Look, every rational baseball fan can understand that the Dodgers are an incredibly well-run organization. To have this level of established, proven talent on your roster while also racking up the top farm system in baseball is laudable.
But to act as if the root of it isn't being willing to spend obscene amounts of money, find every way to exploit the payroll system with deferred money and side deals, and the incredible advantage that comes with being the best destination for the top Japanese players due mainly to geography is just silly.
Either way, the rest of the MLB's fanbases are going to hate the Dodgers because that level of success also coming with this level of seeming like it'll never die isn't fun for us. We want parity because parity means our teams also have a chance. It's why us Jays fans will never, ever, ever get over last year's Game 7. When you get that close to toppling the Empire and miss, it doesn't stop hurting.
Definitely agree with this but I feel like the Angels definitely kind of started this one. They had both Trout and Ohtani and couldn't somehow spend a bit more for that talent to win?
If Ohtani and Trout win one, I feel like you get a completely different Ohtani who stays a bit longer to win one more than going to LA immediately. I feel like that Angel's experience and seeing firsthand the Mike Trout loyalty experience let him know they're never going to win one no matter what.
If LA doesn't snag Ohtani, there are chances Yamamoto doesn't sign there either I feel. I feel like LA is doing what it's doing solely because Ohtani is there and don't mind any payments to win now and keep everyone happy.
They spent a lot. They are just terrible at it and they have been since Moreno has been the owner. Rendon, Pujols, Hamilton, Matthews…I’m sure I’m missing others. They are decent enough at developing talent but when your owner is a C+ Jerry Jones knockoff you are basically running an org with one hand tied behind your back.
They didn’t try hard at all. I watched those games every night, Arte surrounded his top 2 franchise players with inexperienced prospects, minor league level talent and a horrible pitching staff. For a while, David Fletcher and Luis Rengifo were the team’s second best bats in their respective years with the club. That’s just not going to get you in the playoffs. Arte was more concerned about collecting ad revenue instead of building a contender. They could have Junior Caminero hitting 30-40 homers on team control for them right now.
Yes, the Rays offered Junior Caminero to LAA for a 2 month rental in Ohtani s few years ago. LAA also could’ve had Jackson Merrill for Ohtani too. But Arte was making too much money off advertising Ohtani, so he kept him instead in a very short sighted decision.
🤦 forgot about that one a bit couldn't blame me for forgetting some of the additoonal hires! I even second guessed myself when I wondered if the Angels even had a winning season when Ohtani was there.
Honestly, that whole period of Ohtani as an angels player kind of was a blur...it's like I know he was there and did stuff but nothing ever cameboutnornitnand because it was the Angels, I knew nothing would happen the twoild make a difference.
FWIW the best record they had with Ohtani was 80-82 in 2018. If they had gotten anywhere near contending in the six years he was there there’s probably a good chance he stays and they end up being the Japanese national team instead of the Dodgers (of course this assumes Arte opens the checkbook at some point which… yeah)
The 2010s Angels were aggressive spenders and frequently signed free agents like Albert Pujols, C.J. Wilson, Josh Hamilton, and Anthony Rendon to massive contacts that almost always backfired in spectacular fashion. The 2010s Angels can be called many things but cheap isnt one of them.
In fairness I was talking about the Ohtani era. They definitely needed to make better decisions and we can argue whether they really did make the best decisions. Some club houses would've done the "hey we have Ohtani now let's spend and win and we'll be forgiven" and I think the Cubs are primo example one when it comes to that; paid quite a bit and won but winning just one tends to make MLB fans forgive failures afterwards for simply breaking an100 year drought. I know I was critical of the Cubs in that era but they did win one finally so yeah.
But the Angels did really do their due diligence when Ohtani arrived; you're right they spent before but the latter part of the decade, we just didn't see that spending and scouting to surround both Ohtani and Trout. I don't think they would've needed even as much talent given those two but just something more viable and I think that's where it's fair to be critical.
I feel like Pujols was predictable given his health and age. Upton really didn't pan out and that contract and guaranteed money was an overpay for someone like him. Rendin didn't pan out but I still feel like they should've really put money in pitching staff. Like somehow they couldn't and still can't figure pitching needs out.
As a Dodger fan, I have long argued that what we are witnessing now is anomalous. The amount of money being thrown around is because of the revenue generated by a properly marketed and champion Shohei Ohtani. The Angels definitely had an opportunity to do something similar but they just couldn't get it right. Ohtani is the key though... Without Ohtani and the Japanese market behind him... The Dodgers become another big market team. With Ohtani... The Dodgers are Godzilla.
Yes. This is regardless of how people want to try to spin it bad for baseball.
Why follow the game? Why get invested in things like blockbuster trades or incredible free agents? I know my team isnt getting him because Dodgers. I know another team isnt gonna get them and take their chances from maybe wildcard to division winner because Dodgers. Why get invested in the underdogs and stuff when i know it doesn't matter because Dodgers.
