The Los Angeles Dodgers have been unfairly labeled as the villains of baseball.
The Dodgers have won back-to-back World Series championships and will more than likely be favored to win again in 2026. They hold a handful of players who are considered the best at their position and are among the top ten players in baseball.
They have crushed the dreams of small-market cities that envisioned a World Series in their city and have created conversations about a salary cap and a salary floor.
The Dodgers, however, are not the villains in this story. They are the innovators. They are the modern heroes of baseball who are trying to save the sport from mediocre viewership numbers and a lack of fandom among young kids across the world.
Baseball is “behind the 8-ball” when compared to the NFL, NBA, and even the NHL. Contrary to popular belief, the Dodgers have actually paved the way to saving baseball.
More MLB Content From TWSN
The Dream Free Agent Signing For Every MLB Team
Tom Ricketts Is Ruining the Chicago Cubs
The Los Angeles Dodgers Are The Greatest Dynasty Of The Last 10 Years
The Dodgers Aren’t Baseball’s Villain
The Dodgers have quickly created a dynasty in the 2020s with the roster they have created via the offseason and mid-season trades at a rate that is unheard of and envied across the MLB.
Quickly claiming what the Dodgers are doing to be “unfair” and to those who said early on that it wouldn’t work are both flat-out wrong.
The Real Villains of Baseball
The Dodgers are not the villains of baseball. In the past five years, they have created a super team. A team that a little kid would dream of making by putting some of the best players in all of baseball together.
That is excitement, fun, and a willingness to win at all costs. Something that excites their fanbase and makes them a must-watch for any fan.
Baseball has an issue where only the fans of that team watch those games. Baseball has lost the rights to a lot of nationally televised games because they don’t do numbers.
The NFL has fixed this issue, and fans are likely to watch several games each weekend. The only teams that usually gather the attention of a regular fan are the Los Angeles Dodgers and the New York Yankees.
The real villains of baseball are the owners who are unwilling to spend each season to make their teams better. The owners who are okay with their team setting historic losing records in a season, or are nowhere near making the playoffs.
Or the owners who think just making the playoffs is good enough. These owners live on the hopes of their fans but never do anything to fulfill those hopes.
Who Is Baseball’s Biggest Villain?
The fault is not just with the owners who are okay with losing. Most importantly, it is the fault of MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred as well.
He is allowing this to happen. He is allowing teams to consistently tank year after year. The product some teams are putting on the field is so lousy that the effort levels of these franchises are sometimes minimal at best.
Manfred has also terribly marketed not only the MLB but the game of baseball as a whole. Baseball has made some great moves with the pitch clock; however, not being able to market the stars of the MLB has damaged the overall success of baseball.
Baseball has consistently marketed the bigger market teams and their players, leaving the small market players relatively unknown to a regular fan.
The use of MLB images and videos of gameplay is restricted to authorized purposes, not allowing players to market themselves. Former pitcher Trevor Bauer consistently battled with the MLB and his YouTube channel on what he could and could not do. Baseball makes it much harder to brand yourself, unlike other sports.
What @mlb is doing with this social media policy is repeating the same mistake they made years ago that led to blackouts. Short term money/power grab that destroys the future of the sport. This is assinine. I feel bad for all the LCCs and social teams getting laid off right now.
— Trevor Bauer (トレバー・バウアー) (@BauerOutage) September 16, 2020
Fans have to realize the Dodgers are not the bad guys in this story and realize that everyone wishes their team did what the Dodgers are doing.
Everyone is jealous of the Dodgers and wishes their owners were like theirs. And that realization should come to one conclusion: their biggest governing figure is the villain in the story of baseball’s downfall.