Congrats to the Phillies — and especially to Jayson Werth, who was one of the all-time good guys during his stint with the Dodgers — on winning the World Series. Now, would somebody please light the hot stove? Players who are eligible for free agency can start filing tomorrow. Ned Colletti said today that he still hasn’t spoken with Scott Boras (the two HAVE exchanged voice mails) about ANY of his Dodgers clients, not only Manny Ramirez but also Derek Lowe, Greg Maddux, Tony Abreu and Andruw Jones (Abreu and Jones are NOT free agents). Ned said he has spoken with the agents for Rafael Furcal, Casey Blake and Nomar Garciaparra, but only in a very preliminary manner. … Ned also said a couple of other interesting things today, the most interesting being that the club’s player-development system needs to get better at, well, player development. His exact quotes will be in tomorrow’s paper, as will a comment he made about Russell Martin possibly benefiting from not catching as often. … I did receive some sad news today. The Dodgers have fired their entire Vero Beach staff, which consisted of three people. But they were three of the nicest, coolest, most professional folks you could ever work with, co-general managers Katie Siegfried and Shawn Marette and communications manager Christa McElyea. I spoke with Katie today. She said they were all hoping to be brought to Arizona and that they were all disappointed it didn’t happen. But she also said all three of them were free to apply for similar jobs in Glendale, although those jobs are being filled as part of a joint venture between the Dodgers and Chicago White Sox (who apparently haven’t even officially determined whether they’ll be joining the Dodgers in Glendale next spring or if they’ll put off their move from Tucson to 2010). … That’s about it for now. Sorry about the long posting drought, but I have been extremely busy with moving, the details of which I’ll be posting here in the next day or two. Thanks for your patience. And thanks for all the great emails I have received from several of you who took the time to write over the past few days.
