[Shoeless Moe]

From ESPN today...

The $120 million or so the Dodgers are in line to pay in luxury tax penalties on top of their payroll is more than the projected Opening Day payroll of 10 teams.

In the past 411 days, the Dodgers have:

Signed Ohtani to a 10-year, $700 million contract, with $680 million deferred

Traded for right-hander Tyler Glasnow and signed him to a five-year, $136.5 million contract extension

Signed right-hander Yamamoto to a 12-year, $325 million contract

Signed Smith to a 10-year, $140 million contract extension, with $50 million deferred

Signed two-time Cy Young winner Blake Snell to a five-year, $182 million contract, with $66 million deferred

Signed Edman, acquired at the 2024 trade deadline, to a five-year, $74 million contract extension, with $25 million deferred

Signed outfielder Michael Conforto to a one-year, $17 million contract

Signed reliever Blake Treinen to a two-year, $22 million contract

Signed outfielder Teoscar Hernandez to a pair of deals totaling $89.5 million over four years, with $32 million deferred

Signed Korean infielder Hyeseong Kim to a three-year, $12.5 million contract

Signed Sasaki

Signed closer Tanner Scott to a four-year, $72 million contract, with $21 million deferred

In total, they have guaranteed $1.778 billion -- nearly half of it ($874 million) deferred. For a team that already had Betts and Freeman under contract -- a team that over its six previous full seasons won at least 100 games five times -- to turn over more than half its roster and add nearly a dozen impact players registered as baseball gluttony.


THE ANGER -- from disillusioned fans, from dispirited front offices, from owners made to look like they don't care -- is very real. And it's growing to the point where people at the highest levels of Major League Baseball acknowledge it concerns them. Most worrisome is the rhetoric that fans are done with the game. That what L.A. is doing is unfair. That the financial imbalance ruins the sport.