Five teams hired new managers this off-season, but none were more deliberate in their approach than the Dodgers, who on Monday announced the hiring of Dave Roberts after a month long search to replace Don Mattingly. The Dodgers were the last team left in the majors without a manager. The team’s drawn out, extended interview process had many players simply relieved to learn the club had finally settled on someone on Sunday Night when reports had trickled in about Roberts’ hiring.
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In Roberts, Los Angeles gets a skipper who has never managed before, but who spent the last five seasons on the Padres’ coaching staff, first as first base coach, then as bench coach. Roberts’ time in San Diego distinguished him from the other finalist for the job, Gabe Kapler. Though the Dodgers front office hired Kapler as director of the player development last year, and continue to think highly of him, Kapler has no experience coaching in a major league dugout, a scenario some Dodger players were uncomfortable with. And while his intelligence and baseball acumen is undisputed, his philosophies tend to be extreme—from his ideas about testicular sun tanning to his preaching to young hitters in the Dodgers farm system that exit velocity is the only stat that matters.
While exit velocity is a useful, important tool for evaluating players, some within the Dodgers organization worry that such an emphasis will continue to produce all-or-nothing swings with gigantic holes in them, like that of rookie Joc Pederson. (Though in fairness, Pederson wasn’t in the minors when Kapler ran player development). Still, Kapler’s philosophical approach terrifies people in the organization who believe that the same kind of emphasis should be placed on situational hitting. The Royals lead the universe in putting the ball in play and struck out less than any other team. They just won the World Series.
While many in the media pegged Kapler to succeed Mattingly—who has since become the Miami Marlins manager—perhaps in the end he was too radical a choice. Though Dodger ownership gave Andrew Friedman and Farhan Zaidi complete control of personnel decisions when they were hired last fall, the blissful honeymoon period is overafter another early playoff exit. Installing Kapler as manager, only to watch it go sideways, would not reflect well on their decision-making. Roberts was unquestionably the safer choice.
Still, anyone who thinks they know how Dave Roberts will do as manager of the Dodgers is just guessing. After all, he has never managed before. The last manager Friedman hired turned out to be a pretty good one. And though some players are happy the club chose Roberts over Kapler, one player seemed mostly indifferent, telling VICE Sports it doesn’t matter who manages the Dodgers because the front office maps out and scripts everything. (This player, for what it’s worth, is mostly a fan of Friedman and Zaidi).
The Los Angeles Times reported that Roberts will sign a three year contract with an option for a fourth year, a level of job security that his predecessor, Don Mattingly, never got despite leading the club to the playoffs for three consecutive years for the first time in franchise history. This would seem to indicate that the Dodgers front office is more comfortable with Roberts’ ability to execute their vision, even though Mattingly showed a great willingness to embrace analytics.
Then again, the manager job isn’t what it used to be. Whether Roberts succeeds or not, it’s important to remember that we have entered an era where major league skippers are part middle manager and part team spokesman, with negligible impact on a club’s win/loss record. The Dodgers pitching coach, Rick Honeycutt, is widely believed by players to have more impact on the team than any other coach or manager. The club signed him to a multi-year extension weeks ago; he was the only coach the Dodgers retained from last season.
Those who know Dave Roberts call him an exceptional human. The diminutive Roberts squeezed out a ten-year major league career with five different teams by using old-school tools like heart, grit, and hustle. Maybe that makes him the perfect foil to the nerds in the club’s front office. Or maybe all the new school vs. old school yammering is simplistic, lazy analysis of a team that has suffered three straight crushing playoff defeats for a variety of complex reasons.
The Roberts’ hire marks not only the end of the Don Mattingly era but perhaps the true beginning of the Andrew Friedman era. Now that he has his guy in place, it’s time for him to show just how far his Dodgers can go.
