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With the World Series now over, MLB free agency can officially begin. The Los Angeles Dodgers are sure to be players in the market as they search for ways to improve their roster after a second consecutive disappointing playoff exit.

When looking around the diamond, positions of concern for the Dodgers include shortstop, catcher, the back end of the starting rotation and the bullpen.

New president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman has a prime opportunity to make a good first impression after Los Angeles reportedly paid him $35 million over five years, according to ESPN’s Buster Olney.

The Dodgers extended a qualifying offer to Hanley Ramirez worth $15.3 million, per Dylan Hernandez of the Los Angeles Times, but the shortstop is expected to turn it down and sign elsewhere. Without many other free-agent options at shortstop, Los Angeles may roll with Miguel Rojas, Alex Guerrero or Erisbel Arruebarrena while waiting for the eventual promotion of top infield prospect Corey Seager.

Rather than focusing on a potential replacement for Ramirez, Friedman and the Dodgers may have their eyes on other marquee free agents this winter.

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Between all their riches and all their star power, the other 29 teams in Major League Baseball already had good reasons to fear the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Now you can add another to the list: The Dodgers have gone and hired a certified baseball genius to run the show.

As Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times was first to report, the Dodgers have lured Andrew Friedman away from his job as the general manager of the Tampa Bay Rays:

According to Ramona Shelburne of ESPN Los Angeles, the Dodgers are making Friedman their president of baseball operations. With incumbent GM Ned Colletti stepping aside to become a senior adviser to Dodgers president and CEO Stan Kasten, Friedman is free to hire his own GM.

Basically, the Dodgers are making Friedman what the Chicago Cubs made former Boston Red Sox GM Theo Epstein: the big boss in charge of everything.

And in so doing, the Dodgers are effectively going to run the highly intriguing experiment the Red Sox wanted to run back in 2002, when they almost pried Billy Beane away from the Oakland A’s. They’re going to find out what a successful small-market executive can do with a big-market budget.

Time will tell. But right now, it’s beyond easy to imagine the answer being quite a lot.

You won’t be very impressed by Friedman’s track record if you focus only on what his Rays did in 2014. They went 77-85 and finished 19 games out of first place in the AL East. Nothing to write home about there.

Of course, it’s better if you don’t focus on 2014. To get the real gist of how the big-money Dodgers were drawn to Friedman, you need to focus on the teams he built between 2008 and 2013.

With some help from Baseball-Reference.com and Cot’s Baseball Contracts:

That’s five 90-win seasons out of six, complete with two AL East titles, four trips to the playoffs and one American League pennant.

That’s good stuff for an organization with a payroll that went as low as $43.7 million and never climbed higher than $75 million. Especially in a division featuring two of the biggest payroll titans around in the Red Sox and New York Yankees.

Friedman didn’t establish such a track record through blind luck. Under him, the Rays had a system.

Topkin outlined all the different aspects of this system in an excellent article last year, highlighting how Friedman’s Rays were a perfect mix of “intelligent, organized, prepared, creative, thorough and forward-thinking.”

Surely, it’s only through a combination of all those traits that an organization can do so many things well. Such as:

• Digging up bargain free agents, such as Casey Kotchman in 2011, Jeff Keppinger and Fernando Rodney in 2012 or James Loney in 2013.
• Finding hidden gems in trades of big-name players, such as Ben Zobrist in the 2006 Aubrey Huff trade, Matt Joyce in the 2008 Edwin Jackson trade or, more recently, Drew Smyly in this summer’s David Price blockbuster.
• Locking up young stars to team-friendly, long-term contracts, such as Evan Longoria in 2008, Matt Moore in 2011 or Chris Archer in 2014.
• Continually churning out good young pitchers, from Price to Moore to Archer to Alex Cobb to Jeremy Hellickson to Jake McGee.

And finding talent wasn’t the only thing the Rays excelled at under Friedman.

