/ STAFF WRITER
LOS ANGELES – There are front offices in Major League Baseball where they play checkers. (Yes, Mr. Stoneman, checkers is a perfectly fine game.)
There are front offices where they play chess and maybe even dabble in three-dimensional chess.
But the Dodgers have handed their future to a front office that is intent on playing three-dimensional Vulcan chess – on the most expensive, state-of-the-art holodeck money can buy.
“They’re a goliath in the game right now,” former Rockies GM turned MLB Network analyst Dan O’Dowd said Thursday of the pairing of the Dodgers’ financial resources with a front office ready, willing and able to leverage those resources in the most creative and intelligent ways their combined brainpower can conjure.