Jeff Bridich, as well as Dave Stewart and A.J. Preller, really have their work cut out for them now.
It's annoying when the rich get richer, but that's what happened when the Los Angeles Dodgers hired Andrew Friedman away from the Tampa Bay Rays on Tuesday.
Friedman will take over as the Dodgers' new president of baseball operations, the team announced, while former GM Ned Colletti is being kicked into an advisory role. Friedman comes to the Dodgers without compensation due to the fact that he had been working for the Rays without a contract.
In Friedman, the Dodgers land an excellent analytical mind who is also no slouch at building a winning baseball team. The Rays struggled to a 77-85 record this year while dealing with a myriad of injuries and a trade of their best starting pitcher, but Friedman's squad finished with a winning record in every season from 2008 through 2013 and made the postseason four times during that span.
Friedman has been able to get a lot of results out of a miniscule amount of money in Tampa Bay, and now he'll head a Dodgers franchise that has unlimited resources. There's always a chance that being able to write blank checks will have Friedman way in over his head, but that's doubtful. The more optimistic (for the Dodgers) -- and frankly, realistic -- way of looking at this is that Friedman will be able to build championship-caliber teams the way he always has, but now he'll have a crapload of money to use to fill in holes with deadline deals and last-minute free-agent signings.
In other words, Jeff Bridich's job just got a lot harder. And so did the jobs of the other two new NL West GMs -- Dave Stewart in Arizona and A.J. Preller in San Diego. Meanwhile, the Giants will likely make their move in the form of winning yet another World Series.
Bridich, Stewart and Preller are going to have to get creative to compete with Friedman's Dodgers and Sabean's undeniably fortunate but also extremely well-put together Giants. That starts with the three newbies needing to find a way to continue their advantage in player development, and extends to having an even smaller margin of error when it comes to having success with draft picks.
Beating the Dodgers and Giants is also going to require finding a leg up at the big league level. It means that the Diamondbacks need good fortune with their pitching rotation and have to do a better job of finding better depth to surround a highly capable core of Paul Goldschmidt, Miguel Montero, Chris Owings and A.J. Pollock. For the Padres, it means getting any sort of offense to complement what is, and pretty much has always been, an adequate-or-better pitching staff. And for the Rockies, it means fully embracing Coors Field, and quite possibly going to drastic means to upgrade their offense to the point where it can compete away from Denver, as well.
Baseball is hard. It always has been. But for Bridich (and Stewart and Preller), it just got even harder.