The Dodgers success story in getting people to come to them
Much has been said about the Dodgers and their spending spree this offseason, improving upon baseball’s premiere team in 2024. It’s interesting how the complaints vary from unfairness to skepticism. Still, there are some important points to tackle when it comes to the current state of the Dodgers, and we’re not here for polarizing statements. In fact, the main takeaway is a sense of balance.
As important to this opportunity as is the lack of a salary cap in baseball, another crucial factor in helping the Dodgers add so much is the variety of available ways to improve an MLB roster. A basketball team can only accommodate so many shots, a quarterback has X number of targets, but in baseball, the room for adding is relatively massive.
There are small hurdles to overcome, but Max Muncy can go from first to third base to accommodate Freddie Freeman, and stay there longer-term to accommodate Shohei Ohtani at designated hitter. Mookie Betts can move from right field to the middle infield based on need and let the Dodgers sign a duo of free-agent corner outfielders with Teoscar Hernández and Michael Conforto.
On the pitching side of things, a bullpen can literally always add top pieces, as we’ve seen with most-recent additions Tanner Scott and Kirby Yates, the latter at the expense of veteran Ryan Brasier. For the rotation, you can go as far as getting five top-of-the-line starters and then a bunch of established arms with health and/or workload concerns. Bobby Miller, Tony Gonsolin, and Dustin May all could be argued as guys who deserve every opportunity to run away with a spot as one of the five starters in a contender from day one. And that won’t be the case here.
It takes the rarest of scenarios for a top free agent or available asset to be truly closed off from looking at a team as a potential landing spot in baseball. One like Pete Alonso and the Dodgers, for instance. But with the flexibility of certain players, the Dodgers could still feasibly add a star for really any of second base, shortstop, third base, or outfield, and be able to make it work, even with an active roster’s complement of players.
All of this may sort of go without saying, but it’s also worth highlighting how it evens itself out with the whole nature of the postseason in baseball. The Dodgers could field a $500 million dollar payroll and still be guaranteed very little when it comes to October. Look back at the 2024 championship-winning squad that came within an inch of another one-and-done campaign as the Dodgers did in 2022 and 2023.
Circling back to the part about always being able to add, that has a big effect on driving more and more important players to choose to come to Dodger Stadium. Whereas in other sports, a player might be worried as to how he fits on a specific top team, Michael Conforto isn’t worried about playing time when he signs with the Dodgers. Yates is fine not being the closer if it means going for that first ring. The opportunity for the clashing of egos isn’t really there as well.
The Dodgers’ entire rotation is composed of genuine aces, but other than the footnote of who starts opening day, pecking-order arguments are mostly irrelevant. Sure, if we assume all are healthy and pitching to their standards when the playoffs roll around, an interesting choice will arise and discussions will take place. That being said, the odds of it happening are small, and if it does, we’ve seen this team successfully use established starters as relief aces in the playoffs.
While everyone looks for a singular thing behind a team getting to this level, it’s really a collection of them, and a whole lot of money to justify the Dodgers being where they are right now. Betts and Freeman wanted no part of leaving their respective clubs until they were low-balled into exits. Teoscar Hernández took a bit less money to come to LA, but there was room for someone to offer enough more for him not to return. Blake Snell and Scott mostly went for the bag, although they definitely also wanted to be here. Shohei Ohtani created a ripple effect as more and more Asian stars naturally gravitated toward the Dodgers, and that should only increase in impact going forward.
I’m looking at you (in 2026), Munetaka Murakami.
This Dodgers team has many resources and maximizes all of them, but that also doesn’t mean it has a magic wand to fix everything. In fact, one could argue other organizations do a better job of fixing pitchers or getting more out of them. Noah Syndergaard could not figure himself out in LA, Jack Flaherty fell off a cliff from budding ace to middling starter after joining the Dodgers at the last deadline. Do we remember the Lance Lynn experiment, who by the way was pretty solid for the Cardinals last season? Walker Buehler was never the same post-sticky stuff crackdown, and now he is looking for a new life in Boston. Even with all these resources, the Dodgers are not immune to failed experiments.
The mistakes and situations that didn’t turn out so well are here for everyone to see, but if you do enough things well and commit to putting the best product out there, you’ll reap the rewards. Right now, for the Dodgers, that means being the premiere destination for many stars and solid players alike.