His system also involved coming up with all the data that turned Joe Maddon into baseball’s most innovative manager. Just as important, the Rays system placed a special emphasis on keeping players healthy.

Especially pitchers, as Topkin noted:

“They devote tremendous time and energy into injury prevention: like their shoulder exercise program for pitchers that not only is individually tailored, but mandatory and monitored.”

Tampa Bay’s methods for keeping pitchers healthy have worked like a charm. Disabled-list data cobbled together by Jeff Zimmerman at FanGraphs for the 2011, 2012 and 2013 seasons can vouch. And as B/R’s Will Carroll noted, Moore’s Tommy John operation earlier this year came as a total shock in light of the organization’s track record with elbows. 

All this leads us to a quote from Maddon to Topkin that pretty much says it all: “I want to believe that the overarching theme here is that the system works.”

Indeed it did. And that Friedman was able to make it all work despite his resources being restricted by the Rays’ perennially poor attendance and a local TV contract that, per FanGraphs’ Wendy Thurm, is only worth $20 million a year makes it that much more impressive.

And there, obviously, is the scary part about Friedman joining the Dodgers: He’s going from limited resources to basically unlimited resources.

There’s certainly no attendance problem at Dodger Stadium, as the Dodgers have ranked first in the National League in attendance the last two seasons. To boot, the club has a local TV contract worth several hundred million dollars per year. 

The Dodgers’ revenue supply is pretty much endless. And as this year’s $230 million payroll can vouch, Magic Johnson and the rest of the club’s ownership group sure don’t mind spending said revenue.

In Friedman’s hands, that revenue could be used to turn the practically flawless system he had in Tampa Bay into an actually flawless system. One that will direct him toward legit stars worthy of the Dodgers’ riches rather than bargains worthy of fliers, with everything else being perfectly geared toward keeping the club’s roster cohesive and effective.

If there’s a concern about Friedman joining the Dodgers, it’s the one that ESPN’s Buster Olney (subscription required) brought up about how much Friedman will be allowed to be himself in Los Angeles.

The current Dodgers leadership may not mind spending, but it veers “sharply from day to day, seemingly valuing star power as much as WAR.” This is true, and you do wonder if the taste for flash the Dodgers ownership has displayed could encroach on Friedman’s more methodical style. There is room for this partnership to go awry.

Then again, you don’t target a guy like Friedman unless you admire his style. And because Shelburne noted that a “handful of teams” had tried to get Friedman out of Tampa Bay before the Dodgers, they must have made it clear that they weren’t just looking for him to come aboard and stay the course.

Nope, this should be the real deal: the Dodgers owners as the investors and Friedman as the architect. This figures to be arguably the game’s sharpest executive at the controls of the game’s most powerful spending machine.

Rather than a disaster, the Dodgers are more likely signing up for a dynasty.

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

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The big-money stars just might be coming on at the right time.

For nearly the entire season, the Los Angeles Dodgers could not get health or consistent, steady production from the bulk of their highly priced core, especially the men whose primary job is hitting.

But as the final week of the regular season begins and the postseason starts to yawn and stretch as it wakes, the Dodgers appear to be hitting full sprinting speed despite a 13-inning loss Monday night that kept their magic number to win the National League West at three.

From Aug. 31 through the start of Monday’s game, the Dodgers had one of the most devastating offenses in the majors with a .308/.369/.478 slash line and an .847 OPS. As a team this month, the Dodgers are second in the majors with 120 runs scored (three behind the leading Los Angeles Angels), leading with 27 home runs, second with 341 total bases and second with an .820 OPS.

That is monstrous production, and it’s the stars leading the way:

• Since the All-Star break, Matt Kemp, one of the game’s best all-around players in 2011 and part of 2012 before a shoulder injury sapped him, has hit .304/.363/.580 with a .943 OPS, 15 homers and 49 RBIs. In September, he has hit a major league-leading seven home runs and went into the week with a 1.044 OPS.

