Dodgers President & CEO Stan Kasten said that the team has "entered the second phase" of the Guggenheim Partners ownership group's plans, according to Mark Saxon of ESPN L.A. The first phase "involved restoring the credibility of the franchise after years of neglect under previous owner Frank McCourt and ramping up excitement for the launch" of the team's SportsNet L.A. RSN. The "only major moves" the Dodgers have made this offseason are to the front office, which has "their work cut out for them." But GM Farhan Zaidi "disputes the notion that they are being brought in simply to shed the team of bad contracts and lower the payroll." Zaidi: “It sounds overly simplistic, but we’re just going to try to make good baseball decisions." He added, "I think it’s just going to be a gradual evolution as we start thinking in that disciplined way. But I think there will be decisions we make, that we believe in, that are going to increase the payroll. It’s not just going to be a straight line from where we are to where we are in the long run.” Saxson noted the Dodgers are the only MLB team with more than $100M committed to the '17 payroll, as they have $171M "already on the books" for that season. The number "comes down only slightly" in '18. Cleaning up the books "might not be the sole focus of this offseason" for the Dodgers’ front office, but "that task alone will take every bit of brain power and savvy the best universities in the country could produce" (ESPNLA.com, 11/17). In N.Y., David Waldstein writes the hiring of Zaidi "adds to the Dodgers' dream team of small-market executives with a mandate to improve on the team's recent success by exploiting its vast resources while also bringing costs under control" (N.Y. TIMES, 11/18).
