Cash not everything, but it doesn’t hurt
Dodgers’ brain trust has wider margin for error than Astros’
The Astros are smart. The Los Angeles Dodgers are smart and rich.
As Josh Byrnes, the Dodgers’ senior vice president of baseball operations, chatted with Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow behind the batting cage Friday, one onlooker remarked it was an impromptu Mensa meeting.
Combine the brainy approach of the Astros with a couple hundred million dollars more in payroll — plus some unknown amount of money for off-field investments — and you’d end up with a version of the Dodgers.
Andrew Friedman, the Houston native who used to run the small-market Tampa Bay Rays and is now the Dodgers’ president of baseball operations, returned to his hometown for this weekend’s series at Minute Maid Park.
He, Byrnes and Dodgers GM Farhan Zaidi — Billy Beane’s former assistant GM with the Oakland Athletics — add up to a prudent, forward-thinking trio manning the game’s biggest pile of cash, with the team’s player payroll at roughly $300 million.
“This is my first year with Andrew and Farhan, obviously,” Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw said. “Really enjoy being around them. Open lines of communication, which I think is pretty cool. They’re around a lot. They talk to guys.
“At the same time, I think they’re trying to use the money as best they can with the information that they have. They’re not spending recklessly.”
The Astros, meanwhile, have started a season with a payroll of $100 million or more once in their history, in 2009, and presently sit above $77 million. (Coincidentally, that’s almost exactly the highest payroll Friedman ever managed in his decade with the Rays.)
Just how Astros ownership acts moving forward is to be seen. But despite increasing payrolls, the Astros won’t catch up to Hollywood dollars. It’s possible no one will.
Are smarts ,then ,enough to outdo the combination of smarts and greenbacks? Good doesn’t have to mean pricey
“I think the Dodgers are going to have success,” Luhnow said. “This is a great group at the helm, and they’ve got a lot for resources clubs don’t have. We’re in a position where we’re in a big city, but we don’t have the resources that a lot of the big markets have. And so wehave to work harder and faster and be more nimble and figure out ways to compete that might be available to us, and that’s how we’ve structured the front office from the beginning.
“We don’t worry too much about the big players in the other league. We worry more about our own division, and can we be with the Mariners and the Rangers and the Angels, the Angels being the big-market behemoth in our division. … There’s income disparity in baseball just like there is in anything else. We just have to figure out ways to close the gap.”
To color the Astros’ payroll — or that of any team — as something other than disadvantageous in comparison to the Dodgers’ would be naïve. Extra money allows for a quicker recovery from mistakes in player moves. Just signed a bad player? Go sign a replacement. Or eat his salary and send him away.
But as Friedman and Astros manager A.J. Hinch pointed out, there’s more nuance to the payroll effect.
“Money in and of itself isn’t necessarily as significant of a competitive advantage as some people make it out to be,” Friedman said. “More resources help you, at least in theory, more in the free-agent market. You look back over time, and it’s very hard to invest wisely. So coming from the Rays, you were almost insulated from making those mistakes in the free-agent market (because the money wasn’t available).”
Theoretically, the smartest teams are most likely to avoid mistakes in the first place. But the size of a payroll doesn’t necessarily reflect talent and ability, Hinch emphasized.
The Astros are a model example of the benefit of young players. In an open market, Carlos Correa already would be a nine-figure player. As a rookie, he’s making the major league minimumand can’t be a free agent until after 2021.
Monetary benefits extend beyond payroll
The ability to add a $25 million free agent is never going to be outweighed by an advantage gained by applying money to other areas. But although payroll is the most obvious form of financial muscle, others have grown in importance.
“There are real advantages if applied correctly,” Friedman said of his available money, “and that’s what we’re trying to figure out. Is maintaining some small-market disciplines to our advantage?”
Dollars spent elsewhere — in technology, the medical arena, and underexplored talent markets like Brazil or Asia, for example — matter more and more. Simply spending on player development, nutrition, massage therapy, and strength and conditioning can make a difference.
“Resources play a key role in every facet of life,” Hinch said.
But overall, significant gains are fewer and farther between, or at least more obscure than before. The pond of the obvious has dried up.
When Boston was in town in July, Ben Cherington was still its GM. In a long session with reporters, he made an observation related to his own failures.
“Every team’s talent is more evenly distributed,” said Cherington, who has since left the Red Sox. “Every team has access to information. It’s a very sort of flat world, so you have to find ways to build advantages anyway you can. Obviously, we haven’t done a good job of that the last two years.”
Friedman surveyed the landscape similarly.
“I do think that competitive balance is at its apex as you look back at least over the last 20 years,” he said. “I think things are at least becoming more efficient, and as things become efficient, it’s more difficult to find an advantage. What’s exciting about what we do on a daily basis: trying to figure out different advantages and different benefits, even on the margins.” Prospecting off the field
A company called Zepp has created a device that attaches to the knob of baseball bats. Via Bluetooth, users can instantly see analyses of their swings on their smartphones.
Buying a few dozen — the devices sell for $149 on Zepp’s website — wouldn’t be too costly for a major league organization, and that’s just a baseline example of technology teams could seek.
As Luhnow put it, clubs have to do everything to turn over as many stones as possible and find an edge.
“Once you find them, you’ve got to hide them and pretend like you don’t have them,” Luhnow said. “And then they question why you’re having success, and then eventually they probably figure it out. And there’s a lot (of stones) that you turn over that end up being dead ends, and you waste resources going down paths that aren’t useful. You’ve got to figure out how to evaluate projects and cut ’em off.”
That’s where L.A.’s coffers might be an additional separator. A wasted research project, like a wasted player contract, shouldn’t be as detrimental to the Dodgers as it would be to the Astros.
Even if a gain is made, it usually doesn’t last long. Luhnow noted defensive shifting was a two-year advantage that has dissipated.
For now, the Astros have one benefit the Dodgers don’t. The former’s system has been fine-tuned for four seasons. The Dodgers are still overhauling theirs.
Luhnow, a Dodgers fan growing up, loves when his present club faces the one of his childhood. But he’s not worried about the resources available to others in baseball’s intelligentsia.
“I think we can hold our own,” he said. evan.drellich@chron.com twitter.com/evandrellich