Red Sox signing former Dodgers pitcher is reminder of Boston trying to mimick LA

The Boston Red Sox just handed former Los Angeles Dodgers left-hander Alec Gamboa a minor league split deal with a spring training invite and a built-in $925,000 carrot if he reaches the majors.

On its face? Totally normal, harmless depth move for a team trying to climb out of AL East purgatory. But dig a little deeper, and perhaps this is yet another team trying to siphon off Dodger pitching DNA. And a familiar one too in the Red Sox.

Look, no one is here to pretend that Gamboa was some crown-jewel pitching prospect who got away. But that’s exactly what makes Boston’s latest move so telling.

Gamboa wasn’t a household name, but he was a Dodgers project. And in today's MLB, that’s practically a stamp of approval. Teams aren’t scouting the stat line; they’re scouting the development pipeline. They’re hunting for the untapped velocity, the tweak-able breaking ball, the spin profile that hasn’t quite bloomed yet. And no one has been better at creating late-bloomer pitchers than the Dodgers.

So when the Red Sox sign a guy like Gamboa who was drafted and developed by LA, what they're really buying is hope –– hope that they can reverse-engineer whatever the Dodgers saw in him. Hope that some of those developmental fingerprints rub off. Hope that a Dodgers-adjacent pitcher becomes the next “how did this guy turn into a weapon?” story.

Red Sox's imitation of Dodgers continues with Alec Gamboa signing

Let’s be honest: the Red Sox have been trying to borrow from the Dodgers’ playbook for years. Chasing versatile positional fits? Very Dodger. Obsessing over pitching infrastructure? Dodger blueprint. Stocking up on undervalued arms with big-league upside? Straight from Andrew Friedman’s philosophy binder. Not to mention all the former Dodgers the Red Sox have signed or traded for, like Justin Turner, Kiké Hernandez, Dustin May, Nathan Eovaldi, Kenley Jansen, Chris Martin, Walker Buehler and others.

Signing a guy like Gamboa — a 28-year-old lefty with no MLB innings but years of Dodger development on his résumé — is exactly the kind of “we’re rebuilding our factory from the inside out” move a front office makes when they realize they’re not operating on Los Angeles' level.

Do the Dodgers miss Gamboa? Not really. Do other teams want to be the Dodgers? Absolutely.
This isn’t a “the one that got away” moment. It’s a “yep, there they go again” moment. Another team taking a flyer on a Dodgers project. Another team hoping the lab made something salvageable. Another team chasing the secret sauce.

The Dodgers don’t lose sleep over moves like this. They just produce five more arms with 97 and a wipeout slider. It’s what they do.

But seeing the Red Sox — a franchise with 120 years of swagger — quietly trying to copy the Dodgers’ developmental homework? Yeah. That’s a reminder that Los Angeles isn’t just the standard right now. It's the blueprint.