Originally Posted by
El_Diablo
Exactly. The current core mostly came up through the Dodgers' farm system (Kershaw, Bellinger, Seager, Buehler, Jansen, Urias, Smith, Barnes, Beaty, Lux, May, Gonsolin, etc.) or were acquired on the cheap and retooled (Taylor, Turner, Muncy).
For a Braves fan to complain about the Dodgers' building a roster through free agent "shopping" is just silly. The Dodgers' free agency results consisted of signing three pitchers with question marks (Treinen, Wood and Nelson) to cheap one-year deals, and the biggest free agent contract they have given out under Friedman's entire five-year tenure was to AJ Pollock (which maxes out at $60 million over 5 years, if he exercises his option). Moreover, every single Dodgers free agent last year (Ryu, Hill, Martin, Freese, Negron) left. The Braves, on the other hand, spent $100 million more than the Dodgers in free agency this offseason, and they had another $80-$90 million on the table for Donaldson (he just turned it down for the Twins).
The Betts/Price deal was not even a matter of shopping; it was a trade that required the Dodgers to give up a lot of value. The Dodgers parted with their top prospect going into last season (Verdugo, who had a good rookie campaign, putting up 3.1 bWAR in only 106 games, and is under control for five more years) and a cost-controlled starter (Maeda) who was under contract for four more years. They have also parted with at least one All-Star (Joc Pederson) and possibly a second one (Stripling...if rumors are true) to make it work financially and stay under the CBT threshold. All of those players also came up through the Dodgers' farm system (except Maeda, who was signed out of Japan).