SAN ANTONIO — Los Angeles Dodgers star Mookie Betts is heading to the infield, again.
That served as the largest development in general manager Brandon Gomes’ wide-ranging session with media at the annual GM meetings on Wednesday. The World Series champions continued their eventful last month, arriving late at the JW Marriott San Antonio Hill Country Resort & Spa due to a series of travel mishaps that included canceled flights, delays and a reroute through Houston. But while the Dodgers’ offseason will largely revolve around their pursuit of starting pitching and retaining much of their championship roster, they already have their first major move.
That will come with Betts, who for the second consecutive offseason will be moving back to the infield – either at second base, where he was supposed to start in 2024, or at shortstop, where he wound up starting on Opening Day in Seoul, South Korea, and played for most of his first 72 games this season before breaking his left hand in June.
“I think it’s a lot of conversations with him,” Gomes explained. “I know the toll on the body is less in the infield for him. So you can make arguments on both sides of it. But the beauty of Mookie is (he’s) the most selfless superstar we’ve ever been around. And that permeates through the team.”
Betts started his professional career as an infielder, though he hadn’t been an everyday shortstop since high school before the Dodgers threw him there just days before the start of the season. While his defense had its hiccups, Betts’ bat took off — the Dodgers led the majors in shortstop production by FanGraphs WAR when he got hurt. The club moved him back to right field, where he’s won six Gold Gloves, when he returned from the injured list in August and stated then the plan throughout would have been for Betts to return there for their postseason run.
Now, they’re back where they started this time last year. Betts’ full-time move to the infield is something that’s been discussed off and on each of the last few seasons, even though this latest move seemingly takes one of the team’s biggest areas of need — the outfield — and worsens it.
It leaves an uncertain role for Gavin Lux, who started at second base against right-handed pitching during the stretch run and finished with a .703 OPS (and an .899 mark after the All-Star break). It adds another name to a shortstop picture that already includes Miguel Rojas and Tommy Edman, with Willy Adames (a longtime Dodgers target) looming in free agency.
“I don’t think it’s a pressing need,” Gomes said of adding a shortstop. “But it’s not something that — if there’s an ability to add good players, and that’s the best way to do it, we’re certainly open to it.”
What a night for Mookie Betts!
4-for-5, HR, 2 R, 4 RBI pic.twitter.com/5cabKyN5Y7
— MLB (@MLB) October 18, 2024
The move also further emphasizes the Dodgers’ need to add outfield depth, be it with retaining the likes of Teoscar Hernández and Kiké Hernández or looking elsewhere in the free agent or trade market. Both players were vocal in the last week about their desire to remain with Los Angeles, and the Dodgers extended Teoscar Hernández a one-year, $21.05 million qualifying offer ahead of this week’s deadline.
“We’ll have conversations with Teo and his group ASAP,” Gomes said.
There remains, as agent Scott Boras so punningly put it, “a magic Juan” looming in the midst too. The idea of Juan Soto in Los Angeles likely still remains farfetched, but the Dodgers continuing to spend at the top of the market even on the heels of committing $1.4 billion in one offseason is not.
“There’s very rarely like one set number,” Gomes said of the club’s payroll, which is already projected to be very much past the luxury tax threshold. “So those are conversations that we’ll continue to have. Like every single year, the goal is a championship-caliber team. They’ve always given us the opportunity to do what we need to, to help us put us in the best position possible for that.”
Another potential roster option, be it to start the season or as it develops, is internal. Andy Pages had a brief everyday run in center field, though he likely profiles in a corner long-term. Catching prospect Dalton Rushing spent much of September with Triple-A Oklahoma City learning the ins and outs of left field — “(Rushing) has continued to do nothing but hit,” Gomes said.
The plan for Shohei Ohtani
The Dodgers were aware that Shohei Ohtani had torn the labrum in his left shoulder in the hours after he jammed it sliding into second base in Game 2 of the World Series, and knew that surgery would be inevitable. What version of Ohtani the Dodgers get in the second year of his record-setting 10-year, $700 million deal remains to be seen.
Ohtani is expected to be ready for the start of spring training as a hitter, Gomes said. The fact that Ohtani’s injury occurred with his back shoulder, rather than his “lead” shoulder, gives them some relief in that aspect.
As far as what it means for his pitching rehab?
