During arbitration, the Los Angeles Dodgers had reached agreement with every one of their eligible except for one. On Tuesday, the Dodgers and Tony Gonsolin agreed to a two-year contract, good through the 2024 season.
Gonsolin and the Dodgers had not been far apart in their asks during arbitration. Gonsolin filed at $3.4M, and the Dodgers countered with $3M.
Ultimately the two sides agreed at a two year deal, worth $6.64M. The contract breaks down to $3.25M for 2023, and $3.4M for 2024.
The deal also includes escalators for 2024’s base salary based off starts in 2023: $500K each for 14, 16, 18, 20, 24 and 28 games starts. There also are Cy Young bonuses included in the contract.
The 28 year old righty had a career year in 2022, making his first All-Star appearance. He made 24 starts, going 16-1 with a 2.14 ERA, including going 11-0 in the first half of the season.
Gonsolin hit the injured list in August, and returned just before the playoffs. He pitched in one game against the San Diego Padres, allowing one run in 1.1 innings.
In other Dodgers news, on Wednesday the Dodgers announced their coaching staff for the upcoming season. The crew pretty much remains the same, with one notable exception. Bob Geren, Manager Dave Roberts’ long time Bench Coach, will be moving to a roll as major league field coordinator. He will be replaced by Danny Lehmann. Lehmann has spent the past three seasons as the team’s game planning & communications coach.
The only other change from last year is that Aaron Bates will replace Brant Brown as co-hitting coach. Brown has hired by the Miami Marlins earlier in the offseason.
Glad that AF and Catman were able to reach that agreement. Now we just have to hope that Tony can throw enough innings to get some of that extra money next year. Not to think negatively, but he just seems like a TJ waiting to happen.
I find the change at bench coach very interesting. Since the Dodgers are not exactly forthcoming on issues like this, we may never get the reasoning behind it. Maybe they’ll at least tell us what the Major League Field Coordinator does.
Wonder why Geren was moved to on-field coordinator.
What does On Field Coordinator even do? Make sure they have 9 guys out there to start the game?
Make sure we don’t have 2 shortstops and no first baseman?
It’s kind of late in the off-season to be announcing a move like this so I’m wondering if it’s health or family related and Geren wanted/needed to cut down on his duties.
Or maybe Doc told AF he and Geren weren’t getting along?
Or maybe Geren couldn’t handle the way Doc was managing?
Or maybe it was none of the above.
Jeff, Here’s a theory. Maybe we have a little insight into how the Dodgers manage a game. Knowing the importance of sabermetrics in making player and game decisions, and the money the Dodgers have to employ brainy people, they have the ability (and need) to wargame every aspect of the game from pregame to last out. Danny Lehmann was formerly Game Planning and Communications Coach. What does that person do? Lehmann has been on the bench during games. Doing what? Just watching the game and thinking? Well, what’s his job title? It was his job to be talking into Prior’s and Robert’s ears to make sure every decision is consistent with best probability outcome and plan for that game. E.g. When there’s a question about who gets up in the bullpen next, it’s not an on-the-fly guess by Prior and Roberts. The result is from Lehmann’s (or Lehmann’s group) pregame number crunching and wargaming for every move during a game. Exactly what you would expect from a 4 billion dollar company like the Dodgers. I think modern baseball organization and strategy is far more sophisticated that we can see.
I’m sure that what you say is correct, Waldo, but Geren (as far as I know) was considered very much into Sabremetrics and had MLB playing experience on top of that, something that Lehmann does not have. Mind you, I have no problem with the change but I would like some sort of explanation from the front office as to exactly how the two jobs differ and what the reason for the change was.
I’m guessing that AF has determined that Geren is the one responsible for the horrific performance against the Pads in the playoffs and for the signing of Bauer and he needed to be called to task for it. I believe there is also some evidence that he’s responsible for the Irish Potato Famine.
I just find it all very curious and because this is a very slow time of year, I’m spending way too much time thinking about it.
Just a quick on-line search shows that most teams have a major league field coordinator. I’m sure responsibilities vary from team to team. But the Pirates describe theirs are “a wide-ranging role that includes game-planning, practice design, workload management, and liaising between team staff members.” No wonder the Pirates do poorly. The poor guy has probably had a stroke from overwork.
I see also that Carson Vitale is the MLFC for the Mariners, and he is on Linkedin. If you are on Linkedin, drop him a note asking “what is it that you actually do?” and “what do you think the LAD MLFC does?” We gotta move up the information chain here. (Laughing)
I’m not on Linkedin but I dropped a note to JP Hoornstra, who covers the Dodgers for one of the local papers and, as always, I got a prompt answer. This is what he said:
"There are no hard and fast rules. Different teams can define those roles differently. Sometimes role swaps are used as a vehicle to give someone a promotion, to prevent that person from being poached by another team. I don't know that to be true in this case, but if Bob Geren wanted to do effectively the same job while giving the Dodgers the opportunity to "promote" Lehmann, they can just make up titles to give the appearance of a promotion. "
Not sure we know any more than before I asked JP for an explanation. It’s still a mystery to me.
JP has been covering the Dodgers to long, that sounded like the same answer we would have gotten from AF.😀
It was vague enough that Andrew might just offer JP a front office job. 🙂