In early December, as the baseball industry crowded into a luxury hotel in San Diego for the Winter Meetings, the Dodgers offered free-agent Gerrit Cole a contract that would have been the largest for a pitcher in the history of baseball.



Some of the money would be deferred, but the team pegged the value for the contract at $300 million — $83 million more than the record David Price set in 2015 and $55 million than the record Stephen Strasburg held for about a day this December. Under president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman, the Dodgers had never signed a player to a $100 million deal. He determined Cole was worth three times that amount.



Friedman had spent years avoiding long-term commitments to marginal players so that when a superstar like Cole became available, the Dodgers could strike. In their eyes, they did. They offered Cole terms that would have looked preposterous only a handful of years ago. When former Dodgers general manager Ned Colletti...