Dodgers need Machado now

SOMETIMES the too-obvious move is the right move. When you’re the Dodgers and you haven’t won a championship in 30 years, your allworld ace is on the clock, and you just lost one of baseball’s best shortstops, at some point in the coming weeks you bite the bullet and pay the price to go get Manny Machado. Simple, right? The Dodgers have one of the top farm systems in baseball, so they can absorb the cost in prospects, though it will pain GM Andrew Friedman and a front office that takes great pride in being a build-from-within organization.

Indeed, there’s the rub, and the reason that baseball people I spoke to believe it’s only 50-50 that they actually do trade for Machado.

Simply put, Friedman’s group has transformed the Dodgers from the wild-spending operation under the new Magic Johnson-led ownership of several years ago, one so desperate to win a championship that it instead paved the way for a Red Sox title in 2013 by making that absurd, high-salary trade for the likes of Adrian Gonzalez, Carl Crawford, and Josh Beckett.

These days, in fact, the Dodgers are operating more like the current Yankees, making it a priority to get under the luxury-tax threshold this year. Otherwise Giancarlo Stanton probably would be in his hometown of LA rather then the Bronx this season.

The difference is that, for the Yankees, it’s part of their rebuild, brief as it was, which is built around a nucleus of young, affordable talent and offers the promise of many years of championship contention.

The Dodgers, on the other hand, are surely terribly frustrated at being unable to get to the mountaintop. They’ve won five straight division titles but have fallen short every October, sometimes because Clayton Kershaw hasn’t pitched like the best pitcher in baseball.

And while Friedman has done a great job of replenishing the farm system on the fly, Kershaw is 30 years old and has an opt-out in his contract that allows him to become a free agent this winter.

It’s one of the reasons the Dodgers want to reset their luxury tax rate, knowing how much it will cost to re-sign their ace. And although Kershaw’s age and recent history of back problems might tell their analyticsheavy front office it wouldn't be smart to re-sign him at a huge cost, it's also hard to imagine they’d let him walk.

Much more so than the Yankees, then, the Dodgers are in win-now mode, with Kershaw backed up in the rotation by 38-year old Rich Hill, and their closer, Kenley Jansen, making $18 million a year.

However, they’re also off to a bad start, falling to 12-17 on the season after losing to the surging Diamondbacks on Monday night, slipping eight games out of first place.

This on the same day they learned Corey Seager needs Tommy John surgery on his throwing elbow and will be out for the season.

As such, it already has the feel of a lost year for the Dodgers, but their front office can’t look at it that way. They should get Justin Turner back from his wrist injury in a couple of weeks, they still have plenty of talent up and down the roster, and, well, it’s a long, long season.

But to plug the hole at shortstop they have to move Chris Taylor in from left field, compromising their depth by making Kike Hernandez more of an everyday player.

One way or the other, Seager’s absence creates a huge void, and if the Dodgers are serious about trying to win a championship this season they really need to make the trade for Machado, who will be moved somewhere by the Orioles in the coming weeks.

If the Dodgers wait until July, the traditional trading period, they would only have to take on about half of Machado's $16 million salary, and with their payroll at about $187 million at the moment, according to reports, that might allow them to stay under the $197 million luxury tax threshold.

Chances are they’ll wait at least several weeks to make sure this season doesn’t go completely south on them, and even then Friedman is not going to want to part with top prospects for two-plus months of Machado, especially since the Dodgers wouldn’t be looking to sign him as a free agent.

But the sooner they go get Machado, the more likely they could start playing at high level, and if that gets them back to October it would be worth the prospects and even the cost of going over the luxury-tax threshold. s a rival team executive told me on Tuesday, “The Dodgers are a lot like the Yankees. They have big attendance and they’re all about the brand. I don’t know if you can quantify it, but getting to the World Series again might be worth more than the millions they’d save by resetting their tax rate.

“The big difference between them and the Yankees is they haven’t won a championship since 1988. That would be worth a fortune to them.”

Acquiring Machado would keep such hope alive for the Dodgers. Whatever the cost, in fact, they have too much invested to pass on an opportunity to save their season.

A