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

by Molly Knight

  For the first time in club history, the Dodgers were putting together a roster with no financial limitations. And the responsibility of loading the organization with expensive talent fell on two men: one who grew up in poverty, and another who had built his career on rarely splurging for stars.

  In his thirty-plus years in baseball, Colletti had proven he had the moxy to hang within the upper echelon of the game. Major League Baseball can be a nepotistic crony fest, filled with sons of famous ballplayers. But by his own estimation, Colletti grew up dirt-poor, and lived in a converted garage on the industrial outskirts of Chicago for the first six years of his life. His Italian-American father worked as a mechanic who was paid by the hour. When the family bought a home, paying the mortgage on time was a herculean task. It was seventy dollars a month.

  Given his background, the fact that Colletti rose to become the general manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers is astonishing. It’s easier to get elected to the U.S. Senate than it is to be named a GM: there are one hundred senators, and only thirty MLB general managers. And the game’s analytics renaissance meant that Colletti didn’t just have to compete with well-connected scions to hold on to his position. In the early 2000s, the Oakland Athletics’ GM, Billy Beane, and his Moneyball philosophy inspired legions of MBA grads and computer science savants to seek out jobs in front offices so they could use their skills to do something more exciting than writing code for Silicon Valley start-ups. The new owner of the Houston Astros, for instance, had hired a former management consultant, Jeff Luhnow, to be the club’s GM. Luhnow then brought in a crack team of Wall Street wizards, lawyers, and a NASA behavioral scientist to overhaul the organization. When Walter’s group bought the Dodgers the club had an analytics department that consisted of one person. Colletti preferred cowboy boots to calculators.

  The directive to overpay Ethier to keep him in Los Angeles must have been a shock to Colletti’s system. Gone were the days of being allowed to add impact bats or arms in the middle of the season only if he could somehow do it for free. Colletti was finally able to pursue the roster he wanted, which better suited his confrontational style. Perhaps because of his humble beginnings, Colletti approached the game with a chip on his shoulder the size of Illinois, and refused to suffer coddled ballplayers. If players viewed him as a bully, which many did, Colletti was more likely to chalk it up to their lack of mental toughness than reflect on the wisdom of letting young guys know they were fucking nobodies who could be cut at any time. While organizations like the Cardinals routinely inserted rookies into the middle of pennant races, Colletti was loath to throw kids into big spots, often to the chagrin of his coaching staff. Regardless of the energy youngsters provided to an older lineup, Colletti worried that rookies didn’t possess the guts required to succeed in October.

  Colletti’s emotions often got the better of him. He was so upset when right fielder J. D. Drew surprised him by opting out of his contract that he told reporters he would not rule out filing a tampering grievance against the Red Sox (where Drew went). He also hinted at his displeasure with ever doing business with Drew’s agent, Scott Boras, again. Since Boras represented many of the game’s best players, this fatwa, if adhered to, would put the Dodgers at a serious disadvantage. But in the moment Colletti didn’t care. Or, maybe the problem was that he cared too much. One of his favorite sayings, to the amusement of his players and staff, was “I care so much that I don’t give a fuck.”

  That passion extended to storytelling, too. On the first day of spring training before the 2011 season, when the Dodgers were neck-deep in McCourt muck, Colletti addressed the team with a barn-burning speech he hoped would inspire them into battle. In the early 1500s, famed explorer Hernán Cortés set out from Cuba to conquer Mexico for the Spanish crown. Colletti said that, according to legend, when Cortés arrived on the shores of Veracruz, he ordered his frightened men to burn their ships as a means of giving them confidence and scaring the Aztecs, the message being that Cortés believed his men would so thoroughly dominate that when the job was complete they would leave on their enemies’ ships. Colletti told this story to the Dodger players who sat before him, and beseeched them to learn from Cortés and go out and burn the figurative ships. The men shot each other confused glances and shrugged. Three years later, Colletti sat the Dodgers down on the first day of spring training again for his annual pep talk. He told the same story. Only this time he got mixed up and replaced Cortés with Alexander the Great. Players looked at each other in disbelief. When Colletti left, the room erupted in laughter. Within weeks, the guys had T-shirts made that said BURN THE SHIPS on the front, with ATG for Alexander the Great scrawled on the back. During the 2014 season it was not uncommon to hear players yell, “Burn the ships!” before taking the field. It had become an unlikely rallying cry, but not in the way Colletti intended. What Colletti didn’t know was that Cortés didn’t burn his ships as a motivational tool; he did it so his terrified men couldn’t retreat.

