Though the Dodgers have been linked to several big names in both trade rumors and free agency, it’s been a pretty quiet offseason at Chavez Ravine, with the club’s one-year, $10MM deal with Blake Treinen standing out as the biggest move of note. The lack of action to date hasn’t sat well with many fans and pundits, including Bill Plaschke of the Los Angeles Times, though Dodgers president and CEO Stan Kasten strongly defended his club’s strategies in a recent phone conversation with Plaschke.
As one might expect, Kasten took issue with what he described as “the L.A. Times’ characterization that everyone hates us,” which he felt was incorrect given strong attendance numbers. While “for sure there are some fans…and a lot of people in the Twitterverse” who are critical of the Dodgers’ decisions, “based on the fans that support us…including this coming year…incredibly strong support and ticket sales…you keep trying to convince yourself that everyone hates us. I just think you’re wrong.”
Kasten denied that the Dodgers were in any way limited by payroll considerations, or lacked full commitment to winning their first World Series since 1988, saying “we really need” to capture that elusive title.
“There are metrics in business that are mostly private that we look at, and I’d say we feel successful there,” Kasten said. “But there’s no question that all of us who are competitive, from every owner that has a piece of the team to the junior people in the front office, we’re laser-focused on winning the World Series….It’s obviously not about what you spend, it is about the moves you make, the decisions you make. I think questioning those things, criticizing those things, that’s absolutely fair. But just to say there’s a [payroll] number you need to hit and if you don’t hit it you’re not trying, that’s just silly.”
To that end, Kasten noted that the Dodgers were fourth in spending last season, and are likely to be beyond the $208MM Competitive Balance Tax threshold by season’s end. Roster Resource’s Jason Martinez estimates that L.A. has a current luxury tax number of just under $189MM, though “the team we have now is not going to be the team we have to start the postseason,” Kasten said. “I expect that team, this year, it looks like it’s going to be well over the CBT, or somewhat over.”
The types of larger-salaried players who would boost a CBT number could come sooner rather than later, as Kasten said “there are guys that we think could be difference makers and we have pursued them, we are continuing to pursue them, when there is an opportunity we will certainly jump at it.” One of the players who was on the Dodgers’ radar earlier this winter was Gerrit Cole, though Kasten doesn’t believe Cole shared that interest in coming to L.A., no matter the dollars involved. Cole joined the Yankees on the largest contract ever given to a pitcher — a nine-year, $324MM deal.
“It is clear now, I think it was clear to us in the middle of the process, he wanted to be a Yankee, he just did,” Kasten said. “In retrospect, I think we were just the stalking horse to get a number he finally could get from a team he wanted to go to. I don’t have any quibble with his approach…it was all very fair, but he wants to be somewhere, he got a lot of money to be where he wanted to be.”
Whether adding a particular star player is necessarily the right move to finally put Los Angeles over the top in a World Series, however, is far from a certainty. Kasten points out that recent postseason heroes Daniel Hudson (with the Nationals in 2019) and Steve Pearce (with the Red Sox in 2019) were unheralded additions to their respective teams.
This strikes to the heart of the debate between Kasten and Plaschke, as the latter is concerned that the Dodgers’ focus on sustained success will keep the team from making a direct and concentrated push to end the championship drought in any one given year. Kasten, by contrast, feels that the team’s approach allows it to be in the hunt every season.
“We won 106 games and came a couple of outs away from beating the team that won the World Series, that doesn’t suggest to me a system that needs to be completely torn apart,” Kasten said. “What about the renewed pipeline, the old Dodger value of a player pipeline that I think we’ve had a reasonable amount of success at rebuilding? How about the kids that are homegrown Dodgers? We have a payroll of $200 million. How can you call us cheap? It blows my mind.“
They are clearly going about this off season with an “only bring in players that move the needle” mindset and thats not necessarily a bad thing.
There were several needle movers around this offseason. LA didnt bounce on any of them. F.O. is content with winning the division and going home empty handed in October.
Offering 300 million for a pitcher is a reasonable effort.
Not when they were well aware that the Yankees were offering more. It’s a move to pretend to the fans that they made a solid effort to sign him, knowing he’d take a higher offer.
Kasten says otherwise.
@Frisco, I don’t get the feeling that they are content with only winning the NL West. I think they desperately want a WS win, but they have become more disciplined under Friedman’s leadership and aren’t keen on big overpays for players who will be deadweight in the last few years of their contracts (like the Giants veterans). The Dodgers want a legit shot at the WS each year and are in a 7-8 year run of just that. I expect they will trade for an impact player or two soon, or at the deadline and be strong headed into October (again).
seems annoyed and defensive in the interview…avoids the “are you really all-in”
and to say this is more fun than ATL was…just not credible…
smug…arrogant…not all fans may hate you, but this one does
forgot to add…condescending…
The “private measure” comment comes off as out of touch but the rest of the interview he answered pretty fairly. If Plaschke and the LA times wants to constantly trash the ownership then expect smug responses.
nah…comes across as “i have done a lot and you haven’t…your opinion is wrong and means nothing to me”
biggest difference with Yankee ownership and Dodgers ownership…Yankees go the extra mile and say, “we need to win championshipS” plural…Dodgers happy to win division titles and waste the greatest pitcher since Pedro Martinez
Well it is wrong when they call them cheap yet they have a top 5 payroll every season. These people act like the Dodgers are the Mets when it comes to spending.
i’ll give you the Mets…they are worse with “we are all in”
my biggest issue with Dodgers is they never fix the bullpen…Joe Kelly??? That was bad.
why not sign or st least try to sign Will Smith this year?
Blake Treinen the best bullpem arm from 2018 seems like a solid attempt to me at fiximg the pen.
…and this is why I say the Nationals fans are quite possibly the best in MLB…..along with Giants fans.
For years the Nationals competed but lost in the playoffs. The fans continued to come out. Continued to support the FO. Continued to support the players that wore the uniform and gave standing ovations in Nationals Park during their 1st AB’s for all players that had left the team the previous off-season….with the singular exception of Bryce Harper.
Fans and the media of almost all MLB teams do nothing but complain. Whining like spoiled rotten little children because every single off-season daddybucks didn’t buy them the shiniest new toy on the market…….like that guarantees a championship (and when he buys them the toy and the team doesn’t win a championship they throw a childish fit).
The overgrown kids educated in Entitlement and playing baseball on computers have no clue that sports are competition, and winning is done by the players on the field.
Mr. Kasten’s history is working under John Schuerholz with the Braves – they constantly competed and ultimately won a WS. He moved onto the Nationals – which had been an awful Expos team that had traded away their farm system trying to win in Montreal. He helped build a solid organization that competed every year until they knocked the door down in 2019. Moved onto the Dodgers that had been flailing away for years never building a quality organization, and consequently never really competed for anything. Now they go to the playoffs 7 years in a row, and they suck?
Gads – you (overgrown) kids think this man is some sort of a lying loser to be called childish names and belittled? What have you accomplished in your lives?
I understood and agreed with all his comments.
Lots of fanbases whine but still show up. This is why ownership of those teams 1) feels no particular urgency to solve the problems or 2) are not punished if their efforts to address the problems fail. Complain all they want, the fan bases still show up. This is not limited to the Nats and Giants. Not at all. The Red Sox, for example, may not do as well as usual this year if they deal Betts and Price, but their fans will still come out in droves.
wow, look Stan Kasten has posted in a chat room…
looks like having an opinion means you’re entitled…
you are right the games are a competition, not just analytics…but since that seems to be where the FO is, here in one…that bullpen has llet them down EVERY uear for the last 7 years…100% of the time…
STOP WASTING THE BEST PITCHER OF THE GENERATION AND FIELD A CHAMPIONSHIP!!!
