The Dodgers are expected to discuss a contract extension with the longtime manager Dave Roberts this offseason, according to a report from Jack Harris of the Los Angeles Times. Roberts’ current contract is set to expire following the 2025 season.
It’s no surprise that the Dodgers would look to lock their captain before Spring Training begins. Club brass admitted last month (as The Athletic’s Fabian Ardaya noted at the time) that the sides had not yet discussed an extension after the club’s World Series run but quickly added that they hoped to keep Roberts in the fold for a long time. – the term. Despite those comments, teams generally prefer to avoid having managers play out the final year of their contract without an extension in hand in hopes of avoiding the “lame duck” situation, and it’s hard to argue that Roberts’ performance wasn’t worth it. an extension.
Since joining the Dodgers as manager back in 2016, Roberts has led the club to nine straight games, eight division titles, four NL Pennants, and two World Series championships. Excluding a 60-game 2020 campaign in which the Dodgers went 43-17, the club has never won fewer than 91 games in a season under Roberts, and after winning the NL Manager of the Year award in 2016 he later became in the finals. he was awarded two more times and received votes in every season of his time at the helm in Los Angeles. Overall, Roberts is 851-507 career as a manager, giving him a .627 winning percentage. That’s the highest winning percentage of any manager in MLB history with at least 1,000 games managed in his career and translates to roughly 102 wins in a 162-game season.
Given the Dodgers’ desire to keep Roberts in the bullpen long-term and his incredible career during his time as LA’s skipper, Harris continues to suggest that a record-breaking extension could be on the table for the longtime skipper. Last season, Craig Counsell signed a record-breaking extension with the Cubs that guaranteed him $40MM over five years. Counsel is widely regarded as one of the best managers in the game right now, but he has never led a team to a World Series or won a Manager of the Year award. In other words, Roberts’ resume is much stronger than Counsell’s last winter, and it’s not hard to imagine a club as expensive as the Dodgers rewarding their captain with a record-breaking deal.
Of course, that is by no means guaranteed to happen. Counsell signed his $40MM deal with Chicago on the open market after playing out the final season of his deal with Milwaukee and had multiple teams vying for his services as the Rangers, Astros, and Mets joined the Brewers in the fight for his services. before finally landing on the north side. That’s different than the captain of the Red Sox Alex Corawho appeared ready to follow in Counsell’s footsteps and test the open market before ultimately opting to sign a three-year extension in Boston that guaranteed him around $21.75MM.
Cora doesn’t compare to Roberts in terms of resume, with only one World Series championship and a .536 winning percentage under his belt in six seasons as manager in Boston. Still, the extension between the Red Sox and their highly-regarded captain amounted to just over half of the Cubs’ total guarantee and annual minimum salary. That result at least left the door open to the possibility that Counsell’s record-breaking deal with Chicago was a fluke caused by several aggressive suitors rather than a new trend in managerial salaries in the league.
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