Los Angeles Dodgers President of Baseball Operations, Andrew Friedman is one of the more respected executives in the game of baseball. Forging his reputation as a genius during his time with Tampa Bay, consistently turning a team with a shoestring budget into a postseason mainstay, there was a mystique that followed him around. When he joined the Dodgers in 2015, big things were expected. After all, how could they not be, considering he was moving from a franchise that pulled change out of the couch cushions to one that essentially prints money?
It’s a strange thing, fealty. For the perfect example, you can look no further than former President Donald Trump. No matter how vile the rhetoric he spews, his followers will adhere to it as gospel. No matter how many affairs or credible rape allegations he’s hit with, the Christian right will anoint him the second coming of Jesus. No matter how catastrophically he botches the domestic response to a global pandemic, it’s his word that’s taken as scientific truth over the consensus of the virtual unanimity of the world’s credible scientific and medical communities. It defies logic. It defies reason. It defies observable reality. Surely, people cannot be so easily brainwashed.
This is the comparison that suddenly struck me when it came to Friedman. Not to the extent of politics, but sports too, especially in the social media era, is hotly debated. And in far more cases than not, the debate gets personal, and saturated with direct pejoratives. There is no better way to show this than ambling into the lawless shitshow that is the Dodgers Twitter (I refuse to call it X) community and suggest that Friedman isn’t great at his job. I recommend wearing a kevlar vest before doing so.
But let’s start objectively. Is Friedman actually good at his job? Well, the Dodgers, despite being a perennial contender and having not had a high draft pick since… God only knows when, consistently have one of the top rated farm systems in all of baseball. This is due to astute drafting, terrific scouting, and of course significant investment in the international market. All of these things are rightly considered feathers in Friedman’s cap. There are more people who deserve credit than just him, but if you’re the man in charge and it goes right, you get to take that credit.
The star-studded roster is also dotted with guys acquired from other franchises. Mookie Betts via trade. Freddie Freeman via free agency. There was also the Trevor Bauer signing, but without getting into the accusations against him and subsequent fallout, he was the best available free agent pitcher that season and Friedman went out and got him. This is what you want from your front office, right? To go after the biggest fish? There’s a curious asterisk here though, as well. The Dodgers were never seriously engaged on retaining star shortstop Corey Seager, he of the very recent World Series MVP award. Nor were they ever seriously in the Bryce Harper sweepstakes. Neither should really be considered too dark of a blotch on the record for Friedman. Seager was always going to go to the highest bidder. The Dodgers could have offered a billion dollars and if another franchise offered a penny more, that’s where he was going. And there is no alternate universe where Friedman offered a comparable deal for Harper to the 13-year pact he got from the Phillies.
And how about those results!? Playoffs every season. Three World Series appearances… but only one title – the Covid shortened season of 2020. This is where you really start to see the increasingly strange behavior. A title is the pinnacle of achievements for sports franchises and their fans. But mention that Friedman has only one title in his tenure despite the resources at his disposal and you’ll get a smile, a shrug, and some variation of “what can ya do? The playoffs are a crapshoot!”
I’m sorry, what? Sure, a 162 game season is a much larger sample size that gives you a more accurate picture of how good teams are when compared to one another. And yes, weird things can happen in a short series. Mistakes are amplified. Iconic performances are amplified. The best team does not always win. But to reduce it to a coin flip is a jaw-dropping outlook. I always wondered why there were warning labels on paste. Don’t eat this! Well, now I know why, I guess.
If your argument is that the playoffs are a crapshoot, doesn’t your probability of winning that crapshoot get better when you don’t have to run out guys like Billy McKinney, the corpse of Albert Pujols, a seriously injured David Peralta (in the literary world we call this foreshadowing), and more?
Apparently not, because his online legion of sycophants have bestowed nicknames on him like Fleeceman and FriedGOD. Seriously. FriedGOD. Some people were really high on Sheldon Neuse, I guess.
But ok, we’ve established that people at large at prone to cult-like behavior and false idol worship. I guess that baseball fans shouldn’t be expected to be any different.
But there’s something that can’t be explained away. Well, let me hedge that. The delusionals who think it’s Friedman that rises on Easter can probably find a way, but this is a question for the powers that be in baseball. Why are the Dodgers permitted to continually run out clearly injured players in the postseason?
In 2022, the Dodgers elected to keep a clearly injured Blake Treinen on the postseason roster over a clearly healthy Craig Kimbrel. Yes, Treinen is one of the most dominant relievers in baseball when healthy, and Kimbrel is a bit of a roller coaster. But for all his struggles as closer in 2022, Kimbrel pitched fairly well down the stretch in a non closing role. And for all his dominance, what with his 100 mph fastball with video game movement, Treinen had pitched all of six innings in 2022 due to a serious shoulder injury. That didn’t matter to Friedman and company though. They would take him on the roster over Kimbrel – itself a tacit acknowledgement that his acquisition was a failure. It turned out to be a disaster. Treinen was sitting at about 91, threw one horrid inning, and the Dodgers were expelled from the playoffs in humiliating fashion by the Padres.
That was last year. In 2023, Clayton Kershaw pitched the worst postseason start in recorded history. The greatest pitcher of this generation managed to get all of one out, and gave up six earned runs. A month or so later, Kershaw announced that he underwent major shoulder surgery, and had some hope of pitching again in 2024. That he was struggling with shoulder soreness down the stretch was not a secret. But it turned out to be a serious injury. Which they absolutely had to have known about, and threw him out there anyway. Meanwhile, deadline acquisition Ryan Yarbrough who pitched mostly well after joining up from Kansas City was left off the roster.
It was also announced that veteran Dodgers outfielder David Peralta had ligament repair surgery on his left arm after the season. Peralta had played well most of the season and been a positive clubhouse presence with his veteran leadership and amiable personality. But he struggled badly down the stretch and did nothing in the playoffs. Now we know why. Meanwhile, capable young hitters like Jonny DeLuca and Mike Busch were nowhere to be seen.
Two guys with serious injuries, trotted out in the season’s biggest games. The front office absolutely knew the extent of those injuries and did it anyway, same as they did with Treinen in 2022. How this isn’t a bigger scandal is beyond me. It’s borderline criminal. And nobody is even asking the question. I get it. They’re probably afraid of offending the slack-jawed legions of hangerson and having to deal with a bunch of “how dare you”s on Twitter.
I get that too. On the off chance they see this, I might have to move and change my name.
But seriously, isn’t this fireable? Can you imagine a football team in 2023 running out a middle linebacker with a known and diagnosed concussion? Why is it ok for a baseball team to run out a pitcher whose shoulder is known to be confetti? There should be an investigation, and subsequently a reckoning. But there won’t be, because it’s apparently not only the unwashed of Twitter who feel like he can do no wrong.
The Stain Sports 