{"id":128706,"date":"2025-08-08T09:34:21","date_gmt":"2025-08-08T09:34:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/128706\/"},"modified":"2025-08-08T09:34:21","modified_gmt":"2025-08-08T09:34:21","slug":"andrew-friedman-struck-out-on-the-dodgers-urgent-need-for-a-closer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/128706\/","title":{"rendered":"Andrew Friedman struck out on the Dodgers&#8217; urgent need for a closer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>A funny thing blocked the path to another <a class=\"link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/sports\/dodgers\/story\/2024-09-30\/dodgers-giants-andrew-friedman-buster-posey\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Andrew Friedman<\/a> midsummer triumph.<\/p>\n<p>An Andrew Friedman midsummer failure.<\/p>\n<p>The <a class=\"link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/sports\/dodgers\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Dodgers<\/a> and their renowned baseball boss came to bat at baseball\u2019s trade deadline Thursday poised to knock another fat midseason pitch out of the park en route to a second consecutive <a class=\"link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/sports\/dodgers\/story\/2024-10-20\/complete-coverage-dodgers-2024-world-series-playoff-run\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">World Series championship<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>They never took the bat off their shoulder.<\/p>\n<p>Strikeout, staring.<\/p>\n<p>The Dodgers needed a proven closer. Six teams picked up proven closers. The Dodgers weren\u2019t one of them.<\/p>\n<p>Mason Miller went to the San Diego Padres, Camilo Doval to the New York Yankees, Griffin Jax to the Tampa Bay Rays, Ryan Helsley to the New York Mets, Jhoan Duran to the Philadelphia Phillies and David Bednar to the New York Yankees.<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/sports\/dodgers\/story\/2025-07-31\/dodgers-mlb-trade-deadline-brock-stewart-alex-call\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Some other reliever<\/a> went to the Dodgers. I think his name was Brock Stewart or something.<\/p>\n<p>How does this make sense? Are they watching what we\u2019re watching?<\/p>\n<p>So you\u2019re telling me they must forge ahead through the rest of the season hoping that Tanner Scott gets healthy or Kirby Yates gets consistent or Blake Treinen gets younger or, heck, maybe the Boston Red Sox cut <a class=\"link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/sports\/dodgers\/story\/2025-07-25\/dodgers-walker-buehler-red-sox-trade-deadline\" data-autoplayable-video=\"true\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Walker Buehler<\/a> and he comes back for one more ninth inning! That\u2019s crazy, but this entire situation is crazy, a $400-million roster with nobody to pitch the last out.<\/p>\n<p>The Dodger also entered Thursday needing a defensive-minded outfielder. Four teams found one. The Dodgers did not.<\/p>\n<p>Harrison Bader went to the Phillies, Mike Yastrzemski and Randal Grichuk to the Kansas City Royals, Austin Slater to the Yankees and Cedric Mullins to the Mets.<\/p>\n<p>The Dodgers picked up an outfielder named Alex\u2026is it Call?<\/p>\n<p>           <video playsinline=\"playsinline\" loop=\"\" preload=\"none\" title=\"Dodgers have a quiet trade deadline, bet on their current roster\" data-video-id=\"00000198-635d-d691-a199-77dd7c750000\">               <\/video>                 <img class=\"image\" alt=\"\"   width=\"473\" height=\"840\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/1754645660_248_\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\"\/>             <\/p>\n<ul data-element=\"action-bar-menu\" class=\"flex gap-2 list-none  absolute w-full h-10 top-0\">\n<li data-element=\"action-bar-share\" class=\"flex  w-full h-10 top-0 lg:items-center lg:justify-center \">\n<p> Share via     Close extra sharing options  <\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So now Dodger fans are haunted with the fear that Michael Conforto will lose a fly ball down the left-field line on Halloween with the season on the line.<\/p>\n<p>This is all so weird. This is all so, well, arrogant.<\/p>\n<p>Granted, the Dodgers have baseball\u2019s best team on paper, but they\u2019ve had its best team for several years and that hasn\u2019t stopped Friedman from dominating the last week in July.<\/p>\n<p>One could argue that Friedman actually won last year\u2019s championship by brilliantly acquiring Jack Flaherty and Tommy Edman and Michael Kopech at the deadline.