Don't you hate when a band you really like breaks up? And I don't mean when it's 10 years after their last good album and you just heard their No. 1 hit in Muzak form at the grocery store and you feel old and fat. Sometimes they're coming off a pretty good album, and you were hoping to hear a little more. That's the Los Angeles Dodgers.
All in all, 2016 was a solid season for the Dodgers, with some big moments, including that track with the surprise cameo from Clayton Kershaw at the end of a postseason game that came out of nowhere. It's just that the Cubs' release was just that little bit better in the NLCS, and there's some unfinished business for the Dodgers to take care of in 2017.
Without third baseman Justin Turner, closer Kenley Jansen and starter Rich Hill, the Dodgers would have been missing some key pieces that would have been quite difficult to replace. Los Angeles has money, even after some loud hints from MLB about the team's debt load, but L.A. was going to boast a $200 million payroll in 2017 no matter what, so to start off the season with an 84-78 roster would have been unacceptable.
It's not as if the Dodgers could have replaced the losses in free agency. Hill had the best projected 2017 WAR per ZiPS of any starting pitcher in free agency. Jansen had the second-best reliever projection outside of Aroldis Chapman. And Turner had the second-best WAR projection of any position player in free agency, just the slightest hair behind Yoenis Cespedes in a neutral park (by about 1/25th of a win).
Short of Shohei Otani coming over from Japan -- something that wasn't going to happen and now appears to be unlikely to happen for several years thanks to MLB's awful new CBA section on foreign players -- money didn't matter. Just to continue the music analogy, the free-agent market is a bit like one of those record stores when they went out of business in 2004 or so, and all they had left on the nearly unguarded racks (for 90 percent off) was a stack of "Gregorian Monks Sing Squeeze's Greatest Hits." OK, I don't think that actually existed.
For Turner, the Dodgers actually got what came out to a more-than-reasonable contract -- his play could actually have merited a lot more. But as we discussed when talking about free agents who shouldn't wait too long, Turner had a problem in that third base simply wasn't a priority for most teams with open wallets this year, a bit of bad timing for him.
For 0.3 more projected WAR in New York over four years, the Mets will pay Yoenis Cespedes $110 million. Even Ian Desmond -- awkwardly played out of position in Colorado to put up a projected WAR half of Turner's over the next four years -- costs more, albeit with an extra season. ZiPS projects Turner's performance to cost $91 million in free agency over four years, giving the Dodgers about $27 million of surplus value since his new contract is reportedly $64 million for four years.
As for Jansen, his WAR tally isn't very impressive, but ZiPS projects him at a five-year, $75 million contract, just slightly less than the $80 million the Dodgers gave him. You're always going to overpay for a name-brand closer, so to justify it you have to be a team that's a serious contender. That's why a team like the Dodgers can pay a lot for a top closer while the Marlins should not. That's also why a team like the Cubs can send out a serious prospect to rent a closer, as they did in their deal for Wade Davis. The Dodgers are that type of team, especially with the Cubs and Nationals also continuing to strengthen their rosters this winter.
Add Hill in the rotation, and compared to the rest of the NL West, ZiPS estimates the Dodgers' roster is about six wins better than it was in the pre-free agency preliminary 2017 projections. Six wins may not sound like a lot, but the Dodgers were projected as a 46 percent divisional favorite before, and that projection jumps to 69 percent now, a nice improvement in a playoff format that rewards winning the division far more than getting in via the wild card.
In looking at the Dodgers, keep in mind that for a team that won 91 games in 2016, quite a bit went wrong. The corner outfield spots were simply lousy, with Yasiel Puig still not bouncing back to anything close to his first couple of seasons. The team had only one pitcher throw 150 innings and was forced to get significant start counts from Bud Norris, Brock Stewart and Mike Bolsinger. And while having 21 starts from Clayton Kershaw is still quite valuable, 34 starts would have been even better.
Reassembling the 2016 roster may not be the sexiest route for the Dodgers, but a team with money would rather spend money than give away their future. By keeping the farm system intact, the Dodgers may be able to keep their competitive window open for a decade.