Huge celebration held at Dodger Stadium for World Series victory
Fans filled Dodger Stadium to party with the team following their World Series victory over the New York Yankees.
SportsPulse
It will soon be rather chic – if it’s not already – to hate on the Los Angeles Dodgers.
To bemoan the rich getting richer. To worry about a Major League Baseball landscape where just a half-dozen markets still get rich off local TV rights and, in some cases paired with a bottomless pit of private equity, will become the stuff of Bud Selig’s oldest nightmares, even as the past quarter-century has given us a diverse slate of World Series champions.
Some of those concerns are almost valid.
Yet in the wake of the Dodgers’ latest nine-figure strike – a five-year, $182 million deal for lefty Blake Snell, who simply wanted a forever home last winter yet had doors slammed in his face – it’s fair to point out who’s complicit in this Gilded Blue Machine they’re building out west.
We can start with the Boston Red Sox.
Not two years removed from their fourth World Series championship since 2004, they suddenly felt an overwhelming urge to become Tampa North, and in February 2020 fairly gifted the Dodgers Mookie Betts, in exchange for three players who would never become Boston mainstays.
Betts needed just one spring to determine he’d like to stay a dozen years in L.A., all on a $365 million deal so heavily deferred its present value is barely $300 million – or the price it probably would’ve taken for Boston to retain him.
We can continue with the Atlanta Braves, who celebrated their 2021 World Series title by kicking Freddie Freeman to the curb, burning prospect capital to trade for Matt Olson and extend him on a $168 million deal, slamming the door on a player who wanted to return so badly, he shed many public tears about it over the next several months.
The Dodgers had virtually no competition in offering Freeman a highly reasonable six-year, $162 million contract, also with deferrals. And now, Fred-die is as ingrained in Chavez Ravine lore as Kirk Gibson and a $30 michelada.
Let’s not forget the San Francisco Giants and every team that bid for Snell’s services last winter, only for the reigning National League Cy Young Award winner to fester on the market well into March before reluctantly grabbing a two-year guarantee for $32 million per season, with the chance to opt out after one.
What happened next was all too predictable: Snell was rushed through a spring training, got hurt, the Giants fell out of contention – and Snell had one of the greatest second halves for a starting pitcher in decades, just in time to hit the market again.
Turns out all’s well that ends well – for Snell, the Dodgers and super agent Scott Boras, of course.
Combine his Dodgers contract with his one year by the Bay and Snell is getting paid six years and $214 million for his services, an amazing scramble drill by agent and player, who rose to the occasion to rebuild his value.
Yet the point remains: The Giants, the Red Sox, the Yankees – any number of squads could’ve had Snell last winter, probably for that amount of money, maybe for an even lesser outlay. Instead, they went cheap, and now Randy Newman can add another line to I Love L.A.
Austerity Boulevard? We love it!
Sure, none of this is our money, and it’s a little gross to sycophantically line up behind the Guggenheim Bros who own the Dodgers and cheer on every last little bit of pocket change they unearth to bring home an All-Star. They’ll soon have seven players signed to nine-figure contracts – a little insane, yes.
But so much of this is so basic that it even precedes Econ 101.
Success breeds success. You need to spend money to make money.
And destinations are created by intent – in this case, the intent to compete and cultivate a powerhouse.
The most surprising thing about the Dodgers’ most recent outlay of a billion-plus dollars – not even 12 months ago! – wasn’t the fact they guaranteed the great Shohei Ohtani and the indomitable Yoshinobu Yamamoto contracts worth $700 million and $325 million, setting the stage for a World Series championship.
No, the surprising thing was how easy it was.
It’s almost like once Ohtani hit the market after six years of hard time in Anaheim that there was no other choice, Toronto flight patterns be damned. And with Ohtani in the fold, where else would Yamamoto go for maximum comfort, paycheck and the chance to compete for a championship?
Boston? (Insert laugh track here).
Come January, this concept may well be on full display again. Rōki Sasaki, the next great Japanese right-hander, is coming to the major leagues, and quite literally, anyone can have him. Like Ohtani, he’s leaving before turning 25 and thus can only agree to a contract within the parameters of a team’s onerous international signing pool – and then will make minimum wage for the next three years.
Guess where he’s expected to go? And should that come to fruition, money will have very little to do with it.
Funny thing is, just five years ago it was Dodgers fans bemoaning their front office and ownership’s seeming lack of desire to go all-in on a title. Even as they built an infrastructure that’s delivered 12 consecutive years of playoff berths, the desire to “re-set the luxury tax penalty” and “dip just under the line” stayed front of mind, as club president Andrew Friedman might say.
Then, Betts dropped into their lap.
Five years later, there’s no end in sight to the rivers of revenue. Famously, the Dodgers are already pocketing tens of millions more because of Ohtani than they are paying him, thanks to a cavalcade of Japanese sponsorship deals and Ohtani’s willingness to defer so much of his contract.
They play in the biggest ballpark in the majors, and demand is such that they are, until further notice, at the “drawing 50,000 for the Diamondbacks on a midweek night in April” stage. Their $8.35 billion TV deal runs through the middle of the next decade.
Meanwhile, the Giants and Red Sox – who have combined for seven World Series this century – are just now waking up. They tried five-plus years of austerity and arbitrage and found out a few things: Their fans hate it, they’re getting their butts kicked on the field and it’s only getting harder to stop that runaway train out west.
Now, they’re trying to pivot, with the Giants whiffing on big-name free agents like an overmatched lefty hitter flailing at a Snell curveball. The Red Sox are all in on Juan Soto, suddenly quite chatty after years of sitting out the biggest sweepstakes while their owners hid behind their other sports holdings.
Yet it’s not so easy to build a destination overnight, eh?
Cue the complaining once the Dodgers make their next inevitable blitz, be it because of their financial might or a player’s decision to choose relevance over a reclamation project.
Squabble up, if you must. But know that the vibes in L.A. remain impeccable, and they weren’t bought off a shelf.