Dave Roberts' first-year strategy with Dodgers: Use tips from old pal Bruce Bochy
New Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts has a big responsibility on his shoulders: help the Dodgers win the NL West again, despite losing co-ace Zack Greinke.
How he plans to do that, as he told the media during a Cactus League phone chat on Monday, has a lot to do with the club's intra-division rivals up north ... specifically, San Francisco Giants manager Bruce Bochy.
Roberts played under Bochy with the San Diego Padres in 2005 and 2006 and again with the Giants in 2007 and 2008, so he's quite familiar with Bochy's style. As quoted by Hank Schulman of the San Francisco Chronicle, he plans to use that experience:
Roberts inherits a Dodgers roster bursting with talent and depth but without the all-out star power of recent seasons. He's already gone on record as wanting to "start fresh" with talented but at times troubled outfielder Yasiel Puig.
Finding the correct combination of starters -- and managing them effectively in games -- is something with which previous Dodgers manager Don Mattingly sometimes had issues. So it's definitely one aspect of the game Roberts will be looking to improve upon in his first year in Los Angeles.
As for his return to San Francisco, Roberts joked that, "If I get booed at the end of September, then I know the Dodgers have done some good things."
