Dodgers Front Office: Top Ranked in US Sports | Kim Hye-seong News

(MHN Arizona (US) Reporter Lee Sang-hee) Kim Hye-sung’s team, the LA Dodgers, was evaluated as the best organization among all four major American professional sports.

U.S. Sports Illustrated reported at the end of last year (Korean time), “The Dodgers’ front office was ranked at the top of a ranking that included the NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB. This is the result of a survey conducted on thousands of sports fans to evaluate the overall operational ability of each team’s front office. The Dodgers were ranked 2nd among all sports teams’ front offices.”

The Dodgers’ front office, which won back-to-back World Series championships for two consecutive years in 2024 and 2025, was evaluated as having made maintaining long-term competitiveness its top priority, ranging from player recruitment and development to trade and long-term team management. And at the center of this is Andrew Friedman, president of baseball operations, who joined the Dodgers organization in 2014.

(From left, Dodgers general manager Brandon Gomes, manager David Roberts, and president Friedman)

Rather than being obsessed with short-term performance, President Friedman has made maintaining competitiveness his top priority from a long-term perspective. As a result, the media analyzed that the Dodgers have never once looked like a team that has lost its direction over the past 10 years. Even if there was a season where they failed to win, the blueprint for the next year was always prepared.

There is a word that is never left out when discussing the Dodgers. It is ‘financial power’. However, this evaluation is not simply the result of giving points to clubs that spend a lot of money. The key points of the survey were consistency of decision-making, player management philosophy, and completeness of long-term strategy. In this context, the Dodgers front office was rated as being almost textbook-like.

Like Shohei Ohtani, he showed a club management method that not only recruits large-scale free agents and fosters internal development at the same time, but also minimizes long-term risks even if it means taking losses. There were no unreasonable all-ins or meaningless resets. In the end, the media evaluated that the Dodgers were “a team that managed both the present and the future.”

(Shohei Otani, who surpassed the LA Dodgers and became the biggest star in the sports world)

And at the center of all these trends was President Friedman. The Dodgers front office is not structured to depend on the abilities of one general manager. It is evaluated as a complete system in which data, scouting, training, and major league operations are organically connected.

Therefore, the Dodgers do not collapse easily even if a key player is injured, and ‘Plan B’ works naturally even if a vacancy occurs. A representative example is Hye-Sung Kim, who debuted in the major leagues last year when starting utilityman Tommy Edman was injured and showed good performance.

(Tommy Edman (left) and Hyeseong Kim)

The reason why the Dodgers are mentioned as candidates for the championship every year is simple. The media reported that this is not because the power is good, but because it has a structure that can maintain good power.

In the survey, there was only one team in the National Basketball Association (NBA), Oklahoma City, that received a higher rating than the Dodgers. This shows how highly trusted the Dodgers are in all aspects of sports operations beyond baseball.