1
The year 2024 couldn’t have gone much better for the Dodgers.
They won their first full-season World Series since 1988, and second (including their pandemic-shortened 2020 title) in the last five seasons. They were transformed on and off the field by Shohei Ohtani, who lived up to every expectation in the first season of his 10-year, $700-million contract. And as the new year approaches, they know they will pursue dynasty status in 2025, trying to become the fifth franchise in MLB’s live ball era to win three championships in a six-year span.
Already this offseason, they’ve begun positioning themselves with several important moves. They signed two-time Cy Young Award winner Blake Snell. They retained slugging outfielder Teoscar Hernández and top reliever Blake Treinen. They even extended key utilityman Tommy Edman. As a result, at this early juncture, they are the clear-cut favorites to defend their title next season.
But more moves remain to be made before the team reports to spring training in early February.
As the calendar flips to 2025, here are four New Year’s resolutions for the club.
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A new contract for Dave Roberts
When Craig Counsell was lured away from the Milwaukee Brewers by the Chicago Cubs last offseason, it set a new benchmark for managerial salaries. Five years, $40 million, $8 million per year.
This winter, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts might be poised to break it.
The Dodgers are expected to negotiate a lucrative contract extension with their longtime skipper this offseason, ahead of what would be the final year of the three-year extension he inked in 2022.
And barely a year after Counsell reset the expectation for top manager contracts, Roberts has the credentials to reestablish the market.
Roberts’ nine-season tenure in L.A. has been marked with highs and lows, but the totality of his resume speaks for itself: eight division titles, four National League pennants, two World Series titles and the highest winning percentage in MLB history by a non-Negro Leagues manager.
The 2024 campaign might have also been Roberts’ most impressive feat, as he helped the team navigate a litany of pitching injuries and a fraught postseason pitching plan to join franchise icons Tommy Lasorda and Walter Alston as a multi-World-Series winner.
The question now: How handsomely will the Dodgers reward him?
Roberts’ impact, after all, goes beyond the field, or even the clubhouse. He is effectively the frontman for the entire organization, with his twice-daily media availability making him among the publicly visible faces of the club. He is also a key conduit between the Dodgers and the community, regularly enlisted for team charity events, pregame meetings with sponsors and special guests, and more.
Dodgers executives have said they would first focus on addressing their roster needs this offseason, before engaging in negotiations with Roberts. But as the calendar turns, that time appears to be approaching, with a new contract for their manager — one that should rival, if not top, Counsell’s record-breaking deal — remaining as one of the last big boxes on their winter to-do list.
3
Landing Roki Sasaki
It will likely be at least another couple of weeks before Roki Sasaki, the star 23-year-old pitcher coming to MLB from Japan next season, decides which big-league club he chooses to sign with.
Joel Wolfe, Sasaki’s agent at Wasserman Media Group, said at the winter meetings that the pitcher — who will be restricted to signing a minor-league contract with a modest signing bonus, since he is not yet 25 — will wait until the 2025 international signing period opens on Jan. 15, when clubs will have bonus pool money available to sign him.
In the meantime, though, Sasaki’s list of potential destinations has become increasingly clearer.
Dodgers officials, as expected, met with the hard-throwing right-handed pitcher before the holidays, according to people with knowledge of the situation not authorized to speak publicly. Five other teams are publicly known to have also met with Sasaki: the New York Yankees, New York Mets, Chicago Cubs, Texas Rangers and San Francisco Giants. It’s likely Sasaki’s full list of meetings was longer, too, with other teams like the San Diego Padres seen as contenders for his services. The Philadelphia Phillies are the only team known to have been denied a meeting.
Around much of the industry, the Dodgers are still seen as favorites to land Sasaki.
Their interest in him dates to last offseason, when there was brief hope among some in the organization Sasaki would come to MLB for the 2024 season. Entering this offseason, the Dodgers also had the most money remaining in their 2024 international signing pool; an indication to some around the sport they were saving funds to sign Sasaki.
Ultimately, however, Sasaki decided to wait until the 2025 period to ink his MLB deal — a decision Wolfe said Major League Baseball preferred “to make sure this was going to be a fair and level playing field for everyone.”
Wolfe has strongly denied speculation about Sasaki already having a “predetermined” deal with the Dodgers, or any other team.
Nonetheless, the Dodgers are still viewed as the most logical Sasaki landing place, given their status as defending World Series champions, the presence of fellow Japanese stars — and Sasaki’s WBC teammates — Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, and their long track record of pitching development.
If they do land him, on what would effectively be a league-minimum salary, it would only further reinforce an injury-prone rotation that was among the team’s lone weaknesses last season.
4
Rounding out the roster
Earlier this offseason, president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman set an ambitious goal for the Dodgers’ 2025 roster.
“My goal is to not buy in July,” Friedman said, long wary of what he sees as inflated prices for players at the midseason trade deadline. “I am setting that out there right now. My goal is to do everything we can right now to not buy in July.”
To do that, the Dodgers have a few more areas of depth to address.
The bullpen is the biggest, with the team still interested in adding another high-leverage reliever. Their pursuit of a trade for All-Star closer Devin Williams didn’t come to fruition, with the Milwaukee Brewers instead dealing the right-hander to the New York Yankees earlier this offseason. But other big-name options remain available on the free-agent market, headlined by stalwart left-hander Tanner Scott (who, while with the San Diego Padres this postseason, was the only reliever to have repeated success limiting Ohtani).
Fan favorites like Kiké Hernández and Joe Kelly are also still lingering in free agency, and could be options to return if the Dodgers seek more lineup or bullpen depth.
One member of the 2024 team who seems more unlikely to return is Jack Flaherty, who will likely need to look elsewhere to find the lucrative longer-term deal he is reportedly seeking. Although the Dodgers heavily relied on Flaherty — who arrived last season as the kind of deadline acquisition Friedman was hoping to avoid — in October, their 2025 rotation is currently well-stocked. Snell, Tyler Glasnow, Yamamoto, Tony Gonsolin and Dustin May should be ready for opening day. Ohtani will return to pitching at some point early in the season. And Landon Knack, Bobby Miller and Clayton Kershaw (who is expected to be re-signed) will also be able to provide depth.
5
Fixing the pitching injuries
Though the Dodgers’ pitching depth might look safe for now, much will depend on their ability to avoid the injury bug that has ravaged their staff the past couple of seasons.
The rise of pitching injuries has not been exclusive to the Dodgers, becoming such a troubling trend around the sport that MLB commissioned a study on the situation that was released a few weeks ago.
The findings, however, provided few concrete answers, other than confirming that as pitching velocities rise, so does the risk of injury.
The Dodgers have made their own injury problems a point of emphasis this offseason. “We’re going to spend a lot of time on our pitching and injuries and just trying to wrap our arms around it more,” Friedman said.
But to this point, it’s unclear what actionable changes the organization plans to make, leaving pitching injuries as a major issue to rectify as the new year begins.
The post Analysis: How will Dodgers reward Dave Roberts? Will they land Roki Sasaki? appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
