Interview: Pedro Moura

Interview: Pedro Moura

By Scott Bolohan

Photo by Diane Bolohan, adapted by Scott Bolohan

When Moneyball came out in 2003, it left a profound mark on the game. But in the nearly two decades since, baseball has continued to evolve and improve on the ideas of Billy Beane’s A’s in ways that most fans aren’t aware of.

Enter the Dodgers, without a doubt the most successful franchise in baseball over the last decade. Under the guidance of Andrew Friedman, the Dodgers have a seemingly never-ending stream of prospects, guys who come out of nowhere, and continually find ways to add superstars. There are no signs the Dodgers run of success is ending anytime soon.

Pedro Moura is a national baseball writer for Fox Sports and covered the Dodgers for The Athletic before that. His new book, How to Beat a Broken Game, dives into what makes the Dodgers so successful, highlighting some of the major players as well as some of the complete unknowns changing the game today. With a fascinating look at the emergence and importance of player development and how the Dodgers operate, the book speaks to the state of baseball today in the way Moneyball did back in 2003.

We chatted with Moura after the Freddie Freeman signing but before the trade for Craig Kimbrel.

So the book is How to Beat a Broken Game. We just had a lockout. Did anything broken get fixed?

Probably not. I don’t think it got much more broken. I think it seems fairly limited in terms of the scope of its damage. I think that the negotiations were less contentious than many people in the game feared they would become. They didn’t last that long.

I thought we were looking at half a year, potentially a full year.

I was the same. Considering the season is starting on April 7, it’s really hard to critique that much besides not negotiating for the first month of the period and whatnot. But did anything broken get fixed? I don’t think so. I don’t think anyone involved really thinks so. I think the pre-arbitration pool that’s going to get younger players paid will make a difference. For twenty or thirty guys, they’re going to double their salaries, which is cool. If you do really well early on in your career and you don’t manage to keep it up—like if you succumb to Tommy John two or three years into your career—you’re going to have doubled how much you can make. That’s pretty significant.

But the on-field product is the central thing I’m referring to when I say broken game. I think nothing has radically changed so far. It sounds like they’re laying the groundwork to change in ’23. I think I said it in the book at one point, they had their eye on banning the shifts since Manfred took the job, which is now seven and a half years ago. But nothing has changed. They can do it quicker now with the new CBA, but they were able to before, so I don’t know.

I think in order to fix what’s broken, you have to agree on what’s broken, and I’m not sure they do. Within the game, there are different approaches as to what the biggest situations in need of fixing are. The thing I fear is for the people involved, the feedback that they’re getting dollars wise is good enough that they’re not fearing for the future of the sport. It seems like most decisions are made based on what is coming in financially, and whenever we see any data about this, it seems like the vast majority of teams, if not all of them, are doing well. So it’s hard for me to see them saying, ‘Oh, we need to radically shift how we approach it and actually make some aggressive changes to get this product better now.’

I was sad I couldn’t get this in the book, but towards the end of last season, there were some serious experimentations in the minors. I have a scout friend who covers the Cal League. He lives in the Inland Empire and scouts all the teams out there. He said they added an 18-second pitch clock between pitches. And he said his quality of life dramatically improved. His wife noticed that they were relating better. His kids said he was happier. The games were reduced an average time of twenty-eight minutes. He had an extra half hour of his life totally free. I think if they cut out twenty minutes of fat from today’s baseball games, I think we would all be better. The fans would enjoy it more and the players would be happier. I don’t think they would sell much fewer concessions, maybe that’s what they’re afraid of. And certainly as writers the morale in a press box would be dramatically improved. The potential to do something like that with one step that unlocks a lot of joy for a lot of people is pretty tantalizing.

I’m just hopeful as a person who grew up loving baseball that aesthetically it will improve, just for the sake of human enjoyment.

I was against getting rid of shifts. Teams were doing something smart and I thought they should be rewarded for it. But this is the history of the game—you break it, and then you fix it. I mean, we’ve even lowered the mound before. People will always try to find a way to maximize performance, you just have to adjust to it. And this is just a normal part of the process of the game, not something radical.

