It could be a fatal mistake for anyone, affiliated with a Major League Baseball team or not, to think the Los Angeles Dodgers won’t make a splash this winter.
Sure, the Dodgers have the league’s highest payroll and back-to-back World Series titles to boast about. But they were also a team with legitimate flaws during the regular season, and the outfield, in particular, could do with a major facelift this winter.
The Dodgers’ hallmark over the past two offseasons has been signing free agents that few thought were attainable. Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Blake Snell, Tanner Scott, and the list goes on. Will that list expand this offseason?
On Sunday, with the Major League Baseball Winter Meetings getting set to begin in Orlando, Kerry Miller of Bleacher Report made a bold prediction that fans of 29 other teams would dread. Miller believes that by the end of the day on Wednesday, four-time All-Star right fielder Kyle Tucker will be a Los Angeles Dodger.
“Not only is “budget” an abstract concept for the twice-reigning champs, but an outfield upgrade is certainly on their offseason to-do list,” Miller wrote. “And unless they’re super high on Harrison Bader or Adolis García, the only free agents who would actually be an upgrade are Tucker and Cody Bellinger—the latter of whom might be opposed to a reunion with the team that non-tendered him three winters ago.
“Tucker signs with the Dodgers, who steer headlong into their villainous role with yet another massive contract that is largely deferred.”
Tucker had a two-month slump this season that may have prevented him from getting close to a $500 million contract, but $300 million still seems like the bare minimum. It wouldn’t simply be a drop in the bucket for the Dodgers; they’d have to be convinced he was the right piece to add for the next decade.
Signing Tucker would also create other interesting questions for the Dodgers this offseason, the most pressing of which would have to do with Teoscar Hernández’s future. Hernández could easily be shifted back to left field, where he played last year before flipping over to right, but he could also be traded if the Dodgers felt like they were getting good value from a team that needed his right-handed power.
More MLB: Blue Jays’ $32 Million Hurler Waived, Outrighted to Triple-A
