Colletti brings stability to Dodgers
11/16/2005Frank McCourt's constant retooling of the Los Angeles Dodgers front office over the last year has left his human resources department with a truckload of overtime stubs and his fans with a truckload of concerns.
But Wednesday's announcement of the hiring of respected, veteran baseball man Ned Colletti as the team's new general manager should do a lot to get the storied franchise and its large fan base back on the road to respectability.
The recent backstory is not so pretty. The banged-up Dodgers lost 91 games last year in McCourt's sophomore year as team owner, and the consistent dependability that the franchise seemed to represent for decades started to slip a little bit. There was plenty of fallout, too.
Manager Jim Tracy and the club agreed to part ways at the end of the season. Soon after, general manager Paul DePodesta, the Harvard whiz-kid and supporting star to Oakland A's super-GM Billy Beane, was dismissed by McCourt despite being given a five-year contract at the age of 31 before the 2004 season.
So, after the Dodgers finished their most disappointing season in recent memory, there was no manager and no GM.
No problem.
The Dodgers were in need of stability, and they got it.
Colletti, 50, is as "old-school" as DePodesta was new and will bring time-honored traits that might have gotten lost in the shuffle over the last two years.
He's been in baseball for 24 years, almost half of his life, and has done just about everything a front office employee can do. For the last nine years, he was the assistant to San Francisco Giants GM Brian Sabean. In that role, Colletti did a lot of the dirty work, hammering out salary arbitration cases, managing payroll and assisting in the acquisition of players.
Before joining the Giants, Colletti was in the media relations and baseball operations departments of the Chicago Cubs.
Most important, Colletti has been a winner.
The Giants have averaged 91 wins a year dating back to 1997, and Colletti was a big part of San Francisco's division championship clubs in 1997, 2000 and 2003. He also was there for the team's Wild Card run and National League pennant in 2002, when the Giants fell to the Angels in seven games in the World Series.
"This guy's been affiliated with winners all his life, and consistent winners," McCourt said. "The record, I think, speaks for itself."
So does Colletti's hardscrabble, poverty-stricken upbringing on the outskirts of Chicago.
"I've had to be street smart since I was a little kid," Colletti said. "I've had to know who's right, who's wrong, who's pulling my leg, who's got integrity, who I can trust. I've had to live that way my entire life, and because of it, I've been able to separate the good from the bad, the true from the false, the winners from the losers, the champions from the also-rans."
Colletti is going to have to do a lot of that in his new post, and he's going to be expected to get a lot of it done quickly.
The 2005 Dodgers were decimated by injuries, which led to a team batting average that ranked 15th in the 16-team NL and a team ERA that ranked 12th.
Now Colletti has to rebuild, and he said he'll be asking a lot of questions in the next few weeks.
First, he'll have to find a manager.
DePodesta interviewed five candidates, including Terry Collins, before McCourt interviewed Rangers pitching coach and former Dodgers ace Orel Hershiser.
And then there's personnel to think about. The Dodgers have several free agents -- Jeff Weaver, Olmedo Saenz, Elmer Dessens and Paul Bako -- to consider from their own roster and other decisions to make regarding first base, third base and enigmatic center fielder Milton Bradley.
"We need to get to work," Colletti said. "There's a lot of work to do. There's a lot of philosophical discussions I need to have with the baseball staff to really determine how far off the young players are.
"For me, that's one of the most important decisions we're going to make in the next few months -- as to who to get involved with via trade or free agency and their shelf life to be productive versus the up-and-coming kid and knowing when they're ready to step in and be a big-time player at Dodger Stadium."
There's no doubt Colletti will be working hard to get this situation back on track, which is something Dodgers fans will appreciate after the ups and downs that have so far defined the McCourt era.
According to the owner, Colletti has it all.
"He has a high level of integrity, he's honest, hard-working, energetic, trustworthy, loyal, takes responsibility, accountable, loves and respects the game, loves and respects people," McCourt said.
For the Dodgers and their fans, it sounds like a heck of a start.
Source: http://losangeles.dodgers.mlb.com/
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home