Pity The Poor…Dodgers?
No, let’s worry more about a game that makes them both an unbeatable MLB foe, a pro-wrestling heel and baseball’s version of The Death Star
With the Packers hibernating for the winter and the Bears still in the NFL playoffs hunt (at least as of this writing), Wisconsin sports fans now have more bandwidth to dwell upon the the latest free-agent largesse flowing freely from Los Angeles, home to the reigning two-time World Series champions.
The “Death Star Dodgers” inked Kyle Tucker to a deal last week that packs a record average annual value of just over $57 million. He joins reliever Edwin Diaz on an LA roster that already includes Shohei Otahni, Freddy Freeman and other megastars too numerous and expensive to mention here. The signing is causing fresh angst among small-market clubs and their fans as they wonder aloud how long the game can survive if the Dodgers give every appearance of purchasing championships.
It also will have owners of those less well-off franchises pushing MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred to lead the charge for some sort of a salary cap when it comes time to start talking about a new collective bargaining agreement with a player’s union that wants NOTHING of the sort. Action on that front is expected to intensify at the end of the 2026 campaign—that’s when the standing deal runs out. It presumably will come as the Dodgers are wringing freshly poured clubhouse champagne from their jerseys. A prevailing school of thought says that the 2027 MLB season becomes doubtful when both sides inevitably dig in their heels about the cap, or lack thereof.
“The coming labor hysteria,” he says in a recent New York Times/Athletic column, “also will obscure realities Manfred and Co. would prefer to ignore.” Rosenthal feels that, “the Dodgers not only outspend every team, they outsmart and outperform the them,” pointing out that the team that spent the second highest amount on talent—the Mets—didn’t even make the ‘25 playoffs. He reminds us that in 2024, the free-spending Padres came within a game of eliminating L.A. from the postseason AT HOME but couldn’t seal the deal. Same, he says, for another deep-pocketed Dodger foe, the A.L. Champion Blue Jays who couldn’t do same in the most recent Fall Classic despite a 3-2 homefield lead. All true, but this conveniently ignores the fact that it’s the big spenders that dominate the post-season. Yes, our Brewers compiled had the best regular season record but things, as Milwaukee fans found out, change comes in the playoffs where it takes only a couple of really good starters and a lot of pop in the lineup to vanquish a foe. The Brewers rotation couldn’t match up with L.A.’s in the NLCS, nor could a power-challenged Milwaukee batting order that relied on small-ball and hitting in bunches to score, do much against All-Star starting pitching at every turn.
Rosenthal at one point almost tries to make the rest of baseball feel sorry for the Dodgers because “their success prevents them from picking high enough in the draft to access future stars like Paul Skenes, Bobby Witt Jr. and Tucker who went fifth overall in 2015.” Thus, he says, “the Dodgers are denied the best avenue to the most precious resource in the sport: young, controllable star talent. The only way for them to access such players is through trades and free agency.” Despite that, he writes that the Dodgers make up for those lost picks by spending gobs on scouting as well as R&D, leaving the club with the third best farm system in the game, despite their low spots in the draft pecking order.
I’ll pause here so you can wipe your tears and blow your nose as you marvel over how well Los Angeles is overcoming these awful disadvantages. It’s often said that money can’t buy you a title, but it sure doesn’t hurt.
Is a salary cap the cure? No. MLB also needs a salary floor that forces habitual low-spenders to pony up, for sure. Limiting deferred contracts that shove the bulk of a star’s earnings into retirement years (like Ohtani’s) might help, too. We know how open the players are to salary caps—they AREN’T—and the potential work shortage a stalemate could bring is not only depressing, but potentially damaging to a game that’s at a popular and money-making peak. It took years (and a bogus home run glut fueled by steroids) to bring fans back to the yard after the lost season of 1994. Wanna know what else will repel the ticket-buying public? The feeling that no matter what your home team’s front office does, it won’t be enough to overcome the fact that your favorite club can’t compete with the wealthy ones that can buy the best scouts, purchase top free agents, and ink the best overseas talent. The gap between have’s and have-nots doesn’t just show during the Hot Stove months when the free agent open market starts—it pervades every aspect of competition, from A-ball to scouting to facilities to research/development. Owners and players should never be content to operate in a world that sees their paying customers go into a new season with absolutely no hope of their team winning it all. If hope is lost, those packed ballparks and flowing TV viewership revenue streams of today go the way of chewing tobacco and dollar hot dogs. How soon will it be before MLB joins horse racing or boxing among the sports that once dominated the headlines but are now at best niche interests?
Milwaukee fans are blessed that the Brewers front office has served up a product that’s been competitive for years now despite massive monetary constraints. Feisty and creative only go so far before that loyal base starts wondering if their club is forever destined to be a brick shy of a load. It brings us back to owner Mark Attanasio’s utterance of a year ago: "Is my job to win a World Series, or is my job to provide a summer of entertainment and passion and a way for families to come together?” That outlook chafed more than a few of us at the time, leading some to ask why it couldn’t be BOTH.
If the game’s financial rivers keep running thusly, doing that becomes an almost impossible task.
I’ve been a fan of the game my entire life. The sad reality is that the game is well into a death spiral due to the ridiculous inequity that the owners and players have allowed to evolve.