When Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman met with reporters this past Friday in advance of this week’s MLB Winter Meetings in Las Vegas, he told them that the team’s “acute needs” were to find a catcher to replace (now) free agent Yasmani Grandal and to “continue augmenting the bullpen.” He also said that finding a replacement for former Dodgers general manager Farhan Zaidi was not on their agenda.

On Sunday, with the Winter Meetings not yet four hours old, the Dodgers’ top exec had already deviated from his game plan when it was announced that he had signed former Seattle Mariners vice president and assistant general manager Jeff Kingston to be their new vice president and assistant general manager.

And then late on Sunday night it was being reported – or at least rumored – that the Dodgers were among the favorites to land former New York Yankees right-handed reliever (and current free agent) David Robertson.

For those unfamiliar with Robertson, the 33-year-old Birmingham, Alabama native and Yankees 17th-round draft pick in 2006 (out of the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa) has a career mark of 53-32 and an outstanding career ERA of 2.88 over 11 MLB seasons. As such, and coming off a 4-year / $46,000,000 million contract that he signed with the Chicago White Sox before being traded back to the Yankees on July 19, 2017, he is going to get PAID, regardless of where he ends up.

Ironically, according to SportTrac, the hard-throwing right-hander with 874 career strikeouts and 260 career walks (for a remarkable K/BB rate of 3.36 and a K/9 rate of 12.0) had a limited no-trade clause in his last contract to the Detroit Tigers, Los Angeles Dodgers, New York Mets, Oakland A’s, and Philadelphia Phillies. Whether or not this will play into his new – and presumably huge – contract remains to be seen.

That being said and as we all know … Money talks.

Stay tuned…