Dodgers Web musings: Are the Angels now L.A.’s No. 1 team?

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Heard that one before.

Heard it when Disney bought the team. When the Angels won their first World Series in 2002. When Arte Moreno bought the team and signed Vladimir Guerrero. And when Frank McCourt drove the Dodgers into bankruptcy.

And, of course, now that the Angels’ off-season has been just a tad more impressive than that of the Dodgers’.

You sign the best hitter of his generation, Albert Pujols, and the top starter available, C.J. Wilson, and people tend to notice.

The Times’ T.J. Simers said the Angels’ moves were clearly in response to the Dodgers signing Aaron Harang and Jerry Hairston Jr. Wrote Simers: ‘There’s only one Los Angeles baseball team that anyone cares about and it isn’t located in Los Angeles.’

Added ESPN/LA’s Tony Jackson: ‘The Dodgers are all about history and tradition and lore. The Angels are all about the here and now, and the future, both short- and long-term.’

For the Dodgers, it’s a bad convergence of the darkest point in their franchise history and one of the highest for the Angels. And it should be noted that last season the Angels, for the first time, outdrew the Dodgers in attendance.

Also on the web:

-- The roster is looking full, but General Manager Ned Colletti tells Dodgers.com’s Ken Gurnick: ‘ ... There’s also more work to do. We’re by far a finished product. Take the rest of the winter off? No.’

Colletti can’t seem to stop his love affair with utility infielders. Gurnick wrote that the Dodgers had been trying to trade for the Mets’ Daniel Murphy.

-- The Times’ Bill Shaikin and Kevin Baxter explain how Frank McCourt enabled the Angels to finance their stunning signings by maximizing their own TV-rights deal.

-- The Times’ Esmeralda Bermudez and Eric Spillman have more troubling details about James Loney’s arrest last month on suspicion of driving under the influence.

-- Gurnick also has Clayton Kershaw’s agent saying they’re in no hurry to sign a long-term deal.

-- The Times’ Joe Flint writes that the gloves are coming off between Time Warner Cable and Fox Sports in the battle over Dodgers media rights. The 2004 contract that prevented the Dodgers and Time Warner from partnering for a regional sports network doesn’t apply to Time Warner Cable, that company argues, because it was spun off as its own seperate operation in 2009.

-- True Blue L.A.’s Eric Stephen has an overview of all the Dodgers’ player moves this off-season.

-- Scott Boras, funny man? Who knew? Speaking to The Times’ Dylan Hernandez on the off-season spending of the Dodgers and Mets: ‘Normally, they’re in the steaks section, and I found them in the fruits-and-nuts category a lot.’

-- Dodgers individual spring training tickets are now on sale.

-- Steve Dilbeck