The very best thing about this baseball season is that every team is profoundly flawed, sufficiently so that none has a legitimate and easily defended chance to win. It was the Detroit Tigers before their wheels came off after three of their players celebrated hits by doing Donald Trump's stupid little dance. It seems like it should be the Milwaukee Brewers, until you look at their power numbers. It was the Toronto Blue Jays, until gravity set in. The Marlins were in the playoff race until last Thursday, for the sake of the gods. Whoever wins this will qualify as a surprise winner, because no team has any reason to believe it should be them, other than the mandated and entirely inner-directed confidence athletes must have to avoid becoming baristas.
Except, of course, the Los Angeles Dodgers. Their expectations are based on their most recent success, the duration of absurd expectations and money spent, and a roster with more recognizable names on it than any other in the sport. They have exceeded the league's $241 million tax threshold by an amount that is greater than the 26-man payrolls of 25 other teams, and 16 total team payrolls. They've gone all in in the one way owners understand, and also in the one way that makes owners impatient, meddlesome, and unforgiving. They've kicked in with the zeal of an emirate, and so expect emirate results forever.
And that means one thing above all others: The manager is in trouble.
This makes no sense in the case of the Dodgers, of course, for all the obvious reasons. Dave Roberts has been in place for a decade now, and has the best winning percentage of any manager in big-league history; the only four with higher percentages were Negro League managers. His teams have won their division every year but one, and in that season they won 106 games. He has two titles, albeit one from the memory-holed COVID year, and has never had an issue with any important player that has lingered beyond the moment. Roberts is also 53 years old, and has proven malleable and amenable to the ways that Andrew Friedman has run the club. By any sensible measure, he should last another 15 years in the job, health and ownership stability permitting.
Ah, but that's old-folks thinking. This year's Dodgers assembled their poorest record (93-69) with their highest payroll, went all in on the Shohei-will-save-us strategy, used eight more pitchers than the Colorado Rockies, and barely held off the power-deficient San Diego Padres for the NL West title. They have only one other regular, first baseman Freddie Freeman, whose season output matches his 2024 production; their bullpen, which was key to their World Series win last year, has been plainly shambolic. In a playoff bracket with no clear favorite, they are simply one of many—Cleveland at three-and-a-half times the cost.
That's where Roberts really could be in trouble: if the Dodgers don't get three-and-a-half-times-the-cost results. These are lousy times for coaching tenure, as American teams of all types adopt the patience levels of their European soccer brethren and sistren. Every day is a new referendum, coaches are a dime a gross, and blame is mostly a matter of assignment rather than absorption.
This means that if the Dodgers turn out to be no better than the Seattle Mariners or Chicago Cubs or, worst of all in regional terms, San Diego Padres, someone will have to pay for that, and it won't be Tommy Edman, Michael Conforto, or Charley Steiner. Well, it might be Edman and Conforto. But it may also be Roberts, if only because the Dodgers, who have made far fewer managerial changes in the last 70 years than any other team in any other league, will need to justify all that money spent. It would be a silly thing to do, but many stupider things have happened—on something like an hourly basis, now, and not just in Denver. - Ray Ratto
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