Dodger Front Office hitting on all cylinders

Phil Gurnee ♦ August 11, 2017 ♦ 2 Comments

I’m sure there are still some fraudman folk out there, but these have to be fans who will never be happy with a modern day analytical approach to running a baseball team. Back in his day, I’m sure they wouldn’t have been happy with Branch Rickey either.

The major league team is on pace to win the most games in LAD history, Dodger history, NL history, and major league history.  They have built and added to the team as they point to October. They are playing without their best player and they keep on winning. They have more starting pitching than they know what to do with.  They have more position players than they know what to do with.

They even have a minor league pipeline that they will have trouble finding room for.

Along with this, they have rarely made a misstep when trading from that pipeline. It does appear they didn’t grasp how good Yordan Alvarez might be, or it might be that was who Houston wanted and if they wanted Josh Fields that was going to be the price. If Josh Fields gets some highly leveraged outs in the postseason, it might still be worth the price.

I was highly skeptical of the price they paid last summer for Rich Hill and Josh Reddick, but it looks like they traded the right trio in Cotton, Montas, and Holmes.  None of them have been able to get consistently untracked. Holmes has been good enough to make the MLB Pipeline team of the week only to follow that with an eight run outing. Montas can’t throw strikes or as hard as he did.  Cotton had Pedro Martinez in his corner but it turns out that Pedro is not a good cut man. Yet

I liked the trade for Logan Forsythe but did expect Jose De Leon to prosper with the Rays, Not happening,  he simply can’t get healthy. Yet

They just kind of threw away Chase De Jong but as bad as the Mariner rotation is, he can’t help them. Yet

I still hope that Willie Calhoun can help the Rangers but he had no role for the Dodgers. AJ Alexy and Brendon Davis are simply too young. I still can’t get over the fact the Dodgers have Yu Darvish for these three. I expect the Houston Astro players feel the same way.  Of course, I’d have been fine with trading Alex Verdugo that is how much I wanted Yu on the team.

One other suspect trade might have been moving Scotty Schebler in the complicated Red/WhiteSox/Dodger trade that saw the Dodgers get Trayce Thompson/Montas moving Jose Peraza/Schebs to the Reds, with the White Sox receiving Frazier. Going to cover that in the “They learn quickly from mistakes”.

Besides trading the right guys from the pipeline, more importantly, are the players they did not trade when being beseeched to make a deal for the present back in 2014, 2015, and 2016.

Corey Seager survived and is now going to be the greatest LAD shortstop in LAD Dodger history.

Cody Bellinger survived and is going to shatter the amazing rookie home run mark of 35 by Mike Piazza, and the NL rookie record of 38 by Frank Robinson.

Julio Urias survived and is going to win the 2017 CYA – oh scratch that one. Can’t have everything.

I haven’t even mentioned the major league trades that brought Alex Wood, Grandal, Barnes, Hernandez.

Nor have I mentioned that free agent signings of Chase Utley, Brandon Morrow, Andrew Toles, Kenta, Hill.  Have there been misses? Sure, Scott Kazmir and Brandon McCarthy stick out like sore thumbs.

Not releasing Ryu and sticking with him.

Now the They learned quickly from their mistakes.

The biggest mistakes they have made was in throwing money at suspect Cuban free agents. Hector Olivera was the biggest of these mistakes but before the rest of the league had caught on to how bad an egg he was, they were able to turn him in into Alex Wood and Jose Peraza.  They then turned Jose Peraza into something that they used to get Rich Hill while keeping the plum piece, Alex Wood.  Somehow the Dodger brass turned what would have become an ugly situation into something bright and shiny. We haven’t heard much kick back on that deal, so the Braves must have been the team that wanted Olivera but beware a team who says yes when asked for the multi million dollar foreign free agent signing as soon as that player is eligible to be traded.

They are still stuck with Arry, and Alex Guerrero took the Dodger money and fled to the far east.

But they then fired that whole Cuban scouting group so I think they learned something.

Every front office is going to have missteps, but this front office is so clearly outperforming the norm that even my cynical heart, has to step back and let things play out when they make a move I find questionable.

Like signing every player who is ever released and then releasing them a few weeks later. I don’t get that strategy but it must have something behind it.