The Best Team Money Can Buy: The Los Angeles Dodgers' Wild Struggle to Build a Baseball Powerhouse (36 page)

It was Carpenter who had homered off him in his last at-bat. And it was Carpenter who had put together the interminable at-bat that derailed Kershaw—and the Dodgers’ season—in Game 6 of the 2013 NLCS. This was Kershaw’s shot at redemption.

Carpenter fouled off the first three pitches, which were Kershaw’s 103rd, 104th, and 105th offerings of the day. Dodger fans unstuck themselves from their sweaty seats and rose to cheer him on. Carpenter took pitch number 106 in the dirt, and watched number 107 sail high for ball two. He fouled off 108 and 109, a fastball then a slider. The Dodger Stadium crowd began to chant “MVP! MVP!” at Kershaw, in equal parts appreciation and encouragement. With the bases loaded, two out, the count 2-2, and nowhere to put Carpenter, Kershaw grooved a 95 mph fastball toward A. J. Ellis’s mitt. Carpenter hammered it. As the ball
sailed through the air and toward the fence, the packed stadium became so quiet that it was possible to hear screams from the Cardinals’ bench. The ball didn’t clear the wall, but it may as well have. It clanked off the blue fence in the deepest part of center for a bases-clearing double. After all three Cardinals scored, St. Louis led 7–6.

This was not supposed to happen to Kershaw, not again. Not against the same team—the same batter!—as last year’s collapse. It was as if the thing he feared most was willed into being after it became a thought in his brain. And this fresh hell was playing out in front of fifty-five thousand people and millions more on television. Kershaw had been beaten when it mattered most the year before, and he had done everything within his power to make sure it would not happen again. He had failed. “Every time he wound up to make a pitch I was thinking, Okay, this is where it ends,” Ellis said about the Cardinals’ seventh-inning hit parade. But Kershaw couldn’t stop it. No matter how hard he worked or how closely he followed his routine to give himself some semblance of control, the devastating reality was he had very little.

The Dodgers mounted a rally, but lost the wild game 10–9.

It was such a shocking turn of events that afterward teammates and coaches struggled to find an explanation. It had to be the heat, right? Or maybe the Cardinals, who were known as some of the best sign stealers in the game, had seen the pitches Ellis called from second base and relayed that information to the hitter? Or maybe Kershaw was tipping what he was about to throw? “I know I’m going to stay up until three a.m. and second-guess every pitch I called,” Ellis said after the game. Kershaw stood in the hallway outside the Dodgers’ clubhouse to answer questions from a crowd of media looking for answers. He had none. “It’s a terrible feeling,” he said. “As a starting pitcher, it’s your game to lose. I did that.”

The Dodgers tried to rebound the next day by sending Greinke to the mound for Game 2. Greinke was terrific, allowing no runs on just two hits over seven innings. The Dodgers took a 2–0 lead into the eighth and needed just three outs to get the ball to Jansen. Since Greinke was
at 103 pitches and would be facing the Cardinals’ lineup a fourth time, Mattingly called on J. P. Howell. The lefty reliever gave up a single to Oscar Taveras and then a first-pitch home run to Matt Carpenter—who else—to tie the game. Brandon League relieved Howell and got the Dodgers out of the inning with the score still knotted at two, but Greinke’s brilliant effort was wasted. Matt Kemp led off the eighth for the Dodgers and turned on a slider, homering down the left-field line. The Dodgers won the game 3–2 to even the series at a game apiece. Then they boarded a flight back to St. Louis for Games 3 and 4.

After sitting out for three weeks to nurse his tender throwing shoulder, Hyun-Jin Ryu turned in a gutsy performance in Game 3, giving up one run over six innings. Mattingly was prepared to let Jansen get the final six outs of the game, but someone still had to pitch the seventh. With no better ideas and the game tied at one, he turned to Scott Elbert, a seldom-used reliever who had just been recalled three weeks earlier after missing two years to recover from multiple arm surgeries. Elbert gave up a double to Yadier Molina and a home run to second baseman Kolten Wong. The Dodgers couldn’t solve Cardinals starter John Lackey and lost the game 3–1.

