Andrew Freidman Genius or Not?

On October 14th, 2014, the Dodgers announced the hiring of Andrew Friedman. Former Tampa Bay GM and Vice President of baseball operations as President of baseball operations for the Los Angeles Dodgers. His contract was for 5 years and 35 million dollars. Friedman was born in Houston Texas and attended Tulane University on a baseball scholarship.

His college career was derailed by a couple of injuries. He earned a B.A. in management from Tulane’s Freeman’s School of Business in 1999. He then went to work for Bear Stearns as an analyst until 2002. He then went to work for MidMark Capital, a private equity firm from 2002 to 2004. Friedman had met Stuart Stenberg who was the new owner of the TB Rays. They decided they had similar ideas and in 2004, Friedman went to work for the Rays as director of baseball development. He was in that job for a little over a year and then promoted to executive Vice President of baseball operations and General Manager after the 2005 season succeeding Chuck LaMar who was fired after 8 losing seasons, which was the entire existence of the team at that point.

Friedman was 28. He gradually rebuilt the team and in 2008 the team made the playoffs for the first time and got to the World Series. He was named executive of the year.

The Rays made the playoffs in 2010, 2011 and 2013. Some of the players they drafted and signed were traded for prospects when they got to the point, they were going to be making BIG BUCKS.

I myself at the time thought Ned Colletti was doing a pretty good job. Except for a couple of disastrous free agent signings, Andruw Jones, Jason Schmidt, he had done a decent job acquiring talent for a really bad owner. He brought a lot of excitement to LA with the trades that brought Manny Ramirez, and Hanley Ramirez to the Dodgers. The farm system was beginning to produce some players with a lot of potential again after a long slumber.

He always tried to improve the club anyway he could. They were like many Dodger teams getting to the playoffs, but no closer. An untimely injury to Hanley Ramirez in 2013 derailed one of Colletti’s better clubs, and the injury to Matt Kemp in 2012 that put him out for an extended period of time, and also impacted his 2013 season did not help.

He made “The Trade” when new ownership wanted to bring in some star power in the form of Adrian Gonzalez, and although saddled with Crawford’s bad contract and an injured Josh Beckett, Nick Punto became a fan favorite, and Crawford, when healthy was productive. Beckett even managed to toss a no hitter in 2014.

 But back to AF as I shall call him since spelling his name every time is a chore. AF did not take much time to start building the front office in his own image. He hired Josh Byrnes, and then Farhan Zaidi to be the GM. Giving the Dodgers 4 men in the FO with GM experience including Stan Kasten the president. Zaidi had been an assistant GM in SF.

AF spent little time before he began to retool the roster also. On Nov 3rd he made his first player move grabbing Ryan Jackson off waivers from the Padres. Through his first year on the job, this would be a continual thing with him. Grabbing the flotsam of other teams off the waiver wire strictly it seemed to me as roster fodder.

His first trade came on the 17th of November, Kyle Jensen from the Marlins for a minor leaguer. On the 20th, he made the first trade where he actually got some MLB ready talent back. Bill Harris and Jose Dominguez, who many Dodgers fans thought was going to be a superstar reliever to the Rays for Joel Peralta and Adam Liberatore. He also picked up Mike Bolsinger from the D-Backs the same day.

He let Ramirez, Chad Billingsly and numerous less known players walk away as free agents. He traded for Juan Nicasio, signed Brandon McCarthy in December.  On the 11th he traded popular 2nd baseman Dee Gordon, Dan Haren and Miguel Rojas to the Marlins for Kike’, Austin Barnes, Chris Hatcher and Andrew Heaney. He immediately turned Heaney to the Angels for Howie Kendrick.

On the 19th he made another huge trade sending another popular fan favorite Matt Kemp and Fed-Ex to the Padres for Yasmani Grandal, Zach Eflin and Joe Weiland. Elfin was then spun to the Phillies for Jimmy Rollins. On the 31st, he signed Brett Anderson to a 1 year free agent deal. I like most Dodger fans was stunned by all this activity as we were not used to seeing so much turnover of a Dodger roster. Rarely had they made 1 major trade at the winter meetings. 2 was unheard of.

By the time spring training rolled around, AF had signed a bunch more roster fodder type players. And there was rarely a month between January and April when there were not at least 10 roster moves. This continued through most of the regular season. He made a trade on July 30, a 3 team blockbuster involving the Marlins and Braves. LA got 7 players in the deal and sent only Paco Rodriguez off of the MLB roster to Atlanta, but they unloaded what would be one of AF’s worst free agents, who by the way had been with the organization for all of 2 months, Hector Olivera, and some minor leaguers. They then sent Michael Morse, one of the players from Miami to the Pirates for outfielder Jose Tabata. In August he acquired Chase Utley, who would change the game on a slide in the playoffs against the Mets.

