Dodgers add Greg Maddux and Raul Ibanez to their front office
The Los Angeles Dodgers have added a tremendous amount of talent this offseason — to their front office.
On Tuesday, the club announced that it hired Hall of Fame pitcher Greg Maddux and 19-year vet Raul Ibanez for front office roles. Both are newly minted special assistants to the president of baseball operations, which we hope means they’ll help Andrew Friedman carry out top-secret missions in the name of baseball. If not that, they’ll be right-hand men well-schooled on what it means to be a successful MLB player, now tasked with imparting that wisdom upon the younger Dodgers players. Both sound like six-figure jobs.
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The Dodgers front-office is already the baseball equivalent of a rock super group with Friedman as president of baseball operations, Farhan Zaidi as general manager and three former GMs scattered around the org chart — Josh Byrnes, Ned Colletti and Alex Anthopoulos. Anthopoulos also joined the club this winter after leaving his post as GM of the Toronto Blue Jays.
In Maddux, the Dodgers add one of the most cerebral pitchers in recent memory, a 300-game winner with impeccable control who has also worked in front-office stints with the Chicago Cubs and the Texas Rangers. Most recently, he was with the Rangers, where his brother Mike was the pitching coach. Mike was hired this offseason by the Washington Nationals and now Greg finds himself back in L.A., where he played in 2006 and 2008.
In Ibanez, the Dodgers get another ex-player with a manager-like make-up. In fact, Ibanez has been a candidate for managerial jobs, most notably with the Tampa Bay Rays, after retiring following the 2014 season. In that way, Ibanez is similar to Dodgers director of player development Gabe Kapler, who was a runner-up to be Dodgers manager this winter.
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Add to all this the fact that the Dodgers have Sandy Koufax, Don Newcombe, Jose Vizcaino and Aaron Sele in special advisor/special assistant roles and you could almost field one heck of a team just using the Dodgers’ front office. The rotation, at least, would be stellar.
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Mike Oz is the editor of Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @MikeOz