“Never building a quality organization”… how old are you, Vandals?
Well said!
Seems like they’ve both done well with their current strategies.
But if he has a bounce back season and due for a big long term contract next offseason. Friedman will let him walk and bring in a 28 year old journeyman who’s been on 8 different teams in the past 2 seasons to fill the void.
Will Smith signed with his hometown team.
Well when the toys are Kazmir Brandon McCarthy Joe Blanton Rich Hill AJ Pollock and the Joe Kelleys of the world and you are a top 3 grossing team every year yea there is a problem but you forgot to mention that in your short story
These guys have no clue how to spend money thats not even theirs to help supplement them to a championship (if they even really want it)- That is the gripe not hiding behind “well nothing guarantees anything in this world” The latter sounds like pure loser talk
Do you mean in Clown Years ?
My accomplishments are far greater than Kasten’s. I have saved people’s lives. Kasten has accrued money and spent a long time in sports. Big deal! It’s a children’s game. I would say almost any profession contributes more to society than a baseball owner or executive.
They’re cheap in the sense to have a players money deferred. Yes, their payroll is high but on what?? I don’t know which Jensen will pitch the 9th… Kershaw is at best a #2 starter and making $30M+ annually?? Where do I start with AJ?! You have a bunch of you g kids making a lot through arb, trade them. Dodgers continue to sellout and people still pay $16 for a tall boy.
It’s really Rizzo who built the current Nats organization, and he deserves even more credit for that than he does for his body of work as a wheeler-dealer.
I hope you aren’t talking about mr choke himself, Clayton the worst Kershaw?!?!
@mchavez22
Look at kershaws numbers from 2019 again. I know it’s a popular narrative to call kershaw over the hill and over paid but that doesn’t make it true.
Kershaw had the 10th best ERA in all of baseball last year. He might be the dodgers number 2 going forward because of buehler but calling him an “at best a #2” is quite laughable considering how many teams would kill for his production at the top of their rotation.
As for how much he makes…the current estimate for how much 1 win of war is worth is 1 win = 9 million
Kershaw was worth 3.6bWAR last year which comes to 32.6m and he got paid…31m.
As for where do you start with AJ? How about the infection in his elbow that completely ruined his first half and the fact that once they finally figured out the problem and fixed it he went out and put up a 130 ops+ in 205 second half AB’s? That seems like a fair place to start to me but I guess it doesn’t quite support what you’re trying to sell.
You could also mention the fact that he only makes 12m per so it’s not like he’s getting paid like a superstar anyways…but I get it.
Last but not least…the issue of the dodgers only caring about money/not caring about winning a ring…
Don’t quote on this one but I believe they’ve spent the 4th(?) most money in baseball over the last 5 years
The dodgers have the most wins in baseball in the 5 years since Friedman took over.
5 division titles
2 national league pennants
Set a franchise record for wins in a season
2 World Series appearances lost one of them in game 7.
That’s the past. What about going forward?
Well…they currently have one of the best 40 rosters in baseball. It’s young, deep,
They also have one of the best farm systems in baseball.
I think vandals nailed it. Fans are absolutely spoiled and lack perspective if they think the dodgers aren’t trying hard enough to win. They’re quite obviously trying…they just aren’t willing to mortgage the future to do it.
I think it is less that Dodgers’ fans are spoiled by the expectation that they should get better results and more that they are desperate to do so: Most Dodger fans would, at this point, give up many years of future competitiveness to win that title. All those wins and titles and WS appearances don’t mollify the pain: they make it worse. they make it feel like the opportunity is being lost, and the best chance to see the team win in their lifetimes is being or has been squandered, and that the window will close and nothing will come of it. At this point, after 2 WS losses and historic regular seasons, nothing but a WS title will soothe that feeling.
But it’s an impossible ask: there’s nothing they can do that makes them likely to win a given world series. They are on the best path to win one, eventually. Probably, with good luck, they would have done so by now. But that’s a hard pill for people to swallow: that nothing the team does for the next 9 months matters, even though, barring injury, it’s true. I can say for myself, the 2017 season was really fun to watch, exciting, record setting .. 2019 was just boring, the team never played a game with any kind of stakes in the regular season, and it felt like they were preparing for October in May – because they were. A baseball season where your only tension is “OH GOD DID THAT HBP BREAK HIS HAND?! WHEW HES OK” is not the most enjoyable experience, because the -expected- outcome is also the best outcome; any variance is disappointment.
This isn’t a fair standard, but it’s one that’s going to follow the Dodgers as a franchise until they break through and get that first title. It’s not quite an Indians/Cubs/Red Sox drought, but 30+ years is enough that for many fans, it has not happened in their memory, or not meaningfully so (myself, I was 7 in 1988, and had absolutely no idea what it meant to have won the WS).
Nats fans are great? Guess you forgot to watch the World Series when they focused their angst toward 1 guy during pivotal moments of the biggest best of 7 tournament in baseball.
1 WAR is worth $4 Million.
That pitcher is, perhaps, the biggest reason the Dodgers have not won a World Series in the past 7-8 seasons. His playoff performance has cost the team wins.
Absolutely agree @itsgood2btheking
As I watched Hersheiser pitch to another WS win in 1988 I never would have imagined we would someday be talking about whether the Dodgers could win another WS in my lifetime. Now as I watch year after year, and I turn 66, it just may be true. We have turned into the Cubs. Wow…
@junts. Yes, you get it. I’ve been going to Dodger games for decades (most of that time on a season ticket) and I can report that the mood in the ballpark took a turn for the worse last year. The home team is getting booed, something I’d never seen before. Fan expectations have gone from an anticipation of victory to the fear of losing, again. Platchke refers to this in the first line of his piece in a way that might have been too subtle for some, but it was his way of asking if Kasten is hearing how the fans’ mood has changed. His answer is basically no, I’m deaf to that. If he does hear it, he sure doesn’t care. He made that clear enough.
And where does that come from? Having attended Game 7 in 2017 and Game 5 in 2018 (as well as NLDS Game 2 last year) and watching the fans from another city celebrate in our house again and again, is where. Dodger fans groaning. Dodger fans booing. Dodger fans heading for the exits of playoff games before they are over. If I was running that business I’d be concerned. I’d at look up from counting my receipts long enough to try to figure it out, and I sure wouldn’t risk offending the paying customers. But then I’m not Stan Kasten.
@bill: But we can always watch those reruns of Kirk Gibson’s home run and if you have grandkids you can tell them stories about how you remember it.
Giants fans are some of the most fair weather in the world. You clearly have no idea what you are talking about. I lived in Northern California for 15 years and when the Giants were not winning you could not find a Giants fan anywhere and when the Warriors were not winning you could not find a Warriors fan anywhere. .Same fan base. I remember an article about Tim Hudson contemplating joining the Giants and he asked Barry Zito about playing for the Giants. He told Hudson the fans didn’t really support them until they won a World Series, but after that they were great. You know how to ramble,, vandals…the problem is that you don’t know the difference between knowing what you are talking about and not knowing what you are talking about.
That’s why this is always a lose/lose. If they don’t sign Kelly, then the fans would complain that they didn’t sign anyone. If they do sign Kelly, and he flops, then it’s ‘why did they sign Kelly?’.
yea he sucks in the postseason tho
With all the decline in newspaper circulation, it’s weird that in Los Angeles Plaschke (who doesn’t understand as much as your typical Fangraphs writer) continues to control the terms of the debate..
