(Photo Credit: Hans Gutknecht)
While the Los Angeles Dodgers decided to embark on a brand new front office structure during the winter of 2014, the game of baseball itself was experiencing an evolution of sorts, as the national pastime began morphing into a game of numbers, analytics and financial management as opposed to seeing the most dominant clubs succeed with intangible qualities like grit, wit and desire.
And as the game evolved, so did the Dodgers. Gone as general manager was Ned Colletti, a hard-nosed sports executive from Illinois who spent time with the Cubs and Giants before being hand-picked by owner Frank McCourt in 2005 to lead the troops in Tinseltown.