So it went. They won the division for the 3rd season in a row. They faced the Mets in the NLDS. With their 2 aces in a 5 game series it was hoped they would advance to the NLCS and maybe further. The games were tight except game 3 where the Mets climbed all over Anderson in New York. Kershaw, who lost game one 3-1 against deGrom, won game four 3-1 beating Steven Matz. Game 5 was a great pitched game. Greinke was very tough and so was deGrom. Then in the 6th, Zack gave up a tie breaking homer to Daniel Murphy. The Dodgers did nothing against the Mets pen, and they were out of the playoffs again.

So, AF’s first year at the helm was in the books. And naturally fans had their opinions of his performance. Granted, the man in charge does not play the game, but fans feel they are as responsible for the results as players are. I had heard many times on many sports outlets and blogs what a genius AF was.  My own opinion at the time, was who are you kidding? McCarthy went down before June rolled around, Anderson was mediocre at best, so basically the pitching was Kersh and Greinke. And at the deadline almost all of us were begging him to trade for a quality arm. What did we get? Mat Latos, and Alex Wood.

The silver lining in all of this, especially for AF was that he did not trade any of the Dodgers top farm hands. And Logan White’s farm was starting to send some good players to the bigs. Probably the most important part of that season was the draft in June. They drafted Walker Buehler, and Josh Sborz on day 1. Got Willie Calhoun and Edwin Rios on day 2, and Matt Beaty and Kyle Garlick on day 3. Considering where all those guys are now, that is not a bad day at the office. But of course we questioned the drafting of Buehler who immediately had to have arm surgery.

Over these past 5 years, I for one have questioned many of his free agent signings. Also a trade or more. But he has kept adding talent and not really giving away his most prized prospects. His people in the minors are doing a great job getting the kids ready for the big leagues. I also think his Cuban signings have left a lot to be desired. He has his own pick for a manager now and one of the reasons Roberts is still the skipper even with his questionable moves in some playoff games, is because he and AF are totally on the same page.

But to me, there was always something missing. Yeah, he signed his own free agents, Turner, Jansen, Kershaw, no one really believed Kersh would walk, did they? But that A lister never was signed. They let Greinke walk, naturally they were no going to match that deal. Tried for some of the bigger names, who always seemed to sign somewhere else. Like Harper to the Phils. But I think even that was a halfhearted effort. You knew Harper was going for the biggest contract he could get, not the highest average salary.

He did make deadline deals for Manny Machado and Yu Darvish. Manny was decent, but nowhere near the player he was in Baltimore. He still as a member of the Padres is not playing to that level, so not re-signing him was a great move. Darvish, well he was injured, same as Hill when he came over. And he had a couple of pretty good games where he looked like the pitcher he was in Texas, but then the total meltdown in the Series and he was gone.

It has now been over 30 years since their last World Series win. And they won with a team that was loaded with role players and one super pitcher. The hitting star for them was not the league MVP, nope, it was Mickey Hatcher. He hit one homer all year and then 2 against the A’s. And this last winter, AF finally made the trade all Dodger fans were waiting for. He brought a superstar to LA. The Mookie Betts deal, although it seemed at one point that it was going to fall through, must have exhausted him. He worked for over a week to get the right mix going to Boston to bring Betts. Who everyone felt would be a one year rental. And he brought David Price with him. And if you look at the deal, with Alex Verdugo, Jeter Downs, and Connor Wong going to Boston, Betts, Price and cash coming back to LA, you would have to say he fleeced the Sox. Verdugo is a good young player who is going to be very good for the Sox, but no Betts. Downs is probably going to replace Dustin Pedroia at some point. Wong is a fringe player. 

And AF ended up getting to keep another piece who would have gone to Boston, but they did not like his medical report, Brusdar Graterol.

So, what does this all mean. Well, the Dodgers are loaded with talent. They have plenty of multi positional players both on their roster and in the minors. AF saved fans a lot of angst this winter when they went ahead and got Betts to sign an extension which will keep him in LA for most likely the rest of his career.

Now, I for the most part, have questioned a lot of his moves. I did not like the constant trolling of the waiver wire the first couple of years like he was looking for a prize in a cracker jack box. I hated the Kemp and Gordon trades, and was pretty vocal about it. I did not believe Grandal was worth Matt Kemp, and I did not care that they were calling Kemp a clubhouse cancer. I kept seeing the 2011 Kemp, and the guy who was mashing prior to his crashing into the wall at Coors.

Most GM’s hesitate before trading the teams popular guys. I will say this, AF does not leap into deals. He is not pressured to make trades. He really evaluates before he moves. Naturally he is human like all of us and makes mistakes like we all do. But my mistakes do not infuriate a fan base. So he has to deal with the back lash. He seems to me a pretty laid back guy when you get down to it. He is what this ownership wanted and went after. No matter how many moves he might make that I disagree with, nor the bad trade now and then…Tyler White anyone? None of that will change the fact that he, and Roberts are going to be here for a while. Is he a baseball genius? I do not think so. I think he is very educated and astute and really into saber metrics. But a baseball genius? No. I reserve that for someone like Branch Rickey who changed the game in so many ways and made so many innovations that became a huge part of the game. He was a genius. AF is a product of the computer age. All of the WAR and other stats would not be here if not for the advanced technology of today.