the Dodgers his top priority.

People! Your enemies are not Ned Colletti or Matt Kemp. They are not the players or field managers — or general manager — of this on-the-cheap ballclub.

The rot at the heart of this franchise is named McCourt. As long as either one is in charge, the other will be getting paid for giving up his/her share, crippling the team’s options, turning the stadium’s turnstiles into cash points for two greedy, egomaniacal creatures.

Don’t blame the players. Don’t blame the messenger. Look at where this begins, the source of the infection. The McCourts.

If you want the situation to improve, stop buying tickets. Boycott the club until new ownership is in place. Till then, you’re just inmates brawling in the exercise yard … as the wardens watch and laugh from on high.