Plaschke is an old-school moron in the tradition of Murray Chass. He knows nothing about how a modern-day team should be run.
@baycommuter
Nailed it.
It really does make zero sense. Plaschke is a tool but he’s not the only one at the LATimes who takes pleasure in poking fun of the “nerds” leading the dodgers.
I guess he just struck a cord with the older gen who would much prefer to hear him make jokes about the geek squad and their pocket protectors rather than learn about all these new age fancy shmancy statistics.
The entire position is just plain lazy. They’ve somehow crafted this position that the dodgers aren’t trying to win because A) well, they haven’t won one yet in 5 years(everybody that’s really trying does!) B) they aren’t really trying because they haven’t signed the biggest FA’s(because those deals have such a high success rate) and C) they aren’t really trying because they won’t trade their top prospects(seager, Urias, bellinger, buehler, Verdugo, Lux, May, Smith, Ruiz etc etc)…I mean I’m sure Cole hamels could’ve helped way back when but boy am I glad that the dodgers didn’t trade seager and Urias for him.
Trading Urias for someone nasty would have been nice though and I’m sure they could’ve. But hindsight etc. I think Dodgers mgmt running team exceptionally well. Waiting for deadline to fill needs makes most sense. Way more downside that upside on a nine-year deal for a pitcher. Would be good if they could trade some quantity for quality with a team for whom that makes sense, but their rarely are any. Indians make some sense with both Lindor and Clevinger but they would have to bite on something. I like the one-year deal for Treinen, way more upside than downside. Much better than Kelly deal. Maybe should’ve been more aggressive going for Betances but sounds like he wanted to be in NY and Mets gave him a strong deal.
He should trash ownership they do this every year.they are always in the running for everbody but get nobody.they are content on winning divisions.why not trade lux for Lindor he is a much better player than lux and he is only 26.can somebody explain that to me
I think the question is how much more value will Lindor provide than a healthy Corey Seager?
If you want an answer to that question, mosey on over to Fangraphs and look at the Dodgers 2020 projections
Gavin Lux’s top comparable player in the history of professional baseball at the same age is Alan Trammell, when Trammell was entering his 4th MLB season, where he began a streak of 11 consecutive seasons of 4+ war and forged a hall of fame career.
Why the heck would you trade 6 years of that for 2 years of a guy who is only barely better now? It is foolish Francisco Lindor is good. He’s probably going to be better than Gavin Lux in 2020.
He probably will not be better than Gavin Lux in 2022 (when he would, you know, be a free agent).
He will definitely be worse than Gavin Lux in 2024
He will certainly be worse than Gavin Lux in 2025 – when Gavin Lux -will still be a Los Angeles Dodger, fool-, and Lindor will be halfway through his free agent contract.
No one trades prospects like that. It isn’t done (and correctly so), because it is foolish.
Thank you for this. It is about as clear and concise an explanation as I have seen on this website, of the LAD management philosophy and player acquisition strategy.
There are several people who have commented on this specific post who, over the past five years, have advocated trading Bellinger, Seager, Buehler, Urias for players comparable to Lindor at similar stages in their careers in equally shortsighted proposals.
Really appreciate your taking the time to put this discussion in proper perspective.
It is certain? I would agree if you say Lux MAY be better by 2024. Then again he MAY NOT be better by 2024. To say it is certain is your guess and opinion.
The only move the Dodgers should have made was at the manager position. A 106 win team with an enviable group of young, versatile future All Stars doesn’t need to spend on free agents. The players weren’t the reason they didn’t beat the Nationals. Poor, in game decisions cost them.
Well said and absolutely agree johndietz
Yep!
No,not enough starting pitching and bullpen collapses again
No,not enough starting pitching and bullpen collapses again
—————————————————————
So your three problems are:
1-Not enough rotation
2-BP collapses
3-And you led the league in ERA by a wide, wide margin.
Interesting set of issues. As a RS fan, I hope our biggest issue is that we have easily the best pitching in the league.
Each of the substantive arguments Kasten makes to refute Plaschke’s specious assertions are credible. This organization is incredibly successful–using just about any measure a baseball fan or writer can conjur.
Plaschke, and many LAD fans, would trade one WS championship for years of being a non-contender. That’s obvious. Kasten rejects that assumption as he understands: 1) it is never that simple (no FA or trade no matter hiw unbalanced can ever guarantee a WS), and 2) even if it were, it makes no sense from a business or competitive perspective.
Plaschke is an idiot who gets paid to be a contrarian and agitator. Good for Kasten for calling him out.
Nailed it. I used to watch Around the Horn maybe 15 years ago and it boggles my mind that someone is still paying money for Plaschke’s opinions.
“Plaschke is an idiot who gets paid to be a contrarian and agitator. Good for Kasten for calling him out.”
Ding ding ding we have a winner, folks. Traschke stinks.
And like a lot of dumb fans, he just doesn’t understand that success in the MLB playoffs involves a great deal of plain-old luck. Getting there each year should be the goal. Then you just have to hope it plays out to your advantage. Like Howie’s home run that was almost foul, for example.
When you get to be where Stan Kasten is in the world you get to speak your mind and expect fans to deal with it.
Always. And for some reason MLBTR decided to give this interview a positive spin by not including his complete quote, which was “childish, superficial and wrong.” Whether you agree with Kasten’s approach to running a team or not, at some point it simply becomes a matter of his demeaning his critics, as if they aren’t worthy of having an opinion. Without seeming to care he sweeps an awful lot of fans up in this too. The very fact that he resorts to this approach speaks volumes.
Also left out of the summary here was Platchke’s accurate reference to the often foul mood at Dodger Stadium this past year. This is something fans who actually spend time there have felt recently in ways they’ve never felt before. Also left out here was Kasten’s artless avoidance of the question about the TV blackout issue. This is something that greatly concerns Dodger fans, but apparently concerns Stan Kasten not at all.
It’s so difficult to imagine any other baseball executive talking this way, being so disconnected from the fans. Maybe if he got out of his press level box once in awhile and mixed it up with the paying customers he might learn something. He should try out the “childish, superficial and wrong” line that way and see how it goes over. I doubt he’s got the guts.
Should say Steve Pearce in 2018, not 19.
I think LA is going to make a big trade soon. I don’t know who will be involved but I think we are going to be shocked at who will be traded.
Interestingly, both Steve Pearce and Daniel Hudson were plucked from the Blue Jays. Perhaps, if a team is looking to add down the stretch, they should be scouting the Blue Jays now to see who might be worth adding ….
Ken Giles. Would help the pen, and is not too expensive – at least in terms of salary (I expect the Jays are looking for a couple of decent prospects)
LA could have Giles if they wanted and he’d certainly help the bullpen.
Every year the Dodgers say it’s not about spending $
They don’t want to forfeit draft picks
“This strikes to the heart of the debate between Kasten and Plaschke, as the latter is concerned that the Dodgers’ focus on sustained success will keep the team from making a direct and concentrated push to end the championship drought in any one given year. Kasten, by contrast, feels that the team’s approach allows it to be in the hunt every season.”
Kasten proves Plaschke’s point. Kasten is interested in sustained competitiveness rather than going all in to win a championship.
How many World Series did anyone win under anyone? How many managements have won multiple World Series in the last 30 years? Yankees, Giants, maybe Red Sox? Not like it’s a thing you just do, and it’s getting less and less doable as more teams being run better.