  In spite of the Dodgers’ financial limitations during the McCourt era, or perhaps because of them, Colletti did find his strengths. He had shown a knack for identifying cheap, effective relief pitchers and cobbling together a dominant pitching staff during the Dodgers’ playoff runs at the end of the previous decade. In 2008 and 2009 the Dodgers led the National League in earned run average, thanks to the performances of afterthoughts and castoffs resurrected by his staff. Guys like Hong-Chih Kuo, Ramón Troncoso, and Ronald Belisario dazzled in their unsexy roles of holding a lead, and they did it while earning salaries that hovered near the major-league minimum.

  Colletti had also shown respectable restraint when it came to trading top prospects. When he took over as GM, the Dodgers farm system was bursting with talent, highlighted by the gifted but raw young outfielder Matt Kemp. In 2006, when Kemp was called up to the big leagues, many Dodger veterans didn’t appreciate his cocksure attitude and thought he needed at least a full season under his belt before he could strut around the clubhouse as if he’d already been elected to the Hall of Fame. Nevertheless, Kemp excelled in his first four years in the majors, flashing all five tools on his way to winning a Silver Slugger award as one of the best-hitting outfielders in the National League, and finishing tenth in the Most Valuable Player voting in 2009.

  But his play collapsed the following year when his enjoyment of the Hollywood lifestyle caused him to show up to the field mentally if not physically hungover many days. In 2010 Kemp hit .249 and struck out 170 times—a franchise record. And on the rare occasion when he did make it to first, he often ran the bases as though he needed directions, and frequently stumbled into outs.

  Unfortunately for Kemp, the Dodgers’ coaching staff in 2010 was short on sympathy. At age seventy, the club’s manager, Joe Torre, had little patience for theatrics from his moody center fielder during what was supposed to be the victory lap of his Hall of Fame coaching career. The club’s third-base coach and Torre consigliere, Larry Bowa, enjoyed a hard-earned reputation for being merciless on temperamental young players, with the Chicago Tribune once describing his coaching demeanor as “more psychotic than a psychologist.” That was back when he managed the Padres in 1988, and by many accounts he had only grown more intolerant of bullshit with each passing year. Bowa and Torre both saw Kemp as a player who could transcend the game if he wanted to. But they had no patience for a head case, regardless of his potential.

  Much ink was spilled over whether the Dodgers should cut their losses and trade Kemp, with grizzled, old-school ball writers wailing about team chemistry while the new generation of numbers geeks reminded everyone that the only good reason for parting ways with a center fielder who has the potential to hit forty home runs and steal forty bases is if he moonlights as a serial killer in the off-season. Though no one would ever accuse Colletti of bending to the will of the sabermetric crowd, he took their side. In Kemp, Colletti saw a twenty-five-year-old kid with physical gifts that couldn’t be taught. Kemp was immature, yes, but the last thing Colle
tti wanted to do was sell low on a guy who could wind up being one of the best players in the game.

  Colletti had traded a few dozen young players in his six years as the Dodgers’ GM and the only one who turned out to be a star was the Indians catcher Carlos Santana, a fact that he was quick to point out to the press. The Dodgers received veteran third baseman Casey Blake from Cleveland in that trade deadline deal, and Blake became a critical member of the club’s NLCS runs in 2008 and 2009. That didn’t change the fact that Santana—who went on to average twenty-two home runs with a .364 on-base percentage during his first three full seasons with the Indians—never should have been traded. But even that mistake wasn’t just Colletti’s fault. Santana was the price the Dodgers had to pay to get the Indians to pick up the remaining few million dollars left on Blake’s tab; he became a victim to the notorious cheapskate tax of the McCourt era.

