Be more aggressive. How Andrew Friedman led Dodgers spending spree

The first time Andrew Friedman reached the World Series as a general manager, his upstart 2008 Tampa Bay Rays team had a payroll of $43 million, the second-smallest in the majors that year.When last year’s Friedman-built Dodgers squad won its second-consecutive World Series title, the club’s star-studded roster cost almost 10 times that amount, with a record-setting $415 million payroll that incurred another $169 million in luxury tax penalties on top of it all.Looking back at that juxtaposition now, Friedman can’t help but chuckle.“(When I got to the Dodgers), I didn’t even know what the CBT really was, or how it exactly worked,” he said.“And even to think back to where we were then, to where we are now, is comical.”Indeed, such has been the transformation of not only the Dodgers in recent years, but also their longtime president of baseball operations.Once the posterboy for small-market success, sustainable spending, and an analytically-driven approach that was supposed to help negate the traditional financial disparities within the salary cap-less sport, Friedman has a new reputation now:Architect of a villainous Dodgers dynasty widely criticized as being “bad for baseball.”“I’ve heard that over the last couple years,” Friedman deadpanned last month, when asked about public outcries over the Dodgers’ near-limitless spending.

“For us, all we’re consumed with is the partnership that we have with our fans … That’s our only focus.”For much of his 20-year front office career, of course, Friedman operated differently.In Tampa Bay, he built a consistent winner on shoestring budgets, pioneering a value-based operation to work around the club’s financial limitations.Even early in his Dodgers tenure, he practiced fiscal constraint when constructing his teams, occasionally dipping under the luxury tax threshold while avoiding many big-money free-agent signings.That all changed when the Dodgers signed Shohei Ohtani two offseasons ago...