A toast to the Dodgers! Who have chased their 2024 World Series championship with the greatest offseason since … the previous offseason.
I’d give them an A++ for the roster they’ve assembled, this baseball masterpiece – if it didn’t feel like I was looking at Van Gogh’s sunflowers minus the seeds.
If it didn’t read like Alexandre Dumas forgot the count when he wrote “The Count of Monte Cristo,” or Jerry Lee Lewis dropped the balls when he played “Great Balls of Fire.”
As it is, as great as it is, the Dodgers’ offseason homework gets an INCOMPLETE until they add that final Midas touch.
So far they’ve signed starting pitchers Roki Sasaki and Blake Snell and added relievers Blake Treinen, Tanner Scott and Kirby Yates. They brought back fan favorite Teoscar Hernández, extended playoff hero Tommy Edman and added infielder Hyeseong Kim and outfielder Michael Conforto.
But the job’s not finished.
What’s left is to make Dave Roberts the richest manager in major league history.
Coming off a World Series championship and heading into the final year of his current deal, he’s earned it, wouldn’t you say?
Wouldn’t you?
Or would you try and argue that any manager should be able to win with such a superstar-loaded roster? That a $300 million payroll should be self-driving?
Or maybe you wonder whether baseball is so analytically driven nowadays that it minimizes a manager’s impact? Whether, at this point, it’s dictated as much by the mathematicians as managers? You might have decided it’s mostly a matter of pushing predetermined buttons – forgetting what it takes to push people’s buttons.
The Dodgers got themselves a manager who can do both.
Managing really is the right word for it. Managing egos, and expectations. Managing crises, in-game and out. Managing balls and strikes and the day-to-day, day after day.
In 2024, the Dodgers’ drumbeat never wavered. Not when Shohei Ohtani’s interpreter Ippei Mizuhara caused a scandal, admitted to stealing $17 million from the star to cover gambling debts. Not when Mookie Betts took up shortstop in place of an underperforming Gavin Lux. Not when Betts broke his hand, joining the dozen pitchers who missed time with injury.
Few can regulate a team’s temperature like the 52-year-old Roberts, who has steered the Dodgers to a 851-506 regular-season record since taking the wheel in 2016. They have not missed the playoffs on his watch and his .627 career winning percentage ranks as the highest of any manager with at least 1,000 major league games. He’s got eight division titles and four National League pennants, and counting.
And yet you wondered why he couldn’t finish the job more often.
Why he had just the one World Series win, to cap 2020’s COVID-shortened season, which felt faraway and weird.
Why the Dodgers had so much trouble getting over the hump in the playoffs, when bats would go quiet, holes in the pitching rotation would get exposed and dissatisfied fans would spiral – until last season, that is.
Last season, Roberts’ managerial masterclass led the Dodgers past the San Diego Padres, New York Mets and, finally, the New York Yankees in five World Series games. That cherry on top of his Dodgers’ tenure should earn him entry into a small club of coaches, like the NFL’s Andy Reid and NBA’s Gregg Popovich, who will leave only when they’re good and ready, and not before.
Roberts made us appreciate the art of the bullpen game. He knew exactly when to go for it and when to punt on a game. He managed humanly, instinctually, and somehow the math still mathed!
He trusted Walker Buehler, his Game 3 starter, to close the ninth inning of the decisive Game 5 – and before that, he showed remarkable faith in Treinen, the reliever.
Remember, in the eighth inning, with Aaron Judge on second base and Jazz Chisholm on first, Giancarlo Stanton due up and Treinen at 37 pitches? How Roberts walked to the mound and looked his pitcher in the eye: “How do you feel? How much more do you have?”
“I wanted him to tell me he had enough to get Stanton,” Roberts told the Fox Sports panel after Treinen did indeed get Stanton to fly out and struck out Anthony Rizzo to move the Dodgers right up to the finish line.
“The rest,” Roberts said, “is history.”
He finally won enough to win over even the most ardent critics, which is why the Dodgers’ manager – who might be underrated, a likely Hall of Famer who has been awarded manager of the year just once – won’t be underpaid.
Shouldn’t be.
The Chicago Cubs gave Craig Counsell five years and $40 million, a historic haul for a manager a couple of years ago.
Make Roberts’ deal for 10 years and $80 million.
Make a statement. And make it by making it soon.
The players are all aboard, so there’s no reason for the Dodgers’ managerial negotiations to go deep into spring training, like they did the last time Roberts’ deal was extended, for three years, on March 25, 2022.
Roberts has proved he can handle the pressure, the scrutiny, and the hate that will be coming the Dodgers’ way.
That he’ll win and win and win the big ones.
He can’t dance quite as well, we learned at last season’s championship parade and ballpark celebration, where he bopped around the stage awkwardly while Ice Cube delivered an encore of “It Was a Good Day.”
It’s all good, though; the Dodgers won’t pay Roberts to dance with the stars, but to manage them.