The Yankees and Dodgers both spent the offseason giving tons of money to free agents from all over in order to load their teams with enough talent to coast to the end again. It got to a point, especially with the Dodgers, that it was verging on excessive. Ryan Brasier, one of the best relievers of the 2024 season for the Dodgers, was cut in order to make room for Kirby Yates, which has to be an awful ego blow. And yes, that is a way to win games, but it also sends the message that buying talent is more valuable than growing talent, which, considering how many Rookie of the Year winners have come from these two teams, is kind of odd.
So it's been refreshing that some of the Yankees and Dodgers' best performers right now are the ones they didn't overpay, at least not yet.
Andy Pages has already gotten some publicity for his leading of the Dodgers charts so far. There were a lot of social media postings consisting of 'imagine paying hundreds of millions for Roki Sasaki only for him to be less valuable than a second year on the standard contract line? Pages's 2024 come-up was a little lackluster, hitting .248 in 116 games with 13 homers, but he did win a World Series as a regular outfielder for the Dodgers. He doesn't just walk backwards into that, he's been an organizational gem for years, and now he's earned playing everyday. This season he's gotten to continue starting, and as such he's been having a wonderful start. In 32 games he's hitting .277 with 31 hits, 14 RBIs and 6 homers. He's also much better defensively, and has been responsible for some great plays out there.
Until Shohei Ohtani sped ahead this weekend, Pages was the Dodgers' WAR leader. That was kinda insane. Mookie Betts is playing well, Yamamoto's off to a fantastic start, Freeman's hitting, but none of them caught Pages in April. Things have evened out slightly, yes, but even tonight I've heard Pages's name just on the defensive side. This guy might be turning into a crucial member of this team, and that'd honestly help more than just buying a centerfielder. You buy somebody like Michael Conforto, and figure he does his thing until someone homegrown can ensure you don't have to keep starting him. And that's what may happen, especially considering that Tommy Edman could play LF if Kim keeps it up at 2nd.
Trent Grisham's success, meanwhile, is even more random. Grisham came over with Juan Soto, and while Soto was the big takeaway, Grisham's Padres numbers gave us hope for a really cool extra outfield bat. Last year, Grisham hit .190 with 9 homers in 76 games. It was not a very helpful year. So Soto leaves, Verdugo leaves, and we're expecting a Dominguez-Bellinger-Judge OF....and then, suddenly, Grisham starts to really figure out hitting in New York. So far he has a .298 average, 17 RBIs and 9 homers. To give you an idea, that's as many as he hit in 2024, and it's more than half of his previous full season HR total. Maybe it's the torpedo bats, maybe it's age and maturity, maybe it's something more arbitrary than that, but Trent Grisham may have turned out to be the key piece of the Soto deal for the Yankees. How about that?
The only upsetting part of that is that because Grisham's basically playing every day in center, and because they're paying Bellinger starter money, that doesn't leave much room for Jasson Dominguez. Which means, for the second year running, Aaron Boone is completely wasting Dominguez's development. Last year he kept him in the minors despite cries to bring him up because of the 'the right person to get the innings is getting the innings' bullshit. And now that Dominguez is up and playing well, we can't even play him everyday because the team's hands are tied with Bellinger. And it's not like Bellinger's playing badly per se, but I think Dominguez is playing better. So in this case, despite the guy making the standard contract getting glory in Grisham, another guy making the minimum is getting screwed, and it's a guy you do not want to fumble. All of this about Baltimore ruining Jackson Holliday- dude's heating up and he has room to. Quiet about that. If the Yankees ruin Jasson Dominguez, the surest thing baseball's had since Harper, everyone involved needs to lose their jobs.
Both the Yankees and the Dodgers look to continue dominating, even with their guys making tons of money [Judge and Ohtani especially]. But allowing for the more unsung guys to succeed is why people will ultimately care about these teams' success if they do go all the way.
Coming Tomorrow- Speaking of people that got swapped around in Juan Soto deals...bet the Padres wish they still had this guy..
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