Coming off another postseason in which the Los Angeles Dodgers failed to advance beyond the National League Division Series, there figured to be fallout and changes made.
While the club had pending free-agent matters to be mindful of, finding a new manager became the top priority on Oct. 22 when the Dodgers announced a mutual separation from Don Mattingly.
Dodgers director of player development Gabe Kapler was the perceived early favorite given his longstanding history with team president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman.
However, through an exhaustive search that’s believed to have included upward of nine candidates, Dave Roberts was named the 28th manager in franchise history. While Friedman led the search, he was aided by Dodgers general manager Farhan Zaidi and senior vice president of baseball operations Josh Byrnes, among others.
In an interview with MLB Network Radio, Dodgers president and CEO Stan Kasten credited the group for a complete search:
“It is a very exciting time. We’ve had a couple of good seasons, but at the end of last year we looked at a lot of things. When a decision was made to have a different manager, we didn’t really know exactly where we were going to go. We obviously had some candidates that we liked. I give Andrew Friedman, Farhan Zaidi, Josh Byrnes, all of them a lot of credit for having a comprehensive search process. I am positive they could not have foreseen this would be the result when they began and I think that’s the mark of a good search. They were open-minded, they were comprehensive. I know a lot of names were listed in the newspapers, but I can tell you they spoke to more names than were written about and considered even more than that. It was a good process that landed with a very, very good result.”
As for how much Dodgers ownership was involved in searching for and naming a new manager, Kasten called it a collective effort while acknowledging Friedman’s opinion carried the most weight:
“It was a collective decision of all the people I mentioned. At the end I certainly was aware of what was going on, our owners were all made aware of what was going on. At the very end with the last two guys, the owners met them as well. With all of that, I think it’s fair to say we made a collective decision. If there was one person whose decision mattered the most, I would say it was Andrew. But it really was a collective process. Most of the work obviously was done by Andrew along with Farhan and Josh.”
Like several others have, Kasten went on to speak highly of Roberts’ personality, energy and baseball acumen. The Dodgers executive added he believes the club found a manager capable of leading the team for several years to come.
Roberts will make his managerial debut against the San Diego Padres at Petco Park on Monday, April 4, 2016. He spent the last five years with the Padres organization, including 2014 and 2015 as Bud Black’s bench coach.
