L. A.’ s Pederson nears title — along with a big payday
Free agent: Will he be Giants’ target?
Would Joc Pederson want to return to a team that tried to trade him, beat him in arbitration and used him only as a platoon player?
For that matter, would the Dodgers have a desire to reinvest in Pederson knowing they’ve already got two MVPs in their outfield?
Drafted out of Palo Alto High School in the 11th round in 2010, Pederson could be playing his final game for the Dodgers on Tuesday night if they beat Tampa Bay and win their first World Series title since 1988.
Pederson homered Sunday in a 42 win that gave the Dodgers a 32 series lead. He is hitting .382 in the
postseason.
“Believe me,” manager Dave Roberts said, “I couldn’t be happier he remained a Dodger.”
Pederson will be a free agent after the World Series and could pursue a fulltime gig rather than settle for platooning for a team that agreed to deal him to the Angels in February, only to have Angels owner Arte Moreno overrule the deal.
The outfielder will have no trouble finding interested suitors despite his rough regular season. He hit .190 with a .285 onbase percentage and seven home runs after belting 36 homers in 2019 with a careerhigh .876 OPS.
Farhan Zaidi, who spent four years as the Dodgers’ general manager before becoming the Giants’ president of baseball operations, said he wants another lefthanded bat and wants to make the playoffs next year.
Bringing Pederson back to his roots could make sense, and who knows? Maybe he’ll seek a oneyear deal to boost his free agency, as Kevin Gausman and Drew Smyly did last winter with the Giants.
Let it be known that Oracle Park no longer reminds hitters of the deadball era, and its power numbers in 2020 suggest someone with a history of hitting home runs could continue clearing the wall in San Francisco.
Pederson seems to like the new vibe. In three games at Oracle Park in late August, he went 4for7 with a homer off Gausman and doubles off Gausman and Johnny Cueto.
The Giants might not make Pederson a fulltime player, at least until he starts hitting lefthanded pitchers, but he could find more playing time than in L. A., where he got 128 plate appearances against righties and just 10 against lefties.
Though Alex Dickerson also is a leftyhitting corner outfielder, he doesn’t have Pederson’s track record or health record. Pederson was an AllStar in 2015 and four times has hit at least 25 homers.
February’s trade that didn’t happen didn’t sit well with Pederson, who called the experience awkward. Also in February, Pederson lost his arbitration case, meaning he’d get a $ 7.75 million salary instead of $ 9.5 million.
Pederson, who’s receiving a prorated sum because of the shortened season, had hoped the case would be delayed until the trade was either completed or rejected, but that didn’t happen.
Union chief Tony Clark released a statement at the time saying it was unfair for players to remain in a “state of limbo” because of pending trades and added the “perversion” of the simultaneous arbitration process was a reminder that “too often players are treated as commodities by those running the game.”
The fact is, the Dodgers tried trading Pederson ( and pitcher Ross Stripling) to the Angels to help offset the cost of Mookie Betts and David Price, who were arriving from Boston. The presence of Betts playing alongside Cody Bellinger made Pederson expendable.
But eight months after getting sized up for a red uniform, Pederson’s still outfitted in blue and helping the Dodgers win important games as one of his team’s most animated players, a league leader in swagger, while showing no bitterness about the game’s business side.
“It’s been a little bit of a rollercoaster,” Pederson said after Sunday’s Game 5, “but you’ve got to adapt. That’s baseball and making the best of what I’ve got in front of me.”
With Bellinger in center and Betts in right, Pederson mostly alternated in the regular season between left and designated hitter, and didn’t get in a groove. He went on paternity leave in early September and later was placed on the family medical emergency list for a reason that wasn’t made public.
Once the postseason arrived, Pederson — nicknamed “Joctober” by teammate Max Muncy while also contributing two home runs and eight RBIs this postseason — became a driving force for the Dodgers, who hope to finally win it all after claiming eight straight division titles and reaching their third World Series in four years.