The contract status of Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman has led to some speculation about the executive’s future in Los Angeles, though team president Stan Kasten left little doubt that he expects Friedman to stay with the team. When asked by Bill Plunkett of the Orange County Register if Friedman would continue to run the team’s front office in 2020, Kasten said “I am completely certain of that, yes.”
More details weren’t forthcoming, as Kasten cited team policy against discussing executive contracts. Friedman has also declined to talk about the impending end of the original five-year deal he signed with the team in October 2014.
Despite the lack of public knowledge about any negotiations, as Plunkett put it, “Kasten sounds like a man who knows a contract extension will be negotiated and announced soon enough.” In fact, it wouldn’t even be surprising if a new deal has already been reached (or at least mostly worked out), and the club is simply waiting until the end of the season to hold a press conference. Some teams don’t even publicize front office extensions whatsoever, though given the high-profile nature of the expiration of Friedman’s deal, one would expect some type of formal announcement.
Under Friedman, the Dodgers have won five consecutive NL West titles, winning no fewer than 91 games in each of those seasons. The club has advanced to the World Series in each of the last two years, and while the championship remains elusive, the Dodgers remain one of the heavy favorites to finally capture the Commissioner’s Trophy this fall.
While Los Angeles was already on a run of success before Friedman’s arrival, he has continued the organization’s calling card of drafting and developing homegrown stars — Walker Buehler, Will D. Smith and Gavin Lux were all drafted during Friedman’s time with the team and are already contributing to the current roster. Friedman’s front office has also shown a penchant for finding unheralded players (such as Max Muncy and Chris Taylor) who have broken out as regulars in L.A.
These factors and a general reluctance to overbid on free agent talent has caused the Dodgers’ payroll to drop from record highs at the start of Friedman’s tenure to a 2018 payroll that got the team back under the luxury tax threshold. The Dodgers are still among the league’s biggest spenders and the club hasn’t been hesitant to re-sign key players (i.e. Clayton Kershaw, Kenley Jansen, Justin Turner) to hefty contracts, though Friedman has brought much greater efficiency to how the team allocates its many resources.
If Friedman did have a desire for a change of scenery, he would immediately garner a lot of interest from around baseball, even from teams who already have a GM or baseball ops president but are looking to make an upgrade. The Red Sox are the only team with an open GM position, and they’d stand out as a natural suitor, as they would undoubtedly be keen to see if Friedman could replicate his success in keeping another big-market team in contention while trimming payroll.
No bullpen no ring
The last 3 champions disagree. (Cubs only had a dominant closer and nothing else)
Dodgers are the Braves of this century.
@Curt, I was thinking the same thing. Dodgers dominate the the National League in the regular season, then come World Series time are nowhere to be found. I remember those times very well from the 90’s.
Until the dodgers lose the WS!
This is a non story
The Dude’s Gone if they don’t win series, their only one Problem, Houston!
Astro whip them again !
Friedman would never go to the Red Sox!
Doubtful he would even consent to an interview.
If, (and it is a big if), Red Sox ever got to the point of interviewing Friedman?!
Friedman would then ask Red Sox Ownership Q’s as to what happened to the last 4-5 successful GMs.?!
Red Sox would hem and haw and not give him a straight answer.
Then, Friedman would call the last 4-5 successful Red Sox GMs that got fired/dumped for their loyalty to the Red Sox and get their take on what happened.
Then, Friedman, armed with that info, would pass on the Red Sox…
Definitely. No need to go to a team that fires a World Series winning GM. Idk how the Red Sox are going to attract anyone with credentials to take on the GM role with long term loyalty.
Unless Andrew Friedman comes up with a different system for Dave Roberts or the next manager of the team to use then Friedman should not return because after last years world series loss Andrew Friedman admitted his system is a failure when it comes to the playoffs
The amount of people with bad takes like these is scary. Dodgers are tied with the Astros for best ran team in baseball.
This assumes ownership cares more about winning championships than making money. Friedman has his job and no doubt he will keep it because he’s very good at optimizing profits. Anybody who doubts that should google his boss, Stan Kasten.
