Baseball is a business. This has become more apparent over recent seasons as we have seen more analytics involved in how the teams are run and how much teams are willing to spend. Teams are also making more money than they ever have. The Oakland Athletics are worth an estimated $1.18 billion, the Miami Marlins about $1.07 billion, our own Arizona Diamondbacks about $1.38 billion. In the 2023-2024 offseason alone the Los Angeles Dodgers have spent roughly $1.4 billion on a select handful of players.
The Dodgers have broken contract records three times this winter, shattering the record for the largest contract with Mookie Betts agreeing to a $356 million deal over a twelve-year span only to destroy that record within a few months by signing future baseball legend Shohei Ohtani. On top of that the Dodgers broke the record for the highest pitching contract not but two weeks later when they signed Japanese superstar Yoshinobu Yamamoto for $325 million.
What exactly caused the Dodgers to look toward such high-cost moves? They have been a dominant force in the National League, making the playoffs every year for the past decade, they even brought home a ring during the 2020 season. They didn’t exactly have a failure of a run this past year as they had a 100-win season and finished first in their division. Are they just that hungry to win or are they the agents of a new trend that could take over professional baseball?
The Dodger’s willingness to break the bank has raised concerns that they are the signal of a new precedent for baseball, one where money talks. Teams will look to the Dodger’s offseason tactic after they have a less-than-stellar season and just throw money at the problem.
No longer will teams look for success in farm systems or scouting reports but take the easy way out possibly corrupting their future endeavors in the process. The Dodgers are among the most valuable teams in baseball, second only to the Yankees so obviously they can afford to splurge on the highest-demand players. The other 90% of the Major League Baseball cannot.
If teams follow in the footsteps of the Dodgers we may never see underdog teams like the Atlanta Braves who built an extremely successful team from the ground up using farm systems and minor-league deals again.
Look at this from an average sports fan’s perspective, sports are fun because they are unpredictable. We are in love with sports because everything is fair game at the start of the season. This could very well change within the coming years as more and more teams look to high salaries in order to build a base.
Of course, there is no guarantee for a ring by simply having the best players as odd as that sounds. We saw this first hand this season when the 84-78 Dbacks made it all the way to the World Series only to be defeated by another surprise team the Rangers.
What people are mainly worried about is that this form of play will not be sustainable for most teams. If a lower-earning team were to offer just a single player anything remotely close to what the Dodgers seem to offer for players sure they might have a decent season but in the future they are going to completely crumble as they won’t have remaining funds to upkeep their current players.
Both the NFL and NBA have very strict salary caps as no player can have a contract that goes over $200 million. These two leagues are more profitable than the MLB so why does no such cap exist for baseball?
There is no doubt that the new Dodgers players are extremely talented and deserving of higher pay. Shohei Ohtani alone is putting butts into seats for any team he plays against. When baseball teams prioritize who the best is and lure them in with ridiculous pay baseball becomes nothing more than a spectacle rather than a beloved and respected game.