How many world series did Atlanta win under Kasten after what 8 division titles….1. Yes, maybe this year will be the one, but I don’t think so, not with Friedman at the helm. Oh yeah, and they should give some thought to WHY Rendon does not want to come to a team that is Hollywood and WHY Cole prefers NY. There is a reason the players are not choosing LA. Think about it Kasten and Co. They won’t spend this year or the next or the next or the next. But Guggenhiem is delighted!
LA is an ugly city. Yes they can live in the burbs but the commute is awful. It can sometimes take 2 hours to go 20 miles. And there are the taxes which is a small factor. I grew up in LA and I would rather play in AZ or Colorado than LA.
They will always have fan support and everyone else will always hate them. They’re the Raiders of baseball. Hope they spend $500M for another World Series loss.
You dont have the slightest clue how this works do you. I know you get giggity at the thought of them losing WS and spending a lot of money in the process but reality is they bring in at least double their payroll in revenue. So stick to being happy when they lose and avoid looking at payrolls lmao.
The fans who think that spending will result in a title are blind. At the end of the day you can put the best players on the field but can’t force them to execute. Time for the Roberts and team to execute.
saying ” look at the prospects” is really a shell game.. prospects are a pig in a poke.. a hope they sell you when they refuse to field the best teams they can afford..
If only the Angels had traded prospect Trout rather than stringing fans along about his potential impact.
Same thing Betts, Bregman, a hundred other guys.
It’s a complicated balancing game. Dumbing it down to anything less is just…dumb.
dumb is apparently all the mlb not taking trout #1… you are speaking after the fact.. after they became known quantities.. the fact remains of the top 100 prospects 75% failure rate to become long term pieces and the rate is even worse for pitchers in the top 100 prospects.. that is 80% failure rate..
Sustained success is great, and as long as the fans care about them competing each year, they don’t have to win a World Series for their model to be successful…for the front office. Look at the Cubs in 2016. They went all in and won a title. Every Cubs fan you talk to would say they’d rather win a WS and miss the playoffs/leave them early instead of constantly coming up short. Fans want an all-out effort to win. This team, as currently constructed, is worse than any from the last three years that failed to win. Fans want that drought snapped. You can’t constantly build for the future and expect anything to happen if your approach doesn’t change
#facts
The Cubs mad a ton of bad moves after their ’16 title that killed their window. They could have survived just moving Gleyber but Theo compounded it with bad moves after the face. This Dodgers team has way more depth than 18 and a better offensive core than 17. Taylor, Turner, Seager and Bellinger was the heart of 17 and Taylor isn’t even a starter anymore.
Those teams had pieces like Machado and Darvish that were added at the deadline. This time will likely have a similar piece. Your argument is fake because you are comparing pre-season roster to post-season roster.
LoneStarDodger … Absolutely not true. You should visit the Cubs site and see how many are killing Theo for wrecking the window. They believe the team would have won a few titles had he not given away the farm on a single roll. And they may be right.
Just because the Cubs blew the followup? For a better model I suggest the Red Sox. They aren’t competitive every year but I don’t know a fan on earth who wouldn’t exchange some division titles for those four championships over 16 years. I also wonder how many Cubs fans would exchange that one championship for few more short postseasons.
More importantly, imagine how those Cubs fans would feel if 1 play goes differently and they lose game 7 in 2016 instead, and they sacrifice their window for a World Series loss
Epstein wouldn’t have a job.
If there was a way to win a title 100% in exchange for a few years lacking in competitiveness, most Dodger fans and this entire front office would do it. But there’s no way to do that, so it’s not a strategy.
The Red Sox have shown otherwise. No, I am not talking about guarantees because we all should know that isn’t a thing in baseball. I am talking about the willingness to push some chips forward when you believe you have a winning hand. This doesn’t mean you win each of those bets. What it means is, if you don’t take a gamble once in awhile you’re probably never going to win.
The problem fundamentally as I see it is the Dodgers are being run like a corporation instead of as a sports franchise. Corporations are adverse to risk. They are about return on investment. For fans sports is about their team winning the big prize at the end of the season. That’s our investment. This is the disconnect I hear whenever Stan Kasten or Andy Friedman open their mouths. I will never buy into the corporate model of baseball, which is why I find these guys so irritataing. They can’t seem to bring themselves to show even an ounce of the passion for the game every fan brings to the ballpark every day. They are going to get criticized for that, and they deserve it.
What the Dodgers are doing is actually more likely to get you a WS title within the next 5 years than the alternative, even if you refuse to see it. That’s -why- it is their strategy.
How do you read so much about modern baseball and not understand the way that teams are built?
Also wait the Red Sox? The team that threw a tantrum and fired their GM -literally the season after winning the World Series- is your evidence that going all-in and failing would be .. palatable?
You don’t want the Dodgers to win. You want the Dodgers to win in a way that proves those filthy analytics are garbage and Giants fans were right all along about Madison Bumgarner and their Superior Character Playing the Game the Right Way.
How ridiculous.
Utter nonsense. Try showing some respect instead of trying to put words in my mouth and thoughts into my head. I’m perfectly capable of coming up with my own.
If he wants to prove they aren’t a cheap team he should trade some of those low paid guys like Buehler and may to the cubs for expensive Kris Bryant
Trading Buehler alone for Bryant would be idiotic.
God, that is a dumb comment, Gocubs. Trade two frontline starters for a 3rd baseman we do not need. Brilliant!
What blows my mind Stan is that your loyal Dodger fans who have subscribed to local satellite for the past several years have been unable to watch Dodger games, yet you have done little to nothing to improve the situation. You disgust me.
Nice Kasten. Won 106 and came within a out. Won’t get anyone but a scrap heap player and now going on 32 years. “Hey we are competitive” but won’t win. Do you think the teams fans that have recently won like the Royals really care they are “ competitive” every year or want to have the memory of winning it all. Go ahead and stay on your 32 year bender.
They won 106 games because the division is rebuilding. Same will happen again this year win the division by a big margin. Come playoff time they won’t make noise. Unless they get starting pitching or bullpen help.
MARK WALTER
What happened to Mark Walter?
He’s back in Chicago counting his money.
Should have gone after Will Harris and Will Smith.
You nailed it my friend ! Been 7 years and its the same story every year- Will Smith was a layup but hey that Joe Kelley has some major UPSIDE
They pay their guys and when they do spend it’s too day they spent, they sign guys they are garbage to over paid contacts in hopes that it’ll work out and they’ll look like geniuses and it hasn’t worked out so how about find a new approach and quit being cheap with the players rush actually deserve to be paid?? Quit over paying garbage players! Also yea, the payroll is high but it’s mostly him paying our guys and over paying those said garbage players like I said. They need to figure this out ASAP. We spend money on tickets, food and merch and they don’t give us those players that deserve to be paid!!
Folks are just so deeply delusional about the ability to buy titles in baseball.
I guess they should have traded Cody Bellinger for (checks notes) Brian Dozier in 2016.
I guess they should have traded Walker Buehler in 2017.
I guess they should have traded Alex Verdugo last offseason for a ‘regular outfielder’.
When was the last time the Dodgers said a prospect was untouchable and were wrong about it? It’s been years.
There are very few ways to improve this team on the field, and Lux, May, Gonsolin, and even Ruiz are likely to contribute to the 2020 Dodgers. If you want to improve the team, you need to add an impact player (4+ war player) without moving any of them. Good. Luck.
The Yankees have been delusional 27 times. This coming October will be the 28th time they have been delusional.
The Yankees won most of those titles long before the modern economic structure of baseball came into existence. The Yankees might be the favorite to win the 2020 WS, but it isn’t the most likely outcome – no team is ever more than 50% to win the WS before a season starts. The Yankees might open the season with 20% WS odds (4-1 would be pretty good), but that still means someone else wins 80% of the time.