Why fans 1) don’t understand that championships and payroll are mutually exclusive and 2) that the Dodgers have spent more money than any team on payroll over the last 5 years and it’s not even close is a mystery to me.
payroll ranks:
2018 – Red Sox 1, Dodgers 3 (the Giants were #2)
2017 – Dodgers 1, Astros 18
2016 – Dodgers 1, Cubs 14
2015 – Dodgers 1, Royals 16
2014 – Dodgers 1, Giants 7
The largest payroll in 2019 – the Red Sox – will not win the WS. We’ll see about #2 – the Cubs. The Dodgers, by the way, are 4th right behind the Yankees. And the prohibitive favorite Astros? 8th.
Anyone that slams the Dodgers for not spending money just simply doesn’t know the facts. The Dodgers developed and executed a plan that gives them an excellent opportunity to win a championship every year and will continue for several years to come.
First off, I know the facts, backwards, forwards, and inside-out. Then, note that my comment didn’t refer to payroll. At all. My point (and I thought this was clearly stated the first time) is that Friedman’s job, first and foremost, is running the Dodgers the Stan Kasten way. For those unfamiliar with the history, Kasten won 14 straight division pennants for the Braves, and in that time, one World Series.
Now, how do you defy the odds that way? By protecting your controllable talent above all else even at the expense of giving them the best opportunity to go all the way in any given year. This approach results in a team that might be competitive for years at a time, but rarely good enough. It keeps the fans in the seats, waiting for the big prize that seldom if ever comes. Ticket prices can be raised every year. Profit is optimized. And what’s happening with the Dodgers? Exactly the same thing. What a coincidence. Not.
I’m always amazed by the fans who don’t seem to understand that baseball is a business, owned by people who want to make as much money as possible from it.
The Braves played in 5 WS in the 90s. How can you possibly say they weren’t good enough? Stan Kasten doesn’t play the games. He didnt blow games in the 90s for the Braves. He certainly didn’t give up a HR to Marwin Gonzalez or not win a game with 7 runs of support. Saying these teams aren’t good enough is just wrong.
Sigh. Because they lost four of them. So that’s how you can say they weren’t good enough. Success in baseball is measured by winning. At least by the fans it should be.
Stan Kasten is the president. He runs the organization, according to his design or he isn’t really the president. Which he is. I made very specific points about what that means. You might try responding to them.
Your whole points are built on sand. The Dodgers and Braves not winning enough titles has nothing to do with ownership avoiding luxury taxes or only wanting to be max profitable. There is more than enough evidence to prove how wrong you are. In 91 the World Series went to 7 games and extra innings. But sure Kasten didn’t have that team built good enough to win. There are so many small things that went wrong for the Dodgers in 2017 that if you just change the outcome of 1 of those they win the title. Baseball is a crapshoot and the best team rarely wins. Last year they dod but their front office is already in complete shambles.
The problem with your entire argument is it seems to be based on the idea that baseball is random. No, baseball is not a crapshoot, it’s a game of probabilities, which is far from the same thing. It’s about the giving your team the best chance of winning. Nobody, not even Dodger fans, thought the Dodgers had the best chance of winning the World Series last year. If they had it would have been a major upset. Boston was clearly the better team. Add to that, they seem to have the better approach, if winning the entire thing is important. Four championships in 15 years. No fan anywhere would gripe about that.
But again, you haven’t actually responded to a single thing I said. Big hint: it has little to nothing to do with payrolls or play-by-play accounts.
If its not payroll or the game then what are you looking to hear? The only other theme I see you talking about is putting your team in the position to be the best in baseball. Friedman has done that reguardless of what you think about player moves. If II remeber correctly you advocated hard for Kimbrel. Definitely did for Vazquez. Your ideas of why they are not the #1 overall team have beem wrong
I’m not looking to hear anything. At this point I am responding to the fact that you are trying to make my point more complicated than it is, or about something other than what I am saying. One or the other.
What I am saying here very simply is that the Dodgers under Friedman and Kasten have proven to be very reluctant to trade some of the future to get results in the more immediate term. This formula can field competitive teams but seldom produces winners. The winners make the midseason adjustments they need to be prepared to face the tough October competition. Over and over we see how this works, so it should be no mystery. Where that philosophy comes from, and what kind of results it has produced, should be no mystery either.
