After another tough World Series loss, the Los Angeles Dodgers offseason did not take long to get going as significant moves have already been made.
On the player side, the Dodgers gave long-time ace Clayton Kershaw a three-year contract extension, agreed to a new one-year contract with David Freese and extended qualifying offers to free agents Hyun-Jin Ryu and Yasmani Grandal.
On the organizational side, the Dodgers have lost a number of key members from their coaching staff and front office, most notably general manager Farhan Zaidi, hitting coach Turner Ward and third base coach Chris Woodward. So replacements for them will need to be hired.
Then there is manager Dave Roberts, who began the offseason without a contract in place for the 2019 season. Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman stated that the plan was to extend Roberts long-term, but that has not happened yet as they instead decided to exercise their club option for 2019.
While the goal is still to come to an agreement on an extension, it may not happen any time soon as talks have reportedly been put to the side. The reason for that, according to Joel Sherman of the New York Post, is because Roberts is looking for a four-year extension in the same neighborhood as AJ Hinch’s with the Houston Astros:
#Dodgers have been busy with qualifying offers to Ryu/Grandal, extending Kershaw, losing staff, notably GM Zaidi. Roberts keeps getting pushed back as he tries to get similar to Hinch’s 4-yr, $12M #Astros extension.
— Joel Sherman (@Joelsherman1) November 8, 2018
Regardless of if an extension is signed or not, Roberts will be back in 2019, which he has said that he wants to do independent of how the contract talks play out.
In his three-year tenure with the Dodgers, Roberts has won three National League West division championships and made it to the World Series each of the last two years.
He has made his fair share of mistakes, as does any manager, but his track record speaks for itself and for that reason he will ultimately remain as the manager of the Dodgers long-term.
