Dodgers GM Brandon Gomes has baffling response to LA's offseason plans

If the Los Angeles Dodgers wanted to calm the waters after a gut-punch October, this wasn’t it. GM Brandon Gomes framed the winter as a search for “exploration” rather than triage, nodding at the outfield and bullpen without calling either a “need.” That might play in November, but it clashes hard with what everyone just watched: a team that should be a 100-win machine undone by two very fixable soft spots. You don’t have to be a scout to connect the dots, LA got burned where they were thinnest, and the fire alarms are still beeping.

Put bluntly, the Dodgers didn’t win the World Series because everything was flawless. They survived coverage in the corners that turned routine balls into adventures and a relief corps that wobbled when the leverage peaked. When a title arrives in spite of a bullpen avalanche and corner outfielders rating like stop signs, the offseason can’t be about gentle “exploration.” It has to be about correction.

Brandon Gomes downplays Dodgers’ needs after costly October leaks

Start with the grass. Teoscar Hernández finished 2025 in the third percentile in Outs Above Average. And Michael Conforto landed in the fifth percentile. That’s not nitpicking; that’s structural. Lack of range showed up to the naked eye and on every rival exec’s scouting card, and it wasn’t just a corner problem.

Center field turned into musical chairs, with Tommy Edman (an infielder by trade) and rookie Andy Pages rotating through. The result: the Dodgers’ outfield tied for second-most errors in the majors (19) and posted the third-worst fielding percentage (.982). That’s a real run-prevention tax, and it nearly came due in October.

Then there’s the bullpen, the unit Gomes hesitated to label a “need” even as the postseason tape told a different story. Game 1 vs. Toronto flipped in a single sixth-inning landslide: nine runs allowed, momentum vaporized. 

Game 5 swung on Edgardo Henriquez’s wild pitch. And in each of the Dodgers’ losses during the series, inherited runners paraded home, turning manageable jams into game-tilting catastrophes. The sting isn’t that they cracked — it’s that they did so on the sport’s biggest stage, moments away from letting a title slip through their fingers.

The Dodgers’ starters gave them chances, the lineup did its job more often than not, and yet the two weakest links — outfield defense and leverage relief — kept wobbling under strain. That’s not a cause for panic, but it is the blueprint for a targeted shopping list.

So what should the winter sound like? Fix the corners. Add at least one true range-positive option who upgrades right or left and pushes a bat-first profile to DH/bench days. Or shortcut the whole thing if the Kyle Tucker chatter has legs — he’s a two-way solve who stabilizes right field, raises the contact-quality floor, and turns more balls in play into outs. 

In the ’pen, target swing-and-miss with traffic résumés, not just big fastballs. Arms who strand inherited runners and keep the barrel quiet when the tying run’s 90 feet away. The goal isn’t star-chasing for the headline; it’s run prevention you can bank on when the calendar turns.

The Dodgers are too good to let their weaknesses keep flirting with disaster. Words like “explore” and “monitor” don’t match the reality of how close the 2025 title came to unraveling. Call them needs, fix them like needs, and maybe next October won’t feel like survival. Call them something softer, and the champagne might not flow so easily again.