Any list of MLB's offseason winners would have to include the Los Angeles Dodgers at or near the top. Name a position group, and L.A. managed to address it: Blake Snell and Roki Sasaki to the rotation, Tanner Scott and Kirby Yates to the bullpen, Michael Conforto and Teoscar Hernandez to the outfield, Hyeseong Kim all over the infield. Heck, they added so much talent so aggressively that one of the dominant topics of discussion in the sport over the last few weeks has been whether Andrew Friedman had managed to break baseball entirely. No matter how much haterade you drank, it was impossible to deny the roster that the Dodgers had put together.
Or so we thought. While mere mortals may look at the Los Angeles depth chart and struggle to find a weakness, Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic has posed a daring, incisive question: Sure, acquiring good players is nice, but have the Dodgers actually done it too much?
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Ken Rosenthal defies all logic in attempt to find fault with Dodgers offseason
No, seriously. Rosenthal uses his latest column to tie himself in knots trying to poke some sort of hole in the Dodgers offseason so far, arguing that "some of their moves border on overkill" and even going so far as to ask "was all this really necessary?" Never mind that the entire idea of "overkill" is ridiculous when applied to adding talent to your baseball team; even taking Rosenthal on his own terms, nothing about his argument adds up.
MBy way of evidence, Rosenthal brings up two of L.A.'s more recent moves: shipping Gavin Lux to the Cincinnati Reds and replacing him with Hyeseong Kim, and signing Kirby Yates to take righty Ryan Brasier's spot in the bullpen. Sure, Lux is a brand name and former top prospect. But Kim seems just as likely to provide the versatile glove/average bat combination that Lux would, and he came with an extra year of team control — plus an intriguing outfield prospect in Mike Sirota and a valuable draft pick from Cincy.
Rosenthal then goes on to cite projection systems that have Brasier coming close to matching Yates' production in 2025, arguing that the Dodgers didn't really need to shake things up. Of course, Brasier spent much of last season on the IL with a calf strain and regressed a bit when he was on the mound, while Yates was putting up a a 1.17 ERA in 61.2 innings for the Texas Rangers, but those are mere details. Yates cost money, and involved ruffling a few feathers (Brasier's, specifically), and that's Rosenthal's main problem here.
It's readily apparent that Kim and Yates are an upgrade over Lux and Brasier for this season and beyond. But the moves involved shipping out to long-time members of the organization, and even more appallingly, they involved L.A. continuing to spend money. When Rosenthal asks if this is all really necessary, he's adopting the same line of thinking that has allowed the Dodgers to lap the field organizationally over the last few years. You can never have enough good players, and spending money isn't a sin. While other teams are wringing their hands, Friedman is only worried about one thing: getting better.