The Yankees have won 7 titles since the advent of free agency. 4 of them were won with a massive, homegrown core (the Jeter=Williams=Posada+Pettitte+Rivera group, 96, 98, 99, 2000).
It is a delusion that anyone can buy titles in MLB. How frequently does the team leading MLB in payroll win the World Series?
Since 2000, the MLB team that lead the league in payroll has won the World Series 3 times:
2000 Yankees
2009 Yankees
2018 Red Sox
That is not exactly a sterling record of success for the Payroll Leader.On only a handful of other occaisions (2017 Dodgers, 2003 Yankees) has the payroll leader managed to even be the team that lost the World Series.
It is a fantasy. Payroll is correlated with winning, but not so strongly that one can ever be favored to win the WS. Really, it’s pretty much impossible to be more likely than not to win the World Series until you’re already in it. Baseball’s simply a game with too much variation for that.
yankees core was supplemented with free agents, which is all we are asking for
Well that’s 3 more times than the Dodgers have.
You have done better. You are delusional every day.
Junts1
“If you want to improve the team, you need to add an impact player (4+ war player) without moving any of them.”
That would have been Free Agency. The Dodgers passed on 4+ WAR players in Free Agency.
Did they? Kasten seems pretty open with the belief that Cole was just using them to run up the price for the Yankees (and their 8 years/$300m offer to him is, uh a real and serious offer that exceeded estimates of Cole’s contract at the start of the offseason).
Rendon was pretty open about not wanting the ‘hollywood lifestyle’.
Strasburg was never viewed by anyone as available to anyone besides the Nats unless they chose Rendon over him, and they did not.
How many other 4+ win players were out there? Donaldson, maybe, but for how long? It gets thin really fast after those dudes.
Wheeler’s not a 4 win pitcher; neither is Ryu. There are not a whole lot of 4 win players in major league baseball.
All the great players in the world and still NO TITLE.
Plaschke and the LA Times
Helping Mark Walter to hide by giving a platform to Mark Walter’s stooge.
So after winning so many games last season, what does the Dodgers have to show for it?
“Sustained success” doesn’t mean anything if you don’t win the World Series.
After losing some key players from last season’s team, would they be able to win as many games or go all the way?
We shall see…
I agree with what he’s saying. They aren’t cheap. That’s laughable. But they r kinda being smart this offseason. They r going to have big extension candidates coming up. And Bellinger will command huge money soon. Plus they have a lot of young guys who need to b added to the big league rosters soon. Where exactly r they lacking right now. The season starts today they have Muncy at 1B, Lux at 2B, Seager at SS and Turner at 3B. Bellinger, Pederson, Pollack, and Verdugo in the OF and Smith at C. Where’s the upgrade on the open market position wise? SP was the only real need. But Strasburg stayed put in Wash and Coke wanted to b a Yankee. They easily could resigned Ryu if they wanted to because he didn’t get a huge contract from the Jays. So obviously they want to make a permanent spot for May.
Private Business Metrics is code for “We’re making a ton of money and at the end of the day that’s our #1 goal”.
Thank you for spotting the elephant in the room. Some seem to be waiting for a bigger elephant.
The way I see it, they probably don’t need to add anyone to win the division, but they better make some upgrades in July. My optimistic side is thinking if Betts or Lindor or a good SP are still out there in July, their prices for trade may come down and this could turn out to be a brilliant maneuver. They’re renting these guys for October, not for April through June. But there’s also the risk they miss out on any impact players taking this strategy, so who knows.
Kasten can paint it any way it wants to, but if he wants to win a World Series, sooner or later he is going to have to trade away some top prospects to add that piece that makes the difference. If you add LIndor, you can afford to trade a Gavin Lux. You have enough other players to make up for his loss. If you are trading for Clevinger, you can move May & still have enough pitching. At some point, you have to part with a high end prospect to get over the hump. The Cubs did it with Torres in the Chapman deal & Chapman helped them win their long awaited World Series. If Kasten is comfortable with winning in the regular season, but never getting over the hump in the postseason, that is his choice. However, he shouldn’t get defensive when his fans get upset that the team won’t make that move to help them win a title
They could have won it without Chapman. That was a stupid trade for the Cubs.
Are you suggesting Lindor and Clevinger are all the Dodgers need to win a World Series? It may be but it’s a gamble on a system that has this team in contention year in and year out. By giving up too much, there is a big risk of having a hole to fill later if it doesnt work out. Believe me, living in the middle of gnat country in Nor Cal, I’m getting really tired of the World Series argument from all the fans around here but I’ll take our organizations position over the gnats any day.
That’s all they need to increase their chances, and increasing your chances is all you get to do in baseball.
I have yet to meet a dodger fan that actually likes the front office. Kasten is delusional.
Friedman is a great president to have. All of the out of touch fans you meet probably think Colleti is better.
Agreed. I don’t see anyone calling to bring back Colletti or Depodesta or McCourt or Fox for that matter. The tv thing sucks, for sure, but I’m not personally affected as an out-of-towner and I don’t think McCourt would have handled it any better.
Selective memory. Colletti managed to win several divisions while working for a bankrupt owner.
Frank went bankrupt in 2011. Colleti had 1 season under him like that. Whats the best thing the Dodgers did under Colleti? 3 un-competitive NLCS trips where they went down in 3-1 every time. Friedmans 3rd best result matched the best thing that happened under Colleti and they were actually competitive in that NLCS.
The Dodgers under the McCourts were in financial straits from the start because their purchase was over-leveraged, but they used the Dodgers as their personal piggybank just the same. The bankruptcy was a merely final product of all that mismanagement and marital bliss. But just look at how the Dodger payrolls ranked during those years and you’ll see it easily. Less easy to see but equally known is how McCourt (and Fox before him) also disinvested in the farm and scouting operations. Colletti should get some credit for winning divisions under such adverse conditions, but of course he never will from some because he lacks geek credentials. Friedman gets all the credit even though he’s had a lot more money behind him from the start. And so it goes.
2010 was the earliest when ownership became an issue so well look past those 2 dreadful seasons. 2006, 08, 09 were fun but those teams had no shot at winning a title. Now from 2013-14 with Guggenheim Colleti had a bloated roster that needed serious reconstruction, which Friedman did while still making the playoffs. The geek credentials is what told them to jump on trading Kemp/Dee and let Hanley walk. If Ned stayed in charge the Dodgers would have turned into the 2012 Phillies. But hey lets ignore all that and applaud the team for over achieving in 2008.
Wrong. Ownership became an issue the moment Peter O’Malley sold the team to Fox in 1997. They had no clue about how to run a ball club and began the process of running the Dodgers legendary farm and scouting system into the ground. They also weren’t much interested in spending on payroll. McCourt simply continued that process and complicated it further by being over-leveraged from day one.
Colletti’s “bloated roster” was created at the direction of ownership. He didn’t give himself permission to spend $275M on payroll. He was implementing the reboot at the direction of ownership. It’s difficult to tell whether you don’t know these facts or are just avoiding them. So I am not “applauding” anything, I am simply reminding anyone who cares to know of the facts and the history. But hey let’s all ignore that. Well you can, but I won’t. Sorry.
