Dodgers Interview: Eyes on his third World Series trophy, Friedman defends the team that’s “ruining baseball”
TORONTO — The Blue Jays’ ballpark hummed all afternoon, and Andrew Friedman stayed measured as he walked through the plan to give the Dodgers their third trophy in six years. He kept one eye on the people involved and one on the baseball math that decides games in October. He talked through Alex Vesia’s absence, the shape of the bullpen, and how Blake Snell landed here as their October ace. He returned often to two themes: execution and depth.
Friedman started with the relief group and how they will cover the late innings without Vesia. “We feel really good about our relievers in terms of the righty, lefty, the different looks, the stuff that we’ll bring out,” he said. “Obviously it comes down to execution and those guys feeling confident to go in the lanes that Doc, Mark, Danny figure out and for them to trust to flood the zone.” He added that Will Klein and Edgardo Enriquez fit the matchup grid. “Their pitch mix, how it matched up against their hitters, felt like it gave us more margin for error in different ways,” he said, calling it “different ways to match up that fit our group really well.”
On Vesia’s roster status, Friedman was clear about the priorities. “We didn’t want to have any potential for any kind of pressure,” he said when asked about the family list. “This is so much bigger than baseball and for us it was doing whatever small part we could to be supportive.” He emphasized that the club will think of Vesia first as a person. “Our focus is being one hundred percent supportive,” he said.
The conversation turned to Snell’s ramp and why the Dodgers took their time. “A lot’s been made about us slow playing,” he said. “I don’t know how much it was slow playing versus there’s a lot of unknowns about injuries. We’re not going to pretend we know exactly what causes them and the buildup to get back.” The north star, in his words, is durability once a player returns. “For us, it’s about getting back to stay back,” he said. “It’s imperfect and it’s much more art than science. We just erred a little bit more on the side of caution to give ourselves a better chance of when they come back to stay back.” He credited Snell’s makeup for the October surge. “He loves these moments,” Friedman said. “Whether we took a little extra time or not, him being dialed right now is the least surprising thing to us.”
Friedman also explained why prior knowledge of Snell mattered. “Knowing him as an eighteen-year-old and then watching that maturation through the minor leagues to the big leagues, the success he had winning the World Series in 20, getting traded to San Diego, we’d always spend some time together and catch up,” he said. “Each year I’d walk away like, this is getting more advanced and really impressive.” The winter sealed it. “Last offseason he was our number one priority,” Friedman said. “Sitting down with him and getting more insight into the way his mind works, how badly he wants to be part of winning a World Series, strengthened our belief in what a great fit he was.”
He pointed to a specific on-field leap that changed Snell’s market. “People think of him as not having great command,” he said. “I think it’s more that he’s really hard to hit and would have longer at-bats, foul balls. Something clicked that year in San Francisco, flooding the zone and getting ahead, and the radical difference that created because then he’s able to eat eighteen outs, twenty-one outs, and go deeper into a game.” That matters when you build a rotation. “It’s hard to pay a lot for a guy that will go five innings,” he said, adding that the second-half run with the Giants “showed even more growth.”
As for the charge that the Dodgers “ruin baseball” by spending to win, Friedman framed the mission as a promise to fans. “For us it is all about our incredible fans and us giving back,” he said. “What they bring night in and night out, the passion they show for the Dodgers. Our job is to pour ourselves back into it and try to give them a team that can compete for championships and that they can be proud of.” He said the rest is outside noise. “Everything for us is about pouring back into our fans and that partnership,” he said. “How do we put ourselves in the best position to win now and also to win in the future.”
Asked whether there was a philosophical shift to peak in October, Friedman said the goal never changes. “You always want to be playing your best baseball in October,” he said. “Last year we had success in a very different way. Every team takes on its own identity. There are a lot of different ways to win a World Series. You have to be really talented, you also have to have some good fortune.” He said this roster was built to invite that good fortune. “It’s putting ourselves in the best position we can to have good fortune fall with a lot of different outs and different ways we can go,” he said.
On the challenge of repeating, he named two risks and how they planned around them. “When we won last year our focus and meetings were all about, how do we win in 2025,” he said. “There were two big risk factors. One is complacency. I didn’t worry about that with our group. The second is you have to really step on your pitching to win eleven or thirteen games in October, and you come back faster.” He contrasted last year’s staff with this one. “We just didn’t have the starting pitching depth that we do right now last year,” he said. “So we added some guys that are really hungry to do everything they can to win the final game of the season. It ties back to Blake and how much he wants this.”
Friedman praised Toronto’s operation, too. “Mark and Ross have done a tremendous job,” he said. “One big goal for us was to create a destination spot where our own players didn’t want to leave and where players from other teams wanted to come. The Blue Jays have created that as well.” He said facilities, communication, and player-maximize culture matter. “They help get the most out of players,” he said. “For them to be here is not surprising.”
The identity of this Dodgers team, in his view, is simple and visible. “A relentless desire to compete and win,” he said. “Watching the work they do every day on the field, underneath, the conversations that are had. It’s guys challenging each other to do everything they can to go out and win a baseball game that day.” He pointed to care and accountability. “The work, the focus, the intent, and how much they care for one another has been really special to watch,” he said.
Depth was the final throughline, especially after a summer of injuries. “The injuries for the most part this year were ones we could forecast guys were coming back from,” he said. “With each individual player returning it was laying out the most thoughtful progression rehab plan to get them back to stay back, and to be hitting their stride going into October.” He would not guess about freshness. “I think they’re all in a really good spot right now,” he said of Snell, Glasnow, Sasaki, and Yamamoto. “Feel very fortunate they’re as dialed in as they are, and feel good about the group as a whole.”
He closed with the big-picture aim, stated without ceremony. “One of our overarching goals is that whenever the time comes and we get fired, people look back on this period as a golden age of Dodger baseball,” he said. “What exactly it means, how it slots, life’s too busy. That’ll be more when we’re done, but that’s our goal, for people to look back on this time period and say that was the golden era of Dodger baseball.”
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