“Obviously, we’re going to err on the side of caution,” Gomes said. “But as far as big-picture concern, there’s no big-picture concern. But we’ll chunk it off, rehab, and then week-by-week.”
Even if Ohtani weren’t rehabbing from left shoulder surgery, he was still coming off a second major elbow ligament reconstruction. The Dodgers decided to delay the start to Walker Buehler’s season in a similar situation this year — Buehler made his first start of the season on May 6. Is the same in the cards for Ohtani, even with the Dodgers opening the 2025 season at the Tokyo Dome in Ohtani’s native Japan? Probably, though Gomes stopped short of saying there will be any form of innings limit for the star right-hander.
“The most important thing is that they’re at their peak, and at his peak, come the biggest games of the year,” Gomes said.
The Dodgers will also have to figure out the logistical hurdle of completing the last stages of Ohtani’s rehab — including facing hitters and simulated games — all while Ohtani remains on the active roster as a hitter coming off shoulder surgery.
Gomes was more direct about one thing involving Ohtani: A year after becoming the first player ever with more than 50 home runs (54) and 50 stolen bases (59) in the same season, Ohtani probably won’t be as aggressive on the bases again in 2025.
“I have a hunch,” Gomes quipped. “I don’t want to count him out, because I don’t ever bet against Shohei.”
The pitching market
Whether they have Ohtani pitching at the start of the season or not, Gomes reiterated again that it is “a safe bet” the Dodgers will open the season with a six-man rotation — only further emphasizing what will be a target area for the organization this winter.
The Dodgers’ pitching group will center around last year’s big pitching expenditure in Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who did not pitch on fewer than five days’ rest in his rookie season in the United States. Tyler Glasnow is expected to be ready for spring after missing the postseason with a sprained elbow, Gomes said. Additional options could include the returning Tony Gonsolin and Dustin May, each of whom missed 2024 with arm surgeries (as did prospect Nick Frasso, who progressed to facing hitters this fall) to go with Landon Knack, Ben Casparius, Justin Wrobleski and Bobby Miller. Clayton Kershaw is expected to re-sign, but won’t be available at the start of the season after undergoing knee and foot surgeries on Wednesday.
Still, the Dodgers did not extend Buehler a qualifying offer, which came as a mild surprise after his postseason heroics and after he seemingly turned a corner from his ugly walk year (5.38 ERA in 16 starts).
“What he has done for us, what he did for us this year, his teammates, that does not go lost on us,” Gomes said, noting that the Dodgers have and will continue to be engaged with Buehler’s camp on a reunion on something other than the one-year, $21.05 million offer.
Another more accomplished pitcher looms on the free-agent market, one who does not have a qualifying offer attached. The Dodgers’ attraction to Blake Snell goes back a ways, including a late run at him last offseason when his desired market failed to materialize. Now, he looms as perhaps the most enticing option on a market that also includes Corbin Burnes and Max Fried at the top along with Buehler, Jack Flaherty, Nathan Eovaldi, Yusei Kikuchi, Sean Manaea, Luis Severino and former Cy Young Award winners Shane Bieber and Justin Verlander, among others.
“I think there’s no doubt that the Snell-ing salts have created a lot of whiffs,” Boras said in his annual reviews of his batch of clients. “The market has definitely awakened to Blake Snell.”
Also lingering as a possibility is Japanese phenom Roki Sasaki. Gomes declined to comment on Sasaki’s status, as it still is not certain that the Chiba Lotte Marines will post him for MLB clubs. If he is, the Dodgers’ interest would be obvious — especially given that Sasaki would only be eligible to sign for whatever is within clubs’ international signing bonus pools.
Also of note
• There have been no talks of a potential extension for manager Dave Roberts, whose current deal runs through the end of the 2025 season, but Gomes said he expects the two-time World Series winner — who is the all-time AL/NL leader in win percentage — to remain with the club “as long as we can see out.”
“Obviously we’re talking through a bunch of players now,” Gomes said, suggesting that such conversations could come later in the winter or into spring, like Roberts’ last negotiation with the club.
• While it appears that the Dodgers plan to return their coaching staff from their title run, there remains at least one piece in flux: first base coach Clayton McCullough remains in the running for the Miami Marlins’ managerial vacancy, interviewing twice before the World Series and again in-person after the Dodgers won the title, according to a person with knowledge of the situation.
(Top photo of Mookie Betts: Kiyoshi Mio / Imagn Images)
