The Best Team Money Can Buy: The Los Angeles Dodgers' Wild Struggle to Build a Baseball Powerhouse (37 page)

Friedman stressed the importance of “sticking to the process” and
gathering as much information as possible before making decisions. He promised he wasn’t just some myopic stat-head and said he valued the opinions of scouting reports on a player’s character as much as data any computer could spit out. “The goal,” he said, “is synthesizing this information.” He said he put a premium on player personality and team chemistry. To become a more functional group, the Dodgers would have to get rid of players who divided the locker room and follow the adage of addition by subtraction. A reporter asked Friedman if he knew that Kasten would never allow him to trade Puig, and whether his experience working for Bear Stearns made him uniquely qualified to dump overvalued assets. Friedman just chuckled and deflected the question. He was not in Tampa anymore.

Kasten denied that he had told Friedman that he wasn’t allowed to trade Puig, but as team president and CEO he was well within his rights to issue that edict. Whatever Puig’s issues were, he was one of the best players in the game, he sold tickets, and he was relatively cheap.

The questions would not stop coming for Friedman, Kasten, and the rest of the Dodgers, not until they hoisted a championship banner. After depressing playoff defeats at the hands of the Cardinals two years in a row, the Dodgers entered the 2015 season having not won a title in twenty-seven years. Even worse: the 2014 Giants won another one, their third championship in the past five years. The Dodgers were better on paper. But the Giants had better pitching and defense and seemed to like each other more. Did chemistry matter that much? The Dodgers were about to find out.

After Friedman was hired, he called Clayton Kershaw to introduce himself, and the two men talked about the state of the team. Kershaw hung up the phone impressed by Friedman’s acumen and confident the Dodgers had hired the right man for the job. Other Dodger players on shakier footing tried to get an audience with Friedman, but Friedman declined, saying he
didn’t want to speak with any of the guys on the team before baseball’s annual winter meetings. Friedman knew he would have to make several tough moves to heal a sick roster, and he didn’t want to meet a guy, develop a personal affinity for him, and have that affect his thoughts on trading him.

•  •  •

Friedman and Zaidi began nibbling at the roster’s edges right away, adding bench players and backups for much-needed depth. They offered Hanley Ramirez a one-year deal for $15.3 million—a hollow pittance that would allow them to recoup a high draft pick as compensation from the team that signed him if he left. When he rejected it, as expected, they watched him leave for Boston for four years and $88 million. The Red Sox knew he was no longer a shortstop, so they planned to play him in left field. The Dodgers would miss Ramirez’s bat, but they would not miss his moods. In continuing their mission to rid the locker room of distractions, they released Brian Wilson even though they would still have to pay him $9.5 million in 2015.

After letting Ramirez walk, the Dodgers’ front office capitalized on second baseman Dee Gordon’s breakout year, trading him and pitcher Dan Haren to the Marlins for a package of prospects. Then, they flipped one of those prospects to the Angels for second baseman Howie Kendrick, whom Colletti had tried to trade for a year earlier. To replace Haren and the retiring Josh Beckett, Friedman signed sabermetric-friendly starting pitchers Brandon McCarthy and Brett Anderson to round out the rotation. Those moves were lauded.

But all these transactions the new Dodgers’ brass made didn’t solve their biggest problem: they still had four outfielders for three spots—five if super-prospect Joc Pederson was included. Yasiel Puig wasn’t going anywhere. Even though he was a source of constant stress for the Dodgers’ coaching staff, he would make only $4.5 million in 2015, when a player of his caliber was probably worth over $20 million on the open market. So that narrowed their options to moving Crawford, Ethier, or Kemp.

The Dodgers would have preferred to keep Kemp and trade Crawford or Ethier, but the latter two had significant contracts that were viewed across the industry as gross overpays. It was unlikely the club
could move either man without eating most of the money they were owed, and since they were both still good players, it was unappealing to pick up big chunks of their salaries and pay for them to play on other teams. Given how well Matt Kemp had performed in the second half, he seemed to be the most likely trade candidate because he could fetch the most value in return. Still, would this new group have the guts to finally trade the player Colletti couldn’t bring himself to ship out again and again?