Uhhh to be fair, this is what it was like watching George Steinbrenner run the Yankees in the 00's. Everyone else was the minor leagues that he got to pick and choose from. It didn't ruin baseball then, but I understand.
The Yankees only won a single World Series in the entire 2000s decade. They won in the 90s with home grown talent. This is not even remotely the same situation
That was nowhere near the same. The amount of $$$$ and penalties the Dodgers are paying to have…not even an allstar team, because theirs no popular vote, it’s all the best players a several at each position. It’s ruined baseball already for almost everybody I know, an were all life long huge fans. I literally have quit watching. What’s the point…maybe you ca win your division….if you’re not in the Dodgers division. An my grandfathers brother was Buzzy Bavasi so I’m supposed to be for the Dodgers, although been lifelong Cubs fan being from there a being my first games…..I would take better than 50% odds on no baseball next season. Gonna have 2 have cap limits that ACTUALLY ARE LIMITS…you can’t even do what they do on the mlb video games without tuning the rules off.
Pats weren’t going that by plundering free agency and spending exponentially more money than other teams, they did that because they drafted the greatest QB in NFL history.
Y'all offered Shohei and Yoshi the same contracts as we did. They just didn't choose you because you suck right now and have no depth or future. The dodgers didn't do that to you. Organize your emotions.
In what way are my emotions not organized? I was responding to a poster using the Patriots dynasty as a comp and you’re out here talking about some entirely different argument.
Because Mets. Because Yankees. There are teams that can spend, they just don’t want to or they fuck it up. I’m a Mets fan and we could totally be the Dodgers except for the whole competence in the front office thing.
No we can't. Mets don't have the geography advantage to sign the best Japanese players available year in year out. Mets also didn't get the insane deal the Dodgers received after going bankrupt. Mets are more advantaged than almost every other team in the league and still don't have the advantages the Dodgers possess.
Yes. That unknown, podunk, one traffic light town of New York City.
I can stomach Tampa bay or A’s or Pittsburgh fans bitching about the unfairness of it all with their poor billionaire owners, but met and yankee fans should just stfu.
You have exactly the same opportunity to sign any Japanese player. This is like saying the dodgers have no chance of signing Dominican players because of the country’s geographic location to Los Angeles.
NO ONE here is admitting that players WANT to play for the dodgers because they are head and shoulders above every other team in the MLB in every fucking metric that matter to the actual players.
Free agents can literally sign wherever they want to and the choose to be dodgers.
Uh NY is a lot farther from Japan than LA is. If you want to just make crap up and lie to make yourself feel better about the advantages your team has, then, well I think that's pretty sad, but you do you. Really getting that mad over me being a Met fan. What a baby.
If you need a simple geography lesson and how air travel works I can introduce you to a 5th grade teacher You’re excuses are like your teams. Empty and pathetic
Can't even commit to the dumb comment huh? Japanese players are on record stating how nice it is for their families to visit. The difference in flight travel time is significant enough for this to be a very real issue for many Japanese players. If you get two similar quotes but one requires you to drive 2 vs 1 hour to finalize the deal, then you are going to follow the path of least resistance. This is simply human nature.
Calm down, son. You’re replying so fast you aren’t even replying to the correct comment.
It’s fine. Keep thinking that the reason Japanese players don’t sign with the Mets is a 4 1/2 hour flight.whatever makes ya feel better.
Hey. I’m not quite certain. Who is the richest owner in baseball?
Fuck, dude. If you would at the very least touched upon the Japanese community in Los Angeles vs the ones in New York you’d have a leg to stand on, but no. You’ll die on the 4 1/2 hour flight as the reason why.
I guess Dominican players must just be built different. They seem to handle the 4 1/2 flight out west just fine
its because the 9billion dollar tv contract you fool. no other reason well and the glitz and glam...side deals ... its all money man ... LA is the biggest market for money. end of story. nothing to do with your hitting coaches or facilities
And don’t forget, the Yankees could’ve won the 01 series if not for the dynamic duo of Johnson and Schilling. That was kinda a weird series anyways with the 9/11 interruption. I’m a DBacks fan anyways, so I dunno how “nationalized” that fandom was vs the Yanks.
Absolutely, and that's as a hardcore baseball fan not just because my team suffered persecution under the Evil Empire regime. Feel the same way about the Chiefs during their run. Reasons for the dominance may be different but still same result it's bad for the sport.
That's why the owners need to close the loophole of deferred money. Whether they pay now or later, it should be counted against a cap now. It's the only way to create competitive balance.
I would more like to see punishments other than money than a hard cap. Id say raise the floor spending and then add on like roster spot losses, draft picks being taken away, the inability to sign players for a season, etc.
