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Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Yasiel Puig will face an investigation from Major League Baseball after he was reportedly involved in a brawl at a bar and allegedly shoved his sister. 

According to TMZ Sports, Puig and his sister were drinking together at a bar in Miami before getting “into a heated argument…and things escalated when he pushed her.” Per TMZ Sports, employees at the bar ran over to break it up, leading to Puig getting physical with them.

Continue for updates.

Dodgers President Comments on Puig

Monday, Nov. 30

TMZ Sports spoke to Dodgers president Stan Kasten, who spoke on the investigation into Puig and his status on the team:

MLB to Investigate Puig’s Involvement in Bar Fight

Friday, Nov. 27

According to Dylan Hernandez of the Los Angeles Times, MLB is going to investigate Puig using the league’s newly implemented domestic violence policy.

Hernandez provided more details from the incident:

The bouncer told police Puig had sucker-punched him. Puig said the bouncer was overly aggressive. Neither said they were interested in pressing charges, and (Major Delrish Moss) said the police considered the case closed.

The Dodgers declined to comment, as did Puig’s agent.

In August, per Paul Hagen of MLB.com, the league and Major League Baseball Players Association agreed to a new policy that covers domestic violence, sexual assault and child abuse. Under the agreement, the commissioner’s office investigates every allegation.

Once the investigation is complete, the commissioner decides “on appropriate discipline, with no minimum or maximum penalty under the policy.” Players are allowed to appeal the decision.

Puig is coming off the worst season of his brief MLB career, playing a career-low 79 games because of injuries. The 24-year-old hit .255/.322/.436 with 11 home runs, but on Nov. 21, Hernandez noted the Dodgers aren’t likely to trade Puig because his stock is so low.

This alleged incident will lead to more questions about Puig, though MLB’s investigation is likely to take some time before providing a final verdict.

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Opting out didn’t surprise anybody. 

Not the Los Angeles Dodgers decision-makers, not the team’s fans, not the media that covers the organization and entire industry, not the man’s teammates and not rival teams.

No one was stunned when ace Zack Greinke left $71 million and three years in his wake by opting out of his deal with the Dodgers. With possibly double that dollar amount available in free agency after Greinke’s outstanding and historic 2015 season, it was the right-hander’s best option.

However, just because Greinke is on the open market and available to virtually any team he wants to play for does not mean he should leave Los Angeles or his co-ace, Clayton Kershaw. And according to Jon Heyman of CBS Sports, the team has made convincing Greinke of that its top priority this offseason.

That would be wise, because without Greinke, the Dodgers rotation suddenly becomes thin and questionable after Kershaw. But for Greinke, signing up to be a Dodger for what will likely be the rest of his career makes just as much sense, as he can be part of the game’s best 1-2 punch with Kershaw.

There have been almost no reports on Greinke’s thought process since the Dodgers’ season ended in the National League Division Series. All we know for certain is Greinke had nice things to say immediately after the playoff run ended.

“That would be nice,” Greinke told reporters last month when asked if he wanted to return to the Dodgers. “I guess that is my whole response.”

That was not the whole response, though.

“It’s got to be the best franchise in the game, I would think,” Greinke added. “They’re in a great situation.”

The comments might be enough to convince Dodgers fans Greinke, who had a 1.66 ERA and 225 ERA+ last season, will re-sign with the team before spring training. Then again, it is common baseball knowledge by now that Greinke chose the Dodgers in the first place mostly because they were able to offer him the most money.

The Dodgers are still in a position to do that this winter, but there is going to be competition and possibly just as much money offered by other clubs. For instance, the rival San Francisco Giants reportedly have serious interest in Greinke, who finished second in the National League Cy Young Award voting and was the league’s Player’s Choice Outstanding Pitcher. The Giants could make him their No. 1 target this offseason, significantly boosting their rotation while weakening the Dodgers, who have won the NL West in three consecutive seasons.

rivals giants seen as threat to steal greinke away from dodgers. https://t.co/uKo2R2JiCo

— Jon Heyman (@JonHeymanCBS) November 20, 2015

The Giants are not the only big-money club with potential eyes for the ace. Fox Sports’ Ken Rosenthal (h/t CBS Sports) has speculated the Boston Red Sox have real interest, and despite their mantra not to spend big in free agency, it would be negligent not to believe the New York Yankees could jump into the fray.

