“People ask me what I do in winter when there’s no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and write a column about the winners and losers of the offseason.” — Jim Bowden (maybe)
Do you ever wonder how many times we’ll have to watch a team “win the offseason” and then not perform up to expectations before we stop caring which team wins the offseason? The fact is, when it’s cold outside and there’s no actual baseball going on, we need things to write about, and a winners/losers column is meaningless fun.
So anyway, at The Athletic, former general manager Jim Bowden wrote his winners/losers column. It’s been a while since I’ve mentioned this, so let me point out that the reason Bowden is a former GM is because he was really, really bad at being a GM, and the other reason he’s a former GM is because he got caught skimming bonus money that was supposed to go to Latin American teenagers.
So I guess what I’m saying is he’s a good person to write a column about losers.
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Bowden’s specialty these days is reading the same things we all read and then rephrasing them to make it look like he has sources, so it’s no surprise that he took the shockingly controversial stance that the Dodgers have had a poor offseason.
The Dodgers have won the NL West in nine of the past 10 seasons and have been the favorite in all of them. But next year, for the first time since 2012, they will be supplanted by the Padres as the team to beat in the division. They lost Trea Turner, Justin Turner, Bellinger, Tyler Anderson and Andrew Heaney in free agency. Their only additions of note have been right-hander Noah Syndergaard, who went 10-10 last year with a 3.94 ERA, and JD Martinez, who at 35 has started to decline. The Dodgers didn’t sign any significant free agents even though the market was loaded with elite shortstops and solid everyday outfielders. Despite their need for a closer, they’ve been silent on that front, too. It’s understandable the Dodgers want to get under the luxury tax and create a runway for many of their young prospects and players, but the reality is their overall team talent is going to take a major dip for the first time in years. Coming off a 111-win season, the Dodgers are no longer the favorites to win the West, let alone the NL.
Look, the Padres might win the NL West in 2023. But Bowden is falling into the same trap many less-distinguished people have fallen into, thinking free agency is the only way to build a team. He presents the luxury tax thing as if LA is just being cheap, completely ignoring that they have several prospects who need playing time. A big part of building a sustained winner is allowing players from within your organization to come up and make an impact. That’s how you end up with guys like Corey Seager and Cody Bellinger and Walker Buehler and Julio Urias and Clayton Kershaw and Tony Gonsolin and Dustin May and a zillion others.
So yeah, it’s been an underwhelming offseason. But I give it three years before people look back and say, “Wow, the Dodgers really lucked out by not participating in the 2022-23 free agent feeding frenzy.” And it won’t actually be luck — it will simply be that the Dodgers, unlike Bowden’s Reds and Nationals, have someone at the helm who’s good at his job.
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