And if you find that one of those maximizations makes the product worse, then what’s the point of keeping it that way? I don’t think people really derive joy from the shift. It’s such a weird thing for people to defend because who actually loves it? It doesn’t increase the joy for anyone. If you’re debating whether or not the shift will create the positive effects that people in the game are arguing for, that’s fair. I think it’s not certain that it will. We’re arguing more of a theoretical thing that if the shift is not in play, hitters’ strategies will change, and we can’t necessarily prove that. The downside is that it stays the same.

My favorite part of the book was learning about these completely unknown guys who didn’t even sniff the major leagues and are now changing the game.

They’re nobodies. There’s nothing stopping you from working for a major league team in two years. It’s a total shift. It’s just crazy to me that a 24-year-old kid can be a couple years out of college and is trusted to coach and guide some of the most valued athletes in the world. They had no chance to ever get to the major leagues in any context other than the one they’re in now. Ten years ago would have never had any luck whatsoever. I think it’s fundamentally a good development. It’s more meritocratic now than it used to be. But there are still some issues. It’s still harder to get into it if you’re a woman or if you’re not white. But compared to where it was twenty years ago when it was strictly based on if you had natural talent, then you could keep going in baseball.  Now even if you don’t have natural talent, you can get a job.

I was surprised about the Freddie Freeman signing, I thought he would end up in Atlanta. But the amazing thing is the Dodgers signed a first baseman to replace a shortstop. That is a uniquely Dodgers solution that the book speaks a lot about.

I think that’s the entire ethos of the idea of versatility and creating a roster of flexibility so that people can always slide in. They got an equal or better hitter to Corey Seager for half as much money, for 60% of the time commitment. And when you look at it like that, why would you want to sign somebody for twice as much money? The defense will arguably be better than it would have been with Seager. I’m seeing this talked about a little bit, but I don’t know if people properly appreciate it. Freeman is, in every way, at least as good as Seager or better, except for the fact that he plays a less demanding position. But in this situation, the Dodgers totally removed any penalty from the less demanding position and they’re actually improving as a result. He’s going to improve their first base, their second base is not going to get any worse, and Turner slides over to short and there’s no evidence that he’s a worse shortstop and second baseman. They created a circumstance where they derive more value from Freddie Freeman than the other teams would. It’s almost a bonus that they’ve created by assembling a roster of guys like Chris Taylor who’s is not assigned to a position and has the flexibility of being able to play anywhere. So the first time someone gets hurt during the season, Chris Taylor will slide in that position. And then they’re going to have a four-win player at that position, and they’re barely going to suffer as a result. And then the next time someone gets hurt, they’re going to have Gavin Lux at that position.

Last year was interesting. I tried to get to this in the epilogue, but they kind of broke their rule a little bit, and they did not have the depth that they’re accustomed to in the postseason. There are some reasons that was the case, with the pandemic year a lot of the minor leaguers had not played in 2020 and just didn’t have the experience. You can’t predict that. So you have to cut them some slack for that. But I think this year, we’re seeing them go back to the over-accumulation of depth that looks almost excessive at the time, but proves to be very valuable later on. And I think Freeman is a perfect illustration of it. People see it as adding another superstar. But the reason they’re able to accommodate the superstar is they built a roster where the rest of the players can slide over. And they can accommodate whoever, whenever.

One of the criticisms I see is that the Dodgers are buying a championship. Their payroll is like $250 million more than the Orioles.

Yeah, I would say that’s more of an issue of why aren’t the Orioles spending more?

But after reading this book, I don’t think you could say that they are simply buying a championship.

The finances are definitely a significant part of it. But other teams are playing in the same realm. The Yankees have the same dollars as the Dodgers and they’re not in the same level of contention since Friedman got there. They’ve been in a tier above the Yankees in terms of frequency of competitiveness. Whenever I promote this book, there’s going to be people tweeting or emailing saying, like, ‘You know, how they beat a broken game? Dollars, baby!’ And that’s part of it, for sure. But it’s also because they have the dollars and they haven’t spent them at the wrong time. They generally save them for when they’re most valuable, and deploy them that way. If I had to say one word as to why they’ve been the best team in baseball since Andrew Friedman got there, I think it’d be development more than it would be dollars. Dollars would be probably second.

