With Alex Bregman getting picked up by the Red Sox yesterday ($120M, three years), off the backs of a wild off-season in which the Mets snagged Juan Soto for $765M and 15 years, it is clear that baseball players are getting rich contract, especially from the subset of teams that decide to spend money. Roster Resource now has 11 of the 30 MLB teams with a 2025 payroll projection of at least $200: Dodgers ($389M), Mets ($331M), Phillies ($288M), Yankees ($285M), Blue Jays ($250M), Rangers ($222M), Cheaters ($218M), Braves ($212M), Red Sox ($210M), Padres ($207M), and Angels ($202M).
So let's break down some of the bigger moves this offseason:
- Mets: Soto ($765M/15), Pete Alonso ($54M/2), Sean Manaea ($75M/3), Clay Holmes ($38M/3), Frankie Montas ($34M/2)
- Yankees: Max Fried ($218M/8), Cody Bellinger (trade), Devin Williams (trade), Paul Goldschmidt ($12.5M/1)
- Red Sox: Bregman ($120M/3), Walker Buehler ($21M/1), Patrick Sandoval ($18M/2), Garrett Crochet (trade), Aroldis Chapman (10.7M/1)
- Padres: Nick Pivetta ($55M/4)
- Diamondbacks: Corbin Burnes ($210M/6)
- Giants: Willy Adames ($182M/7), Justin Verlander ($15M/1)
- Braves: Jurickson Profar ($42M/3)
- Phillies: Max Kepler ($10M/1)
- Orioles: Charlie Morton ($15M/1), Tyler O'Neill ($49.5M/3)
- Angels: Kenley Jansen ($10M/1), Yusei Kikuchi ($63M/3), Travis d'Arnaud ($12M/2), Kyle Hendricks ($2.5M/1)
- Tigers: Jack Flaherty ($35M/2), Gleyber Torres ($15M/1)
- Rangers: Joc Pederson ($37M/2), Nathan Eovaldi ($75M/3)
- Blue Jays: Anthony Santander ($92.5M/5), Max Scherzer ($15.5M/1)
- Cheaters: Christian Walker ($60M/3)
So the Dodgers could have sat on the laurels of their 2024 World Series Championship crown, sure. Instead, though, they did some deals of their own:
- Clayton Kershaw ($7.5M/1)
- Kiké Hernandez ($6M/1 TBC)
- Blake Treinen ($22M/2)
- Kirby Yates ($13M/1)
- Tanner Scott ($72M/4)
- Roki Sasaki ($6.5M/6)
- Hyeseong Kim ($12.5M/3)
- Teoscar Hernandez ($66M/3)
- Michael Conforto ($17M/1)
- Tommy Edman ($74M/5)
- Blake Snell ($182M/5)
In isolation, none of those Dodger deals looks out of whack with market norms. There are no $40M AAV deals on the table like Boston gave to Bregman; there are no long-term deals like the Mets gave to Soto or the Yankees gave to Fried or the Snakes gave to Burnes (in fact, the longest-term Dodger deal, to Roki Sasaki, is an absolute bargain due to international signing rules).
And in aggregate, the team added some players, sure. But we also lost Buehler, Flaherty, Gavin Lux, Daniel Hudson, and Joe Kelly, not to mention others who are recovering from season-ending injuries and won't play for all or most of next year.
As pointed out on The Windup (Athletic podcast), with the Dodgers' consistent divisional dominance, they never get access to the generational draft picks (like Paul Skenes or Bryce Harper), forcing them to have to go to the open market as well as make higher-risk, lower-in-order draft decisions.
I'm ecstatic for the Tommy Edman signing (to get a utility player with a potent bat!), albeit less so for the Dodgers getting a full year of sub-100 OPS+ Kiké Hernandez (not sure why we couldn't just pick him up in July in order to leverage his annual October performance uptick). Oh yeah, and we still have Chris Taylor for another year...(cries).
The Dodgers won the World Series last year. That said, we also came very close to getting dispatched in the 2024 NLDS to San Diego, which would have added more fuel to the ridiculous narrative that the Dodgers choke in the playoffs--but sure, it almost happened again.
But you can't have that (debunked) narrative on the one hand, and then turn around and begrudge the Dodgers for fortifying their own arsenal with reinforcements--especially after last year's experience, when we were down to 2.5 starters in the playoffs and ran bullpen games as a matter of course. (Of note: 1.5 of those 2.5 playoff starters, comprised of Flaherty and Buehler, has left the Dodgers this off-season, leaving only Yoshinobu Yamamoto.)
Blame the Mets, Yankees, and Red Sox for ruining baseball. It's not the Dodgers. They're just trying to keep in the game.