The Los Angeles Dodgers are a big market team with plenty of cash.
That label brings the stereotype of a free spender, like their East Coast counterparts, the New York Yankees – and the Boston Red Sox, until their budget-slashing in 2020. We always think of these teams stocking their rosters with high-priced free agents plucked from the opposition: the Yankees signing Gerrit Cole for $324 million or Boston luring David Price with $217 million.
Andrew Friedman, president of baseball operations for the Los Angeles Dodgers, has the benefit of a large payroll – but he also has made shrewd roster moves in bringing the Dodgers to the World Series three times in four years. Beth Harris/Associated Press
But, since Andrew Friedman took over baseball operations for the Dodgers in late 2014, the largest contract he’s given to entice a free agent from another team is the four-year, $55 million deal for outfielder A.J. Pollock.
For the most part, this team that has reached the World Series three of the last four years has been built through the draft – 10 players on the postseason roster were drafted by the Dodgers – along with international signings and trades. Many of the Dodgers’ free-agent signings were minor league deals given to players who were let go by other teams, such as Justin Turner in 2014 and Max Muncy in 2017.
Of course, the Dodgers have the dollars to re-sign their stars, highlighted by the recent 12-year, $365 million extension given to Mookie Betts – a player the Red Sox deemed unaffordable (or unlikely to sign, or both). The Dodgers also re-upped Clayton Kershaw for three years and $93 million, and Turner for four years and $64 million.
Los Angeles also has money to trade for high-priced players, like Betts and Price (who opted out this year because of the pandemic, but will be back for the final two years of his contract). Boston will be paying half of his $32 million per year salary.
The Dodgers’ blueprint: Build the foundation, fill in holes with deals and under-the-radar free agents, and target the players you want to re-sign. It appears to be a sustainable plan.
“Payrolls don’t decide the standings, and I think we see evidence of that every year,” Friedman said in a press conference before the World Series. “Having a really deep and talented roster, regardless of what your payroll is, is the key to winning games, and that’s what we have.
“And it’s been a lot of very shrewd moves, some through the draft; some through trades and all kinds of different, creative ways of player procurement.”
Red Sox, are you paying attention?
With more World Series titles (four) than any team from 2004 to present, the Red Sox are an obvious power, but also an erratic one, with four last-place finishes since 2012.
Boston has money to spend – a fact that instantly brings up the debate about trading Betts, who reportedly was seeking a contract over $400 million and turned down a 10-year extension for $300 million from Boston. So the Red Sox traded him and, when the pandemic hit with its financial punch, the Dodgers were able negotiate Betts “down” to an extension averaging just over $30 million a year. With Betts starring in the postseason, it looks like a sensational deal. But 12 years is a long time.
Betts, a fifth-round pick out of high school in 2011, is an example of Boston’s solid drafting when it was building its foundation in the early 2010s. But much of that foundation has withered away, in part because Dave Dombrowski traded away prospects while building the 2018 champions, but also because of some questionable draft picks.
Boston hired Chaim Bloom away from the Rays – also Friedman’s former team – a year ago to rebuild the Red Sox base.
It was a strange season to judge Bloom, with a 60-game schedule and the MLB draft shortened to five rounds. Boston’s pitching was dreadful. Injuries can be blamed somewhat, but the Red Sox had no depth to stop the leaks.
The Dodgers’ pitching staff is deep, and it is mostly homegrown. Of the five starters used so far in the postseason, four were drafted by Los Angeles (Kershaw, Walter Buehler, Dustin May and Tony Gonsolin), and the other signed out of Mexico when he was 16 (Julio Urias).
Boston has hopes for Tanner Houck, who made an impressive three starts in September. He could be Boston’s first regular homegrown starter since Clay Buchholz (2007-16).
Bloom has a challenge ahead. He will use methods he learned from the impoverished Rays. But he would do well to copy another team. The Dodgers’ business model is working.
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