Kasten is right. With Lux ready to make the jump and a relatively deep system why go out and spend money just to spend money unless it’s for a top guy. Seager trade incoming!!! Things are happening behind the scenes…
…hang tight Dodgers fans 🙂
The fact that they have a deep system I think just annoys their fans more. They are unwilling to trade high end prospects for impact players and they don’t want to spend what is needed to get the top FA. They want to build a sustainable team, and that is great, but prospects wash out (even the really good ones), teams fall apart due to decline, injuries, etc. You only get so many chances before their window will close for good, especially with the teams in their division taking significant steps to improve. The Indians thought they could sit out last off-season and win the division. How’d that work?
Does anyone think they are a better team than they were last year, even when you consider the potential graduation of prospects?
“We won 106 games and came a couple of outs away from beating the team that won the World Series.”
That’s all I needed to hear. It’s obvious the front office is content with winning the NL West title every year and just making the postseason. As long as they are winning more than losing during the regular season and attendance is good. They have no desire to make any big changes.
We lost in the NLDS after being in back to back World Series and Kasten seems delighted that we were couple of outs away from beating the team that won the world series lol.
Tommy Lasorda is rolling in his grave!
Um, yeah, Tommy might be rolling around in his sleep number, but he’s still alive and kicking.
Yup its all in their speech if you listen……. There is literally no fire in this front office that so often times gives that small little edge come oct
Nobody is delighted they didn’t win the World Series. Glad your not in charge of Dodgers. The goal is to get to playoffs every year. After that it’s a crap shoot.
Lasorda is alive last time I looked. He’s not dead he’s napping
Or maybe you could not take that quote out of context. He was saying that in reguards to roster construction and that their isn’t a need to overhaul the team like fans want. But hey who needs to be logical, mobs are more fun. Tommy isn’t dead either.
The drought would’ve only been 10 years if your idol Tommy Lasorda didn’t have Pedro traded
Playoffs involve a lot of luck. World Series are hard to win, ya know. The Big Red Machine only got 2. The 1990s Braves only won one. The Yankees have only one title in almost the last 20 years, despite massive payrolls for most of those years, And like Billy Beane said, “his stuff doesn’t work in the playoffs.” There’s a great deal of LUCK involved once you’re in the tournament.
Part of the problem lies right in their speech…”We really need to win it”
It almost sounds as if they just want to get the monkey off the back so they can go back to comfortably sitting in front of their computers and show us all how “advanced and genius they are”
How about ” God damnit we are hungry and will do whatever it takes to win it” We have some of the best fans as suppported by the numbers and they deserve to see a winner in thier lifetime
If any of you are having sleeping problems put on a Stan Kasten or Andrew Friedman interview and you’ll be out in no time
I’m very happy the Dodgers didn’t get Cole. To expect a pitcher to maintain $324M level of excellence over 9 years without significant injury is ridiculous and then on top of that you give them no trades and opt outs while the team has no opt outs. The percentage that they’ll become a payroll ball and chain is very high and then us fans will scream because we can’t get the free agents due to zero payroll flexibility. But the Dodgers had other options then Cole and didn’t do it. My expectation is a trade and my guess is Friedman would prefer a three team trade then a one on one. Question is, will that happen? I agree with above poster that a huge issue is the field manager more then the general manager. Four years straight now I’ve watched this cheerleader try to manage playoffs like the regular season and he gets burned every time. As a season seat holder paying more then $100 per seat per game you bet I don’t want to go home disappointed year in and year out knowing we lost again due to poor decisions. I want to scream in joy not sorrow
I started to read what you said about the Cole deal but all I heard was “blah blah blah who cares about winning world series games against true aces”
He’s right. These huge pitcher contracts almost never work out for the team. Kevin Brown comes to mind from many years ago.
Well, fortunately not every team has an Anibal Sanchez to run out there that you can’t possibly beat.
I just get tired of reading that the Dodgers are in on this free agent or trade and nothing ever comes of it. I think this website might own some of the respondsibility as well
Dodger fans are acting like this ownership group and FO has been around for all 32 years of the drought. Point is they’ve come closer than McCourt and FOX.
Horseshoes and hand grenades
People just can’t accept the reality that there is nothing you can to do guarantee yourself a WS title. There are almost no significant ways to upgrade the roster, they just need to play better when it matters. There is no magic key to unlock a championship. The roster is, and has been, just about as good as it can get. What it needs is timely performance and maybe some good luck.
Their bull pen and Manager are garbage. That would be two areas they could have improved.
Of course there’s no way to guarantee a championship. Who ever says this? All any team can do is improve their chances of winning, and all any fan can ask of their team is to create best possible chance. And where exactly do you buy this “playing better when it matters” magic potion? I bet it would be big seller.
Which set of world series odds would you rather have over the next 5 years?
15% – 15% – 15% – 15% – 15%
or
19% – 16% – 14% – 10% – 7%?
When you give up players like Lux, May or Ruiz, you give up far more in future chances to win than you’re gaining in today’s chance to win, because there’s only so high you can push it before the games get played.
That’s the point: the potion doesn’t exist. The MOVE doesn’t exist. They do a -phenomenal- job of building a team that has a good chance to win the World Series every year. At some point, it’s up to the players to get it done. There’s nothing that Andrew Friedman can do but put a ridiculously talented roster out there and let them play.
The best team doesn’t win the World Series. Almost never, anyway
The best team(s) make the playoffs, and then the one of those teams that is the luckiest and the hottest at the right time wins the world series.
You guys want something impossible. There were like 3 players available in free agency who could have moved the needle even a little bit, and they chose to sign elsewhere (and in some cases, didn’t even consider offers from the Dodgers). After that, it is all fantasizing.
I know it isn’t super entertaining to consider, but literally the only thing that matters between now and July 31st of 2020 is that no one on the team suffer a major injury, and if no one does, probably nothing that happens on that date will matter either until October.
It is the curse of having this kind of roster. You don’t realize how good you have it to have absolutely zero drama about the regular season, in terms of title expectation.
It’s kind of the opposite in terms of being entertained, though: 2019 was the most boring regular season I’ve ever followed, since they never played a game with even moderate stakes.
Your answer is a fantasy based on totally made up numbers, and has basically nothing to do with my point anyway. They don’t need to give up anybody to sign free agents, they only have to give up profits for the investors. Preserving profits for investors has a lot of advocates around here. Never fails to surprise me. Once a team decides to prioritize profits then and only then are they in the position of having to trade away their best assets to give their team a better chance. This is an elective situation especially for a team with over $8B in guaranteed media revenue and 4M tickets sold (at skyrocketing prices). They’ve made their choice. Don’t the paying customers get any say? Not according to Kasten we don’t.
I don’t know who “you guys” are in this argument but Dodger fans have been ridiculously loyal to their team (see: tickets sales), right through two lousy ownerships, and through one of the longest championship droughts in the game’s history. The latter is becoming demoralizing to the fans, and all you need to prove this is attend some Dodger games. So when we see management pass on every free agent who could improve the team’s chances of postseason success, we have legitimate questions about whether they care as much about championships as we do. But again, not according to Kasten.
I also don’t need to be told by Kasten or anyone else how “good” we have it The people who say that kind of thing aren’t the ones buying season tickets year after year, decade after decade. I can fully appreciate that the Dodgers aren’t the Marlins or the Orioles, but the reason they aren’t is we, the dedicated fans of the Dodgers, support the team with our loyalty and dollars. They aren’t because we are paying for them not to be the Marlins or the Orioles. But again, not according to Kasten. According to Kasten we should be grateful he even lets us into Dodger Stadium, and if you don’t believe that, just read the entire article (or any other where he’s quoted, for that matter).
Nicely said BlueSkyLA. Wish we could mail it to Kasten. Oh, that’s right, he wouldn’t care.
