Andrew Freedman on Losing Again in the Playoffs

The conversation wasn't meant to be most the Houston Astros. Actually, it wasn't. It just flowed that way, considering forgive and forget, well, forget about that.

As the Dodgers set up to face the Atlanta Braves in the National League Championship Series, a chat with Alex Anthopoulos was in society. The Braves hired him out of the Dodgers' front office iii years ago, and now his squad is all that stands between the Dodgers and their tertiary World Series appearance in four years.

As a baseball game executive, he appreciates how challenging information technology is to win a partitioning even in one case, let lone eight sequent years, equally the Dodgers have washed. And, as a former resident of Los Angeles, he understands that 1988 is beyond ancient history, and that Dodgers fans have raised the stakes to World Serial championship or bust.

"That'south just sports, correct?" Anthopoulos said. "You play to win the World Series.

"Non to dig upward onetime wounds, only you could argue with the things that happened in 2017."

After Game 5 of the 2017 Globe Serial, Anthopoulos flew from Houston to Atlanta to interview for the Braves' job. He knew the Astros had won past overcoming 4-0 and 7-4 deficits confronting Clayton Kershaw that evening. He had no idea, of course, that the reason the Astros had swung and missed at but ane of Kershaw'due south 39 sliders that evening might well have been because the Astros had a adulterous scheme in place.

He had not gear up human foot again in Houston until last calendar week, when the Braves played their division series at Minute Maid Park.

"Coming back for this serial," he said, "was a piddling weird."

Baseball's final four includes the team with the best record in each league, the Dodgers and the Tampa Bay Rays, and a team with a losing record. That squad is the Astros, at present eight wins away from Commissioner Rob Manfred handing owner Jim Crane another slice of metal.

Crane tossed his manager and general manager overboard, and always since the Astros have brushed aside whatsoever pretense of apology. They have embraced their pirate transport.

"I think them playing the victim's complex bill of fare is a niggling interesting to me," Andrew Friedman, Dodgers president of baseball operations, told SiriusXM on Friday. "I go that it'south been a difficult yr for them, just to play the victim card, I call back, has been a curious strategy."

The terminal 4 is a tribute to Friedman, and the executive tree he planted in Tampa Bay, where he took the Rays from worst to beginning in two years. The Angels ought to consider shaking a general managing director loose from that tree.

The American League Championship Series features the Rays, congenital into a contender by Friedman, and the Astros, now run by James Click, an executive hired away from the Rays. The NLCS: the Dodgers confronting the Braves, run by one of Friedman's former lieutenants.

When Anthopoulos joined the Dodgers' front part, he already had led the Toronto Blue Jays to the ALCS as their GM.

Atlanta Braves general managing director Alex Anthopoulos

(John Raoux / Associated Press)

"I felt like going to L.A. was like going to grad school," Anthopoulos said, citing the hazard to acquire from Friedman and Farhan Zaidi, now president of baseball game operations for the San Francisco Giants.

"When y'all're exposed to the all-time in the industry, you're going to get amend, right?" Anthopoulos said. "It'southward like Warren Buffett and a lot of other people say: Surround yourself with people that are better than yous are. Andrew and Farhan made me meliorate."

One lesson he learned helps explain the success of Dodgers players such every bit Max Muncy, Chris Taylor and Justin Turner, and the persistence of Austin Barnes, Kiké Hernandez, Joc Pederson, A.J. Pollock and Pedro Baez. The Dodgers have said they'll work on finding the right spots for Kenley Jansen, and they have said he remains essential to their success, but they resolutely have avoided saying he is no longer the closer. That might be more than semantics.

"I think, because both Andrew and Farhan came from small market place clubs, they were relentless in trying to make players amend," Anthopoulos said. "My attitude may have been, 'OK, a guy is scuffling, you may demand to find him a new home, make a merchandise.' They came from organizations where they just couldn't exercise that. You had to make do with what you had. Past necessity, information technology made them better. They brought those characteristics there.

"That'south why y'all've seen them have so much success in role player evolution. They will exhaust all avenues, and they will not quit on players. They will work with you lot and try to observe a way to make you lot better. It's great for players to know that and see that. That's why you've seen a lot of players discarded by other organizations — and you lot're seeing it with the Giants now as well. They go there, and they become amend. It starts at the summit."

If Los Angeles could not finish talking about 1988, Atlanta could not stop talking near 2001. That was the last year the Braves had advanced to the NLCS. Betwixt then and now, the Braves had played in the sectionalization series eight times, losing every time.

"That's all you heard about," Anthopoulos said. "To knock down that narrative is definitely nice."

The Dodgers won a franchise-tape 106 games terminal year. They did not win the Earth Series.

The Braves won their sectionalisation 14 consecutive times and won the World Series once. Anthopoulos has asked 2 Braves Hall of Famers, manager Bobby Cox and general manager John Schuerholz, almost that.

"They tell y'all the 1995 Braves that won the Earth Serial weren't the best team they ever had," Anthopoulos said.

Are the 2020 Dodgers Friedman's all-time squad? In a 60-game flavour, who knows? If the Dodgers win, who cares? They'll knock down their narrative.

That leaves the Astros, and whatsoever narrative you like almost them. Friedman and Anthopoulos take a series to worry about, and the Astros aren't in information technology. But the Astros are playing the Rays, and Tampa Bay first baseman Ji-Man Choi celebrated by stomping on a trash can.

"No one has forgotten what they take done or chose to do in years past," Rays center fielder Kevin Kiermaier said Saturday. "They take to live with that."

Forgive and forget? Not the team playing the Astros in the ALCS, and not either team that might face them in the Globe Series.

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Source: https://www.latimes.com/sports/dodgers/story/2020-10-10/andrew-friedman-handprints-mlb-playoffs-alex-anthopoulos

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