Does Ken Gurnick Know That Ned Colletti Actually Sucks?

Apparently not.




I'll just touch on a few points:

but this is Ned Colletti's club. He traded for Andre Ethier and Manny Ramirez, he refused to trade away Matt Kemp and Clayton Kershaw, and he signed Randy Wolf and Vicente Padilla.

Do you know why he refused to trade Kemp and Kershaw? Because they were our best offensive and pitching prospects, respectively, and projected to be really really good to elite players. I will not give him credit for not doing an idiotic thing like trading away your best prospects. And on the subject of top prospects, no mention of Colletti severely underselling two of the team's best prospects the last two seasons and shipping them out of town. And while he did an intelligent thing in acquiring Manny, it's not like that deal didn't also happen to pretty much fall into his lap. The Ethier move was excellent, but I'll go out on a limb and assume that had more to do with Logan White than it did with Ned Colletti and his baseball expertise.

Nobody could have more impact than Ramirez last year, but Colletti has been equally successful plugging in overlooked and underrated players such as Casey Blake, whose professional demeanor and steady play haven't wavered this year.

You know what's funny, I didn't realize that they started measuring "professional demeanor". I think it's listed right in between grit and clubhouse presence on Baseball Reference, right ahead of WAR. Again, no mention of the severe cost of trading for Blake. And if by steady play, you mean a .251/.313/.460/.773 (100 OPS+, 1.0 WAR) line in 58 games with the team last year, without even mentioning the .267/.333/.367/.700 line with 1 XBH in 8 playoff games last year, then yeah, steady as she goes, steady as she goes. Of course he's been much better this year on both sides of the ball (3.9 WAR), but if you mention the good, you should also mention the horrendous.

With Jonathan Broxton closing, Sherrill's eighth innings are sometimes overlooked. But he hasn't been scored upon in 22 of the 23 times Torre has used him, for a microscopic 0.42 ERA.

Actually, it's been Broxton who's been overlooked/underrated/shitted on this year, especially since Sherrill arrived. Many have called for Sherrill to replace Big Jon, somehow forgetting that Broxton's been the best relief pitcher in baseball this year. And no mention of the overpayment (Josh Bell) for Sherrill.

He's more successful than the five general managers who preceded him, if not more secure, even with the failures of free-agent signings Jason Schmidt and Andruw Jones.

See what old Ken does here? He casually slips in the horrendous deals Colletti's made, hoping that you won't read until the end and see this paragraph. He also leaves out Juan Pierre, the undervaluing of prospects, specifically top prospects, the poor handling of Blake DeWitt this season, the lack of trust in young players, the unwillingness to let those young players (most of the time) play and develop, etc etc.