“He’s been great,” manager Don Mattingly told Dylan Hernandez of the Los Angeles Times. “It seems like a lot of our guys have been stepping up. He’s certainly one of those guys.”

• Since Sept. 5 and going into Monday, Hanley Ramirez has been red hot. He hit .451/.509/.588 with a 1.097 OPS, seven doubles and 11 RBIs in 15 games. He was also hitting .511 on balls he put into play.

• Adrian Gonzalez has joined the romp since the break. He went into Monday hitting .326/.378/.561 with a .939 OPS, 11 home runs and 52 RBIs in his previous 59 games.

• Yasiel Puig, the most polarizing player in the sport, had been going through a prolonged slump since Aug. 4. In 31 games from that date, Puig hit .186/.289/.212 without a home run and five RBIs. But from Sept. 13 to the start of Monday’s contest, Puig was 17-for-40 (.425) with a 1.152 OPS and two home runs in nine games.

• Finally, since Aug. 10 and entering the week, Carl Crawford was hitting .411/.449/.579 with a 1.029 OPS, seven doubles, three homers, 20 RBIs and eight stolen bases in 34 games. He also homered Monday.

Dodgers offense exploding at the right time. pic.twitter.com/yJqudqX8P6

— Angel Gonzalez (@angel_G96) September 20, 2014

Those five players have contracts worth a combined $568 million, although the Dodgers haven’t paid all of that money since Gonzalez, Crawford and Ramirez were acquired through trades after those deals had been finalized. Also, the bargain that is Dee Gordon has been back on track lately, hitting .312/.318/.385 in his previous 22 games before Monday.

“Hanley’s swinging better, Yasiel’s swinging better, Dee’s getting his hits, Adrian’s been the same all year,” Mattingly told J.P. Hoornstra of the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin on Sunday. “Our guys know what’s at stake.” 

Right now, that’s a second consecutive NL West title. After this week: the franchise’s first World Series title in 26 years. That is why this team was built the way it was once the Guggenheim Baseball Management group took over ownership from the despised Frank McCourt in 2012.

This was the blueprint. This was what things were supposed to look like, how they were supposed to work. The Dodgers broke payroll records this year to field a team that trotted out expensive superstars at nearly every position. They spent so there would be no real breaks in the lineup for opposing pitchers, and they spent for pitching so that they could still walk away with victories even when the offense wasn’t running at optimal levels.

On that pitching front, Clayton Kershaw, Zack Greinke and Hyun-Jin Ryu—they make a combined $398 million—have done their jobs. Dan Haren, on the other hand, has been a liability for a good portion of the season, but even the 34-year old veteran has learned to pitch with his declining tools. Over his last nine starts, including Monday, Haren has allowed 14 earned runs in 54 1/3 innings for a 2.32 ERA, making him another guy getting his act together at the right time. His start Monday kicked in a vesting option for 2015 that would pay him $10 million, the same as his salary from this season.

This Dodger club has no excuses. It’s relatively healthy—Ryu’s status for the postseason is still up in the air—and could gain home-field advantage for the first two rounds of the playoffs if things fall right.

And for maybe the first time since Guggenheim got its receipt for the team, everything seems to be moving as planned. All that’s left is another month of production, and this could be the team that breaks the championship dry spell for one of the game’s storied franchises.

Anthony Witrado covers Major League Baseball for Bleacher Report. He spent the previous three seasons as the national baseball columnist at Sporting News, and four years before that as the Brewers beat writer for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Follow Anthony on Twitter @awitrado and talk baseball here.

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With playoff positioning and the top spot in the NL West still up for grabs, Los Angeles Dodgers superstar Yasiel Puig kept the San Francisco Giants from scoring the go-ahead run in the top of the 11th inning during Monday night’s game.

He maintained the 2-2 tie by gunning down Brandon Belt at the plate after a Brandon Crawford single with a perfect throw from center field, thrilling the fans along the way.

