SAN ANTONIO — Earlier than many of the Dodgers entrance workplace had even arrived in San Antonio on Monday for Main League Baseball’s annual normal managers conferences, a sure stress was already being utilized on Andrew Friedman and Co.
Lower than every week faraway from successful the World Sequence, a number of Dodgers members voiced their need for the staff to maintain its core intact for subsequent 12 months, and retain as many affect items from this season’s roster as attainable for a 2025 title protection.
At a fan occasion at a Elevating Cane’s restaurant in Alhambra on Monday morning, Kiké Hernández pounded that drum, stating his want to stay with the Dodgers as he enters free company following an up-and-down common season however monstrous October efficiency.
“I really, really hope I’m back next year so we can run it back,” Hernández mentioned to a gathering of greater than 500 followers, the road receiving raucous applause. “So make sure you guys talk to Friedman and those guys, and let them know.”
Supervisor Dave Roberts not-so-subtly hinted the identical throughout an interview on Mookie Betts’ “On Base” podcast, when requested what was on his vacation wishlist for the staff.
“I want to bring back a guy we had in the bullpen this year,” he mentioned with a sly grin, referring to fellow free-agent Blake Treinen, who turned the Dodgers’ most trusted reliever within the playoffs.
“I would love for Santa to bring me another bullpen arm who is a high-leverage free agent,” he mentioned, seemingly alluding to the Dodgers’ different veteran free-agent reliever this offseason, Joe Kelly.
“And I want to bring a guy that had a couple big homers for us in the postseason … and is from a Latin American country,” he added with amusing, an outline that utilized to each Kiké Hernández and fellow free-agent outfielder Teoscar Hernández.
Already this week, the Dodgers’ entrance workplace began placing a few of these plans into motion. The staff picked up its 2025 membership choices for veteran shortstop Miguel Rojas and backup catcher Austin Barnes. Longtime pitcher Clayton Kershaw declined his participant choice for 2025, however totally intends to return to Los Angeles on a brand new contract. Teoscar Hernández mentioned he would “do everything in my power to come back,” too.
Nonetheless, a lot work stays to be completed.
On Monday, the Dodgers declined to increase a one-year, $21 million qualifying supply to pitcher Walker Buehler, leaving the door open for different groups to aim to signal him in free company.
One other beginning pitcher, Southland native and key commerce deadline acquisition Jack Flaherty, can also be on the open market, the place he may fetch gives past what the Dodgers are prepared to spend.
The Dodgers will nearly definitely should make different exterior additions, too.
Their rotation stays in want of reinforcements — in a 12 months the place the free-agent market is headlined by two former Cy Younger award winners Blake Snell (a previous Dodgers free-agent goal) and Corbin Burnes (whom the Dodgers had curiosity in buying and selling for final offseason), and may embody 23-year-old Japanese star Roki Sasaki if he’s posted by his Nippon Skilled Baseball league membership.
The lineup will should be bolstered, too, both by way of the addition of an outfielder (the Dodgers have the cash and contending monitor file to enchantment to this 12 months’s greatest free-agent, Juan Soto) or a full-time shortstop (Willy Adames, one other long-time goal of the Dodgers’ front-office, is the largest title amongst that place group on this winter’s market).
Nonetheless, Dodger gamers felt just like the 2024 roster proved itself better than the sum of its components within the playoffs, managing to beat a litany of beginning pitching accidents by making a clubhouse tradition that Kiké Hernández in comparison with the franchise’s 2020 World Sequence squad.
“I mean, it took every single one of us in the locker room to do what we accomplished, and that doesn’t happen without the unit,” Hernández mentioned. “That is the one thing that stands out the most about our October run, is how close we were. It brings memories back to 2020. That’s why we did well in 2020.
“But in 2020, we were all locked in a hotel for a month. And this year, to be able to be that together throughout a whole month, when everybody gets to go back home after games, you can only hope to be able to bring the whole group back and run it back next year again.”
In some ways, the Dodgers’ strategy to each Hernándezes will function a sign of how strongly that hope is permeating the entrance workplace.
Teoscar Hernández must be in line for an enormous payday after his 33-homer marketing campaign, one more likely to result in a sturdy market which may take a look at how far the Dodgers are prepared to go to maintain him.
Kiké Hernández gives a unique proposition, with the membership having to weigh his regular-season struggles (he batted simply .229 and had a below-league-average OPS) along with his postseason heroics, when he batted .294 and hit — as Roberts famous — two key residence runs within the Nationwide League Division and Championship Sequence.
Each gamers turned glue guys on a staff that, whereas missing one overarching chief, bonded collectively by getting contributions from throughout the roster.
And each may assist replicate that tradition once more in 2025, hoping to get the prospect to stay in Los Angeles and defend their World Sequence title.
“We won the World Series a couple days ago, but I truly believe that this team is going to be even better next year,” Hernández mentioned. “I know there’s going to be a lot of moving pieces. But, you know, a guy can only hope.”