For Greinke, the problem with those places could be the clubhouse atmosphere and media coverage. While Los Angeles is a major world market, the traveling media corps is relatively small and far less critical than those in Boston or New York, where every misplaced fastball might be chronicled as the end of good times and evidence of Greinke’s nine-figure contract being a busted one.

In October, Scott Lauber of the Boston Herald quoted a source close to Greinke as saying he “definitely wouldn’t want any more stress or additional media attention” with a new club. Greinke, who has discussed his social anxiety disorder and clinical depression in the past, would be walking into exactly that if he ended up with the Red Sox or Yankees.

This is another reason why Los Angeles seems like the place for him, because even in San Francisco, another relaxed media market, he would enter next year being looked at as the reason the Giants should win a fourth World Series in seven years. While the Dodgers seem to need him to win their first since 1988, Greinke is already comfortable with the expectations and media there.

He is also comfortable as the team’s No. 2 starter. Kershaw is the all-world ace of the team, and much of the pressure to win a title lands on his left arm. Despite Greinke’s historic season, he was able to pitch in Kershaw’s shadow most of the year even when he was the team’s best pitcher for months at a time. For Greinke, that seems ideal.

According to Molly Knight, author of The Best Team Money Can Buy, via Yahoo Sports’ Jeff Passan (h/t Fox Sports), there has been clubhouse discord involving Greinke and Yasiel Puig, but that is likely not enough to scare him into the arms of another organization. That is especially true if the Dodgers are indeed prioritizing Greinke, 32, as their top free agent and willing to pay him as such.

The rub is the Dodgers might not be willing to overextend. Team president Stan Kasten does not like to extend pitchers with a certain number of innings on their arms, and the front office, led by President of Baseball Operations Andrew Friedman, has said in the past he does not want to be handcuffed in the future by huge contracts to a group of players in their mid- or late 30s.

“They’d certainly like to retain [him], but…the Dodgers know that he’s going to command a lot of money on the open market,” Los Angeles Times writer Bill Shaikin said on MLB Network on Monday. “They also know they don’t want to get into six- and seven-year territory with a guy who is going to be pushing 40 years old at the end of the contract.”

This comes down to how badly Greinke would like to remain with the Dodgers, who will pay him market value but maybe just not for six or seven years. It also might be decided by Greinke’s comfort level with the organization and clubhouse, and if that is the case, he should realize he might not find a better situation for himself and his wants and needs than the Dodgers.

Greinke has already had lots of success with the Dodgers as the No. 2 guy to Kershaw’s ace, and he can continue to pitch as one of the best in the majors within that setup. It works for him, as does the cash the Dodgers are going to put on the table.

Now, it is up to Greinke to make the call.

Advanced statistics courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com. 

All quotes, unless otherwise specified, have been acquired firsthand by Anthony Witrado. Follow Anthony on Twitter @awitrado and talk baseball here.

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In Game 4 of the 2004 American League Championship Series, Dave Roberts entered as a pinch runner in the bottom of the ninth inning and stole arguably the biggest base in Boston Red Sox history.

You know the rest of the story: Roberts scored the tying run, the Red Sox won in extras, overcame a 3-0 series deficit to vanquish the hated New York Yankees and ultimately busted the Curse of the Bambino.

It’s not hyperbole to say Roberts is stepping into a similarly pressure-packed situation with the Los Angeles Dodgers.

The Dodgers are expected to officially name Roberts their new manager Monday, according to a report by Dylan Hernandez, Bill Plaschke and Bill Shaikin of the Los Angeles Times, which cited unnamed sources since the news is not yet official.

Roberts, as Hernandez, Plaschke and Shaikin noted, beat out Dodgers farm director Gabe Kapler, who played for the Tampa Bay Rays under then-general manager Andrew Friedman, who is now L.A.’s president of baseball operations.

Bleacher Report’s Scott Miller confirmed the news and noted Roberts’ connection to a Dodger legend:

Roberts’ mandate is as simple as it is daunting: Get the Dodgers over the postseason hump and guide the club to its first championship in more than a quarter-century. 

There are reasons for optimism, so let’s start with those.

While this is Roberts’ first non-interim managerial gig, he’s spent plenty of time in the National League West, including stints as a player with the Dodgers, San Diego Padres and San Francisco Giants and a run as the Padres’ first-base coach and bench coach. He also spent one day as San Diego’s interim manager after the club fired Bud Black in June. 

So he’s familiar with the lay of the land out West. And he impressed during his interview with the Dodgers, as USA Today‘s Bob Nightengale noted before the hire:

Roberts, whose parents are African-American and Japanese, will also be the first minority manager in team history, a not-insignificant footnote for the franchise that signed Jackie Robinson.

