Dodgers News: Team President Dismisses Concept of 'Fatally Flawed' Game Plan

Dodgers CEO Stan Kasten talked to Bill Plashke of the Los Angeles Times recently, and Kasten's quotes on several topics are quite illuminating. Plaschke, of course, tried to weave the quotes into the narrative he had already formed in his mind, but if you read the words Kasten actually said, you can see that it doesn't quite match up with Plaschke's version.

During a 30-minute interview reflecting on the season, Kasten emphasized he was happy with the organizational direction and its leadership despite the team coming under the most critical public scrutiny since Kasten’s group took ownership a decade ago.

But he acknowledged that the Dodgers will do whatever it takes to change the ending.

“We have succeeded in too many ways on too many fronts for me to think of this as any kind of failure,” he said, later adding, “Just in the last eight years, five LCSs and three World Series, I don’t think those are bad numbers. ... We won one World Series, we lost another one in Game 7, I don’t think those are symbols of a fatally flawed program. I just don’t agree with that.”

However …

“I’m sure there are ways that we can get better. ... We can’t accept that there’s no way we can get better. ... That’s not an acceptable conclusion,” he said. “You can look at everything that happened and you can look at everything we did ... you hope the breaks even out over a period of time, but we always assume there are things we can do to get better.”

Kasten's comments about a "fatally flawed program" are spot-on. The Dodgers won the World Series just two years ago, and three years before that they were cheated out of another title. The best way to win the World Series is to get as many chances as possible, and the way to do that is to "always assume there are things we can do to get better." The Dodgers won 106 games in 2021, then went out and signed Freddie Freeman.

That's the actual point Kasten was making, not the narrative Plaschke was pushing about "do whatever it takes to change the ending," which were Bill's words, not Stan's. What Kasten is saying is that the Dodgers have a good system in place and they'll keep doing the same thing they do every offseason, which is try to put together the best team possible. The ending will change when the stars align for Los Angeles, not when Kasten and the rest of the organization make some fundamental change.

Another day, another reason to be glad Plaschke is writing about the Dodgers instead making any decisions about them.