The Los Angeles Dodgers always get the last laugh.
With the Dodgers in the World Series for the second straight year, President of Baseball Operations Andrew Friedman can bask in the glory of being right. The fanbase dragged him at the trade deadline for not making a big move, relying instead on internal solutions to fill holes in left field and in the bullpen.
As he told the Los Angeles Times over the weekend, the second-guessing comes with the territory.
“The thing I can’t do is make moves based on what people think we should do,” he said. “We’re going to make mistakes. We’re going to be aggressive taking shots.
“Our goal is to be essentially the casino: be right more than we’re wrong, and have it yield a really good product that has a chance to win the World Series.”
Since Friedman took over in 2015, that has certainly been the case. He has led the Dodgers to World Series championships in 2020 and 2024 — their first two titles since the 1980s, and had LA in the Fall Classic an additional three times, including this year.
The Dodgers' achilles heel has been their bullpen, and while it has been a problem in the postseason, the team has gotten creative with an internal solution to stop the bleeding. They moved Roki Sasaki to the bullpen as he came back from injury, and he has given up one run in eight innings during the playoffs.
Manager Dave Roberts has shown trust in him — or maybe just more trust than he has in Alex Vesia and Blake Treinen — putting Sasaki into high-leverage situations and even giving him ninth-inning duty.
“Our thing on not acquiring some pitching was, we thought we were going to be leaving talented pitchers off our playoff roster as is,” Friedman said. “It wasn’t as front of mind as it was for others.”
The Dodgers now await the winner of Game 7 of the ALCS between the Toronto Blue Jays and Seattle Mariners as they try to become the first team to repeat since the New York Yankees' threepeat from 1998 to 2000.
