Dodgers ruining baseball

[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.

[Balticfox]

I agree. I'll really be pulling against the Los Angeles Dodgers in the next few years.

[Balticfox]

Originally Posted by Shoeless Moe

Most worrisome is the rhetoric that fans are done with the game.

Is any of that coming from Dodgers' fans though? What are they saying?

[Aquarian Sports Cards]

same nonsense we heard about the Yankees in the late 1970's early 1980's. Steinbrenner's ruining baseball etc.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Andrew Friedman rules.

[campyfan39]

I'm loving it!
Yet, I do think there should be more regulation, but that ship has sailed. It's like college sports now; once you let the lid off, there is no putting it back on.

[BobbyStrawberry]

I don't mind it at all. They will be a fun team to watch and root against. As already stated, they're basically the new Yankees.

Also, no salary cap allows players to earn what they're worth...let the other poor billionaire owners open up their wallet if they want big name players

[Shoeless Moe]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Andrew Friedman rules.

A DEI hire could do as good of a job........Friedman is just writing blank checks.

All the credit goes to the owners financing it.

[Snapolit1]

What is ruining baseball is the cheap ass billionaires who own teams who don’t want to spend money to put a great team on the field. They’d rather hold an asset that appreciates in value year after year after year even if they are bad and don’t make the playoffs. It’s like one of us buying a house in a nice neighborhood and refusing to do any maintenance on it, knowing full that in 10 years we will sell it to a developer at a huge profit and he can knock the house down and build a new house in a desirable neighborhood. Those are the aholes ruining baseball. Every owner in baseball could afford to spend money like the Dodgers do.