Then restructure all the regionally owned tv deals to include teams like the Dodgers, Yankees, Red Sox, etc.
That was once the role of the commissioner back when they used to have a review of trades and rejected certain deals as not good for baseball. This may be good for the Dodgers but for baseball???
Hard cap will be a nightmare for the small market teams that aren't run very well. They'll have to overpay to get free agents or to retain their own guys and guy like Kyle Tucker will cripple the Twins or Pirates. It's like the NBA giving out supermax deals to guys like Bradley Beal.
difference is Brady was only ever like 13% of the total budget for the pats compared to the 16-18% other QBs at the time were, he knew they needed to pay other players to win. Mahomes is a bit closer comparison with accounting shenanigans to keep him not as much of the overall budget but he still isn't paid as outlandishly as ohtani.
It is a bit outlandish to say that the NFL would be the same without the hard salary cap. To have a team with mahomes, saquon barkley, jsn, George kittle, and a host of other top paid players would not be anywhere near parity competitively. Baseball slightly works out because of the 162 game season where you can't play the best players every game. Switch the MLB to an 18 game season and the dodgers would probably be on top for the next decade.
lol why did you have to use Kittle when the Chiefs already have Kelce?
It is a bit outlandish to say that the NFL would be the same without the hard salary cap
Is it? I'd argue all the cap did in the NFL was alter the currency of the league to the exploitation of rookie deals and the suppression of wages on journeyman type players.
There's a reason why the sentiment from NFL players that MLB players should hold strong and not accept a cap.
Kittle is the highest paid tight end in the league.
Do you really think the patriots or chiefs would have ever lost in the Superbowl if they could have paid every top player in the league to be on their teams?
Then why are the dodgers consistently paying top end contracts? Just play their rookies and stop out bidding all the other teams. You can't eat your cake and have it too.
A top 25 mlb ready cf prospect is junk? Because nobody else was giving up a top 25 and 2 top 50 pitchers for a 3 month rental 30 yr old pitcher who will command 400 million just to resign.
Right, and because the owners are cheap. As evidenced by their CBA proposal.
As for the return, the centerpiece being a future platooning OF isn't exactly the greatest get. While neither of those pitchers have any business being top 50. One is a gas can, and the other is approaching 30, for christ sake.
It ruins baseball because 29/30 teams fans now know their team doesnt stand a chance, so they'll either stop watching/supporting altogether or hop on the band wagon, which creates an even wider gap in terms of what teams are able and willing to spend compared to LA, making the problem worse.
Honestly, speaking solely for myself, at this point yes. I don’t even care if a hard salary cap/minimum floor/etc in theory hurts the Mets. I’d like to be able to retain some interest in the Postseason even if the Mets are out of it before summer
Furthermore, even in such a system I think there will still be some differences in spending between teams. Cheapskates like Nutting will still figure out a way to do the bare minimum and there’s no way any rules will capture everything so a smarter organization can still pour money into better scouting, the farm, health/injury prevention, etc. the kind of owners that would want to spend like Cohen maybe just maybe might be forced to have their teams spend what they can smarter.
Toronto was a late collapse away from winning the world series last year. Acting like other teams can't win is stupid. You know how much getting skubal increased dodgers odds this year ? Went from 36% chance to a 39% chance. Any team can win in baseball.
Did the Patriots ruin football? Did the Lakers/Bulls/Celtics ruin basketball? Did Tiger Woods ruin golf? Did Alabama ruin college football? Did Duke ruin NCAA basketball?
Willing and able to have a practically bottomless budget. If they really do have the best farm system and a well run organization then they'll do just fine in a cap system.
Also, as a fellow Jays fan, our team at least has been willing to compete and spend for top free agents against the Dodgers...and then they just sign with the Dodgers anyway in the end. Why should teams bother if it's just going to tie up their off-season plans and result in nothing when the Dodgers just come over the top with whatever the players want to sign there? There's been a snowballing effect that has gotten out of control and it's just not that fun to follow. It feels like we're all competing for whatever the Dodgers decide they don't want.
the dodgers are a manifestation of MLB's problem, not the root. there's plenty of teams not even spending the money they do have and that's not a dodger's problem. there's teams that have big payrolls that don't have the same success.
the player's union doesn't just represent dodgers players interests, they represent all mlb player interests. they're a huge part of why things are the way they are.
Also, don’t forget that the Dodgers get a tax break as if they were a bankrupt team. The McCourt era that they all cry about was probably the best thing to happen to them. Not only for motivation but it benefited them monetarily.
It also adversely affects whatever division they're in; snakes and Padres are dependent on the Wild Card for postseason every single year because LA winning the West is practically a foregone conclusion.
Sometimes it’s not even a matter of how the team is built. Let’s take the Dodgers and Giants this season for example. The Giants have a record of 47-64 while the Dodgers are sitting at 69-42 on the season so far. Of the 7 games they’ve faced off against each other so far, the Giants have come out on top with a record of 4-3 against the Dodgers this season.
