The question to me boils down to this:
At what point should Mookie move to to 2B?
That's been the plan for a few year--and probably ever since AF signed him longterm. He had come up as a middle infielder with the Red Sox, and was blocked at 2B by Dustin Pedroia. Boston might have played him at SS, but they had Bogaerts. Mookie, a superior athlete, took over RF and excelled.
But when AF signed, surely the plan was for the aging superstar to move back the middle infield. With his abiding, misplaced faith in Gavin Lux, the plan was for a Lux-Mookie keystone. But finally the vaunted LAD brass saw what a lot of us fans had seen: Lux fell short as a shortstop. And it was Mookie to the rescue!
So how long should this last?
The SS market now has a lot of good options that have (a) outperformed Freeland and Kim and (b) make the Dodgers younger. You say Otto Lopez has a good glove? I'm good with a terrific fielder who piles up 190 hits but doesn't walk much. What will he cost? Is Brice Turang really available? Great! How much? He was drafted as a SS, so maybe young Brice and Old Man Mookie can switch roles in a couple seasons.
You think Freeland will have a breakout season like Turang did a couple years back? Well, Turang was a 1st round pick (like Lux, only better), so Milwaukee understandably had great faith in the lad. Freeland had had some good moments, but in '26 his elders Rojas, Edman and Kike out-played him. He was not pushing them toward retirement. Freeland got a greater opportunity that Kim, but Roberts opted to play the old guys more, because they delivered, and he wanted to win. Will Freeland blossom like Miguel Vargas? Well, the Dodgers brass wanted desperately for the Lux-Vargas keystone to work. But Miguelito didn't blossom until he left the Dodgers.
The way I see it, the gap between Freeland and Kim is pretty narrow, like the 1 point difference in their ML OPS. Even though Freeland got double the ML opportunity than Kim, the Dodgers passed over Freeland for Kim in the postseason. Kim has the edge in speed, Freeland the edge in pop. The gap between these two is so narrow that I find myself hoping that a dark horse like Davalan or Geloff could change the 2B equation in Spring training. Both appear to have higher ceilings on offense.
But I find myself circling back to the Elly question...
Just as the Dodgers brass has to think about the best time to shift Mookie to 2B, Cincy has to be thinking about the best time to put Elly on the market.
My guess is that it won't be this winter, but probably next winter.
So maybe Freeland--or Kim or Davalan or Geloff--have one season to stake their claim at 2B.
A year ago, a lot of fans, including myself, were predicting that Skubal would probably become a Dodger. The writing was on the wall.
Now people are wondering about Elly.