Cue the whining. Again.<\/p>\n
The fan bases of 29 other teams are mad, their anger directed at Baseball\u2019s Villains, and that should sound familiar. Once the news broke Thursday night of the Dodgers\u2019 signing of free-agent outfielder Kyle Tucker \u2014 a transaction that will become official once the club makes a corresponding move to free a spot on the 40-man roster \u2014 the \u201cthey\u2019re ruining baseball\u201d crowd went into overdrive.<\/p>\n
With one additional twist. Now, if you listen to the experts on social media, the Tucker signing makes the implementation of a salary cap in baseball more justified than ever. In other words, if a lockout following the 2026 season takes place because of that very issue, it\u2019s all Andrew Friedman\u2019s fault.<\/p>\n
Wrong, and wrong. (Oh, and where does the New York Mets\u2019 signing of Bo Bichette at three years and $126 million, reported Friday morning, fit into this scenario?)<\/p>\n
Salary caps were owners\u2019 version of paradise a full decade before Frank McCourt\u2019s reign of error as Dodgers owner began in 2004. Remember, the reason for a strike in 1994 that wiped out the last seven weeks of the regular season and the entire postseason was the owners\u2019 insistence on a salary cap, tied to a revenue sharing mechanism, and the players\u2019 own insistence that there wouldn\u2019t be one, which has lasted to this day.<\/p>\n
That particular stoppage lasted the entire winter and into spring training when clubs assembled groups of replacement players, preparing to begin the season with scab labor. That nonsense was halted when District Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor \u2014 now Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor \u2014 issued an injunction that stopped the replacement players scheme, restored the economic status quo and enabled the 1995 season to open on time.<\/p>\n
Another reminder: While a salary cap might also include a salary floor, forcing the teams at the bottom of the payroll chart to at least spend something, the main benefit of a cap would be to put more money in the bank accounts of the billionaires who own the teams. And if the teams at the bottom aren\u2019t spending now, what makes you think they\u2019ll spend any more than they have to, even with a salary floor?<\/p>\n
In other words, there won\u2019t be an appreciable difference. Owners who want to win will spend. Those who don\u2019t will find an excuse.<\/p>\n
The Dodgers are the convenient lightning rod for all of this, as back-to-back World Series champions with an ownership that seems to care as much about winning as its fan base does. And never mind that (a) in each of the last two Octobers they were a game away from elimination, (b) they were ousted in the first round the two years before that, and (c) their 2020 World Series victory inside the COVID-19 bubble was discounted as a \u201cMickey Mouse\u201d championship even though that October grind might have been harder than normal.<\/p>\n
Why shouldn\u2019t they spend as much as they can? And why should they listen to anyone else\u2019s opinion of their ability to spend? They abide by the rules \u2014 contract deferrals are perfectly legal and available to anyone, for example \u2014 and they spend with the knowledge that they\u2019ll pay competitive balance taxes as well, money that goes to those clubs that receive revenue sharing funding. Often, that money is not spent on player payroll.<\/p>\n
All of that said, what have the Dodgers done this winter? They had two areas of need, shoring up what at times was a dreadful bullpen in 2025, and seeking a corner outfielder after the dismal failure of the Michael Conforto signing. They\u2019ve taken care of both needs, with Edwin Diaz and Tucker, a four-time All-Star, two-time Silver Slugger, Gold Glove outfielder and a World Series champion in 2022 with Houston.<\/p>\n
(I\u2019m guessing Dodger fans won\u2019t hold that against him. He wasn\u2019t there in 2017.)<\/p>\n
Is the game\u2019s economic model broken? The demise of Main Street Sports, the parent company of the FanDuel networks, has created serious issues for teams that not only are searching for new homes for those telecasts but are also scrambling to replace the income from those contracts.<\/p>\n
The Dodgers, with a Spectrum contract that runs through 2037 and pays them $320 million a year to air their own network, seem insulated from that issue for now. How that might change remains to be seen. But give the current owners credit for the foresight to have made that deal shortly after their purchase of the club in 2012.<\/p>\n
And give them credit for signing Shohei Ohtani \u2014 remember, the Angels were offered the same deal, 10 years at $700 million, $680 million of it deferred, and they turned it down \u2014 and then leveraging it with deals in Japan that created even more profit.<\/p>\n
Maybe this is just a smart, efficient organization, one that likely would thrive as well with a salary cap as it does now.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that people just overlook the fact that every year we probably have (a) top-five farm system in baseball,\u201d Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said during his briefing before Game 7 of the World Series in Toronto. \u201cThis year I think we probably have the No. 1 or No. 2. We pick at the bottom of the draft every year, towards the bottom, and we still have young guys, whether by way of trade or development, that continue to help contribute.<\/p>\n
\u201c(And) on the business side, I think that we do a great job of marketing our organization.\u201d<\/p>\n
Exhibit A: Japan.<\/p>\n
Friedman noted during that World Series that one of the organization\u2019s goals was to create \u201ca destination spot where our own players didn\u2019t want to leave and where players from other teams wanted to come. \u2026 I think there\u2019s a lot that goes into it, (being) known as a really good player development organization. Players ask those questions. When we\u2019re meeting with players in the offseason, they want to know that you can help maximize their ability, and that you\u2019re getting the most out of their teammates. Because when you can do that and do it well, you tend to win more games.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think communication, being honest, having a really strong player development group in place at the major league level, and how you treat families and treat the players, I think matters a lot in that.\u201d<\/p>\n
And maybe that\u2019s the Dodgers\u2019 secret ingredient: The executives care as much about winning as their players do.<\/p>\n
\u00a92026 MediaNews Group, Inc. Visit ocregister.com<\/a>. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.<\/a><\/p>\n \n Success! An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup.\n <\/p>\n \n Error! There was an error processing your request.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cue the whining. Again. The fan bases of 29 other teams are mad, their anger directed at Baseball\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":55724,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2288],"tags":[5,2328,2304,4,256,2305,2303,8080,185],"class_list":{"0":"post-529846","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb-postseason","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-major-league-baseball-playoffs","10":"tag-major-league-baseball-postseason","11":"tag-mlb","12":"tag-mlb-baseball","13":"tag-mlb-playoffs","14":"tag-mlb-postseason","15":"tag-mlb-world-series","16":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115929923141243654","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=529846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529846\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=529846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=529846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=529846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}