Kershaw got another shot in Game 4. Pitching on three days’ rest, he struck out the side to begin the game, then cruised through the first six innings, allowing just one hit and no runs while striking out nine. He took a 2–0 lead into the seventh. Had the Dodgers’ bullpen been solvent, Mattingly probably would have ended Kershaw’s night after six innings, as he had done in Game 4 of the Division Series against the Braves the year before—the last time his young lefty pitched on short rest. But Mattingly didn’t have any arms. He could bring Jansen in for the eighth and ninth, but he still needed those three outs in the seventh. So Kershaw went out to pitch the same inning that had caused him so much trouble in Game 1 and gave up a single to Matt Holliday, just as he had four days earlier. Then he gave up a single to Jhonny Peralta, following the script. The Cardinals’ big first baseman, Matt Adams, stepped into the batter’s box next. The left-handed Adams had
hit .190 against southpaws during the regular season, with a .298 slugging percentage. Kershaw had not given up an RBI to a lefty in 2014 until the month of September. Those numbers didn’t matter. Ahead in the count 0-1, Kershaw hung a breaking ball to Adams, who hit it into the Cardinals’ bullpen. St. Louis took a 3–2 lead, which became final two innings later. The Cardinals advanced to the NLCS to face the San Francisco Giants. The Dodgers went home.

T
he Guggenheim group had
spent more than $250 million on all the players who graced the Dodgers’ roster in 2014. It bought them one playoff win.

On the flight home from St. Louis,
Ned Colletti was angry. He knew the press was roasting him over the Dodgers’ failure to add relievers at the trading deadline when it was already obvious the club’s bullpen was a disaster. He wanted people to know it wasn’t his fault. Colletti had come so close to trading for Padres reliever Joaquin Benoit back in July that San Diego’s front office thought it had a deal. A veteran in his thirteenth season, Benoit had staggered through his first eight years with Texas, bouncing between being a starter and a reliever and posting a 4.79 earned run average. Then, in 2009 he blew out his throwing shoulder and had to have surgery to fix a torn rotator cuff. He sat out a year to recover from the injury. Many thought his career was finished.

But the small-market Tampa Bay Rays liked what they saw in
Benoit. Because their limited finances prevented them from paying a premium for established stars, their shrewd front office began stockpiling broken relievers with excellent changeups, figuring their pitching coaches could help the player sharpen it and turn it into a devastating weapon. With no better offers, Benoit accepted Tampa’s invitation to minor-league camp in 2010. The Rays called him up to the big leagues at the end of April and he dominated the rest of the way, striking out 75 batters in 60 innings with a 1.34 ERA. Benoit’s success was bittersweet for Tampa. They had taught him that throwing more strikes early in the count would make his changeup even harder to hit when batters fell behind, and he had flourished. And because they had helped him so much, they could no longer afford him. Detroit signed Benoit to a three-year deal worth $16.5 million before the 2011 season. He pitched very well for the Tigers, too, striking out ten batters per nine over 199 innings with a 2.89 ERA. In his final season in Detroit, he was promoted to closer.

Benoit had been one of the best relievers on the market before the 2014 season when the Padres signed him to a two-year deal worth a guaranteed $15.5 million to pitch the eighth inning ahead of their closer, Huston Street. As a guy who had proven he had the psychological mettle to handle the ninth inning, Benoit remained on Colletti’s radar. And when the Chris Perez and Brian Wilson signings blew up in his face and he knew the Dodgers’ bullpen would be a liability in October, he tried to deal for Benoit at the trading deadline.

But the Dodgers’ analytics department thought it was a bad idea. The thirty-seven-year-old Benoit’s shoulder was on the verge of exploding, they argued: it was just a matter of time. And Colletti had gotten the Dodgers’ bullpen into this mess by overpaying for former closers. If Benoit did get injured, Los Angeles would still be on the hook for over $10 million, plus whatever prospects they gave San Diego to get him. Had they learned nothing from recent history? Colletti disagreed with their assessment of Benoit, perhaps because he knew he would be blamed for failing to trade for reinforcements who could shore up the
bullpen. Stan Kasten may have been in the game for a long time, but he had shown a willingness to listen to the opinions of the new-school stat-heads and embraced the idea that there was no such thing as too much information. Kasten sided with the geeks. The deal was nixed. Padre officials were left with the impression that Colletti couldn’t pull the trigger because he didn’t have room in a bullpen already crowded with veteran relievers he couldn’t cut. So the embattled Dodgers GM made no moves at the deadline and told reporters that he felt good about his club. The Dodgers’ analytics department was proven right immediately: Benoit reported shoulder soreness two weeks after Colletti had tried to trade for him. He pitched just five innings in the last seven weeks of the season.

