The Dodgers are going to have a record payroll this season. They are already at something like $365 million after adding Tanner Scott, and that’s before factoring in the future additions of Clayton Kershaw, likely Kirby Yates, and probably another position player.
But it’s the combination of spending on big-ticket free agents and also getting the super-cheap Roki Sasaki, the highly-coveted 23-year-old ready-made starting pitcher, for a relative pittance that seems to have tipped the scales in negative reaction from other teams and fans.
In the last few days, the term “evil empire” has been written to describe the Dodgers at various places, including USA Today, Forbes, Reuters, Marquee Sports Network, the Dallas Morning News, and SF Gate.
Jeff Passan at ESPN detailed the Dodgers pursuit of Sasaki, and separately how the Dodgers’ lavish spending has set them apart and drawn ire from other teams. There’s a lot going on in this piece, and you should read it all. But I did enjoy this passage from Passan: “The Dodgers’ willingness to spend in grand sums and success with it should motivate other teams to keep up, not preclude them from doing so.”
Ken Rosenthal at The Athletic wrote about the Dodgers as the new “evil empire” but also that other teams should spend more: “Calls for greater competitive balance have existed since the days of Babe Ruth. They would carry more legitimacy today if more teams were trying.”
Rob Mains at Baseball Prospectus wrote dug into the math and wrote that a salary cap in baseball is in search of a problem that doesn’t exist.
As much as I initially bristled at the title of this Fansided article, Robert Murray was right to point out that regular season does not guarantee success in October (just as the 2022 and 2023 Dodgers).
“But the Dodgers are positioned to overcome adversity and repeat as World Series champions better than any other team in baseball history,” Murray wrote, “and that’s exactly what Andrew Friedman, Brandon Gomes and Dave Roberts wanted.”
On the flip side, I very much enjoyed this headline of Michael Baumann’s piece on the Dodgers at FanGraphs, which included this paragraph:
Their most expensive free agent, Snell, has less guaranteed money coming to him than either the Giants’ or Diamondbacks’ top free agent signings. And the best player the Dodgers signed — and the one whose absolute attraction to the Dodgers should be most troubling to the other 29 teams — was Sasaki. That had nothing to do with money and everything to do with environment.