<\/p>\n<p>This has always been Friedman\u2019s strength, humbly adding talent to a group already possessing riches of talent.<\/p>\n<p>Remember, this is the time of year he also once traded for Rich Hill, Yu Darvish, Manny Machado, Max Scherzer, Trea Turner and Evan Phillips, all of whom led them deep into the playoffs.<\/p>\n<p>The only two years during which Friedman has fumbled the deadline? He failed to acquire pitching in 2022 and they were beaten by the Padres. He brought in only Lance Lynn in 2023 and they were swept by the Arizona Diamondbacks.<\/p>\n<p>This suddenly feels like one of those years.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe felt like this is an incredibly talented group that, as we get healthy and these guys hit their stride, we feel like we\u2019re in a great position for another deep run into October,\u201d general manager Brandon Gomes said on a conference call with reporters.<\/p>\n<p>In other words, they think they\u2019re good enough that they don\u2019t need to trade any top prospects for win-now talent.<\/p>\n<p>But are they? And even if they are, why take a chance?<\/p>\n<p>           <img id=\"yt-img-zEmLfy0acfo\" class=\"absolute\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/zEmLfy0acfo\/hqdefault.jpg\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\"\/>                 <\/p>\n<p>If there\u2019s anything the first 109 games of this season has taught us is that the Dodgers\u2019 greatness, like all greatness in a sport that hasn\u2019t had consecutive champions in a quarter of a decade, can be fleeting.<\/p>\n<p>The window suddenly seems to be slowly closing on the Hall of Fame careers of Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman. Shohei Ohtani has been so physically stressed that he\u2019s leaving games with cramps.<\/p>\n<p>Teoscar Hern\u00e1ndez doesn\u2019t look like last year\u2019s revelation. Max Muncy can\u2019t stay on the field. And  Edman is batting aches that may last all season.<\/p>\n<p>The rotation is also shaky, with fragile Tyler Glasnow and aging Clayton Kershaw and underwhelming Roki Sasaki and injured Blake Snell and, really, just one sure-fire starter is Yoshinobu Yamamoto.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cObviously there was a lot of action today throughout the game, and a lot of teams improved, but we feel really good about this group,\u201d Gomes said. \u201cComing into the year, felt like this was as talented of a roster as we\u2019ve ever had. We\u2019re in a position where we\u2019re in first place, and I don\u2019t even think we\u2019ve played our best baseball yet. So as we continue to get some of our starters back, and then adding these pieces, and our guys just kind of playing up to their potential, we feel like it\u2019s still a really, really strong team, and we don\u2019t feel any differently about our aspirations than we did at the beginning of the year.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Through their stunning inaction Thursday, the Dodgers clearly made the statement that they\u2019re good enough to win a championship without any more help.<\/p>\n<p>All those teams that greatly improved don\u2019t agree.<\/p>\n<p>The baseball world is sensing a Dodger vulnerability, as if there\u2019s blue blood in the water.<\/p>\n<p>Given a chance to dissuade everyone of that notion the Dodgers sighed, shrugged and passed.<\/p>\n<p>A strikeout of a day, a turning point of a season?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A funny thing blocked the path to another Andrew Friedman midsummer triumph. An Andrew Friedman midsummer failure. The&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":128707,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[69110,591,78578,8329,2442,60561,1910,5169,13940,1266,2228,7546,5950,62,3993,3007,6599,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-128706","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-andrew-friedman","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-defensive-minded-outfielder","11":"tag-dodger","12":"tag-dodgers","13":"tag-friedman","14":"tag-game","15":"tag-group","16":"tag-last-year","17":"tag-mlb","18":"tag-new-york-yankees","19":"tag-rich","20":"tag-season","21":"tag-sports","22":"tag-talent","23":"tag-team","24":"tag-tommy-edman","25":"tag-united-states","26":"tag-unitedstates","27":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114992464901133854","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}