Perhaps it’s no surprise that the manager of the team with one of the highest payrolls in all of Major League Baseball became the game’s highest-paid skipper on Monday. However, the contract extension that the Los Angeles Dodgers reportedly handed out to Dave Roberts also brings along with it plenty of expectations as well.
Reports surfaced on Monday that Roberts will make more than $8 million per season from 2026 to 2029 to manage the Dodgers. Coming off a World Series win last season and armed once again with arguably MLB’s most star-studded lineup, Roberts and the Dodgers are heavily favored to win the Fall Classic again this year.
In spring, before the first real game has been played, it all sounds wonderful. However, managing expectations is what Roberts is getting paid for this season and beyond, perhaps as much as penciling Shohei Ohtani’s name into the designated hitter spot in every game possible.
The highest-paid manager guiding the path of a team of this caliber sets up for all eyes to be on Chavez Ravine in the near-future… good or bad. While Roberts expertly navigated the Dodgers through the World Series win last year over the New York Yankees, there are no guarantees that Los Angeles will be back in the late October spotlight again this season. Certainly the Dodgers have the depth and talent to do so, but the baseball gods can be a fickle group.
Don’t forget that last year, in the National League Division Series, the Dodgers had to overcome a 2-1 deficit to the San Diego Padres to eventually capture the best-of-five series. A stumble to San Diego in the NLDS would have created a whole different storyline this offseason for the Dodgers, a team that spent roughly $70 million more on its roster last season than the Padres.
With big expenditures come big expectations, and that trend will continue for the Dodgers this season. Roberts understands that and seems ready to embrace the challenge.
“Certainly with what we’ve done so far, we’ve gotten better,” Roberts said at the winter meetings in December, even before his team signed Roki Sasaki to boost the rotation and brought back outfielder Teoscar Hernandez on a three-year, $66 million deal. “I like the direction we’re going certainly.”
That direction will be filled with pressure, beginning with the season-opener for Los Angeles in Tokyo against the Chicago Cubs on March 18. Between the early start to the season and last year’s World Series run, no team has had a shorter offseason than the Dodgers, just adding a little more fuel to the questions surrounding a potential repeat.
Los Angeles believes Roberts is the man to lead through the fire of a repeat run in 2025. With new contract in hand, it’s time to see if the Dodgers’ investment will indeed pay off.