Edwin Díaz signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers in December 2025 — three years, $69 million — coming off a season where he posted a 1.63 ERA and 28 saves with the Mets. Eight months later, the Dominican closer is sitting on an 11.00 ERA, a 2.44 WHIP, and has just blown back-to-back saves against the Arizona Diamondbacks, the second one on a walk-off home run, while the team has dropped seven straight. A tweet capturing the moment has racked up 1.8 million impressions, and the question it sparked is the same one every LA fan is asking right now: does the best front office in baseball ever actually miss?
The $69 million closer who came back broken
The signing made perfect sense on paper. Díaz had been the best closer in the National League in 2025 — 28 saves, 1.63 ERA, a slider that hitters simply couldn’t touch. The Dodgers paid market price for the best option available and handed him the ninth inning on a world championship team. What nobody fully anticipated was the elbow surgery that landed him on the injured list in April 2026, just six innings into the season. He returned with a repaired arm but without the command that made him untouchable.
Through August 9, Díaz has three blown saves in eight opportunities. In his August appearances alone, the ERA climbs to 18.00. On August 7 and 8 — two consecutive nights — he came in to close out games against Arizona and lost both.
A tweet from @MissionVlyMafia captured the moment perfectly, listing name after name of Dodgers acquisitions that haven’t worked out under the sarcastic header «THE BEST FRONT OFFICE IN BASEBALL!! THEY NEVER MISS!!» With 6,200 likes and 1.8 million impressions in under 24 hours, the conversation had already spread well beyond Dodgers fans.
The long list: real mistakes vs. bad luck dressed up as failure
It’s worth separating what’s actually on that list. Not every failure is the same kind of failure, and lumping them all together is exactly what turns a real debate into noise.
The genuine evaluation errors are documented:
- Trevor Bauer — signed in 2021 for $102 million, never threw an official pitch as a Dodger before his suspension.
- Michael Conforto — arrived injured and never became the hitter the contract implied.
- Jason Heyward — a veteran experiment that simply didn’t work.
Those are cases where the front office either bet wrong or didn’t do sufficient due diligence.
Then there are the injuries, which is messier territory. Blake Snell has been on the IL since Opening Day 2026 — March 25 — without throwing a single game. Tyler Glasnow’s lengthy injury history was public knowledge before he was signed. Roki Sasaki dealt with right shoulder impingement in 2025 and ran into more physical setbacks in spring training 2026. Injuries are partly unpredictable; blaming the front office because an arm breaks is a different charge than blaming them for paying Tanner Scott $72 million — Scott led all of MLB with 10 blown saves in his first season in LA and finished with a 4.82 ERA.
Kyle Tucker is the most recent and quietest case: signed as a free agent in the winter of 2025–26 with franchise-player expectations, he’s been performing at league-average across the relevant metrics in 2026. No injury to point to. He just hasn’t been the player they paid for.
The best front office in baseball can miss — and is still leading
Here’s the paradox the viral tweet doesn’t resolve, because that’s not what a tweet is for: The Athletic ranked the Dodgers’ front office second-best among all four major US sports in 2025, trailing only the Oklahoma City Thunder in the NBA. And right now, with Díaz struggling, Snell sidelined, and Tucker underperforming, the Dodgers are still leading the NL West.
Andrew Friedman and Brandon Gomes run a high-risk, high-investment model: sign a lot of players, take on big contracts, and bet that enough of them work out even when some don’t. In that framework, failures are a cost of doing business. The problem in August 2026 is that several of those big contracts are failing at the same time, right when the team needs them most.
What did arrive before the trade deadline was Tarik Skubal, acquired from the Detroit Tigers for three prospects. Skubal came in with a 2.79 ERA and 116 strikeouts across 96.2 innings. That move smells like the front office everyone knows.
How much of that holds through October — and how much more the bullpen gives back before then — is what this Dodgers summer will ultimately be defined by.