That didn’t stop Colletti from laying into one of the employees who he believed blocked the trade, on the flight back to Los Angeles from St. Louis. “Thanks for having my fucking back on Benoit,” he was overheard saying to the man. The nerds had been right about Benoit and had saved the Dodgers millions of dollars and prospects. But in that moment it didn’t matter much to Colletti. Had he traded for Benoit and watched the righty’s arm fall off as a Dodger, at least he could say he had done
something
to try to help the bullpen and could blame the failure on the club’s bad injury luck.

The Dodgers flew home on a Tuesday. By Friday, rumors swirled within the organization that Colletti had been fired. The club denied it. But on the following Tuesday the Dodgers announced they had hired the whip-smart architect of Tampa Bay’s improbable success, Andrew Friedman, as their new president of baseball operations, with the expectation that he would hire a new general manager. But Kasten still hated firing people, and it seemed he had a soft spot for Colletti. Ever magnanimous, he reassigned Colletti to the ceremonial position of senior advisor. For the 2015 season Colletti would move into the broadcast booth.

Friedman and his sabermetric-inclined front office had picked a thirty-two-year-old Benoit off the scrap heap, signed him for little
money, and watched him develop into one of the best relievers in the game. Colletti, in his desperation, sought to trade at least one decent prospect for the thirty-seven-year-old, on-the-verge-of-major-injury version of Benoit, in addition to paying the remaining three-quarters of his $15.5 million contract. Colletti had survived the McCourt regime and the Guggenheim takeover because he excelled politically with those he worked for. But the game was changing: information was now king. And in his two and a half years owning the Dodgers, Mark Walter had learned that money couldn’t buy championships. Being the richest team wasn’t as important as being the smartest.

•  •  •

The Friedman hire caught everyone by surprise because many teams had tried, and failed, to lure him away from Tampa. The Los Angeles Angels came calling, and Friedman turned them down. He had also said no to Theo Epstein and the Cubs, and to his hometown Houston Astros. Like Colletti with the Dodgers, the thirty-seven-year-old former Bear Stearns analyst had been the Rays’ general manager for the past nine seasons. When he took over in late 2005, the seven-year-old club had never experienced a winning season. Despite their limited payroll, he led them to the World Series three years later, powered by an approach steeped in advanced statistics. During his time as GM the Rays were always in the bottom half in MLB payroll. But they made the playoffs four times. The problem, of course, was that whenever his talented young players were about to hit free agency, Friedman was forced to trade them for prospects, one by one, to rich teams like the Dodgers because the Rays could never afford to keep them. Given the nature of the team’s finances, everything would have to break right for Tampa to win one world championship. A dynasty wasn’t possible.

But Friedman liked the challenge of playing poker with the short stack. He had joined the Rays’ organization with his close friend Matthew Silverman, who became the club’s president. And he enjoyed a close relationship with the team’s owner, Stuart Sternberg, and manager, Joe Maddon. By most accounts, he had the freedom to do
whatever he wanted, and he treasured his comfortable working relationships. Because of this, the rest of the industry thought he might stay in Tampa forever. When the Dodgers lured Friedman away it stunned baseball. No one should have been that surprised. Mark Walter had proven, time and again, that he was a man who got what he wanted. From buying the Dodgers the night before they were to go to auction, to taking on hundreds of millions in dead money from the Red Sox to land Adrian Gonzalez, to overpaying to snap up Yasiel Puig, Walter had shown he wasn’t someone who liked to hear the word
no
when his sights were fixed. In his introductory press conference, Friedman said that while he loved his time in Tampa, he couldn’t pass up a chance to run such a storied franchise, but the Cubs were pretty storied, too. The amount of money the Dodgers offered Friedman to leave Tampa was not disclosed but he was rumored now to be baseball’s highest-paid executive. He convinced one of Billy Beane’s lieutenants, Farhan Zaidi, to leave the Oakland A’s to become the Dodgers’ new GM.

Friedman sat at a table next to Kasten to greet the pack of local reporters crammed into the same press-conference room that was the site of Mattingly and Colletti’s awkward year-end session the season before. He appeared nervous as he read from several pages of prepared remarks, as if he were giving a speech to fellow high school classmates in hopes that they would elect him student body president. He had good reason to be anxious. In Tampa, he never had to deal with the weight of championship expectations. He and his team had made their bones taking chances on misfits and previously injured (or incarcerated) players with tremendous upside who, if they failed to pan out, would not lead to his being ridiculed or fired. And for every frog he was able to turn into a prince, he’d be hailed as a genius. There was very little risk. For these Dodgers, anything less than World Series appearances would be viewed as failure. And unlike in Tampa, where he called most of the shots, the Dodgers would still be Stan Kasten’s team.