  Colletti’s instincts about Kemp proved right. In 2011, the Dodgers replaced Torre with his hitting coach, the Yankee legend Don Mattingly. Kemp flourished. He raised his batting average seventy-five points and his on-base percentage eighty-nine points, hit thirty-nine home runs, and stole forty bases. He finished second in the NL MVP award voting to Brewers left fielder Ryan Braun—who the world learned later had tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs during the season. Kemp became one of the few bright spots for the Dodgers during one of the bleakest years in franchise history. Colletti responded to Kemp’s resurgence by locking him up that November with an eight-year deal worth $160 million. It was the largest contract the Dodgers had ever given a player.

  While general managers are judged by the moves they make, their best deals are often the ones they don’t make. Perhaps because McCourt was so keen on keeping the payroll down, Colletti didn’t often sign free agents to long-term, exorbitant contracts that torpedoed so many other teams when those players underperformed. He did make one infamous mistake, though, when he inked thirty-three-year-old former San Francisco ace Jason Schmidt to a three-year, $47 million deal in 2007—despite an MRI revealing that Schmidt’s throwing arm appeared to be fastened to the rest of his body at the shoulder with chicken wire. In 2003, while Colletti was San Francisco’s assistant general manager, Schmidt led the National League with a 2.34 earned run average, an incredible number considering he posted it at the height of the steroid era. So, three years later in his new capacity as the GM of the Dodgers, Colletti took a flyer on Schmidt, hoping he would heal and recapture at least some of his old form. He didn’t. Schmidt went on to appear in just ten games for the Dodgers, winning three. The signing was mocked as one of the worst of the decade, especially when it emerged later during the Dodgers’ attempt to collect insurance money that the club was aware of Schmidt’s partially torn rotator cuff when it signed him. Many Dodger fans were frustrated by Colletti’s infatuation with former Giant players, and it was easy to wonder if his judgment was clouded by deep emotional ties to the archrival organization. When the Giants won their first title in fifty-six years in 2010, Colletti cried. Those around the game assumed that if he ever left the Dodgers, he would go back to work in San Francisco.

  • • •

  Ned Colletti’s newfound fiduciary flexibility came with a catch. After Mark Walter took over the Dodgers he installed Stan Kasten as team president to run the club’s day-to-day operations. Kasten had worked in that same capacity for the Braves from 1986 to 2003, before moving to Washington to help guide the Nationals after they relocated from Montreal. During his tenure in Atlanta the Braves became the class of the National League, winning fourteen division titles in fifteen years and five NL pennants with homegrown talent and the best starting rotation of the modern era. During that dynasty, future Hall of Famers Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and John Smoltz functioned like a three-headed monster that chewed through opposing lineups with devastating results. Kasten brought with him to Los Angeles an emphasis on pitching and developing a strong farm system. But on the surface, he was a counterintuitive choice to run the new cash-drunk Dodgers. “I just don’t like giving a lot of money to players,” said Kasten.

  Nevertheless, the job was his. The Dodgers were setting themselves up as the new Yankees West, and they made no secret of the fact that they were hungry for superstars to showcase on their new television network. Kasten hadn’t run the Braves that way. When he took over in Atlanta the team held the impressive distinction of having the highest payroll ($16 million) in the National League and finishing last in its division. Knowing the Braves’ farm system was also in tatters, Kasten traded better-known players for prospects and slashed the club’s payroll to $12 million. The press roasted him. But Kasten preached patience to his owner, Ted Turner, even advising the media mogul to avoid local sports talk radio for the next few years. After finishing in last place in the NL West the next three seasons, the Braves rebounded in 1991, winning their division and advancing all the way to the World Series. They captured the NL pennant the following year as well. Most impressive, the Braves didn’t sign their first big free agent, Greg Maddux, until after they’d been to the World Series twice. “We kept everyone as they were growing and becoming all-stars,” said Kasten. “My last year there our payroll got up to eight-five or ninety million dollars—which was maybe the highest payroll in the National League—but we had earned our way there because we had started from the bottom.”