Ultimately, Puig’s heroics weren’t enough, as the Giants won 5-2. 

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Matt Kemp and Yasiel Puig were caught on camera bickering at each other during Monday night’s game, a clear sign that skipper Don Mattingly is losing the clubhouse and the NL West-leading Los Angeles Dodgers are primed for a September implosion.

Am I doing this hot-sports-takes thing right? 

For reference, here’s a look at the incident in question:

The Dodgers ultimately fell to the Rockies 11-3, and the sports world has gotten into quite a frenzy about that mini argument.

To be fair, it’s not difficult to see why it has received such attention. Puig is one of the most scrutinized players in the league. If he gets upset at his dog for going No. 2 inside the house or if he decides to put Sriracha on his eggs, you’re probably going to hear about it. Kemp, a one-time MVP candidate who hasn’t produced up to standards in the past two seasons, is another target of criticism. 

Take two closely dissected stars like that from a major city, put them in a shouting match, and you have the recipe for a national story. 

But that’s all it is—an interesting 41-second video to watch or maybe a talking point with co-workers or friends. However, it’s not a sign of things to come. It’s not an indication of how the clubhouse is being run or how Kemp and Puig feel about each other. And it’s certainly not an issue that anyone should be making a big deal out of. 

Whether it’s first-grade T-ball, the Show or any other team sport, teammates will undoubtedly get upset with each other. It’s part of knowing each other’s potential and wanting to get the most out of those closest to you. Better to push them—and yes, that includes yelling angrily at them sometimes—than coddle them when you’re losing. 

As ESPN’s Buster Olney and Fox Sports’ Jimmy Spencer argued, this is just natural in this kind of setting: 

Kemp was similarly nonchalant about the incident after the game, via the Orange County Register‘s Bill Plunkett:

“Oh, just talking in the dugout, same old things,” Mattingly added, via ESPNLosAngeles.com’s Mark Saxon. “We’re like the [Oakland] A’s, the ’72 A’s.”

Those 1972 Oakland Athletics were famous for fights between teammates, but no one seemed to mind when they won the World Series in ’72. And ’73. And ’74. 

Who knows if the Dodgers will follow in those footsteps, but at 86-64, four games clear of the San Francisco Giants in the NL West and just 0.5 behind Washington for the NL’s best record, they are certainly set up for a dangerous run in October. 

No matter who’s yelling at who inside the dugout. 

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With the minor league season over and several youngsters currently up in Los Angeles with the Dodgers, a few of the standouts from the minor league season are familiar to Dodger fans. However, not all of them are, and here is an opportunity to recognize a more diverse list of players.

As an organization, the Dodgers are pitching-heavy. Fourteen of the team’s top 20 prospects are pitchers, so it’s a bit tougher to pick position players to fill every spot. When the positions that are lighter in depth come up, that will be noted.

This is not simply a list of the players at each position who had the best year. A 29-year-old is not a prospect, so someone tearing up Double-A or Triple-A but who will not make a long-term contribution for the Dodgers is not eligible. Instead, these players are the combination of youth and talent that is most likely to impact the big league team.

Note: All statistics courtesy of MiLB.com unless otherwise noted.

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After defeating the San Diego Padres on Monday night and notching his 18th win of the season, Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw has forced his way into the National League MVP discussion with just a little more than two weeks left in the regular season.

In 24 starts this season, the Dodgers’ ace sports an 18-3 record and leads all pitchers in ERA (1.67), WHIP (0.82) and WAR (7.5) and is the likely front-runner to win the National League CY Young Award.

While pitchers have typically been left off MVP voting ballots, Kershaw’s strong season has pushed him into elite company, via Jon Heyman of CBSSports.com:

With MVP awards typically reserved for position players, Kershaw‘s historic season has started to prove he is more important to his team than the other presumed front-runners: Pittsburgh Pirates center fielder Andrew McCutchen and Miami Marlins right fielder Giancarlo Stanton.