The bottom line, though, will be results. And while we don’t yet know the parameters of Roberts’ contract, it’s doubtful he’ll be given much of a grace period.

He is inheriting baseball’s most expensive roster, after all, a team that has won three straight division titles but has fallen short of an NL pennant—let alone a Commissioner’s Trophy—each time.

He might enter 2016 without the services of Zack Greinke, the Cy Young runner-up who is currently floating in the free-agent pool.

But he’ll have ace Clayton Kershaw and whatever additions Friedman makes to the rotation, lineup and bullpen in the coming months. It’ll be a group capable of winning—that much we know. The trick will be making them jell.

To that end, Roberts would be wise to sidle up quickly next to Yasiel Puig and establish a relationship. Assuming he’s not traded, the Cuban slugger will be a key piece of the puzzle next year in L.A., and Roberts needs to ensure the ultra-talented but often polarizing Puig understands where he fits.

We won’t know what kind of skipper Roberts will be until we see him in action and watch him evolve into the role. But Padres catcher Derek Norris offered a clue last season, when Roberts made his one-game stint at the helm.

“We love Doc,” Norris said, per Kirk Kenney of the San Diego Union-Tribune. “He’s great. He’s awesome. He’s very optimistic and very positive. People respond to that.”

“Doc” is Roberts’ nickname, a play on his initials. It’ll be apt as he tries to resuscitate a clubhouse that was often less than healthy under Don Mattingly, as Joel Sherman of the New York Post outlined:

[If] anything created tension in the organization, it was the front office felt it had to clean up messes in the clubhouse because Mattingly was not good with confrontation. Last offseason, the Dodgers did not sign free agent Hanley Ramirez, traded Matt Kemp and released Brian Wilson in the name of improving chemistry. Still, Yasiel Puig was left behind, as were a swath of expensive players who were expecting to play daily and in some cases weren’t.

There’s no guarantee Roberts will expertly juggle every ego and deftly sidestep every playing-time minefield. Undoubtedly he’ll make his share of mistakes, as all rookie managers do.

But by tapping a guy with a reputation for likability and relatively recent experience as a player in the Dodger dugout, Friedman and company have sent a message that cohesion and harmony matter. This talented, expensive ship needs a captain with a bright smile and a steady hand. Roberts appears to have both.

Based on Nightengale’s note on Roberts’ interview, it’s safe to assume the new skipper is open to suggestions from Friedman and Los Angeles’ analytically inclined front office. The key will be filtering that down to the field without creating tension.

It’s a balancing act, no question, and Roberts could wobble. All managers can, no matter how many years they’ve logged on the top step.

But this feels like the right hire—a positive development and a needed reset for a team that was looking increasingly like baseball’s winningest mess under Mattingly.

Eleven years ago, Roberts’ legs helped end Boston’s championship drought. Now, the Dodgers are hoping his head—and heart—can do the same thing in Southern California.

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The Los Angeles Dodgers have found their next manager.

The franchise named Roberts as manager on Monday, a day after Dylan Hernandez, Bill Plaschke and Bill Shaikin of the Los Angeles Times first reported the decision.

Roberts said in a statement, via MLB.com’s Ken Gurnick:

It’s hard for me to put into words what it means to be named manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers. This is truly the opportunity of a lifetime. The Dodgers are the ground-breaking franchise of Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Sandy Koufax, Maury Wills, Fernando Valenzuela and Hideo Nomo. When I put on this uniform as a player, I understood the special responsibility to honor those that played before me as well as the amazing bond between the Dodgers and their fans. I feel that I have now come full circle in my career and there is plenty of unfinished business left in L.A.

Jerry Crasnick of ESPN.com reported an introductory press conference will be held on Dec. 1.

With Roberts’ hiring, he is the first minority manager in Dodgers history (his mother is Japanese and his father is African-American).

Multiple veterans on the team told management they wanted Roberts to be their next manager once he made it to the final stages of the selection process, according to Bob Nightengale of USA Today.

Molly Knight, author of The Best Team Money Can Buy: The Los Angeles Dodgers’ Wild Struggle to Build a Baseball Powerhouse, agreed with the decision:

Roberts joined the San Diego Padres staff in 2011 as the team’s first-base coach, and he was most recently the bench coach for the Dodgers’ National League West rivals.

