PHOENIX — The Dodgers have agreed to a three-year contract extension with manager Dave Roberts, according to a person with knowledge of the situation, locking up the World Series-winning skipper through the 2025 season and ensuring he won’t manage the 2022 campaign in the last year of his deal.
In six years managing the Dodgers — all of which have seen the team make the playoffs — Roberts has been at the helm for five division titles, three National League pennants and a World Series championship in 2020.
Roberts’ .622 career winning percentage is the best mark of any National League or American League manager in history. His 542 regular-season wins are fifth-most in club history. And not since Tommy Lasorda has the tenure of a Dodgers manager lasted so long.
The upcoming 2022 season was set to be the final year of a four-year contract Roberts signed in 2018. However, both Roberts and club personnel maintained confidence throughout the winter that they would strike a new deal before the end of the offseason.
That agreement finally came Friday, with the Dodgers completing one of the last major items on their to-do list before the start of the new season. Terms weren’t immediately known, but the new deal will keep him under contract with the team for the next four seasons.
Roberts, 49, played in parts of 10 big league seasons from 1999 to 2008 (including three years with the Dodgers), then spent five years on the San Diego Padres coaching staff from 2011 to 2015, before getting his first managerial job with the Dodgers in 2016.
The club lost in the NLCS his first year, before suffering back-to-back World Series defeats in 2017 and 2018 to the Houston Astros and Boston Red Sox, respectively. Following a disappointing exit in the NLDS in 2019, the Dodgers finally got over the hump in the pandemic-shortened 2020 campaign, beating the Tampa Bay Rays in six games to win the franchise’s first championship since 1988.
Last year was the first time the Dodgers failed to win the NL West under Roberts’ watch, finishing second behind the San Francisco Giants despite winning 106 games.
In the playoffs, the Dodgers beat the St. Louis Cardinals in the wild-card round, then outlasted the Giants in a classic five-game division series. The team’s repeat hopes were dashed in the NLCS though, with the eventual champion Atlanta Braves eliminating them in six games.
The 2021 postseason saw a familiar critique of Roberts resurface from fans, who questioned several of the team’s pitching decisions during the series loss to Atlanta. But Roberts’ resume has few other obvious blemishes, with the manager having cemented his reputation for getting the most out of the Dodgers’ perennially deep and talented rosters.
The upcoming 2022 season will present new challenges for Roberts, as the Dodgers will have to manage a condensed schedule following MLB’s offseason lockout.
He will enter the year knowing his future is contractually secure, though, after coming to terms on a new deal that was all offseason in the making.
