Good luck Andrew Friedman, you're not in sleepy St. Pete anymore
As general manager of the Tampa Bay Rays, Andrew Friedman took a team with a $40 million payroll to the 2008 World Series. Now he'll engineer a baseball payroll that's at least for now $240 million, which is an MLB record.
So the Dodgers have to be six times as good right?
Well, no, not exactly.
Friedman, hired Tuesday by the Dodgers as their newly created president of baseball operations, proved himself as a small-market GM. His Rays teams exceeded expectations most years, and sometimes by far, though not exactly this year, when the Rays played their way out of things early. And it's easy to see why the Dodgers' ownership group, which has enough money to do whatever it wants, selected him Tuesday to lead their baseball operations department.
Friedman is the hot name, and has been the hot name since 2008. And there's no question he and the others who ran the Rays baseball department are very smart, and made a lot of good decisions over the years. But starting today, he has a totally different job, one where there are expectations, there is much pressure, and folks are actually paying attention.
Anything would have been fine in sleepy St. Pete. Remember, when you have no money, it's much harder to make a big mistake.
In L.A. there will be lots of choices, and each and every one of them will be dissected. For all its reputation as a laid-back big town, there is a lot of heat there. The media is more intense than anyone realizes. The fan base, which hasn't witnessed a World Series victory since 1988, is restless. And certainly, the ownership group, which spent a record $2.15 billion, is anxious.
There aren't too many teams like the Dodgers that improve four straight years, win 94 games, and kick their general manager upstairs, which in effect is what happened with Ned Colletti, a grinder who actually won 30 some odd more games than the rival San Francisco Giants since he got there nine years ago from the same San Francisco. (But the Giants, of course, have a chance to win their third World Series title in that time).
It's easy to understand why the 37-year-old has been hailed as a boy genius for years now. He and his staff in Tampa found bargains by emphasizing defense, hiring a manager who often coaxed amazing output out of good players and very good output out of replacement-level players, developed starting pitching like almost no one else and forging team-friendly long-term deals where possible.
But this job is nothing like that job. People are watching now. Big money is being spent. A season that ends with quick playoff exit is seen as a disaster, not a cause for celebration.
There's little question Friedman did a terrific job in Tampa/St. Pete, but it's fair to wonder how much value there was in having one great and stable single ownership voice in Stuart Sternberg, an original manager in Joe Maddon who oversaw the rises of Carl Crawford and B.J. Upton (and other players who fell as soon as they left), a great system and superb pitching coach in Jim Hickey who developed one viable or better starting pitcher after another. Let's also not forget he laso had the ability to take flyers on guys with hickeys (the bad kind) like Elijah Dukes, Delmon Young, Matt Bush and many others. That won't fly so easily in L.A., where there are plenty of pens and microphones.
Maddon, in particular, may have been the biggest differencemaker he had in Tampa, and credit Friedman/Sternberg and Co. for hiring him to replace the legendary Tampa Bay native Lou Piniella. There will be speculation about Maddon now joining him in L.A. at some point, seeing as how Maddon came up as a coach through the Angels system, and as Mike DiGiovanna of the Los Angeles Times mentioned, he still has a home in Long Beach. Not to mention, Friedman is smart enough to know the value of Maddon.
But there is no good reason to believe that he's joining him this minute, as Maddon is still under contract for another year in Tampa and the Dodgers weren't willing to trade real prospects for David Price this summer so they wouldn't dare do it for a skipper. Plus, the Dodgers are saying how happy they are with Don Mattingly, who beautifully negotiated a clubhouse minefield laden with egos and oversaw those four straight seasons of improvement in blue. Maybe in a year from now this will be worth revisiting, especially if the Dodgers don't make it back to the League Championship Series. But for now, it's really not even worth mentioning.
Friedman is the one they are entrusting with the $240-million team, and while it's a logical call, there are no guarantees. Friedman, who was previously pursued by at least the Angels, Astros and Cubs, won't have the one-man ownership set-up, he won't have Maddon (at least not in 2015) and he won't be able to take the same sort of chances with a $200-million-plus team in a city that's paying attention.
It's easy to say why he took this job, and not all the others. The Dodgers are a storied franchise with a talented payroll, and he gets the keys to the store. This may not have entered into his equation, but the Rays slipped a bit after spending more this year, and there's no good solution in sight to the stadium mess. For the forseeable future, thanks to a long and bad lease they appear to be stuck in The Trop, which is no paradise.
Friedman will have a lot of advantages in L.A., including a full front office and solid staff. Their pitching coach, Rick Hoineycutt, is excellent. Colletti, who never was this ownership's guy though give them credit for keeping him in place for 2 ½ years, moves to become a senior adviser, and Friedman will bring in a general manager to work under him. He also has there Gerry Hunsicker, the former Astros GM who advised him in Tampa, along with a host of other luminaries.
The Dodgers are stacked in both roster and front office, and will expect to win immediately, if not sooner.
To be sure, this is no Tampa, where they had to watch all their nickels and dimes -- and generally did a pretty darned good job of it (the $77 million they spent this year on a losing team was by far a record for them).
Friedman has been seen as someone who knows all, but the most important thing to know is what he's getting himself into. If he doesn't fully realize the difference between the towns, he will find it out soon enough.
Post a Comment for "Good luck Andrew Friedman, you're not in sleepy St. Pete anymore"