Deep pockets help L.A. bury mistakes
Willing to take risks, Dodgers eat $35 million in dumping Crawford
When embattled Frank McCourt finally sold the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2012, the city hailed the inclusion of basketball legend Magic Johnson in the new ownership group.
Four years later, it’s clear managing partner Mark Walter is the franchise’s true magic man.
His deep pockets can make bad contracts, ill-conceived gambles and impetuous decisions vanish into thin air, the latest example coming Sunday, when the Dodgers designated outfielder Carl Crawford for assignment.
The Dodgers owe Crawford $35 million for the remainder of this season and 2017. In essence, Crawford’s contract was the poison pill the Boston Red Sox insisted the Dodgers ingest when they sent Adrian Gonzalez, Josh Beckett and Nick Punto west in a nine-player trade that altered the course of two franchises.
Gonzalez was the cornerstone the Dodgers needed, and he has not disappointed, helping drive Los Angeles to three consecutive NL West titles.
To get Gonzalez, however, the Dodgers took on more than $32 million owed Beckett, as well as about $108 million due Crawford, already in a steep health and production decline.
What we didn’t realize was the extent to which the Dodgers would be willing to eat salary with the volume and enthusiasm their fans inhale Dodger Dogs.
A front office led by Andrew Friedman and an all-star cast of lieutenants is not afraid to be creative, be it the eight-year, $25 million deal given to Japanese right-hander Kenta Maeda, who could make a ton more in incentives, or a three-team deal in December that landed reserve outfielder Trayce Thompson, who is young, cheap, talented and becoming a more integral part of the club each week.
Yet as Friedman and Co. exploit market inefficiencies on one hand, on the other they show little fiscal restraint.
Consider the Dodgers’ forays into the international market, where draft position doesn’t matter and financial might — and a willingness to pay steep penalties to Major League Baseball — means the world.
They guaranteed Yasiel Puig $42 million just weeks after Walter and Co. bought the team, far beyond what any other club wagered on the little-known Cuban outfielder.
They guaranteed $62.5 million, almost half of it in a signing bonus, to another Cuban outfielder, Hector Olivera.
They guaranteed $30 million to Cuban right-hander Yaisel Sierra.
To make an aging and expensive rotation a bit younger and cheaper, they swung a 13-player transaction with the Atlanta Braves and Miami Marlins in July, dumping Olivera on the Braves and taking on some $13 million in contracts for veterans Mat Latos and Michael Morse, even though the Dodgers knew Morse wouldn’t take an at-bat for them. Latos, meanwhile, lasted six weeks before a designation for assignment.
The overriding theme with these transactions: The Dodgers have no fear they could blow up in their face.
Puig, no longer a rookie sensation or All-Star, is under contract through 2018. Where will Andre Ethier — signed to an extension in 2012, still due $20 million for next year plus a 2018 buyout — play with regularity?
What if Sierra doesn’t pan out? Or if veteran pitchers Scott Kazmir and Brandon McCarthy, due $52 million between them through 2018, get to a point when they can’t get batters out anymore?
The answer for the Dodgers is quite simple: Pass the mustard.