Colletti stays the course with Billingsley

Dodgers GM Ned Colletti revealed in an interview yesterday on SIRIUS XM that he has spoken to All-Star pitcher Chad Billingsley numerous times this winter about his late-season struggles. Colletti is not inclined to trade the young right-hander.

“It’s tough to replace a Chad Billingsley. I know people are disappointed with what transpired the last two-plus months of the season. Prior to that, you could probably compare him to a lot of the upper echelon starting pitching in the game who’s 26, 27 years old and younger. What we need to do is we don’t need to subtract as much as we need to add. He struggled. We’ll see what he learns from the struggle because everybody loses. It’s what you learn when you lose. If I’m going to trade a good young pitcher, we’d have to get two pretty good starters back, which people just don’t have to trade. I’m confident in Chad that he can come back. I’ve talked to him a handful of times this winter…

“Sometimes, you have to make your guys better. You just can’t continue to expect to fill everything from the outside and continue to sign free agents and continue to trade away players. You end up in the same spot more times than not and most of the time worse off than before you started making moves…

“A lot of people were down on Matt Kemp a couple of years ago. It takes time. You have to be patient. I think the toughest thing for a lot of us to do is to fight off the urge to be impatient.”