MLB: Blue-collar Colletti at helm of new-look Dodgers

Ned Colletti entertains…questions from MLB.

“People talk about the payroll, ‘Oh, gee, the payroll’s over $200 million,’” Colletti said Sunday in an interview with MLB.com at Camelback Ranch. “You know, we were at $90 million last year. You’re the Dodgers and you play in Los Angeles at Dodger Stadium, and you’ve got a chance to draw almost four million people a year. And you’ve got two great baseball cities in Boston and Philly, and their payrolls have been in the $170-$180 [million] range, with two smaller ballparks, too, two smaller areas. If that’s where they’re at and the Yankees are way up there, too, shouldn’t we be somewhere between the Yankees and those two clubs with our payroll, $190-$200[million]?

“If that’s where we were, if that’s where we should have been, is [an increase to over $200 million] a big deal? No, it’s not a big deal. The big deal to me is not that we’re at $200 [million] it’s that we were at $90 [million]. That’s the big deal. If it was $190 last year and we signed [Zack] Greinke and we went up to $210, is it a big deal? No.”

...“Some people like to learn only when it’s convenient,” Colletti says. “But what is important is what you learn when it’s inconvenient, when you have to fight through and deal with adversity. That’s when you really learn, I think.

“That’s really also when you learn about other people. I think our staff did great. Our people stayed in there. [Manager Don Mattingly] kept everybody focused on winning games. Even though our payroll kept shrinking, shrinking, shrinking and the Giants kept winning and their payroll kept going higher while ours kept going lower. We never complained about it, we just said, ‘Hey, our job is to figure out how to win today’s game.’

“We did the best we could. You can’t control results. The only thing you can control, and I ask this of everybody that works in baseball ops, is your own effort. If that’s pure, it that’s everything that everybody’s got, we’ll let the results come however they come.”