Okay, that’s the line slowly tongue-in-cheek. But slowly. To be fair, it’s not particularly the Dodgers that broke baseball. Jesse Friedman made a remarkable post on Twitter, which I strongly agree with.
All of these statements can be true at the same time:
1) The Dodgers are doing exactly what they have to do.
2) They probably won’t win the 2026 World Series.
3) Some owners need to spend more.
4) MLB’s competitive balance methods are flawed and need to be fixed.
My major disagreement with the above is point #2. I think the Dodgers maybe the will win the 2026 World Series, and if they don’t it will be because of the randomness of the playoffs. Maybe the Yankees or the Blue Jays strength they were able to go on a seven game streak. But my concern has more to do with the 2026 regular season, which spans most of the year, even if MLB makes more money during the postseason month. After the arrival of Kyle Tucker to the Los Angeles Dodgers, their over/under win tally increased by eleven games.
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Not the best in the NL West. Or even better in NL. That’s eleven games better than any other team in the major leagues. They are expected to win the NL West with seventeen games over the Padres. This section forms a complete procession, the kind seen in 2019. Do you remember that year? No, you don’t. Because the Dodgers’ division lead reached double digits in the first week of June, and fans of every other team watched the race all the way. The 2026 projection isn’t too surprising, considering the current projected salaries in the NL West.
Yes, the Dodgers this year, between salary and luxury tax, will spend twice as much as any other team in the NL West. No other frame will have such a dramatic imbalance. Sure, the Mets are scrapping, but the Phillies are right there with them. The same goes for the AL East, where the Yankees, Blue Jays and Red Sox are within $62 million of each other. The next heaviest would be the NL Central, but there, the difference in spending by the Cubs over the next team, the Brewers, is about $104 million: almost a third about $300 million advantage the Dodgers enjoy in the West.
“Your team can do this too.”
Ah, the common cry of a Dodgers fan, to which I respond succinctly: bullshit. I referred you to Forbes’ The business of baseball report, which is as good a resource as we have regarding the finances of MLB’s thirty franchises. If you look at the income column in the most recent report, it’s right there two their other groups net income would allow them to match the Dodgers’ salary bill on their major league roster through 2026. The Dodgers’ TV deal alone ($334 million a year) is worth more than every penny the Diamondbacks make. Yes: if no one ever went to Dodger Stadium or bought an Ohtani jersey, they would still be richer than Arizona.
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So the way to “do it again” would be to run quickly into bankruptcy, or it would require a benevolent billionaire owner to treat the franchise as a money pit, and dump his personal wealth into the fund. There are no reliable solutions at all. Even if we could, I’m not sure Kyle Tucker should be the recipient of such a largesse. While the Dodgers are collecting most of the $2.11 billion they still have on the books in guaranteed salary, most of the moves made sense.
But what is the universe where Kyle Tucker is worth $60 million a year? I mean, he’s a really good player. But his 4.6 bWAR last year ranked him 33rd among position players. He didn’t miss time with a calf injury, but if Tucker had averaged his career, his 5.5 bWAR wouldn’t have cracked the top 20. Even using the increased $11 million per MPI, he would need that performance higher every year to justify the contract. On your own, this can seem like a big payoff for Tucker. If the D-backs paid that much for Tucker, I wouldn’t be happy.
But this is how the Dodgers operate now, with eight contracts on the books worth more than $100 million. The Diamondbacks have…. one. Stealing a quote Heathers:Veronica Sawyer: Why do you have to be such a mega-bitch? Heather Duke: Because I can be.
Make no mistake: all of this is perfectly legal under current laws. But Manfred sat on his hands and watched as the only tool they could use against the luxury tax was proven completely useless. It has become part of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ cost of doing business, and MLB gets its share. Other teams and fans? Fuck ’em.
Turn on the lockout
The game needs a serious salary cap, and I certainly agree, it’s a salary cap. Although it will be too late: there is likely to be some kind of grandfather clause in place, which allows the Dodgers to continue to eliminate the $400 million team until their deferred salaries are exhausted. That will be 2047, when Edwin Diaz – then in his mid-fifties – is scheduled to receive his last check in LA. But it will be better than nothing, meaning the current spending limit. If I look at my current complete lack of interest in the 2026 regular season as an attempt to compete, the sooner the better.
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Because right now, the best hope the D-backs have to ever win the division might be… rescheduling. Unfortunately, most of the proposals I’ve seen involve Arizona remaining in the same category as Los Angeles. Too many games with Dodgers fans storming Chase Field is clearly not fair. There aren’t enough Raid available for that. But there was this one, where we kept the Angels, Padres and Athletics. That would work. Of course, the ideal scenario would be to put the Dodgers in their division, by themselves, so no one has to play them until the end of the season.
But while we’re thinking big, why not revamp things with payroll? These days, with jet travel as usual, geography is less important than it used to be. So why not get each club to submit their full salary budget at the start of the year, rank it, and plan the split that way? For example, the Super-Platinum Division will currently consist of the Dodgers, Mets, Phillies and Blue Jays; the Balsa Division will be the Marlins, Rays, Indians and White Sox. That way, teams will be competing against others with similar salaries and it would be a more fair test of skill. Or do it fantasy baseball style: every team gets exactly the same budget.
There are options, for sure. Although getting the player’s union to agree may be a different matter. But it is important to note that, while the average baseball’s salary exceeded five million dollars this season for the first time, i which is in between salary – the point at which half of the players earn more and half earn less – it has fallen reached $1.35 million. It’s $300K less than it was ten years ago, and that doesn’t factor in inflation. As with the team totals, individual salaries are getting heavier, and it shows the level of recording money in the game doesn’t float all boats equally.
