The past weekend seemed like something of a tipping point for fans of teams other than the Dodgers. The Dodgers were able to land Japanese phenom Roki Sasaki on Friday for a mere $6.5MM bonus, given the restrictions on signing international players under the age of 25. While Sasaki will enter the arbitration system for the final three years of team control from 2028-30, he still comes with incredible surplus value.
Then on Sunday, the Dodgers put an exclamation point on their weekend by signing the best reliever on the market, Tanner Scott, to the fifth-largest free agent contract ever at the position. And yes, there was significant deferred money in Scott’s contract, but that’s a poll topic for another day.
We’ll hear from Sasaki soon enough, but surely the Dodgers’ previous monstrous offseason signings of Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto helped lure him to Los Angeles. Since the 2023 season ended, the club has also added Teoscar Hernandez (twice), Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow, and others, while brokering extensions for Glasnow, Will Smith, and trade pickup Tommy Edman.
It’s not easy to buy an MLB dynasty. Others have tried, but the sport hasn’t seen back-to-back World Series winners since the 1998-2000 Yankees accomplished a three-peat. Now, with a 12-team playoff format, that might be even harder for the Dodgers to pull off.
Most MLB teams don’t open their books to the public, so we don’t know how many clubs would be profitable at the $370MM payroll the Dodgers currently sport. It’s fair to assume small market clubs could not support that type of payroll, even though some of them receive in excess of $150MM between national revenues and revenue sharing each year.
Some might argue that because of the nature of the MLB playoffs, the sport is already in good shape in terms of parity. But because the Dodgers bring in so much revenue (particularly through their TV deal), they have advantages in acquiring players that many markets simply cannot match. Maybe the Dodgers can’t guarantee a string of championships, but they haven’t won fewer than 98 regular season games since 2018 (extrapolating the pandemic season). Their payroll is obviously part of their success.
The drumbeat from fans, at least on social media, seems to be getting louder for a salary cap. It’s hard to argue: if all 30 teams were capped at spending, say, $200MM on player payroll, the regular season playing field would be leveled…
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