IIt’s been an unrealized goal of Andrew Friedman’s for years. This summer, however, it finally might come to fruition.
As he does at the start of every winter, the Dodgers’ president of baseball operations set lofty ambitions for their activity this offseason. He wanted to reinforce a talented team, one just months removed from winning the franchise’s first full-season World Series title in three and a half decades, with even more star power. He wanted to bolster roster depth across the board, especially a pitching staff that was ravaged by injuries.
Most of all, he wanted to avoid a situation in which the club once again would have to make hefty additions at the midsummer trade deadline.
“It’s been my goal the last however many years — and I failed miserably at it — but my goal is to avoid ‘July to buy,’” Friedman said at last month’s winter meetings. “I do not want to buy in July. I feel like the more times I say it out loud, the better chance it has to actually be a thing.”
Fast-forward a few weeks, and he just might be in position to make it a reality. The Dodgers upgraded their starting rotation with the signings of two-time Cy Young Award winner Blake Snell and 23-year-old Japanese phenom Roki Sasaki — even with three other starters in Shohei Ohtani, Tony Gonsolin and Dustin May set to return from injuries to take the mound again.
They’ve rounded out a star-studded lineup by retaining key contributor Teoscar Hernández and adding veteran outfielder Michael Conforto and Korean utility man Hyeseong Kim — two notable additions that have flown under the radar amid the blockbuster moves.
Even in the bullpen, where the Dodgers re-signed Blake Treinen last month, they haven’t been afraid to keep spending. On Thursday, they finalized their four-year, $72-million contract with top free-agent reliever Tanner Scott, a lockdown left-hander who general manager Brandon Gomes said will “get a ton of opportunities to close games.” They also have been in serious talks to sign another veteran reliever, Kirby Yates, though they would need to clear a 40-man roster spot before completing that potential signing.
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Put it all together, and the Dodgers have taken one of the best rosters in baseball and fattened it. They absorbed the hard lessons they learned in recent years — when their postseason successes and failures often were defined by the quality of their deal-making at the trade deadline — and charted a more aggressive course of action in preparation for their World Series defense.
“For us going into this offseason, it was, ‘Let’s do everything we can on the front end. Let’s be as aggressive as we can be and be in a position where we don’t have to go to market in July,’” Friedman said Thursday at an introductory news conference for Scott, the fourth such ceremony the team has held this winter.
“Obviously things can happen, you never know,” Friedman added. “But that’s our game plan. To have a really talented team as we head into spring training, give that team a chance to jell and bond together, and not need to go to market in July when prices are two times what they are at other times.”
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To see how seriously the Dodgers have taken that plan, look no further than the way it contrasts to last winter — when their stunning $1-billion spending spree, including a record-breaking $700-million signing of Ohtani, still left foreseeable holes in their top-heavy team.
Back then, the club improved its rotation with the acquisitions of Tyler Glasnow and Yoshinobu Yamamoto. But it also bypassed other possible impact players on the trade market, then came up empty in a late free-agent bid for Snell.
Instead of fully reinforcing the pitching staff at all costs, they reached the halfway point of the season struggling to find healthy bodies. And while a last-second trade for Jack Flaherty at the deadline ultimately stabilized the staff, it came at the cost of two well-regarded prospects.
A similar situation played out at shortstop. Rather than fill the position — an area of need since Trea Turner’s departure the year prior — with a star free agent or trade target, the Dodgers began spring training with Gavin Lux penciled into the position, then quickly pivoted to Mookie Betts shortly before the season.
Read more: Hernández: Why did Roki Sasaki sign with the Dodgers? Health not wealth drove his decision
When that didn’t work out, with Betts scuffling defensively at his new position even before he missed two months because of a broken hand, the Dodgers had to find an alternative. It arrived in the form of Tommy Edman, acquired along with reliever Michael Kopech — yet another necessary addition to a bullpen that unexpectedly had been whittled down by injury problems and ballooning workload — in a three-team deal. But that move cost them three more prospects.
In hindsight, they all were problems that could have been forecast before the season. All issues the Dodgers failed to effectively address until the stress of deadline season. The good news: Unlike their more modest midseason moves in 2022 and 2023, last year’s additions were a universal success, with all three deadline arrivals playing a key role in their march to winning a World Series.
“Every year the goal is to not go out and add [at the trade deadline],” Gomes said Thursday. “I think for this year, the support from ownership has allowed us to go out and do that in a way, to continue to see how the free-agent market is playing out and be opportunistic on adding really talented players.”
The breadth of those additions — which, with Yates, would include six players ranked in MLB Trade Rumors’ top 50 free agents this offseason and more than $450 million in total spending — has caused consternation around baseball, raising questions about whether the Dodgers are becoming far too superior for the rest of the sport.
Read more: Plaschke: Invincible? After historic offseason, the Dodgers sure seem like it
Inside the offices in Chavez Ravine, however, team officials view the moves not so much as a way to lap the competition, but rather as requisite insurance for a team trying to avoid a repeat of its hectic deadline dealings.
“We feel like what we’re charged with doing is putting a team together that puts us in the best possible position to bring another championship to L.A.,” Gomes said.
And to do that, it means beefing up the roster to a point where even bad injury luck, unexpected struggles and unknowable variables of a 162-game season seem unlikely to knock the Dodgers off their path.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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