LOS ANGELES — The Texas Rangers are expected to aggressively pursue Clayton Kershaw this winter and can offer the free-agent left-hander something the Dodgers can't — a chance for the three-time Cy Young Award winner to play near his Dallas-area home and not have to uproot his family every spring.
The Dodgers, despite not extending an $18.4 million qualifying offer to the franchise icon, do not intend to go down without a fight.
"We really want Kersh to come back — not only because of what he's meant to us looking back, but what he'll mean for us going forward," Andrew Friedman, the team's president of baseball operations, said Tuesday on the first day of baseball's general manager meetings.