In the wake of the Dodgers’ elimination in the National League Championship Series last week, president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said one of his first offseason phone calls was with team owner Mark Walter.
His takeaway from their chat?
“It’s been business as usual,” Friedman said this week.
Over the previous five months, of course, things had hardly been as usual in Walter’s larger business empire.
There was the ongoing federal investigation into the dealings of several insurance companies he owns. His sudden, and troubling, sale of the Lakers in June. Questions about whether he would have to sell the Dodgers next. Uncertainty about whether his Guggenheim Baseball Management group could continue to fund the team at the same historic levels it has in recent years.
However, Friedman said that when he spoke to the embattled billionaire businessman following the team’s sweep against the Milwaukee Brewers, Walter was “obviously really disappointed” but also already focusing on the future.
“What can we do? What are our plans? What are our thoughts for the offseason?” Walter said, as Friedman recounted.
“Our brains weren’t quite there yet,” Friedman added with a chuckle, while speaking at an end-of-season press conference on Wednesday. “But so much of his focus was, ‘How do we put ourselves in the best position to win in ‘27?’”
Friedman’s phone call was the latest indication that, for now at least, nothing about Walter’s ownership of one of MLB’s flagship franchises has tangibly changed.
Team president Stan Kasten made that point repeatedly during the season, downplaying concerns on multiple occasions about the investigation into Walter and any speculation that he might need to sell the Dodgers.
Walter’s holding company, TWG Global, insisted the same in a lengthy statement it put out in August, saying then that “the team is not being sold” while denying allegations of fraud related to so-called “affiliated” loans made from Walter-owned insurance companies to other entities in his business portfolio (including several connected to the Dodgers).
Granted, only time will truly tell if the Dodgers will indeed be unaffected by Walter’s not-yet-resolved legal saga –– especially after setting MLB payroll records of $415.2 million and $432.8 million the last two years, respectively, according to Cot’s Baseball Contracts’ calculations for luxury tax purposes.
For now, though, “business as usual” remains the company line, going into an offseason in which the team will try to retool for a return to World Series contention.
