Originally Posted by
Dan Druff
The question is what's going to happen now:
Will Friedman AND Roberts be fired?
Will Roberts be the sacrificial lamb, even if Friedman was the one pulling the strings?
Will nobody be fired, with the Dodgers' 4 consecutive division titles (during his tenure), two 104+ game win seasons, two World Series appearances, and 3 NLCS appearances be the justification?
Keep in mind that Friedman is/was under orders from ownership to keep under the luxury tax threshold. And Roberts was probably under orders from Friedman to manage the way the front office wants.
Since ownership can't fire itself, who should be canned?
Personally I'm sick of Friedman, and wouldn't mind seeing him go. He still runs this team like it's a small market operation. He's afraid to fire big money at any one player, but instead wastes equivalent money by signing a bunch of flawed players to mid-size contracts. He's too obsessed with mid-money free agents who have a small chance at a high upside, which is what you do when you have a small market team, but not with the Dodgers.
Not only that, but he has a poor feel for which mid-money free agents to sign.
I'll excuse the Kershaw thing. Even though it was clear Kershaw's velocity was down and never coming back when he gave Kershaw the extension, the truth was that Kershaw wasn't going to opt out anyway, so it was really just an extra year. Given his monster numbers with LA and career-long tenure with the team, I understand that.
I'll excuse the Jansen extension. At the time, Jansen was dominant, and nobody saw his decline coming so early.
But all of the outside free agents for $10+ million have been a fail under Friedman.
Brett Anderson? Fail.
Brandon McCarthy? Fail to the point where he's out of baseball now.
Logan Forsythe? Fail.
Joe Kelly? Fail.
AJ Pollock? Fail.
Rich Hill? Not quite a fail, but they could have used the money better. He was too old and too injury-prone. Prior to the signing, he had pitched 111+ innings in a year just twice in his life -- back in 2007. He gave the Dodgers about 135 in both 2017 and 2018, and was useless in 2019. His numbers were good when he pitched, but he didn't provide $48m of production.
The team has succeeded on the backs of its young players and surprising players. The farm system produced Corey Seager, Cody Bellinger, Walker Buehler, and Joc Pederson. They lucked out in acquiring Chris Taylor and Max Muncy when they were nobodies on the verge of being out of baseball. I guess you can give them credit there, but you can't say that they expected any real production out of either of these guys when they picked them up. And then there was Justin Turner, acquired from the scrap heap during the previous front office regime, who they got to sign as a free agent at a cut rate because his story of ascension was so unexpected and still unproven.
Anyway, Friedman's only real accomplishment has been NOT making franchise-killing moves, such as trading minor leaguers Bellinger or Buehler (he had tons of suitors), and NOT signing declining "stars" to huge albatross contracts.
At the same time, he has made no major moves which have worked out, and his inaction at the trade deadline has often been baffling. The most baffling of them was 2017, when Justin Verlander was practically begging for the Dodgers to trade for him, and they grabbed Fuck Yu instead. Verlander hadn't had his career renaissance yet, and could have been had for cheap. That probably cost them the 2017 World Series, especially since Fuck Yu blew 2 of those games.
In short, I'm ready for somebody new.
It could be worse, though. Look at what a disaster the Phillies have become again. At least they finally let go of weirdo coconut oil masturbator Gabe Kapler.
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