Dodgers News: Kendrick Signing Praised; But Offseason Perplexes Executives

If you’re already this far into the news cycle today and figuring that it’s National Rank The Offseason Time, then you’d be correct. Today over at ESPN, Senior Writer Jayson Stark spoke with 35 baseball executives to get their thoughts on the offseason. And some results had to do with the Los Angeles Dodgers.

No, the Dodgers didn’t appear on the “Most Improved Teams (National League)” list.  The top squad on that was the Arizona Diamondbacks, with 22 votes. The third place team was the San Francisco Giants, with 6 votes. Essentially, executives feel that the NL West improved a lot for some teams.

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The Dodgers, as a team, did appear on one list, though. From ESPN Senior Writer Jayson Stark:

Most unimproved teams (NL)

Rockies: 15

Reds: 9

Padres: 8

Brewers: 6

Braves: 5

Cardinals: 5

DODGERS: 3

Phillies: 2

Pirates: 2

From there, Stark went on to elaborate just a little bit more:

This is still a deep, dangerous team with massive resources, but this was one winter, another exec said, when it felt as if “nothing went the way it was supposed to.”

I guess it’s hard to argue there. As Stark notes, the team didn’t re-sign Zack Greinke, had to back out of a trade deal for Aroldis Chapman, had to back out of a free agent deal with Hisashi Iwakuma, and then seemed like they were going with Gabe Kapler before settling on Dave Roberts.

However, that doesn’t mean that the team didn’t have at least one bright spot on the list:

Best free-agent signings

Zack Greinke (Diamondbacks): 14

David Price (Red Sox): 13

HOWIE KENDRICK (DODGERS): 10

So, there is that. Baseball executives did vote that Howie Kendrick was one of the three best free agent signings of the offseason. Then again, Zack Greinke is on that list and it hurts. Either way, the Dodgers still got a quality free agent out of the entire ordeal, even if he was on the team last year.

This offseason hasn’t been a smooth one for the Dodgers, but it hasn’t been a smooth one for baseball executives that voted on this piece, either. For instance, 8 of them voted that Jason Heyward to the Cubs was the second worst free agent signing of the year. We all know that’s a lie.