91. Free (But Expensive) Agency

Baseball’s free agency era began with a Dodger. In December 1975, arbitrator Peter Seitz ruled that right-hander Andy Messersmith, along with retired Montreal pitcher Dave McNally, no longer had contracts with their teams and could negotiate with any franchise. The decision overturned the major leagues’ interpretation of the reserve clause, which the executives felt entitled teams to renew player contracts in perpetuity, even though the language of the contracts stated that teams could do this for one year after the player’s last contract had been signed. Ironically, as players union leader Marvin Miller wrote in A Whole Different Ball Game, Messersmith’s contract dispute with the Dodgers originated with his desire for a no-trade clause that would help ensure he remained a Dodger. Instead, baseball’s owners and commissioner Bowie Kuhn bet that Seitz would uphold the sport’s longtime precedent that gave them the power to refuse Messersmith’s request—and lost. In March 1976, the owners ended their attempts to appeal the decision, and there was no looking back. Free agency was here to stay.

Though fans had to bid farewell to some of their favorites sooner than they might have liked, everyone ultimately came to agree that the unilateral binding of players to teams, like puppies to their masters, was unfair, and subsequent history quickly proved that free agency would not ruin the game as baseball’s leadership had insisted. However, it’s no understatement to say that the Dodgers themselves have had mixed success in the free agent market, at best.

The Dodgers’ first foray into free agency was belated and modest. They signed relief pitcher Terry Forster in November 1977, and he turned in a 1.93 ERA (182 ERA+) the following year, before faltering in subsequent seasons. Two years later, the Dodgers grew bolder—and the results scarred them for nearly a decade. Coming off their first losing season in 11 years, Los Angeles shelled out for free agent pitchers Dave Goltz and Don Stanhouse in November 1979. Goltz had been one of the AL’s most consistent pitchers of the 1970s, posting six consecutive above-average seasons, while Stanhouse had been a top reliever for the AL champion Baltimore Orioles. Had either retained their value, the Dodgers no doubt would have taken the NL West instead of losing in a playoff game, but both pitchers were almost hopelessly ineffective.

Between then and the end of the 1987 season, as mainstays like Steve Garvey played out their contracts, the Dodgers’ most noteworthy free agent signing was outfielder Terry Whitfield, plucked to be a platoon partner of Candy Maldonado in 1984 (and ending up another disappointment). But in the winter of 1987–88, the first since Fred Claire replaced Al Campanis as general manager, the Dodgers dove back in.

Had Claire’s efforts stopped with Mike Davis, coming off three straight solid seasons with Oakland, and Don Sutton, who returned to his original team at age 43, the Dodgers might have considered handing their finances over to a blind trust. In ’88, Davis had two home runs in the regular season and a TAv of .208, while Sutton ended his Hall of Fame career in August after a struggle with a sprained elbow. But Claire made one other signing of note: a player who, like Messersmith, had been freed by an arbitrator, in response to owners colluding to drive down salaries earlier in the decade. His name was Kirk Gibson, and he came to have a bit of a memorable year, thanks in part to a single, well-timed walk by Davis in the ninth inning of Game 1 of the World Series.

Given the team’s postseason record since 1988, it’s no surprise that no Dodgers free agent signing since Gibson has met with that kind of success, but there have still been some nifty ones. Brett Butler had TAvs near or above .300, sparking the Dodgers of the early 1990s. In February 1995, the Dodgers again broke new ground by acquiring the rights to Hideo Nomo, who came over from Japan to become NL Rookie of the Year with a 150 ERA+ and 236 strikeouts in 1911/3 innings.

Under new general manager Kevin Malone in 1998, the Dodgers got downright brash, signing pitcher Kevin Brown to a record seven-year, $105 million deal. Though Brown was sometimes injured, he was also sometimes spectacular, and in the end doesn’t even belong in the conversation for the most disastrous free agent signing of the post-Gibson era. In the 2008 season, the Dodgers found themselves paying an injured Jason Schmidt $12 million in the middle year of his three-year, $47 million contract, at the same time they were laying out the first $14.1 million of Andruw Jones’ two-year, $36.2 million sinkhole. Despite entering the year with 368 career home runs at the age of 30, Jones completely lost his batting eye, struggling to a 34 OPS+, the worst by a Dodger in 97 years. Soon after Jones and the re-signing of Manny Ramirez, the split between Dodger owners Frank and Jamie McCourt left the Dodgers handcuffed in their finances, shying away from the big spends.

The only playoff game won by a Dodger between 1989 and 2007 was a shutout in 2004 against St. Louis by Jose Lima, who had signed that year for relative pennies—and then departed just in time to collapse in 2005. Sometimes in the free agent era, the big splash has paid off for the Dodgers, but just as often it seems, a little has gone a long way.

 

Diggin’ the Dugout Club

The Dugout Club, which USA Today said in 2008 offered the best premium seat in baseball, might be another story. “Fastballs hiss and pop. Players argue with umpires. Teammates hug. All right in front of you,” wrote the paper’s David Leon Moore. “Being a member of the Dugout Club is sort like having a all-expenses-paid suite at the Ritz-Carlton.” With seats closer to home plate than the pitcher’s mound and waiters attending to your needs, this is serious all-purpose baseball pampering.

Holdout

For all the decades before the reserve clause was overturned, baseball players had no leverage in salary negotiations except an appeal for goodwill—and the option of quitting the major leagues entirely. In January 1966, after a season in which they had combined for a 2.39 ERA and 592 strikeouts over 644 innings, Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale took their chances, banding together in the hopes of obtaining contracts guaranteeing each roughly $166,000 a year for the next three seasons. The Dodgers, not surprisingly, offered Drysdale and Koufax only slight raises from their 1965 salaries of $80,000 and $85,000, according to Steve Delsohn in True Blue.

So the Dodgers reported to Vero Beach for spring training without their two star pitchers (along with Maury Wills, who was holding out separately for a raise from $60,000 to $100,000). Wills settled, but the pitchers took their holdout to the end of spring training. While public sentiment worked against them in those pre-free agent days, Koufax and Drysdale lined up enough outside work—from book deals to movie appearances—to keep from having to cave in completely. On March 30, two weeks before the regular season began, they agreed to one-year contracts: approximately $125,000 for Koufax and $110,000 for Drysdale. It wasn’t a complete success, but the 50 percent raises, give or take, were enough for people to take note.

Drysdale ended up having the worst season of his career to that point (a 3.42 ERA doesn’t sound bad, but his ERA+ was 96), while Koufax was extraordinary: 1.73 ERA (190 ERA+). Of course, Koufax pitched through such tremendous pain that he ended up retiring at the end of the season. However, one still wonders what might have happened had the Dodgers been willing to give him three years. Would they have lost money on the deal, or would they have kept the superhuman lefty for longer?