In 128 games this season, McCutchen has hit .311 with 22 home runs, 74 RBI and has an OPS of .938.

Down in Miami, Stanton has batted .291 in 143 games with 37 home runs, leads the National League with 105 RBI and has registered an OPS of .957.

With Pittsburgh holding just a 1.5-game lead in the NL Wild Card and Miami sitting 4.5 games back, McCutchen‘s and Stanton’s great seasons may be diminished if their teams fail to make it to the playoffs.

Kershaw and the Dodgers currently sit atop the National League West with a 3.5-game lead. Barring some unforeseen breakdown, they appear to be headed to the postseason.

While making the postseason is not a prerequisite for winning an MVP award, Kershaw’s WAR of 7.5—and the fact that the Dodgers have won 20 of the 24 games in which he has started—would indicate that without him on the mound, the Dodgers would be fighting with teams like the Marlins in the middle of the pack for a wild-card spot.

The WAR stat has become more commonplace in recent years, and after 2011 MVP Justin Verlander was named the first pitcher to win the award since Roger Clemons in 1986, the groundwork has been laid out for a dominant pitcher like Kershaw to win the award. 

Verlander finished the 2011 season going 24-5 with a 2.40 ERA, a .920 WHIP and led all pitchers with an 8.4 WAR. Twenty-two players received votes in the AL for MVP that season and only one player, Ben Zobrist, finished with a higher WAR (8.7) than Verlander. Despite boasting the higher WAR, Zobrist finished 16th in the balloting.

Just as Verlander sat near the top of all MLB players in 2011 with his WAR, Kershaw‘s 7.5 WAR is the highest among all qualifying players in both leagues. Stanton’s 6.39 and McCutchen‘s 5.47 puts them squarely in the top 20, but that may be what helps Kershaw land the most votes at the end of the season.

There is no guarantee that Kershaw‘s league-leading WAR will help claim him the award, but after comparing his 2014 season to that of Verlander’s in 2011, it appears that Kershaw is quickly headed toward the top of the MVP discussion following his 18th win Monday night. 

All stats courtesy of ESPN.com. 

Follow @MattEurich 

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If Hanley Ramirez knew what was good for him, he wouldn’t be playing shortstop for the Los Angeles Dodgers.

That’s not to say Ramirez shouldn’t be wearing Dodger blue. He should, however, consider wearing it at a different position.

Namely, third base.

That’s not a new idea. Before Ramirez came off the disabled list August 24, he made headlines by taking grounders at the hot corner. Was a positional switch in the works?

Turns out, no.

“I think he thinks, moving forward in his career, that he’s a third baseman,” Dodgers manager Don Mattingly told JP Hoornstra of the Los Angeles Daily News.

But, Mattingly insisted, there’s been “no real talk” about making the change this year.

“He likes making everybody raise their eyes and making me answer questions,” the L.A. skipper added.

Since being traded to the Dodgers in 2012, Ramirez has played just eight games at third base, and none in the last two seasons.

In fact, he explicitly told the Dodgers upon arriving that he didn’t want to move around the diamond in-season, Hoornstra notes.

In his days with the then-Florida Marlins, Ramirez was adamant that he was a shortstop. “Hanley doesn’t want to play third base and the Marlins were informed of that,” an unnamed source told Enrique Rojas of ESPNDeportesLosAngeles.com in 2011.

Still, the 30-year-old has started nearly 100 games at third in his MLB career.

So far his current club has honored his desire to remain one half of the keystone combo. Entering play Friday, all three of Ramirez’s starts since coming off the DL have been at shortstop.

Yet, why not make the switch now—or at least seriously entertain the notion—for the good of the Dodgers and Ramirez’s own future?

