Dodgers See Trea Turner As Part of 'A Luxury' on 2022 Team

Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman says having Trea Turner was a "luxury" they'd love to have again next year.

With Trea Turner hitting free agency, the Dodgers are working to figure out who their shortstop will be in 2023. It could be Turner again, as he's said he's open to coming back to L.A. and the team has a lot of money. They could go after one of the other "big four" free-agent shortstops: Carlos Correa, Xander Bogaerts, or Dansby Swanson.

Or they could go internally, with Gavin Lux, Jacob Amaya, and Chris Taylor all being names they've discussed. Replacing Turner with someone less accomplished would be a definite step back, but as Bill Plunkett reports in the Orange County Register, Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman is aware they had it good in 2022.

“Last year, in a lot of ways was a luxury – would we like to continue a luxury? Of course. That was an extra level above where it (the team’s offense) had been,” Friedman said. “We’ve had a lot of really good offenses over the last five to seven years and they’ve looked a little bit different at different points in time.”

It's unrealistic to expect the Dodgers to be even better in 2023 than they were in 2022. (Of course, we're all hoping for and expecting a better postseason performance.) At some point, it's hard to even maintain a level of excellence. With the Dodgers' resources, it's reasonable to expect them to put together a 100-win team pretty much every year. But 111 wins? That's that "extra level" Friedman mentions.

Los Angeles could put together an outstanding team even if they go with an unproven option at shortstop, and it might come to that. The "Big Three" for the Dodgers got mentioned so often because it's such a rare thing to have. With or without Trea, L.A. will be a very good team in 2023.