A few hours before news broke that the Dodgers had signed Freddie Freeman to a six-year, $162-million contract, Andrew Friedman was asked about his interest in the first baseman on MLB Network. The L.A. president of baseball operations had a simple answer: “He’s a really, really, really good baseball player.” But then he broke into an enormous grin. He rose up as if he was standing on his tiptoes. If he had verbally communicated one thing with his safe, straightforward one-liner, he had visually communicated another: Friedman just could not hold back that he was really, truly, seriously interested in Freeman.
And who could blame him? If you were presiding over a team already projected to be the best in baseball, and you were closing in on a long-term deal with a star of this caliber, wouldn’t you be grinning and rising out of your shoes as you tried to play coy about it on national television?
Before the end of the night, Friedman had made the five-time All-Star a Dodger. In doing so, he took the strongest team in baseball and made it even stronger.