Roberts played in the major leagues for 10 seasons and famously kept the Boston Red Sox alive in Game 4 of the 2004 American League Championship Series against the New York Yankees when he stole a base and scored a critical run late in the contest. The Red Sox proceeded to win the game and come back from a 3-0 series deficit on the way to a World Series title.

Roberts was also an outfielder for the Dodgers early in his career and will become the first manager hired by Andrew Friedman after he took over as president of baseball operations last year. 

Hernandez, Plaschke and Shaikin noted Gabe Kapler was the initial favorite for the Dodgers position given his status as the franchise’s farm director. Friedman hired Kapler to work in the Tampa Bay Rays front office and brought him with him when he joined the Dodgers.

Hernandez, Plaschke and Shaikin also suggested “like Mattingly, the new manager can count on guidance from front-office executives on everything from the team’s lineup to bullpen decisions.”

Roberts will inherit a team Don Mattingly led to a division title in 2015. Mattingly held the position with the Dodgers for five seasons, but the franchise and manager split ways this offseason before he signed a four-year deal with the Miami Marlins.

While this will be Roberts’ first time as a major league manager, Los Angeles will have World Series expectations firmly in place behind a pitching staff that includes three-time Cy Young winner and former MVP Clayton Kershaw and an offense spearheaded by power hitter Adrian Gonzalez.

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At times, it appears as though the Los Angeles Dodgers clubhouse is full of egos running amok, full of tension between players that has prevented the team from achieving greater success on the field.

Three-time Cy Young Award winner Clayton Kershaw has rarely been associated with such supposed dissension. Yet rumors floated Thursday that the face of the team—and perhaps all of baseball—wants embattled outfielder Yasiel Puig out of the Dodgers organization.   

Andy Van Slyke, former major leaguer and father of current Dodgers outfielder Scott Van Slyke, told Frank Cusumano of CBS Sports Radio 920 in St. Louis (h/t CBS Sports‘ Dayn Perry) such may be the case:

This is just between you and I. When the best player—the highest paid player on the Los Angeles Dodgers—goes to the GM and—is asked what are [the needs of the Los Angeles Dodgers], this particular highest-paid player said, ‘The first thing you need to do is get rid of Puig.’ That’s all you need to know.

Van Slyke didn’t specify Kershaw by name—referring instead to “the highest-paid player,” but the implication was clear.

Puig is one of the most athletic players in the majors, with the power of a linebacker and the arm of a quarterback. Dodgers legendary broadcaster Vin Scully aptly refers to him as a “wild horse,” a remarkable talent who sometimes suffers as a risk-taker. That all-out playing style ended up costing him nearly half of last season because of injury.

The Dodgers are coming off their third straight disappointing finish and are currently without a manager after the club parted ways with former skipper Don Mattingly in late October. 

At face value, this all seems irregular for Kershaw, who’s known to consistently speak the truth but always with optimism. Even when the Dodgers’ clubhouse dysfunction reached a public level in 2014, Kershaw never threw his teammates under the bus. 

Perhaps the former MVP does want Puig gone, but it’ll be up to team president Andrew Friedman and the rest of the Los Angeles front office to make a decision.

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Coming off his most productive season in years, Brett Anderson has decided to stick with the Los Angeles Dodgers.

According to ESPN’s Buster Olney, Anderson has accepted the Dodgers’ qualifying offer. Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports confirmed that Anderson would be taking the one-year guarantee.

Under terms of the qualifying-offer system, per Doug Miller of MLB.com, players who accept will make $15.8 million in 2016.

Anderson has been one of the biggest cautionary tales in MLB for years. The left-hander has always shown great ability when healthy, but injuries had prevented him from making 20 starts in a season for five consecutive years before 2015.

Last year, starting a career-high 31 games for the Dodgers, Anderson proved that he has a lot left in the tank.

Even though Anderson doesn’t miss bats the way he used to, he has always generated a lot of ground balls, and last season was his best year in that regard. His 66.3 percent rate in 2015 was nearly 5 percent better than any other starting pitcher in the majors, per FanGraphs.

Speaking to Mark Saxon of ESPN.com in March, Anderson talked about why his ability to keep the ball on the ground is such a critical part of his game. 

“When I was younger and throwing harder, I’d strike more people out. Obviously, you have to evolve,” Anderson said. “As I’ve gotten older and had some of the injuries, I don’t throw quite as hard, but that’s part of pitching and part of being in the big leagues for a little while now.”

