The Dodgers are expected to discuss a contract extension with longtime manager Dave Roberts this offseason, per a report from Jack Harris of the Los Angeles Times. Roberts’ current contract is slated to expire following the 2025 season.
It’s hardly a surprise that the Dodgers would look to lock up their skipper before spring training begins. Club brass acknowledged last month (as noted by The Athletic’s Fabian Ardaya at the time) that the sides had not yet discussed an extension in the aftermath of the club’s World Series championship but was quick to add that he hopes to keep Roberts in the dugout long-term. Even aside from those comments, teams often prefer to avoid having managers play out the final year of their contract without an extension in hand in hopes of avoid a “lame duck” situation, and it’s difficult to argue that Roberts’s performance hasn’t merited an extension.
Since joining the Dodgers as manager back in 2016, Roberts has led the club to nine consecutive postseason appearances, eight division titles, four NL Pennants, and two World Series championships. Ignoring the 60-game 2020 campaign where the Dodgers went 43-17, the club has never won less than 91 games in a season under Roberts’ guidance, and after winning the NL Manager of the Year award in 2016, he’s subsequently been a finalist for the award two more times and received votes in every season of his time at the helm in Los Angeles. Overall, Roberts has a lifetime 851-507 record as a manager, giving him a .627 winning percentage. That’s the highest winning percentage of any manager in MLB history with at least 1,000 games managed in his career and translates to approximately 102 wins in a 162-game season.
Given the Dodgers’ desire to keep Roberts in the fold long-term and his phenomenal work during his tenure as L.A.’s skipper, Harris goes on to suggest that a record-shattering extension could be on the table for the longtime skipper. Last offseason, Craig Counsell signed a record-breaking extension with the Cubs that guaranteed him $40M over five years. Counsell is widely considered to be among the best managers in the game at the moment, but he’s never led a team to the World Series or won a Manager of the Year award. In other words, Roberts’ resume is much more robust than Counsell’s was last winter, and it’s not hard to imagine a high-spending club like the Dodgers rewarding their skipper with a record-breaking deal.
Of course, that’s by no means guaranteed to occur. Counsell signed his $40M deal with Chicago on the open market after playing out the final season of his deal with Milwaukee and had a number of teams vying for his services as the Guardians, Astros, and Mets joined the incumbent Brewers in vying for his services before he ultimately landed on the north side. That stands in contrast to Red Sox skipper Alex Cora, who appeared poised to follow in Counsell’s footsteps and test the open market before ultimately opting to sign a three-year extension in Boston that guaranteed him around $21.75M total.
Cora doesn’t quite compare to Roberts in terms of resume, with just one World Series championship and a .536 winning percentage under his belt in six seasons as manager in Boston. Even so, the extension between the Red Sox and their well-regarded skipper came in at just over half the total guarantee the Cubs offered Counsell and with a lower yearly salary. That outcome at least left the door open to the possibility that Counsell’s record-setting deal with Chicago was more of an outlier caused by multiple aggressive suitors rather than a new norm for manager salaries in the league.
