Revamped Dodgers Front Office Could Be One of MLB's Best

When Guggenheim Baseball Management acquired the Los Angeles Dodgers in the spring of 2012, it vowed to strive to be the best at everything it did with the team. 

This fall, the Dodgers took another step toward that goal by revamping their front office. Their moves were bold, first luring Andrew Friedman away from Tampa Bay to become their president of baseball operations and then bringing in a group of young, analytical minds to assist Friedman.

The hiring of Friedman, Josh Byrnes (vice president of baseball ops), Farhan Zaidi (general manager), Gabe Kapler (farm director) and Billy Gasparino (scouting director) all within the last three weeks has transformed the Dodgers’ front office from a traditional one to one of the most progressive think tanks in the game.

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Congrats to Andrew Friedman, Farhan Zaidi, Josh Byrnes, Gabe Kapler and Billy Gasparino #Dodgers #PowerHouseFrontOffice

— Jim Bowden (@JimBowden_ESPN) November 7, 2014"

Now that these men are together, the question is how they will turn the Dodgers into World Series champions for the first time since 1988.

“I think all of these guys are incredibly well-rounded, and have a lot of respect and appreciate all that goes into making players what they are and how players are evaluated,” Friedman said on a conference call last week (via True Blue LA). “We're going to have really strong, good evaluative voices that are focused on the subjective, combined with the objective information we are going to generate.

“For us, information is king, and it's about having people who appreciate that and can synthesize that to put us in the best position to make decisions.”

Those decisions will be a collaborative process. This front office not only wants to know what it is paying for, it also wants to know what it will be paying for in the future. Just because these minds will be working with monetary resources unlike any of them have ever experienced before, it doesn’t mean they want to waste cash.

That is what the “Moneyball" philosophy is all about. People think it is only about crunching numbers or having an Ivy League degree, but that is quite inaccurate. To cast a wide net over the “Moneyball” line of thinking, it is about not wasting money. It is about efficiently valuing players, positions and attributes in an inefficient market to create an advantage.

This is how the Dodgers will now work, and that is why they have already become a better team this offseason without signing a single player.

Damian Dovarganes/Associated Press

“Our quest isn't just evaluating how good players are, it's how good players are going to be,” Zaidi said last week, according to Dylan Hernandez of the Los Angeles Times. “How are you going to identify guys that are going to break through? How are you going to identify guys that make a mechanical adjustment and turn into a completely different player? That's why you need this sort of holistic approach in baseball operations, because otherwise you're going to miss out on a whole swath of opportunities.”

Zaidi continued: “We need to be the best at everything. I don’t think we’re in a position to make trade-offs of saying we’re a stat organization or a scouting organization.”

Friedman and Zaidi might be seen as “stat guys” or, as Steve Dilbeck of the Los Angeles Times so stalely put it, the “Geek Squad,” but reality is both had tremendous reputations with their scouts in Tampa Bay and Oakland, respectively. Blending both schools of thought is a strength for both men, and hiring Kapler, a respected major leaguer with a mind for advanced metrics, will advance that.

This group is already making their presence felt by not spending wildly to keep one of their own middle-of-the-order bats, Hanley Ramirez. Aside from that, there isn’t much it can do with the major league roster because they are locked into some long, expensive contracts.

However, there could be some turnover besides Ramirez. The team is interested in free-agent catcher Russell Martin, according to Bruce Levine of CBS Chicago, and there is some bullpen remaking to be done.

Beyond the bullpen, Friedman, Byrnes and Zaidi will have their hands full with the team’s outfield situation. It doesn’t take a “geek squad” to understand that the Dodgers have more outfielders than positions, so exploring trade possibilities for Matt Kemp, Andre Ethier or Carl Crawford is a real thing since top prospect Joc Pederson is bound to get a big league shot sooner rather than later.

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Sources: #Dodgers aggressively trying to move Kemp, Crawford or Ethier. Puig not in play.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) November 10, 2014"

Whatever happens, we can be assured it will not happen in haste. This group of individuals should be as exciting for Dodger fans as the people in uniform. They have strong track records and have earned their reputations as incredibly smart baseball executives.

While this new regime is handcuffed by some of the moves of the old one, which could limit its immediate impact for 2015, putting it under the umbrella of one organization will strengthen the Dodgers from top to bottom for years to come.

Anthony Witrado covers Major League Baseball for Bleacher Report. He spent the previous three seasons as the national baseball columnist at Sporting News and four years before that as the Brewers beat writer for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Follow Anthony on Twitter @awitrado and talk baseball here.