Shocker! The Dodgers Stunned the Baseball World

What was that? From a Dodger fan’s point of view, everything they wanted to happen at the Winter Meetings didn’t, and everything they didn’t want to happen, did.

What went wrong?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We get it. You lead the Majors with 104 wins, you cruise through the playoffs to the World Series, then lose Game 7, and you probably don’t need to do much to prepare for the next season.

Key word: much.

But the Dodgers didn’t do ANYTHING during the four-day Meetings, preferring to sit idly by and watch the three biggest fish get traded or sign somewhere other than L.A. (no, Anaheim is NOT L.A.). Then they, and we, sat idly by and watched several top relievers sign elsewhere.

General Manager Farhan Zaidi told Andy McCullough of the Los Angeles Times, “To some degree, the relief market’s beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Different teams are looking for different things. I do think the reliever market is probably the place where being diligent and really rolling up your sleeves and just doing your due diligence, you can create value there.”

OK, so signing a bullpen arm isn’t the glitzy move Dodger fans have been pining for. But, traditionally, teams that have come close or won the World Series and made drastic changes the following off-season haven’t fared as well the following year.

Andrew Friedman and Farhan Zaidi had something up their sleeves for the Dodgers and their fans that no one could have seen coming.