For Los Angeles, the primary consideration is defense. As Hoornstra points out:

Miguel Rojas, who’s been playing the majority of innings in Ramirez’s stead, ranks first among major-league shortstops in UZR per 150 games. Ramirez ranks 37th, above only two other shortstops.

UZR, or Ultimate Zone Rating, isn’t the final word on defensive ability. But most every defensive metric puts Ramirez at or near the bottom of the league, per FanGraphs.

That should at least give the Dodgers pause.

Los Angeles, after all, is pushing toward the postseason. Their primary concern should be to put the best possible team on the field. Period.

Justin Turner, who’s been getting the bulk of the action at third base with Juan Uribe on the disabled list, is hitting .321 in 284 at bats. So it’s not as if the position is caught in a black hole.

But Ramirez is a known commodity. His .270/.359/.443 slash line and 12 home runs aren’t the production L.A. was hoping for, but the Dodgers want his bat in the lineup.

Yet he’s fielding less and less like a quality big league shortstop. Which brings us to Ramirez’s best interests.

While it behooves the Dodgers to slide Hanley over, it behooves Hanley just as much.

An impending free agent, Ramirez would automatically hit the market as one of the more attractive third-base options, possibly eclipsed only by Pablo Sandoval (assuming the San Francisco Giants don’t make a last-minute move to lock up the Kung Fu Panda).

Ramirez could go a long way toward solidifying his value if he gave prospective suitors (including the Dodgers) an extended audition in the heat of the pennant race.

It’s a risk, certainly. If he shows rust at a position he hasn’t played in nearly two years, or if the move disrupts his performance at the plate, his value could take a hit.

It’s a risk worth taking, though. Both for Ramirez’s future and the Dodgers’ present.

All statistics courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com unless otherwise noted.

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Hanley Ramirez headlines the Los Angeles Dodgers’ approach to the offseason, but he is far from the only point of curiosity. An outfield logjam loaded with big league regulars and a top-heavy pitching staff that all of a sudden needs help only add to the list of issues Ned Colletti must sort out before the 2015 season begins.

A farm system that has stalled since the class of 2006-08, which featured Clayton Kershaw, Matt Kemp, Andre Ethier and others no longer with the team, is finally on the verge of bearing fruit again, and Colletti must find a way to successfully integrate young, talented and cost-controlled players into a team whose obscene payroll ($172 million already committed to next year) needs to be curtailed if the organization wishes to develop a sustainable model for success.

It is for this reason that the decision facing the Dodgers’ front office about Hanley Ramirez is by far the most interesting and important one. Either choice plays a huge role in the Dodgers’ next several years: If Ramirez is re-signed to a long-term deal, the 2015 team will likely look quite similar to this one. But in 2016, when Juan Uribe’s contract expires, elite prospect Corey Seager should (hopefully) be ready to step in on the left side of the infield and shift Ramirez to third base. While this is obviously an ideal situation in a perfect world, Ramirez has a history of resisting the move from shortstop as well as a rather lengthy list of recent injuries.

The alternative is to let Ramirez walk this offseason, sign a stopgap shortstop and then hope. They must hope for two things: Seager continues to develop as projected starter and can be a big league shortstop in the next couple years, and Uribe can continue to stave off Father Time and be a productive third baseman.

The first option is the path of least resistance. The Dodgers are clearly swimming in cash, so signing Ramirez likely would not considerably hamper their financial situation in the long run. Additionally, the memories of Ramirez as a world-beater when healthy in 2013 have still not entirely faded—re-signing him is a high-upside play, at least in the short term.

Where that plan would get tricky is in the later years. If the Dodgers invest a lot of money in Ramirez and count on him to play third base but he continues to get hurt, they will be hamstrung. They won’t be able to simply go get someone new because Ramirez will still be on the roster, but they also won’t be able to ink him into the lineup on a daily basis.

Colletti has to make a very difficult decision, and it is one that I do not envy. Either road, though, is dependent on the development of Corey Seager, and that takes us conveniently to the player he’s been linked with all season: Joc Pederson.