  Kasten hated the idea of trading away blue-chip prospects for veteran rentals who could help his club win in the short term while wrecking its future. Instead, he believed that in order to win year in and year out, the first thing an organization had to do was stuff its farm system with young talent. Kasten’s measured approach relied on self-control. But Mark Walter didn’t want to wait. While Dodger fans welcomed Guggenheim with much excitement, Walter was smart enough to know that the honeymoon affection his new ownership group enjoyed from the city would evaporate if the club went into rebuilding mode. In order to bring back fans alienated by McCourt and compete with the Lakers, he knew his team had to win, and to win now. Walter couldn’t be at Dodger Stadium every day to deal with the minutiae of overseeing a major-league baseball team because he still lived in Chicago, where he ran his multibillion-dollar investment firm. So he turned the keys to the club over to Kasten. The Dodgers were not Walter’s team or Colletti’s team or even Mattingly’s team: the Dodgers were Kasten’s. Everyone knew it.

  • • •

  Stan Kasten never stood still. On game days, he arrived at Dodger Stadium by eight in the morning and often stayed until midnight. During the sixteen hours or so he was at the ballpark each day he roamed the premises like a shark that feared it would die if it ever stopped moving. Kasten was not only the captain of the Dodgers’ ship, he was also the club’s hall monitor. His constant motion put everyone he came into contact with on edge. While baseball was a game to many, it was a high-stakes business to him. If something went wrong, Kasten had to answer to billionaires who did not like it when things went wrong. He could not rest when there was anything to be done, and there was always something that needed doing.

  After the new ownership group came in, Kasten sat down with Colletti and made a wish list of players they would love to see in Dodger blue—whether they were available or not. At the top of that list was Boston’s first baseman, Adrian Gonzalez. “He was offensively great, defensively great, bilingual, from Southern California, a pillar of the community,” said Kasten, of Gonzalez. “He just checked all the boxes. So he was on the list of the most perfect guys we could ever get some day.”

  The Dodgers had employed James Loney at first base for the past seven seasons but were looking to upgrade the position. Loney was a lanky high school senior from Houston when the Dodgers selected him in the first round of the 2002 draft, and he’d spent his entire career in the organization. His slick fielding made him one of the best defensive first basemen in the game, but he’d never hit more than fifteen home runs in a year. That lack of sock in his swing wouldn’t do for a burgeoning super team.
Getting Gonzalez from Boston wouldn’t be easy: the Red Sox had just signed the left-handed slugger to a seven-year, $154 million contract extension before the previous season. But Gonzalez’s tenure with the Sox had started on an awkward note. Though he had hit twenty-seven home runs in his first season with Boston and collected an MLB-leading 213 hits on his way to a .410 on-base percentage, Gonzalez drew the ire of Red Sox Nation when, after the team suffered a spectacular collapse in the season’s final month and failed to make the playoffs, he shrugged and told the media that a championship just wasn’t God’s plan. The following year when he struggled to start the season, the boos rained down on him at Fenway. It stung.

  Gonzalez had played most of his career in San Diego, a sleepy city whose fan base gives its players minimal grief when they sputter. He never got used to playing under a microscope. When Boston scuffled in the final months of his first season with the team, Gonzalez blamed the club’s schedule. Because the Red Sox were one of the league’s best teams, many of their Sunday day games were moved to the evening so they could be shown nationally. Late Sunday start times meant more overnight flights on getaway days—something Gonzalez rarely had to deal with as a Padre. But they also meant that he was playing on a winning team—and he was mad about that? Gonzalez had moved from one of the most relaxed cities in America to the one wound tightest. “You go to the grocery store and you’re getting hitting advice,” said teammate Nick Punto, of Boston. “You go to the barbershop and you’re getting hitting advice.” That kind of pressure bothered Gonzalez. “They didn’t like that I was a calm person,” he said later to the Los Angeles Times, of the Boston media. “I won’t throw my helmet. I won’t scream, I won’t use bad words if I strike out. That’s what they want over there.”