Showing posts with label prospects. Show all posts
Showing posts with label prospects. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Ned Colletti, The Luckiest Man in Sports
I probably don't need to write much on this topic.
I could simply say, "look at the picture above. Imagine that Frank McCourt is the one in the foreground and that Ned Colletti is the one in the background, out of focus. It's a metaphor for the freedom that Colletti has enjoyed to make horrible decision after horrible decision thanks to the distraction that McCourt has caused by being a horrible, horrible owner."
But it's worth a deeper look to comprehend how the general manager the person that is most directly responsible for the collapse of the Dodgers since he was hired in 2006.
McCourt deserves every negative word said about him -- and only those who have followed this thing for years and read every detailed, disgusting account of how he and his family abused Dodger funds for personal use know just how much of a scumbag he really is -- but at the end of the day, Ned Colletti had almost $100 million a year to spend on his major league baseball team. He may not have had access to the resources to go after C.C. Sabathia or Cliff Lee, but neither did 28 other teams, and most of them are considerably better put-together than the Blue.
Few would look at the the team over the last year and a half -- or even the playoff years of 2008 and 2009, for that matter -- and argue that the general manager has done a particularly good job, but he has also been largely absent from the discussion of how this franchise has gone from promising to the precipice of the Pennant to pathetic. When the Dodgers reached consecutive National League Championship Series in 2008 and 2009, they were ahead of schedule. Clayton Kershaw was a rookie in '08 and neither Matt Kemp nor Andre Ethier had hit their prime, so who could blame you for expecting to see them playing in October for years to come?
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