Another 10 Days, A Few More Bullets Avoided

Wohoo!  The Angels stacked a lot of money on a palette, and airlifted it via helicopter to Torrii Hunter's house.  Now the dodgers won't be able to sign him.  I've also read that Aaron Rowand has been asking for a similar type of palette delivered to his house but teams are backing off.  Ned Colletti has been interviewing very well as of late and seems to be committing more and more to young players.  In addition, he seems less likely to add stopgap veterans in the future.  That's great to hear, but...  seemingly out of nowhere the dodgers may have swooped down and picked up a carp, in 32 year old starting pitcher Hiroki Kuroda.  If you want the LA Times version of the same thing it's discussed here.  With the way Colletti has swooped up on Furcal, Schmidt, and Pierre in past offseasons, this could be real.  It would be a great story to have a new free agent japanese pitcher on the dodgers.  If the contract is somewhere between 7-9 million a year for 3 years or less I'll be O.K. with that.  Another plus is it probably makes Esteban Loaiza expendable.  

But, my take on things is that the new object of Ned's collecting depth has shifted from middle infielders to pitching.  Pitching, despite Ned's efforts, hasn't been able to last deep enough into games which leads to taxing a great but not miracle working bullpen.  As I've said before Proctor will probably help out with that.  This could also be a sign that Schmidt's recovery may not be too comforting to Colletti.  Who knows?  But acquiring decent starting pitching for the right price is almost always a positive thing.

Stay tuned...