Sanlmar, that's an entertaining essay as always, but you're missing the main point with Friedman.

He's like the guy who can afford a new car but keeps buying used cars with questionable history, and by the time he is finished spending money on repairs and junking several vehicles, he ended up spending more than had he just bought a new, luxury car in the first place.

Combine the salaries of guys like Joe Kelly and AJ Pollock and you can get a high-end free agent for the same money.

He's one of those guys who is afraid to make large purchases, but doesn't blink before wasting lots of money on several medium sized purchases.

It's time to stop this BS and simply pull the trigger on a Cole type. Even it's at the expense of acquiring some mid-level players he's had his eye on.

Yes, I am aware that the current Dodgers ownership is somewhat frugal, and has basically decided that if the team wins the West and stays under the cap, they've done well enough. However, there is such backlash over what happened this year, they may need to deviate if they don't want fans abandoning them. Their only saving grace might be that Washington went on to win the World Series, so the narrative has shifted from, "We let a wildcard team steal a series from us when we had it mostly locked up in Game 5" to "We were beaten by the eventual World Series champs, who crushed the Cardinals and beat the mighty Astros four times on the road."