Pederson himself is an interesting case because his performance long ago earned him a promotion to the big leagues. He is making a run at 30 home runs and 30 stolen bases in the Pacific Coast League, something that has not occurred since 1934. As touched on in the True Blue LA post, it’s not as if the PCL is a particularly difficult place to go 30 and 30. Instead, players with the talent to do so are normally called up to the majors before they get the chance to reach those numbers.

The Dodgers’ 2014 outfield, though, was a special case. With three outfielders making $18 million or more and not one of those three being named Yasiel Puig, there were simply too many players for not enough spots. That was complicated further when Pederson hit the cover off the ball in Triple-A, as instead of three (or four, depending on your opinion of Scott Van Slyke) players fighting for two spots, there were four.

Coming into the season, the Dodgers expected to have a crowded roster. Carl Crawford, Andre Ethier, Matt Kemp, and Yasiel Puig are each talented enough to start, but—obviously—there can only be three starting outfielders. Prior to 2014, the Dodgers could delude themselves into thinking the problem would sort itself out: Since the trade in 2012, at least one of the four had been injured. Crawford missed the rest of the year after the trade, and Kemp played just 73 games last season.

Now, though, the Dodgers have had all four healthy for much of the last month and a half—ever since Crawford returned from the DL on July 10. And while manager Don Mattingly has settled on a lineup he prefers, it is a less-than-desirable outcome that has outfielder Andre Ethier (and his $18 million salary) consistently on the bench.

This offseason provides another opportunity for Colletti to sort out the problem. As with the Ramirez situation, there is likely no easy answer. Neither Crawford nor Ethier has much value, be it in a trade or on the field, and their contracts are massive. If they were easily traded, such a deal would probably already have occurred. However, a move is more necessary than ever. Scott Van Slyke has demonstrated that he can be a competent fourth outfielder, and Pederson deserves an opportunity.

The final large hurdle Colletti will have to handle this offseason is pitching. The bullpen’s struggles are well-known, but relievers are easily found and developed cheaply. It is the rotation that looks problematic. We are not far removed from a starting five that appeared to be an embarrassment of riches: Clayton Kershaw, Zack Greinke and Hyun-jin Ryu led a rotation that was getting a surprise performance from Josh Beckett (ERA under 3 through June) and Dan Haren (ERA under 3 in April).

Now, though, questions abound. Haren has struggled mightily, as he has posted ERAs over 4.00 in each successive month. Beckett is currently on the disabled list, as is Ryu. Greinke is dealing with a sore elbow. While it is unlikely that all of those problems will persist through next year—particularly Ryu’s strained glute—the Dodgers certainly are lacking in depth. And Colletti will have to address that need, whether it be through continued development from internal options such as Zach Lee and Chris Reed or through external additions in trade or free agency.

With the talent currently on the roster and in the high minors, the Dodgers are certainly in a good position. However, their ultimate goal is to be a World Series contender every year, and the decisions Ned Colletti makes will go a long way towards determining both the short-term and long-term health of the organization.

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The stretch run is important for the Los Angeles Dodgers for multiple reasons: They’re preparing for the playoffs, and—with a 3.5 game lead in the NL West as of Aug. 18—the players on the roster are attempting to prove their worth.

To a certain extent, the Dodgers’ 2015 core is locked in. Andre Ethier, Carl Crawford, Adrian Gonzalez, Matt Kemp, Zack Greinke, and Clayton Kershaw are all scheduled to make at least $18 million next year, and other current members of the roster, such as Yasiel Puig and Juan Uribe, are signed to multimillion dollar deals and will be inked in to the lineup barring injury.

With all that being said, though, there are quite a few roster spots that are—to one level or another—up for grabs, and guys currently on the 2014 team have an opportunity to make their case for continued employment.

Note: All statistics courtesy of FanGraphs unless otherwise noted.

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