What sort of staff would commit $141 million to 2 closers?
The one which received final yr. The one which received this yr. The one which plans to win once more subsequent yr.
“All I have to say to you,” Dodgers proprietor Mark Walter instructed followers on the staff’s World Sequence championship celebration final month, “is we’ll be back next year.”
The Dodgers handed Tanner Scott $72 million final winter. It hasn’t labored out. So, on Tuesday, the Dodgers handed Edwin Díaz $69 million.
If the Dodgers are going to be Exhibit A for Walter’s rival homeowners to cry about how desperately they want a wage cap, carry it on. If Walter’s rival homeowners demand that gamers be locked out subsequent winter and never be allowed again till they relent and settle for a wage cap, properly, carry that on too.
There’s a sentence gamers are taught to utter: “I can’t worry about what I can’t control.” The Díaz signing is mainly the Dodgers’ possession saying the identical factor: “We can’t worry about other owners pointing their fingers at us. We’re here to win. If the rules change, then we’ll worry about that.”
Or possibly not.
“Honestly, I think that we have an organization that, whatever rules or regulations or constructs are put in front of us,’’ Dodgers manager Dave Roberts told reporters Monday, “we’re going to dominate.”
In what they name their golden age, the Dodgers are chasing historical past. No staff had received back-to-back championships in 25 years. Subsequent up: tying the main league report of 14 consecutive postseason appearances, and turning into the primary Nationwide League staff to win the World Sequence in three consecutive years.
“What’s better than two?” Roberts hollered on the World Sequence celebration. “Three! Three-peat! Three-peat! Let’s go!”
It ain’t bragging in the event you can again it up. For the primary time in what shall be his third season with the Dodgers — and after successful consecutive most useful participant awards — Shohei Ohtani needs to be obtainable to pitch and hit for your complete season.
“I’m ready to get another ring next year,” Ohtani stated on the celebration.
Mookie Betts, the one lively participant to win 4 championships, will come off a Gold Glove-nominated yr in his first full season at shortstop and, presumably, won’t must struggle off an sickness just like the one which derailed his power and hampered his offense in the beginning of final season.
“I got four,” Betts instructed the celebration crowd. “Now it’s time to fill the hand all the way up, baby. ‘Three-peat’ ain’t never sounded so sweet. Somebody make that a T-shirt.”
Roberts stirred some dialog final week when he instructed the Amazon Prime present “Good Sports” that he would help a wage cap.
“You know what? I’m all right with that,” Roberts stated. “I think the NBA has done a nice job of revenue sharing with the players and the owners. But if you’re going to suppress spending at the top, I think that you’ve got to raise the floor, to make those bottom-feeders spend money, too.”
The homeowners of these bottom-feeders ought to pay attention to that, as a result of they must spend, and they’d not be capable of level their finger on the Dodgers. The homeowners, in spite of everything, are pitching a wage cap to the general public as a treatment for aggressive steadiness.
The Dodgers would welcome that problem. A wage cap would restrict salaries, however it could not restrict spending on teaching, analytics, biometrics, services, diet, staff planes, and different areas through which the Dodgers’ homeowners have earned championship rewards for his or her important investments.
For now, although, the Dodgers wanted a better. The Dodgers bought one of the best one obtainable in free company, a man who has struck out no less than one-third of opposing batters in every of his previous seven seasons and has restricted opponents to a batting common underneath .200 in every of his previous 5 seasons.
Would the Dodgers prefer to get youthful? Sure. Did they subject the oldest group of place gamers within the majors final yr? Sure. Do the Dodgers now have Díaz and Scott for the subsequent three years, and do each flip 32 subsequent yr? Additionally sure.
However, given the place each the Dodgers and Main League Baseball are proper now, this may be the extra pertinent query for the Dodgers: Can Díaz change into the primary Dodgers reliever to shut out a World Sequence clincher since Steve Howe in 1981? (Orel Hershiser did the honors in 1988, adopted by Julio Urias in 2020, Walker Buehler in 2024 and Yoshinobu Yamamoto in 2025.)
In case you believed the Dodgers had been ruining baseball, then the signing of Díaz will solely intensify that. In any case, 11 groups didn’t open final season with a payroll of $141 million — the mixed worth of the Díaz and Scott contracts.
And, if sufficient homeowners imagine the Dodgers are ruining baseball, then these homeowners can discover a answer in need of a wage cap — or they’ll set hearth to the sport, and to the momentum generated by a worldwide celebrity main an internationally fashionable staff, and an internationally fashionable World Sequence.
The Dodgers can’t resolve that by themselves. They’ll act of their finest curiosity, and on Tuesday they did.