You also don’t seem to be willing to acknowledge that team owners and fans are not looking for the same thing out of the game. I think once you do a lot of things become clearer. You can wait a long time before you’ll hear anyone with the Dodgers organization say this team’s loyal fans have waited long enough for a championship. You’ll die waiting, because they never do. At some point you have to realize that they don’t say it because they don’t believe it. And if they can continue to sell more tickets at skyrocketing prices, then why should they?
Yes, I thought they should have gone after Kimbrel, and Vasquez too. Those were clear needs. The argument against pursuing the best available quality bullpen arms when you know that’s your biggest vulnerability has to be based entirely on a magic crystal ball.
Friedman literally said 30 years is too long last year when they clinched in Milwaukee. Did they not trade good prospect capital for Hill Reddick, Darvish and Machado. All of those were rentals who boosted the team in the “now”. I can assure you Kimbrel was not hindsight. His peripherals and performance showed a decline was coming. Vazquez, ok no one saw that coming. We all know its a business. They want to wim and if they come up short im willing to bet they make a significant addition to the club
I literally cannot find him saying this, at that time or any other. But I can easily find Kasten extolling the virtues of not paying the CBT, and I can also find Friedman saying that he expects the bullpen to be good this year, and if it isn’t, he will fix it. How’d that work out? Those are just a couple of the empty promises he’s made over the years. Bottom line, Friedman and Kasten are completely on the same page with each other, and that’s why Kasten is so confident that Friedman isn’t going anywhere.
We all know it’s a business, but do we all know ownership judges victory based on how often the turnstiles click?
The bullpen got much better in June and his acquisition has a 0.83 ERA. How is that an empty promise, he did improve it. Its no coincidence most of the blown games are because of tryouts to players that won’t be there in October aka when Yimi, Caleb Fergeson, Floro. Also Jansen but in the playoffs he wont have the luxury of blowing a game and still being the closer.
It got better because it could have hardly gotten worse. I wouldn’t get too excited by a handful of innings from Kolarek. They don’t look much like the much larger sample of his work. Sadler doesn’t look terrible but again the body of his work says he’s mediocre. We’ve seen a steady march of their sort on the Dodgers. Few find a way to stick and very few do you want to see in must-win situations. Jansen is obviously the biggest issue and with ten days of the regular season left to play I don’t where they’ve got a Plan B for closing. Maeda? Hill? Kelly? The two rookies? Alka-seltzer?
I dont have any issue with Kelly closing but the problem would be needing him as a fireman earlier in the game. Baez doesn’t scare me either if he had to close
Using either Kelly or Baez in the ninth would certainly be defensible given what we’ve seen from Jansen all season, but it would also certainly be a paper clips and bailing wire approach to closing that we should not be seeing on a team with championship hopes.
Lmao they made two world series
And the last time they won one was during the Reagan administration, before all but a few of the players on the current team were even born. Kind of a long time, don’t you think? Dodger fans kind of do. Get yourself out to Dodger Stadium and you will feel the impatience.
So no, I’m not LMAO over that.
It would be down right ridiculous for the Dodgers to get rid of Andrew Friedman. Being a Giants fan I can only hope it happens though, maybe they’ll finally stop spanking us like they have been for the past 5 years.
friedman or not, dodgers were swept by the angels!
Who cares about the Angels?
Actually, the Dodgers have an open GM position too. It wasn’t filled after Zaidi left.
The dodgers will choke in the playoffs like they always do. Bullpen is the biggest problem ever year. but they never fix it and never will. Yeah they spent money but look who they spent it on? They will blow it again in the playoffs or world series. Friedman will never get a ring or a championship. Jensan will blow it!!!
Their non-ace starters will go to the bullpen and all will be well. Rich Hill and company.
Who is Jensan?
They spent it on Joe Kelly the guy with the 100 mph fastball and nast hook. Hows the other big rp signings Familia, Robertson, Soria, Hurrera worked out?
Come on Mr. Moreno bring him in and let him run the team.