Am I missing a joke here? I don't know if Friedman will succeed in LA, but if the owners have even a little patience, I imagine he'll do just fine. He won't be able to pull off a Theo-esque rebuild a la the Cubs, but being able to succeed in Tampa is nothing but a feather in his cap and is a positive indication that he will be able to figure out how to spend when there's money in the coffers. Of course, it might be a few years before any of that money is available to him, but I wouldn't be surprised to see him make a few "salary dump" moves where he brings back some lottery tickets, like the White Sox got in Francelis Montas from the Peavy trade.
In fact, the restrictions he's dealt with in Tampa might serve him well with the salary crunched Dodgers for the next two or three seasons. He's been a pretty good bargain basement shopper over the last couple of winters. This GM but not the GM trend that is allowing teams to poach GM's under contract is a little annoying, but it doesn't look like the league has any desire to slow it down. Friedman is a good get for the Dodgers. They still have a very solid farm system with Seager, Urias and Pederson at the top and Alexander Guerrero is probably ready to take over second with Dee Gordon moving to SS full time to start 2015. The loss of Hanley is going to hurt the offense, but the infield defense should improve dramatically.
They have plenty of young talent to add to some really good vets. They remind me a little of the 2007 Red Sox at the start of that season. Gonzalez, Gordon, Kemp, Puig, Ethier with an excellent looking rotation and a lights out back of the pen.
The Sox came in with Tek, Manny, Papi, Lowell, Drew and Crisp as the veteran core on the field and a rotation with Beckett, Schilling and Wake, with the intention of adding Pedroia, Ellsbury, Matsuzaka and Lester. Papelbon and Timlin were the back of the pen and Okajima stepped up and became a dominant setup man, with Youk establishing himself and Buchholz being minor league depth by the end of the year. It's not a perfect comparison, of course, but I wouldn't be surprised to see LA win a title next year. If Friedman can move the right contracts, they could be really good for a long time.