The Dodgers put Anderson in a situation where he doesn’t have to lead the rotation like he did in Oakland and Colorado because Clayton Kershaw is the staff ace. The team faces uncertainty behind Kershaw next season, with Zack Greinke opting out of his deal and Brandon McCarthy set to miss the start of 2016 while recovering from Tommy John surgery. 

The 27-year-old Anderson will continue to be a volatile pitcher until he builds a track record of staying healthy, but the Dodgers can expect another solid season after his work in 2015, securing much-needed rotation depth.

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The Los Angeles Dodgers are in the market for starting pitching, and word is they’re willing to go big. They either want to re-sign Zack Greinke or, failing that, sign David Price instead.

But here’s a crazy notion: Why not both Greinke and Price? And by “crazy,” we of course actually mean “plausible and very much worthwhile.”

First, let’s be clear that signing both Greinke and Price doesn’t appear to be the Dodgers’ goal. Jon Heyman of CBS Sports has reported that they’re the top two free agents on the Dodgers’ radar but that there’s only an either/or thing going on. Greinke is their top target, and Price is their “fallback option.”

You can understand why the Dodgers feel they only need to sign one of them. They’re coming off a year in which their starting rotation’s excellent 3.24 ERA had a big hand in delivering a 92-70 record and a third straight NL West title. At the heart of that success was the unrivaled duo of Clayton Kershaw and Greinke, who combined for a 1.94 ERA in nearly 450 innings. 

Re-signing Greinke, who led MLB with a 1.66 ERA, would keep the band together and potentially allow the Dodgers to repeat their 2015 formula in 2016 and beyond. Going for Price, whose 2.45 ERA gave him his second American League ERA title, could have the same effect.

But if one of them would be good, signing both would obviously be even better. Doing so would cost a lot of money, but…hey, these are the Dodgers we’re talking about here.

Modern times being what they are, there’s no mistaking that Greinke and Price are both in line for gigantic contracts. 

In the wake of the seven-year, $210 million contract that Max Scherzer signed last winter, the price for elite starting pitching this winter will be at least $30 million per year. Tim Dierkes of MLB Trade Rumors is probably right on in predicting that Price, 30, will sign for seven years and $217 million and that Greinke, 32, will sign for five years and $156 million.

If that’s where Greinke and Price end up, they’ll both be on the hook for $31 million per year. So, if the Dodgers were to ink both, they could be adding a little over $60 million to their 2016 payroll. That’s a lot of money for two players. 

But too much? Maybe not for the Dodgers.

The Dodgers ultimately spent $310 million on payroll in 2015. As of now, Cot’s Baseball Contracts has them on the hook for about $155 million in salary commitments for 2016, and MLB Trade Rumors has them projected to pay about $35 million in arbitration. That adds up to roughly $190 million.

If the Dodgers add Greinke and Price at their projected rates, they’d only be raising their 2016 commitments to $250 million. That’s well short of where they can go, giving them room to make more additions even after dropping a couple king’s ransoms on the kings of the free-agent pitching market.

And this is without even assuming that the Dodgers could backload Greinke‘s and Price’s contracts so that the real money doesn’t kick in until later. With the club’s guaranteed salary commitments set to fall below $100 million as soon as 2018, that’s something they could do.

Another thing to keep in mind: signing Greinke and Price would only cost the Dodgers money.

The Dodgers made Greinke a qualifying offer, and his inevitable rejection of it will tie him to draft pick compensation. But if it’s the Dodgers who sign him, their first-round pick in 2016 (No. 25) will remain theirs. And because Price was traded in 2015, he was barred from receiving a qualifying offer. Ergo, signing both of them would not hinder the Dodgers’ ability to keep adding young talent via the draft.

In all, we have how the Dodgers can sign both Greinke and Price. Now it’s time for the second half of the equation: why they should.

As it has been in previous offseasons, the Dodgers’ goal for this offseason is to make upgrades that will bring them not just more NL West titles, but the elusive World Series title they’ve been hot after ever since Magic Johnson rescued the team from Frank McCourt in 2012.

To do this, the Dodgers could pursue all sorts of options. It’s just hard to think of one better than upgrading their rotation with Greinke and Price.

The Dodgers could upgrade their offense, which may seem like the right idea after it failed them down the stretch in 2015. But President of Baseball Operations Andrew Friedman said recently, via Eric Stephen of True Blue LA, that he sees the team as being “pretty locked in offensively.” And he’s right.

