Ned Colletti the Gunslimger

Ned Colletti the gunslinger, or shall we say Stan Kasten, Magic Johnson and the Guggenheim group as gunslingers?

They pluck Hanley Ramirez away from the Marlins in the latest Jeffery Loria fire sale, they get Adrain Gonzales, Josh Beckett, Carl Crawford and Nick Punto from last year's Valentine/Boston fiasco, and now, they pay 25 million to a Korean team for negotiating rights to Ryu Hyu-Jin, a guy they forsee as their third starter should everything go right, we're talking negotiation here, not even the actual contract.

Not that I'm objecting. The generally underwhelming performance by the post-trade Dodgers is overshadowed, in my view, by the fact that their are owners who actually want to win, by owners who will invest in the franchise, by owners who see the Dodgers as what they are, a classic baseball franchise who needs to always be in champion contnetion conversations.

The genius of Ned Colletti has always been his ability to scrape together successful teams with limited means at his disposal. For many years he was a thorn in the dodgers side, working his magic with the Giants. For the last few years, he has kept the Dodgers competitive almost every year, despite the ownersjip shenanigans.

Now he has money to play with. Now he has a solid baseball guy, Kasten, behind him. he also has Mr. Los Angeles himself, Magic Johnson behind him. he also has the big bucks of Guggenheim behind him. It will be interesting to see how he does. it will be interesting to be baseball be relevant in L.A. again, instead of the faded, mis-used relic it had become.

Go for it, Ned!