You write about how anyone could have had guys like Justin Turner, Max Muncy, and Chris Taylor. But only the Dodgers developed them. Is player development becoming the norm or are the Dodgers still head and shoulders above everyone else?

The development is getting better. The ability to take a player, spot deficiencies, and how to improve them is better than it used to be by orders of magnitude. I still think the Dodgers paced the sport. I think the gap between them and the other teams is going to be smaller because other teams are more aware of it now. With Taylor and Muncy, that development was a few years ago. Now I think it’s going to be harder to do that because teams are able to experiment with what the Dodgers did with these players and see if they might work with them. Maybe not to the same extent, but at least they’d get an idea that there’s potential here. I didn’t get into this exactly, but essentially this is Moneyball, but with player development. In Moneyball, there’s no talk of player development. There’s nothing of that sort. You draft the players and either they’re good or they’re not. It’s funny that the A’s drafted Muncy, who was a perfect Moneyball player. Just the way he looks, undervalued position, everything about him. They just let him go when the skills weren’t developing the way they hoped they would. And he had a pretty good minor league career. So player development is obviously a huge element of this. Probably the most important thing in the organization is what you make of the players in the years between when you draft them and when they’re debuting.

The book begins by profiling Mookie Betts. The Red Sox, a team on the same level as the Dodgers, essentially gave him away. Why aren’t they operating the same way?

It’s a good question. I think they’re afraid that they can’t sustain the profits to support a $250 million-plus payroll consistently.

Does that not concern the Dodgers?

The Dodgers have a system with their profits with the television contract and their profits in Los Angeles where they sell by far the most tickets of any stadium. There’s a lot of money coming in. They’ve built a system where they can support one of the biggest payrolls in sports. But I think the other element is that a lot of teams wanted to take on Betts at the time, but Betts came with David Price, who came with a significant amount of money owed. Nobody else had the budget to take on that money. The Dodgers had not only the money, but they elected against spending it earlier in the offseason. And I think that’s a key element that people who say it’s all about the money miss. Dollars always come with limitations in terms of how much to spend. And if they had spent them earlier in the offseason, they would not have been able to make that trade that proved to be the best for them.

So why didn’t the Red Sox resign Mookie Betts? That part I’ll never totally understand. It doesn’t make a ton of sense. My guess would be that the executives convinced themselves that fans care more about the jersey than about the players and the sport. It’s a sad thing, right? And the Red Sox didn’t even do that badly in that trade. They got some guys who helped them a little bit, but they aren’t Mookie Betts. They’re not going to have the same level of fan affection. I don’t know anyone who thinks that the sport wouldn’t be better off with Betts staying with the Red Sox for the vast majority of his career.

And yet you see teams like the Orioles and the Guardians who essentially didn’t spend money this offseason. They see what the Dodgers are doing and they’re just opting out. They’re basically playing two different games at this point.

I think it’s worrisome where it’s going to go for the teams who are not in the Dodgers realm because now the best-financed teams are run by some of the best executives. I don’t know what room that leaves for the other rosters. The Arizona Diamondbacks are never going to spend more than $100 million in a season and they’re run by a pretty competent GM. But where are they? What’s their window to compete with the Dodgers and the Giants, who are run by two of the smartest executives and with payrolls massively bigger than theirs? At what point are they going to contend? I don’t see space for it. You could argue that’s one reason baseball was motivated to expand the playoff field to twelve. It does increase the likelihood that you can sneak in within like a lucky 88-win season. But I think it’s really worrisome. Those teams will have to condense all their resources towards a three-year run, and really go for it then. So if the Diamondbacks build up for 2026 to 2028, and they make the playoffs one time and lose in the first round, what happens from 2028 to 2034? They’re rebuilding again, and how many fans will be left at the end of that cycle? It’s really problematic.

Cleveland is probably one of the best examples. They had so much talent assembled there. It was just really disappointing, it’s just not the way that anything should be run. You’re close to getting over that hump, and you’re opting against it just to try to save 3% of your operating profit or something like that. It’s a sad story. I think the Tigers are an example of something good that can happen. But they’re about to start the window, and how long is the window going to last? Are they going to be willing to run payroll to $200 million-plus? I think we could be entering an era where a lot of teams are simply irrelevant for six to eight years.

Pedro Moura‘s book is available here.

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