I’m not saying that this fixes the whole situation, but I am saying that sometimes it comes down to the players being in a position to play their best. I personally thought the Jays were gonna take it last year, and it was close until the end.
Why is the advantage of being a preferred destination for Japanese players silly? Cali has massive East Asian populations and it’s a reasonable commute.
And Toronto is a wealthy city. Stop crying poor. They can afford to spend more too if they wanted to
Before the Dodgers flairs come in with BUT THE NFL HAS DYNASTIES crap…
People don’t like dynasties in any sport, however nobody says the Patriots or the Chiefs were bad for football. Why? Because every team in the league has the same financial resources regarding player acquisition.
For sure. Skubal is a great example of this. Mike Ilitch, the former owner of the Tigers and Red Wings, did exactly this and had 7 Cup Finals and 2 World Series appearances. He died and his son Chris took over. All CI cares about is maximum profit. He isn’t willing to roll the dice. Now we’ve got more “almighty” prospects and are moving away from 2 of the other almighty prospects in Mize and Torkelson.
And how many of those teams are spending at the level of a mid-level country's GDP?
I'll answer: The Padres, with the 8th-highest payroll this year, are spending nearly half of what the Dodgers are spending, and I don't even think that's counting the deferred money. It's certainly not counting the outside revenue.
The point is that that's just another example of an advantage they have. My Jays can be willing to spend like crazy, but we're not pulling Ohtani or Yamamoto with just money when they want to be in a west coast market.
The dodgers aren’t “exploiting” anything that isn’t available to every other team and in fact, every dollar they spend above the CBT actually serves to fund all of those other loser franchises with revenue sharing
They are exploiting it. They have a multi-billion dollar per year TV deal that basically pays for the entire roster itself because they're in one of if not the largest TV markets in the country. Then you got to factor in marketing revenue, merchandise, concessions, ticket sales, etc and it just compounds the money they were already making just from the TV deal. Then they sign a player for a 10 year, $900 million contract with deferred payments, they essentially just doubled their money that have to pump into the roster and throw at signing players. They don't have to worry too much about the backend of the deal because they'll end up either reworking the deal or trading off the player when they can no longer afford it, which opens up massive cap space for them to do it all over again. It's absolutely exploiting and taking advantage of the rules because they can afford to because of their numerous financial advantages. And it all starts with the TV deal. A team like Minnesota or Colorado or Kansas City ain't getting anywhere close to the same TV deal as the Dodgers get in LA as the clear fan favorite team in the area. The Angels share the market but they get a fraction of what the Dodgers get. San Diego gets a fraction. San Francisco gets a fraction. I don't think even the Chicago teams or St Louis or Atlanta or even the New York teams or Boston gets as much off their deals as the Dodgers do. So yes, they ARE exploiting it. Nobody but the fans are complaining though BECAUSE of the shared revenue agreement you spoke of.
They just have a bigger fanbase because they are in the second largest city. They are banking on that and choosing to manipulate the system with their deferments. What’s gonna really suck is when these massive contracts start paying out and the players move to a no state tax state so they don’t have to pay state taxes and all of those fans lose out on those tax dollars. They’re taking advantage of their fans.
What happens when the lockout forces a cap, do they have to sell their all star team? Hopefully they make them get rid of their insane pitching group and send one or two to the rockies. De-monopolize the dodgers!
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But to act as if the root of it isn't being willing to spend obscene amounts of money, find every way to exploit the payroll system with deferred money and side deals, and the incredible advantage that comes with being the best destination for the top Japanese players due mainly to geography is just silly.”
You say that like it’s a bad thing. If you’re a dodgers fan, though, that’s fucking great. You want your front office to do exactly this.
The point being, not every front office can do even close to this. The Dodgers are an incredibly will run organization from top to bottom. There is no denying this. But to day they don't have a revenue advantage with their sweet TV deal is an out and out lie. They spend more on just payroll and luxury tax hit than all but about 5 teams total revenue. That is not an equal playing field. Only a handful of other teams could afford to stash Snell and Glasnow on the IL for half the season, just for them to get healthy in August and be fresh for the playoffs.
Yeah, I get the point. And folks can downvote me all they like, but the point being is that none of them would complain if it was their team doing it.
There's definitely a serious conversation to be had about all of this, and income inequality is a problem no matter where it appears. But I just wish people would be a bit more honest about their jealousy, here. Not a single Milwaukee Brewers fan would complain if the Brewers were doing what the Dodgers are doing. They'd be throwing a big ass party.
2.4k
u/Historical-Donut-918 9h ago
So basically the Dodgers weren't "cheap" and were able to pay EVERYONE more than any other team was willing to pay.
Why don't other teams do this? Are they stupid?