How do you win a World Series? Ask the McCourts
Having the biggest and most dazzling payroll in baseball doesn’t guarantee postseason participation, as the New York Yankees discovered in 2008.
Winning the most games of any team in the league during the regular season is also no guarantee that your team will make it out of the first round of the playoffs, as the ’08 Chicago Cubs and Los Angeles Angels can attest.
So if money doesn’t conquer all, and winning the most games doesn’t catapult you to the top, permanently, or at least until November, what does?
This is the question on the minds of every major league owner and general manager.
Frank and Jamie McCourt, owners of the Los Angeles Dodgers, are concocting their own concoction to find the right formula.
One thing they are deliberately not doing is emulating the Yankees by buying the best big-name players at high prices. They didn’t seriously go after Mark Teixeira or CC Sabathia, for whom the Yankees paid big.
They willingly took over head cases from other teams, like bad boys Manny Ramirez and Vincente Padilla. One guy had a reputation in Boston for throwing slow-motion tantrums, while the last giddily lobbed baseballs at the heads of competing players.
The McCourts scored big by acquiring manager Joe Torre, a virtual yankee from the Yankees. Torre, I think no one would disagree, did a wonderful job in 2008 and is just as impressive in 2009.
Dodgers general manager Ned Colletti is a shrewd dealmaker, acquiring Manny and others at virtually no cost in 2008 and refusing to agree to Manny’s salary demands for 2009.
Equally important, Colletti and the McCourts have been very supportive of retaining their young and developing stars, while using creativity to bring in veterans who will be available at the end of the season.
Sportswriters and fans may complain that Dodgers management is too tight-fisted and risk-averse.
I am sorry I disagree. Having been burned by the big contract awarded to Andruw Jones, and having assessed the losses incurred by overpaying Kevin Brown, Darren Dreifort and others, they are simply playing it safe.
The McCourts and their management team are already showing remarkable good judgment, which in baseball’s executive suites is a rarity.