The answer came in early December when the Dodgers struck a deal to send Kemp and backup catcher Tim Federowicz to San Diego for catcher Yasmani Grandal and two prospects. After the season ended, the Dodgers’ farm director, De Jon Watson, had left for Arizona. Logan White, the man who had drafted Kemp more than a decade earlier, had also moved on from the Dodgers and taken a job with the Padres in a similar capacity. White had long been one of Kemp’s biggest fans, and championed the deal.

The Dodgers flipped one of the prospects they got for Kemp to Philadelphia for shortstop Jimmy Rollins to replace Ramirez for a year while they waited for their top prospect, twenty-year-old Corey Seager, to take over the position in 2016. With Ramirez and Kemp gone, the Dodgers’ lineup figured to lose some power in 2015, especially from the right side. But Rollins and Kendrick offered significant defensive upgrades at short and second, and it became clear the new front office valued run prevention as much as or more than offense. The coaching staff rejoiced. The Kemp trade meant that Puig could shift back to his natural position in right, and Joc Pederson would finally get his shot in center field. This new Dodger team, with an emphasis on pitching and defense, would be built much more like the Royals and Giants, the two teams that had just played in the World Series. While the two previous Dodgers rosters were flush with star power, they weren’t designed for October. This new front office would not make that mistake.

There was a hang-up in the Kemp trade, however. After word of the rumored deal leaked, days passed before either team confirmed or
denied it. This was strange. Adding Matt Kemp was one of the most significant moves in Padres franchise history. Their previous record for a contract was the $52 million they gave starting pitcher Jake Peavy in 2007. Kemp was still owed more than twice that. The deal was good for Kemp. Though it was strange and awkward and sad for him to leave the only organization he’d ever known, there always seemed to be drama in Los Angeles, and sometimes he had no idea where he stood. In San Diego he would be treated like a god. The lackluster 2014 Padres had posted some of the worst offensive numbers in National League history, finishing the season with a .226 batting average and just 535 runs scored—38 fewer than the next most anemic offense and 183 fewer than the Dodgers. So when San Diego traded for Kemp, fans were thrilled. But after the thirty-year-old took his physical, word leaked that his body was more broken than previously thought. While the Padres knew about Kemp’s surgically repaired ankle and shoulder, according to the report they were stunned to find the slugger had severe arthritis in his hips. The trade, which was thought to be a done deal, was now in jeopardy.

Los Angeles had already agreed to send San Diego $32 million to help offset the $107 million Kemp was still owed.
The Padres asked for $18 million more to make the results of Kemp’s physical look more palatable. The Dodgers were furious. They knew that if a deal fell apart and Kemp was forced to remain on the team, it would be a toxic situation for both the player and the club. The leak of Kemp’s medical information to the public was a gross violation of privacy, and probably even against the law.

Had the Padres exposed his medicals on purpose to extort more money out of Los Angeles? No one knew for sure. But the Dodgers called the Padres’ bluff, and San Diego agreed to the original terms of the trade.

Matt Kemp was gone.

T
en days after Andrew
Friedman left Tampa Bay for the Dodgers, news leaked that the Rays’ brilliant manager, Joe Maddon, was also leaving the organization. Because of the timing, the baseball press assumed Maddon was following his former boss to Los Angeles to replace Don Mattingly. Mattingly’s job status was very much in doubt when the 2013 season ended, and that was after the Dodgers won a playoff series. The 2014 Dodgers were better, and they hadn’t made it out of the first round.

But unlike the year before, when the front office let Mattingly twist in the wind post–playoff exit, Kasten immediately quashed the rumor, telling a reporter that Mattingly would be the Dodgers’ manager in 2015. The minute Friedman heard about Maddon, he got in touch with Mattingly to reassure him the Dodgers would stick by him. “He called me and he was like, ‘Hey, don’t even worry about it,’ ” Mattingly said. “It’s nice when somebody does that. That’s the way I deal with a player. If something pops up, I’ll call him or text him and be like, ‘Hey,
bro, don’t even buy in to that.’ It’s quick, and it doesn’t let anything go forward.”