Return to sender, address unknown…
Best post Ive seen in quiet some time Blue Sky kudos
I wonder what Dodger fans think the FO should have done and should DO this offseason.
His reason for missing out on Cole may or may not be true. If it wasn’t, do Dodgers fans think the Dodgers should have made a better offer?
What about Strasburg? I would think any fan is crazy if they think their team should have exceeded what the Nationals offered to resign him.
Ryu then. They did the same thing when Grienke was offered a monster contract, but is it the same here? I think the Dodgers made the right decision but I do recognize that this is more debatable. I dont think Ryu is going to repeat his 2019 performance ever again. The Blue Jays just pumped out $80 million for a pitcher who might not even give them 500 innings at the end of those 4 years and he isnt particularly effective in the playoffs either.
Rendon and Donaldson. Another one I’m curious about from Dodger fans. Should the Dodgers have beaten the offer to acquire Rendon? I see this contract as the least risky of the four talked about so far. I could see Dodger fans looking to sign Donaldson but they certainly have less motivation to risk a multi year deal to a middle aged third basemen.
The trade market for the Dodgers is even more interesting to me. Everyone loves the idea of getting Lindor or Clevenger but I haven’t seen many okay with the price it would take to get either.
If Dodger fans arent satisfied with what the team has accomplished then why not trade Lux, May, Ruiz, Gray, Downs and Gonsolin to the Indians for Lindor and Clevenger. After all, letting your home grown talent develop into productive players hasn’t worked, right? So why not trade it all in to try for a ring?
Add in Hand and done deal for me.
Hmm well they coulda worked around the fringes better couldnt they? 34 mill left and they let Hudson go for 5. and a half today ……… But hey just wait till all the merchandise gets shipped to Nordstom rack though right
You realize they have 34 more fckn dollars left and have made 1 signing so far?? Please explain………
Interesting debate here. One question? Where are the long term commitments to the young players on this team? Bellinger? Buehler? Maybe Seager? These guys will all walk in the name of sustainability. This front office counts on fans being blind to there profit first motives.
I think the Dodgers would gladly extend players, but both Bellinger and Seager are Boras clients, and Boras clients almost never sign pre-arb extensions.
They might have better luck with Buehler or Lux or some of the guys to come.
I suspect that if they could get one of those deals done they would jump on it, but they’re quite difficult to do. Bellinger’s arbitration salaries are about to go up rapidly and give him a lot less reason to sign such a deal, too: this website predicts him to make 11.6m this year in Arb1, and he is a Super 2 so he’s going to go through arbitration 4 times: He’ll break Betts’ arbitration record if he doesn’t extend.
As a whole though this team has been really good about keeping the core pieces even if they do reach ‘free agency’ (kershaw, turner, jansen). I don’t think you should just assume they’ll all be allowed to walk without any meaningful effort
I would expect that the time to work out a Bellinger deal is in a couple years when his arb money is more or less what he’d be paid on the market – 2 years from FA is the most common extension timeframe.
The Dodgers will trade any of those players, who won’t sign team friendly deals. Belanger will be traded for prospects, within the next two years. Because they don’t want to sign anyone long term. They will then come out publicly and they say they tried everything they could to lock him up long term.
Yeah, this doesn’t measure up with reality. The Dodgers aren’t the Rays or A’s, and for all that they are pretty deliberate in the free agent market, they have spent to retain guys already on their roster who meet their needs. That may not always be possible, but there’s no actual evidence to support the idea that they’re going to take a Rays/As style approach and just sell them off without trying to extend them.
Really the only ‘major’ pending free agent the Dodgers traded and made no effort to extend was Puig, and 2019 certainly made that look like a pretty good decision (and Puig has never been the kind of contributor some of those dudes are).
The Dodgers don’t refuse to spend money; they refuse to spend money riskily. It seems like they feel much more confident in spending on players they already have, whether that’s due to greater familiarity with personalities, knowing those players have bought into their systems (which are not typical), or internal analytics data not available to the public, or some combination of all 3.
They seem to come to that conclusion quite quickly, too, as you can see when they immediatley re-signed Rich Hill in 2017 to substantially more than a lot of folks expected him to get.
Dodgers fans, always calling out Arte Moreno for being cheap. yet the Angels right now have a higher team payroll for next season, than the Dodgers. The Dodgers will only have one player making over 10 million next season and that’s Kershaw. The last big time free agent the Dodgers signed, was Many Ramirez. The Dodgers know that they can win the NL West, because the only team that can afford to spend money like them, is the Giants. The Giants who have won 3 titles in the last 10 years. While the Dodgers have not won in over 30 years. Wake up stop being content with winning the Division. That would be like being content as an Angels fan, simply because the Angels have Trout. I want the Angels to win another title.
Plaschke is a blow hard with a punchable face. Sure, the Dodgers haven’t brought in any blockbuster free agents and they have tried to cut corners by signing talented people with injury histories (committing over $150M to Brett Anderson, Brandon McCarthy, Scott Kazmir, AJ Pollock.
But look at what at what they have also avoided despite a fanbase clamoring for an outside superstar – Giancarlo Stanton would have cost them some prospects, a total salary of $250M+ and sees t have sustained a serious injury having played in less than 20 games in 2018.
Bryce Harper had a decent year at the plate but was it worth allocating $330M to get him? The Dodgers got nearly the same production from Max Muncy who they paid less than $1M. Cody Bellinger was their MVP for also less than a $1M. They’re going to need to pay their own stars soon as well.
And as a fan, it does concern me that so little is spent on the players who produce and deserve more but that’s another topic…..
So absolutely the Dodgers have missed out on their first-choice free agents and perhaps they haven;t spent wisely on the ones they have brought in, but their drafting and developing are keeping them relevant. As long as a team can make it to the post-season, anything can happen. All they need to do is make it to the post-season.
Heard so far in the past few weeks from the Dodgers FO:
“We’re going to be a lot more aggressive..”
“Were going to see a huge roster change a big turnover.”
“We really tried to get that impact FA.”
Oh BS, we’ve heard that for 5 years now.
I don’t disagree with Kasten. I expected him to follow this approach, in the same way he did with the Braves. But even the Braves opened the checkbook to sign Maddux as a free agent. The Dodgers have an excellent core, and they have a lot of promise in the rotation with Urias, May and Gonsolin. My main issue with the front office is that they went into the Winter Meetings publicly stating that they were pursuing several top free agents, then showed no urgency in pursuing any of them. If they had said they liked the core and planned to evaluate the players they had before focusing on any moves, then the fan base wouldn’t have the high expectations they had. That said, Plaschke is an idiot, and seems to forget after Game 1 against Washington, he pretty much declared the series over.
Glad that so many of us agree that Plaschke is an idiot. He’s just another old-school sportswriter who can’t comprehend or understand advanced statistics and modern baseball economics.
The Dodgers let another opportunity to win a World Series pass by not going all in at the trade deadline last year. Now they’ve lost a very good SP and have done nothing to replace him and only added a RP who has a 50/50 chance of being a bust. Their refusal to truly go all in and acquire their missing pieces shows a team that’s not really worried about winning it all
The best player available at the trade deadline was a child molester.
good thing the pirates demanded lux lol
I have a difficult time understanding how anyone can get their fingers to move over a keyboard to type such a thing but I can easily think of at least two very good reasons why they shouldn’t.
“The Dodgers let an opportunity pass by not going all in at the deadline last year”. Had they gone all in what would have been their acquisition???? No one big was moved other than Greinke which was not happening so the only other name was Vazquez. Going all in means caving into the pirates demands and getting Vazquez. Had that happened it would have washed Gavnin Lux and more down a drain. You may not want to hear that but its true.