The Dodgers have solid starters at every position except second base, and what happened at the end of 2015 shouldn’t obscure the fact that there’s plenty of upside to be found in the Dodgers offense. The Dodgers had an elite offense early in 2015 and could again if Yasmani Grandal and Yasiel Puig can stay healthy and young guns Joc Pederson and Corey Seager make good on their potential.

The Dodgers could also upgrade their bullpen, which hasn’t featured a solid bridge to the excellent Kenley Jansen in any of the last three seasons. But outside of Darren O’Day—who ESPN.com’s Jerry Crasnick says already has the Dodgers’ attention—the free-agent relief market is very thin. Most of the action is on the trade market, where there aren’t many sensible targets for the Dodgers.

As much as the Dodgers would probably love to have Aroldis Chapman, their young pitching (i.e. Julio Urias and Jose De Leon) may not appeal to a Cincinnati Reds team that needs young position players. Moving young talent to the San Diego Padres for Craig Kimbrel could backfire in the future. Andrew Miller is available, but Heyman writes that it may take an ace pitcher to land him from the New York Yankees. At present, the Dodgers only have one of those. And he’s, uh, not available.

So, behold. We’re left looking at Door No. 3: the Dodgers rotation.

If nothing else, the Dodgers rotation needs depth. Kershaw is still on top and is still awesome. But after him, Alex Wood is the Dodgers’ only healthy established starter. After him come Hyun-jin Ryu and Brandon McCarthy, who are both coming off significant injuries.

If the Dodgers were to sign Greinke and Price, they’d be making depth a much more minor concern and, more importantly, upgrading from an elite rotation duo to an elite rotation trio.

How good would a trio of Kershaw, Greinke and Price be? Well, it says a lot that Baseball-Reference.com WAR rates them as three of the league’s eight best pitchers since 2013:

Things don’t look much different if you focus strictly on 2015, as Kershaw, Greinke and Price rated as three of the league’s six best pitchers.

In fact, had they been on the same team in 2015, the Dodgers would have been the first team with three starters with ERAs below 2.50 since they did it in 1985. Even more impressive, they would have been only the third team ever with three pitchers worth at least six WAR.

If a Kershaw, Greinke and Price trio becomes a reality, the Dodgers would have a rotation trio that few teams could match up with. This is certainly true of the National League, where the only competitive unit would be the New York Mets‘ trio of Jacob deGrom, Matt Harvey and Noah Syndergaard. 

And lest anyone doubt that the Dodgers need only arrange an elite rotation trio to have a shot at their elusive World Series title, the Mets are a pretty good example to follow.

The Dodgers were the first team the Mets beat on their way to winning the National League pennant, in part because they got excellent pitching out of deGrom, Harvey and Syndergaard. Evidently, that left an impression on Adrian Gonzalez.

“I definitely think that in this day and age you need three front-line starters to go deep in the playoffs,” said the Dodgers first baseman, via Dylan Hernandez of the Los Angeles Times.

Granted, this is debatable. The Kansas City Royals didn’t need three front-line starters to win the World Series. And as Friedman pointed out to Hernandez, the assorted rosters of this year’s postseason were “constructed very differently.”

What the Mets showed, however, is that a roster constructed around an elite starting trio is indeed capable of going deep into the postseason as long as it has the right supporting cast. In their case, that meant an offense defined by its depth and one shutdown reliever (Jeurys Familia).

That’s a blueprint the Dodgers could follow if they put Greinke and Price behind Kershaw. As we discussed, they already have one shutdown reliever in Jansen, and depth will indeed be their offense’s defining feature if it’s blessed with good health and a couple of breakout performances. If this formula worked for the Mets, it could work for the Dodgers.

To go for it, all the Dodgers have to do is hand out a couple hundred million bucks. And, really, what’s that to them?

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.

If you want to talk baseball, hit me up on Twitter.

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Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Yasiel Puig suffered through an up-and-down 2015 season and only played in 79 games thanks to two separate stints on the disabled list. He also started only one of the five games in his team’s loss to the New York Mets in the National League Division Series.

President of Baseball Operations Andrew Friedman believes the outfielder’s weight was one reason for the health issues.

Friedman commented on Puig and the Dodgers’ desire for him to lose that weight in a report by Dylan Hernandez of the Los Angeles Times: “That’s a focus. He has continued to get bigger and stronger each year. It may not be the optimal size for him to play 150 games, 150-plus games.”

It is a tricky balance because adding strength would likely result in more power at the plate, but Los Angeles needs the outfielder on the field. Friedman did acknowledge “the reports have been great,” regarding Puig’s regular contact with strength and conditioning coach Brandon McDaniel.

