It’s been an unrealized aim of Andrew Friedman’s for years. This summer season, nevertheless, it lastly may come to fruition.
As he does at the beginning of each winter, the Dodgers’ president of baseball operations set lofty ambitions for his or her exercise this offseason. He needed to strengthen a proficient crew, one simply months faraway from successful the franchise’s first full-season World Collection title in three and a half many years, with much more star energy. He needed to bolster roster depth throughout the board, particularly a pitching employees that was ravaged by accidents.
Most of all, he needed to keep away from a state of affairs wherein the membership as soon as once more must make hefty additions on the midsummer commerce deadline.
“It’s been my goal the last however many years — and I failed miserably at it — but my goal is to avoid ‘July to buy,’” Friedman mentioned finally month’s winter conferences. “I do not want to buy in July. I feel like the more times I say it out loud, the better chance it has to actually be a thing.”
Quick-forward a couple of weeks, and he simply could be in place to make it a actuality. The Dodgers upgraded their beginning rotation with the signings of two-time Cy Younger Award winner Blake Snell and 23-year-old Japanese phenom Roki Sasaki — even with three different starters in Shohei Ohtani, Tony Gonsolin and Dustin Might set to return from accidents to take the mound once more.
They’ve rounded out a star-studded lineup by retaining key contributor Teoscar Hernández and including veteran outfielder Michael Conforto and Korean utility man Hyeseong Kim — two notable additions which have flown beneath the radar amid the blockbuster strikes.
Even within the bullpen, the place the Dodgers re-signed Blake Treinen final month, they haven’t been afraid to maintain spending. On Thursday, they finalized their four-year, $72-million contract with high free-agent reliever Tanner Scott, a lockdown left-hander who common supervisor Brandon Gomes mentioned will “get a ton of opportunities to close games.” Additionally they have been in severe talks to signal one other veteran reliever, Kirby Yates, although they would want to clear a 40-man roster spot earlier than finishing that potential signing.
Put all of it collectively, and the Dodgers have taken the most effective rosters in baseball and fattened it. They absorbed the exhausting classes they realized lately — when their postseason successes and failures usually have been outlined by the standard of their deal-making on the commerce deadline — and charted a extra aggressive plan of action in preparation for his or her World Collection protection.
“Obviously things can happen, you never know,” Friedman added. “But that’s our game plan. To have a really talented team as we head into spring training, give that team a chance to jell and bond together, and not need to go to market in July when prices are two times what they are at other times.”
To see how critically the Dodgers have taken that plan, look no additional than the best way it contrasts to final winter — when their gorgeous $1-billion spending spree, together with a record-breaking $700-million signing of Ohtani, nonetheless left foreseeable holes of their top-heavy crew.
Again then, the membership improved its rotation with the acquisitions of Tyler Glasnow and Yoshinobu Yamamoto. But it surely additionally bypassed different doable influence gamers on the commerce market, then got here up empty in a late free-agent bid for Snell.
As an alternative of totally reinforcing the pitching employees in any respect prices, they reached the midway level of the season struggling to seek out wholesome our bodies. And whereas a last-second commerce for Jack Flaherty on the deadline finally stabilized the employees, it got here at the price of two well-regarded prospects.
An analogous state of affairs performed out at shortstop. Moderately than fill the place — an space of want since Trea Turner’s departure the 12 months prior — with a star free agent or commerce goal, the Dodgers started spring coaching with Gavin Lux penciled into the place, then shortly pivoted to Mookie Betts shortly earlier than the season.
When that didn’t work out, with Betts scuffling defensively at his new place even earlier than he missed two months due to a damaged hand, the Dodgers needed to discover another. It arrived within the type of Tommy Edman, acquired together with reliever Michael Kopech — yet one more vital addition to a bullpen that unexpectedly had been whittled down by damage issues and ballooning workload — in a three-team deal. However that transfer value them three extra prospects.
“Every year the goal is to not go out and add [at the trade deadline],” Gomes mentioned Thursday. “I think for this year, the support from ownership has allowed us to go out and do that in a way, to continue to see how the free-agent market is playing out and be opportunistic on adding really talented players.”
The breadth of these additions — which, with Yates, would come with six gamers ranked in MLB Commerce Rumors’ high 50 free brokers this offseason and greater than $450 million in complete spending — has induced consternation round baseball, elevating questions on whether or not the Dodgers have gotten far too superior for the remainder of the game.
Contained in the workplaces in Chavez Ravine, nevertheless, crew officers view the strikes not a lot as a method to lap the competitors, however moderately as requisite insurance coverage for a crew making an attempt to keep away from a repeat of its hectic deadline dealings.
“We feel like what we’re charged with doing is putting a team together that puts us in the best possible position to bring another championship to L.A.,” Gomes mentioned.
And to try this, it means beefing up the roster to some extent the place even dangerous damage luck, sudden struggles and unknowable variables of a 162-game season appear unlikely to knock the Dodgers off their path.
