Red Sox's latest free agent signing marks end of an era for Dodgers

To a generation of Los Angeles Dodgers fans, Walker Buehler will be remembered as the pitcher who struck out Alex Verdugo to clinch the 2024 World Series, rose his arms and soaked in the hostile atmosphere at Yankee Stadium.

To a slightly older set of fans, Buehler marked the beginning of an era in Los Angeles.

Both parties could agree on one thing: when the Dodgers signed Blake Snell, pursued Roki Sasaki, and looked forward to the returns of Shohei Ohtani, Dustin May, Tony Gonsolin, and possibly Clayton Kershaw in 2025, there was no room for Buehler in the Los Angeles rotation.

Monday, Buehler agreed to a one-year, $21.05 million contract with the Boston Red Sox, joining a suddenly imposing rotation that recently added Garrett Crochet via trade.

Breaking: Right-hander Walker Buehler and the Boston Red Sox are in agreement on a one-year, $21.05 million deal which includes incentives, sources tell @YahooSports. The two-time World Series champion with the Dodgers now becomes the veteran arm in Boston’s new-look rotation.
— Russell Dorsey (@Russ_Dorsey1) December 23, 2024

The Dodgers' current era of success, at a glance, began in 2013. In 12 years since, they've won 11 National League West titles. It's a streak partially indicative of the core group — Clayton Kershaw, Kenley Jansen, Matt Kemp, Andre Ethier — already in place when Guggenheim Baseball Management bought the team out of bankruptcy in 2012.

But the Dodgers did not become a model MLB franchise overnight. When they poached Andrew Friedman from the Tampa Bay Rays' front office after the 2014 season, he put in place a new director of amateur scouting, Billy Gasparino, and charged him with replenish a farm system without ever giving the appearance of rebuilding.

Gasparino's first draft pick? A college pitcher with a broken elbow named Walker Buehler.

Buehler is just one man, but he encapsulated the next decade of Dodgers baseball — and the trends they set along the way — in some meaningful ways.

The idea of using a team's first-round draft pick on a pitcher in need of Tommy John surgery was panned in some corners at the time. But as the surgical procedure became a rule rather than an exception for hard-throwing pitchers, investing in college pitchers (and eventually high schoolers) who had already undergone the procedure became accepted as the cost of doing business.

It's worth noting here that Buehler was one of eight players Gasparino drafted in 2015 who ultimately reached the majors, an outstanding hit rate. It wasn't even his best draft; seventeen players would reach the majors after being drafted by the Dodgers in 2016, including two players who went back to college and ultimately debuted with a different organization.

Buehler began accruing minor league innings for the Dodgers in the summer of 2016. His starts lasted no more than 30 pitches at a time. Historically, a pitcher like Buehler might have gained seasoning over the next few as a starter before making his major league debut.

Instead, Buehler raced through three levels of the organization — High-A, Double-A, Triple-A — before debuting in Los Angeles in Sept. 2017 as a reliever. By May 2018, he was a full-fledged member of the Dodgers' rotation, the start of a career that appeared to be on a Hall of Fame trajectory.

From 2018-21, Buehler made two All-Star teams, went 39-13 with a 2.82 ERA (146 ERA+), and effectively defined the modern starting pitcher's prototypical repertoire: something like 30 starts, and 140 to 200 innings of throwing 95-plus for at least five innings at a time, then turning the ball over to the bullpen.

Privately, Buehler epitomized the modern pitcher too. He was cerebral enough to hold a conversation about kinematics, analytics, the economics of baseball, or his greatest passion in sports — horse racing. (He's an active investor in multiple horses in his native Kentucky.) Publicly, Buehler oozed the "bulldog" spirit that suggested he wanted to throw a complete game every time. None of it was an act.

Of course, Buehler's elbow gave out again. We know now that that is what pitcher's elbows do. The Red Sox are betting that Buehler, at age 30, can resume the Hall of Fame trajectory his 2022 Tommy John procedure threatened to thwart. (According to ESPN's Jeff Passan, Buehler can earn up to $2.5 million in incentives.)

In a way, Buehler's time in Boston will be a test case for an entire era of pitching development philosophy, one that has now come under scrutiny by Major League Baseball itself. What will his 30s look like? In the best-case scenario, Buehler is for the Red Sox what he was for the Dodgers in October: a clutch starting pitcher with an explosive fastball in any role necessary.

For the Dodgers, it's the end of an era. Buehler was the first draft pick of the Friedman/Gasparino era. His final pitch in a Los Angeles uniform clinched the team's eighth championship.

The idea of Buehler wearing a different uniform will be a foreign concept to many Dodger fans. The blueprint of his career lives on, however, not just in Los Angeles but in the way pitchers train, develop, and break down around the world.

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