2012 Los Angeles Dodgers

2012 Los Angeles Dodgers / Franchise: Los Angeles Dodgers / BR Team Page[edit]

Record: 86-76, Finished 2nd in NL Western Division (2012 NL)

Coaches: Trey Hillman, Dave Hansen, Rick Honeycutt, Ken Howell, Davey Lopes, Manny Mota, Jim Slaton and Tim Wallach

History, Comments, Contributions[edit]

The 2012 Los Angeles Dodgers spent all season in a see-saw battle with the San Francisco Giants for the lead in the National League West. Yet for all the excitement this return to competitiveness generated, the biggest news of the year was made in border rooms and not on the diamond. On May 1st, the team was sold for a record $2.15 billion to a group headed by investor Mark Walter and also including former basketball great Magic Johnson and front office veteran Stan Kasten, who was named team President. The amount paid was the largest in history for a North American sports franchise and was the result of an open bidding process supervised by a bankruptcy judge following the ruinous divorce of former owner Frank McCourt. The staggering amount paid for the team meant that McCourt walked away from the process a much richer man than in the days when he was married to his wife Jamie and the two jointly owned the team.

It appeared quickly however that the amount paid for the team was only the beginning. On August 25th, with the race with the Giants in full intensity, the Dodgers pulled out one the biggest blockbuster trades in baseball history, obtaining four veterans from the Boston Red Sox - 1B Adrian Gonzalez, P Josh Beckett, OF Carl Crawford and IF Nick Punto - and taking on $260 million in contract commitments for the first three of these. The new owners seemingly had not deep pockets but bottomless ones ! In return, they parted ways with unproductive 1B James Loney and four younger players: Ps Rubby De La Rosa and Allen Webster, IF Ivan DeJesus and 1B/OF Jerry Sands. It did not matter to the new owners that Crawford for one was on the shelf until some time next season (as was De La Rosa, although the salaries and major league track record of the two were nowhere near comparable). The deal generated immediate excitement in Los Angeles, after the doldrums of the McCourt divorce saga, especially when Gonzalez began his tenure in storybook fashion, hitting a three-homer off the Miami Marlins' Josh Johnson in his first at-bat as a Dodger on the day of the trade, keying an 8-2 win.