That Mattingly had embraced the uber-analytical approach of Friedman and the Dodgers’ new general manager, Farhan Zaidi, became evident when he began using the term
spin rate
when talking about his pitchers. Spin rate was a relatively new metric that quantified something that knowledgeable observers of the game had long understood: the way a pitch moved was more important than how fast it was traveling. A pitcher throwing 90 with a high spin rate probably got more swings and misses than one who threw 95 with average movement. Mattingly used the term to describe why the Dodgers had overlooked reliever Yimi Garcia and his 91 mph fastball when he was in the minors, despite his strikeout rate of 29.2 percent. “He was one of those guys in the minor leagues that had success all the way through. His velocities aren’t like the velocities that you’d think get the punch-outs he does,” Mattingly said of Garcia. “But he’s got a real action to his ball. It’s one of the things Andrew [Friedman] and the guys will talk about. We talk about spin rates and things like that.” When the new front office noticed that Garcia’s spin rate was much higher than average, he earned a spot on the major-league roster to start the 2015 season. The Dodgers had invited many veteran free agent relievers to spring training to compete for bullpen jobs. None made the team. By the end of April, Garcia emerged as one of the best relief pitchers in baseball, striking out an average of 14.9 batters per nine innings. The rookie even began closing games in place of the injured Kenley Jansen. It was hard to imagine the twenty-four-year-old getting such an opportunity under Colletti’s regime, but it was clear Friedman and Zaidi preferred young, live arms to veteran experience; they valued spin rates over save totals.

Friends said Mattingly entered the 2015 season happier in his job than ever before. His opening day lineup was the same around the edges, but unrecognizable up the middle. Adrian Gonzalez took his
familiar spot at first base, and rolled a ground ball over to Juan Uribe at third. Carl Crawford ran out to left field as Puig made his way to right. During spring training, the new front office decided to form a leadership council of sorts among the players, and to bring Puig into that group—the idea being that if the young right fielder helped set team rules, he would be less likely to break them. Most Dodger team charter flights are for players and staff only, but spouses and children are allowed to fly with the club back to Los Angeles at the end of a road trip. As one of a handful of single players on the team, Puig wanted to be able to bring friends on the plane, and took the idea to the leadership committee. Then he presented his rule change to the rest of the team. Veteran players who had been in the league for a decade or more had never taken team flights with somebody’s entourage. They weren’t interested in trying it out, and told him so. An angry Puig stormed out of the clubhouse.

By the start of the 2015 season, Puig seemed to realize that most of his teammates—and all of his critics—were exhausted by his antics. A week into the season, he showed contrition, telling the
LA Times
that he had decided to, among other things, tone down his bat flips. “I want to show American baseball that I’m not disrespecting the game,” Puig said.

As harmless as it seemed, the Dodgers had been trying to get Puig to do that since before they called him up to the big leagues. Maybe if Puig had spent all of 2013 in the minors he would have learned how to behave better on the field and in the clubhouse. Maybe not. Puig was the ultimate Hollywood child star, thrown into the trap of too much money, too much fame, too much pressure, too young. And everyone around him—from teammates to coaches to ownership to the front office—had been complicit in his uneven upbringing. Getting Puig to quiet his emotional outbursts while holding on to the intensity that made him great would not be easy for him or for the Dodgers. But Puig’s future with the team seemed to depend on it.

•  •  •

On opening day, Jimmy Rollins took Hanley Ramirez’s old spot at shortstop and tossed the ball over to Howie Kendrick at second. Young Joc Pederson ran out to his spot in center field behind them. This new Dodger lineup might not hit as many home runs as the one that trotted out Ramirez and Matt Kemp, but with its superior defense up the middle it might not have to.

A. J. Ellis squatted behind home plate, and Clayton Kershaw walked to the mound to thunderous applause. It had been a busy off-season for the Dodgers’ ace. In addition to winning the Cy Young Award after the 2014 season ended, Kershaw had also been named the National League’s Most Valuable Player. It marked the first time a pitcher had won the NL MVP since Bob Gibson in 1968. Kershaw accepted both awards at a banquet in New York the day after he became a father. The final acknowledgment in his MVP acceptance speech went to the St. Louis Cardinals. “Thank you for reminding me that you’re never as good as you think you are,” he said.