The Dodgers outfield is something of a question mark this offseason after Puig missed so much time with injury (and set career lows with a .255 average, 11 home runs and 38 RBI) and Joc Pederson hit .178 with six home runs after the All-Star break. Pederson drilled 20 home runs in the first half of the season but looked lost at the plate by October.

Hernandez said Los Angeles could look for Puig and Pederson to bounce back in the 2016 season “rather than pursue any offensive difference-makers on the free-agent market.”

The Hernandez article also pointed out Friedman wants to see Puig work on his swing mechanics in addition to his efforts to become leaner (listed at 6’2″, 255 pounds by Baseball-Reference.com).      

Trading Puig is one option during the offseason, but he will only be 25 years old during the 2016 campaign. He is also under club control for three more seasons and recently played 148 games in 2014 and hit .296 with 37 doubles and 16 home runs.   

If he can return to a similar form next year, the Dodgers will be a much more formidable offensive club.

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The Los Angeles Dodgers have a few priorities to address this winter. The list begins with hiring a new manager. Elsewhere, there’s what to do about star right fielder/everlasting headache Yasiel Puig.

Or, the Dodgers could address both priorities at once. All they have to do is hire Gabe Kapler as their new skipper and let him deal with Puig. It could be as simple as that. For, you know, reasons. 

But we’ll get to those later.

For now, understand it’s hardly a foregone conclusion that the Dodgers are going to hire Kapler to replace the departed Don Mattingly. He’s been mentioned as a heavy favorite for the job, including by Buster Olney of ESPN.com and Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports, but there are others in the mix.

Bill Plaschke of the Los Angeles Times has reported that former Dodger Dave Roberts is also on the club’s radar and that his stock may be rising. Per Jim Bowden of ESPN and MLB Network Radio, there are also quite a few other candidates in the mix:

But as outlined by Dylan Hernandez of the Los Angeles Times, Kapler remains an intriguing choice. His current position as the Dodgers’ farm director gives him plenty of familiarity with the organization. And as a former player who spent a dozen years in the majors and has since embraced analytics, he could be a rare skipper who speaks the language of both the front office and the clubhouse.

There’s also this: Out of all the Dodgers’ managerial candidates, Kapler might be the best equipped to turn Puig into a superstar.

Mind you, it does require some skepticism to presume that Puig needs to be “turned into” a superstar. Even after a trying 2015 season—in which injuries limited him to 79 games and he posted a career-worst .758 OPS—Puig‘s career still looks like that of an exceptional player.

In three seasons, Puig has racked up a .294/.371/.487 slash line. That gives him a career .858 OPS, which equates to a 141 OPS+, which places him among the league’s top 15 hitters (min. 1,000 PAs) since 2013. And even after his rough 2015, WAR still rates him as one of the game’s top five right fielders.

So, there. Puig is a really good player. As well he should be, as 6’2″, 255-pound bundles of strength, speed and electricity aren’t mass-produced (yet…).

But if we allow ourselves to be more realistic for at least a second, Puig has indeed earned skepticism about his superstar status.

Rather than he is a superstar, it’s more accurate to say Puig can be a superstar. The difference between “can be” and “is” comes down to consistency, a concept that has thus far eluded Puig.

To illustrate, behold a chart of his month-to-month OPS:

Granted, the various injuries Puig has dealt with haven’t helped. But pinning his inconsistency on the injury bug is unfair to the injury bug. Just as much as his injuries, Puig‘s inconsistency is owed to the fact that he’s just, well, inconsistent.

At the plate, his inconsistency comes from all-too-frequent lapses in pitch recognition and plate discipline. On the bases, his recklessness can just as easily lead to a comedy of errors as it can results. And though his defense features some amazing throws, he also makes it hard to ignore his comes-and-goes effort level and his penchant for overthrowing cutoff men.

Vin Scully, the Dodgers’ legendary play-by-play announcer, calls Puig “the Wild Horse.” In light of how he carries himself off the field, that’s too perfect.

But just as noteworthy, of course, is that Puig‘s nickname also applies to how he carries himself in general.

Puig‘s assorted behavioral issues—with tardiness, with his temper, with his work ethic, etc.—were well-documented in 2013 and 2014. And though many of his transgressions seemed overblown, it became harder to back that perception in 2015.

Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports noted that Puig‘s behavior actually improved throughout the year, but Molly Knight’s book The Best Team Money Can Buy pulled back the curtain on Puig‘s contentious relationship with Mattingly and with his teammates.