“nothing to replace him with” except the FV60 pitching prospect that Fangraphs rates as the -3rd best pitching prospect in all of MLB-, who has never had a major injury and has pitched at least 140 innings in every season of his professional career.
Yes, yes, tell me about this lack of a replacement for the 120 innings a year provided by Hyun-jin Ryu.
It’s a bit depressing that some posters know so little about BB, and are still willing to comment on it. Unless something happened this morning, the rotation is:
Kershaw
Buehler
May
Urias
Maeda
I’d make a substantial wager they beat any other team in ERA straightup.
Speaking of depressing… May could be great some day, but as of now he’s got a grand total of 34 innings of major league work under his belt. On that basis you have him pitching a full season of top-of-the-rotation effort this year? Then what about the postseason, available and ready for that too? You think either one actually likely?
Urias is more than ready. Stripling, May, and Gonsolin will all get time with an eye on saving innings for the postseason and fortifying the BP.
Urias might be ready. They way they’ve handled him until now I’d expect him to be pulled from action at the first sign of any issues. As for May I think you are penciling him in as the second coming of Clayton Kershaw. But even the greatest pitcher of his generation wasn’t born fully grown, he required a lot of seasoning before he was really ready. I’d expect the same from May, best case scenario.
Unlike Urias, Buehler, Stripling and basically every other notable Dodger SP prospect who has debuted recently, Dustin May doesn’t have an injury history, isn’t recovering from Tommy John surgery, and already has a history of throwing substantial innings totals in professional seasons (he has exceeded 140 in each of his 3 professional seasons to date)
The Dodgers will not need to tightly monitor his innings to protect his recovery from injury like (all) of the guys I just named. The Dodgers don’t allow anyone to pitch more than 160 or so regular season innings, and he should be just fine to do that.
Also, pitching prospects of May’s pedigree -usually- simply show up and are good in MLB. Did you literally not watch Walker Buehler (a lower rated prospect, lol) in 2018? If you check around the league for prospects of a similar pedigree, you fill find that they hit the ground running more often than not. Pitchers do not usually have an extended ‘adjustment’ season the way that young hitters can when they face MLB spin. A brief callup struggle (like Buehler ’17), or simply not at all
Hell, just for reference, Fangraphs’ projection systems, which tend to be quite conservative for players with minimal MLB experience, project may to be as good as Kenta Maeda on a per-inning basis next season.
That will play just fine, given it doesn’t remotely represent his upside (if you want to know what a FV60 starting pitcher looks like, well, honestly, 2019 Clayton Kershaw is that, Buehler is more of a 65).
Tell me, when was the last time the Dodgers made a prospect untouchable and were wrong about it? Bellinger, Buehler, Urias, Verdugo – if they refuse to move a guy, he lives up to the expectations. The ones they trade (like de Leon) are the ones who don’t make it. They’re -really- good at this (and using a lot of proprietary player data capture that we don’t have access to in public, like Rhapsodo and Blast Motion).
You seem like the kind of person who, if they been told in 2016 what the next 3 years player transactions were gonna look like, would have been convinced that the division title drought would have ended because of all these kids called up and no-name minor leaguers signed instead of Real Free Agent Players.
Hot tip: With an extraordinarily limited number of exceptions, every player is already declining by the time they get to be a free agent. Most free agents will -never be as good as they were before they became free agents again-. If they are, they will almost certainly not do so for more than the first couple years. It is NORMAL. It is EXPECTED. It is the way that the free agency game is biased against the players (team control is so long that they pass their athletic peak before they are free of it). Teams know that now; that is why the free agent market has been dying for several offseasons.
Winning teams aren’t built the way you think they are.
We haven’t even talked about Stripling (lol a 2018 all-star starting pitcher), Santana, Ferguson, or Josiah Gray. As usual, the Dodgers will have 10+ starting pitchers who would start for most teams in the league without hesitation, and people will think half of them are bad because they are buried by a system that is designed with the expectation that several of them will get hurt each year, because pitchers break.
Frankie Montes comes to mind (and yes I know he was suspended), but he definitely would have been a keeper. Still I am not suggesting the Dodgers should trade May, far from it. He looks like a keeper too. I am simply rating his chances of becoming a top-three starter right out the box, and that is what they need. That is in fact a rarity and it isn’t about whether the player was injured before, it’s about experience and being built up to the level of work. That’s two long-shots for 2020 where May is concerned. I don’t want to see him gutted out in his rookie season because the Dodgers wouldn’t spend.
Your assertion about the free agent market “drying up” is so easily disprovable I have to wonder why you even made it. Every year a bunch of premium free agents sign for more money than most people who claim to know expected. Teams want these players for a reason, even if they know the out-years of those contracts can be ugly. Teams with huge revenue streams (such as the Dodgers) can afford to eat some out years to get the good ones. They’ve been doing it since free agency was created and it isn’t going to stop just because some fans have a theory that it’s bad for them. The lower tiers of free agency have suffered recently, that much I will grant you. But the numbers we’re seeing for the biggest names clearly refutes your basic premise. The teams that pay for those players know what they are doing too.
I do agree that the Dodgers have a lot of excellent starting pitching options for the regular season. What they lack is the 1-2-3 that wins in the postseason. Depth wins divisions. The core wins in the postseason. I’m looking for that success in the postseason.
You don’t need to tell me what I think, I will tell you what I think. Same as I do for you. Deal?
Yordan Alvarez for 100$ Alex
My guess is May tops off at 170. Urias is also an issue. But LA is not adding another good SP to accommodate that risk. I thought Price makes at least a little sense for them in this regard. but there is a limit to how much money you want to pay for a luxury instead of a need.
Wow…Dodgers fans are incredibly spoiled.
The LA Dodgers are in a terrific position to win; they have talent at the top and talent in the farm. They’ve shown a willingness to spend, albeit some questionable acquisitions (Treinen this year, Pollock and Kelly last year). Up until now they’ve been the big fish in the NL but not better than Houston or Boston in the years they lost. The NL has improved and they need to do the same. Feels like they continue to improve offensively and on the mound (not the bullpen), yet they are trending backward. Now is their time and now they need to make their move to get it done.
Dodgers need a difference maker or they wont win the ring. If they want to be a team that is consistently winning lots of games but no championships then keep on doing what they are doing.
I agree with Kasten.. The RS have the most WSCs this century. Past that, the LAD model under Friedman is probably the most successful in BB. Break the model at your own risk.
And, as a RS fan, I’d love to see Verdugo, Downs and Gray in a trade for a ‘difference-maker’ like Betts. But it would be a stupid move by LA.
Joe Brady gets it, and isn’t even including Lux or May.
People, including the writers, are going waaaay overboard both ways. Some writers have suggested that Betts, the #2 player in BB, is almost worthless in a trade. And as a side benefit, still want to extend him for $300-400M.
Some writers and fans think he is worth May++.
Betts is projected for 6.6 WAR. So that’s what he is worth. 6.6 * $9M, less a $27.4M salary makes him worth $32M. Maybe slightly more for a team on the cusp of a WS. Maybe slightly more if you think it will help you re-sign him.
But guys like May and Lux are worth a lot more than $32M. The objective would be to target guys that, in the aggregate, are worth a lot more than $32M, but worth less to LA because they are blocked. That’s my logic for targeting guys like Ruiz/Cartaya, Downs maybe Verdugo.
Stanley needs more fiber in his diet. Hey Stan, you sound whiney, like a petulant child and defensive. You’re a MLB executive. Act like it!