“[Mattingly] had to deal with Yasiel Puig, who’s phenomenally talented, sells tickets…and he’s a basket case,” said Knight in an interview with Grantland’s Jonah Keri. “He flouts all the rules, skips BP, shows up late. What do you do? Bench him and watch your team lose? Or not punish him and piss off 24 other guys?”

In Mattingly‘s defense, he did try to find the right gloves for handling Puig. There were plenty of times in which he stood up for Puig. And as Knight hinted at, it’s also to Mattingly‘s credit that he didn’t let Puig‘s antics get in the way of the Dodgers’ winning three straight NL West titles.

But for all that Mattingly did well, his style of managing Puig can still be second-guessed.

Though there were instances in which Mattingly defended Puig, there were also instances in which he couldn’t hide his frustration with him, and instances in which he effectively used the media to challenge Puig to shape up and become more mature. Mattingly also wasn’t shy about benching Puig, most infamously when the Dodgers were facing elimination in the 2014 postseason.

For Mattingly, Puig was a problem child. His response was generally to treat Puig as such. From three years’ worth of material, we can gather this wasn’t the best approach for handling Puig.

Which brings us, finally, back to Kapler.

If the Dodgers hire him, they could at least count on his approaching The Great Puig Project with enthusiasm. During his rise to prominence as a writer and TV analyst, Kapler made it clear he’s a big fan of Puig‘s style. Writing at Gammons Daily in 2013, Kapler even went so far as to write that Puig was “the most charming, exciting, engaging and flat out fun player that I’ve ever witnessed.”

Knowing this, Kapler likely wouldn’t be overly preoccupied with getting Puig to leave his “Wild Horse” days behind him on the field. If nothing else, that could help Kapler get on Puig‘s good side.

But lest anyone worry about Puig running amok under Kapler‘s watch, that likely wouldn’t be the case. Simply getting on Puig‘s good side would be only half the battle for Kapler. The other half would be solving the consistency question, and he has both the training and the ideas for the task.

Kapler has experience dealing with raw young talents like Puig. He was the manager for the Single-A Greenville Drive back in 2007, where Nick Cafardo of the Boston Globe said Kapler drew “rave reviews” for his performance. More recently, Pedro Moura of the Orange County Register highlighted how Kapler has used a data-driven approach to help get Dodgers youngsters on track. 

Of course, this raises the question: Kapler may have the right kind of background for a job that requires getting the most out of Puig, but how exactly would his approach differ from Mattingly‘s?

Fortunately, there’s no need for wild guesses. Kapler pretty much told us what he would do.

In March 2014, Kapler penned a column for Fox Sports in which he argued that Puig‘s demeanor wasn’t an “attack on the organization.” Rather, it merely signified where Puig was in the developmental cycle. To Kapler, Puig looked not like a “man without experience” but a “man without boundaries.”

To establish the necessary boundaries, Kapler argued an authoritarian “Bobby Knight approach” was the wrong idea. Instead, the trick should be to give him role models to take after, which, rather than commanding Puig to follow, has to do with encouraging respected veterans to lead by example.

Or, in short: “The question isn’t ‘How should Mattingly handle Puig?’ It’s ‘How should the Dodgers family handle Puig?'”

Is this the right approach for handling Puig? Only time could tell. But it’s at least an approach the Dodgers seemingly haven’t tried yet. That alone makes it worth trying, and Kapler is certainly the right guy to carry it out.

If it were to turn out that Kapler isn’t the guy to get the most out of Puig, well, that could actually end up being neither here nor there. The Dodgers were able to win in 2015 despite the fact Puig was basically a footnote throughout the year. Between the talent they have now and the resources they have to add more talent, they could move forward into 2016 with a real chance to do that all over again.

If, on the other hand, it were to turn out that Kapler is the right guy to turn Puig into the superstar he can be, the reward could very well be the Dodgers turning into the superteam they so badly want to be.

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.

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According to Bill Shaikin of the Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Dodgers ace Zack Greinke opted out of his contract Wednesday, becoming a free agent and opening the door for bigger money—and apparently a free bus pass, courtesy of L.A. Metro.

Yep. The public transit company offered the pitcher a lifetime of free public transportation use in Los Angeles County if he re-signs with the Dodgers…plus, you know, whatever financial terms the franchise actually offers him.

Surefire plan, L.A. Metro. Well done.

[LA Metro, h/t SB Nation]

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