A quarter-century has passed since a baseball team has managed to win consecutive World Series championships. In order to end that streak, the Los Angeles Dodgers are employing a wildly expensive—and wildly simple—new strategy.
It’s called, “Buying up all the good players.”
The Dodgers arrived in Arizona for spring training last week as the ultimate symbol of sporting economic excess. In a financial system without a salary cap, they have taken advantage of their league-leading attendance, astronomical local television deal and savvy executive management to build an unprecedented superteam.
The cost: roughly $392 million. And that’s before a projected luxury tax bill of more than $140 million as penance for their largess.
The Dodgers’ payroll is $70 million higher than Steve Cohen’s New York Mets’ and a whopping six times larger than the budget for sport’s stingiest organization, the Miami Marlins. Only 14 of the 30 major-league teams currently have a payroll that is even half the size of what the Dodgers are spending, according to data compiled by Spotrac.
The Los Angeles Dodgers won the World Series after beating the New York Yankees. Wendell Cruz-Imagn Images
The result is a roster designed for one purpose. The Dodgers are here to obliterate all of the powerful market forces that have worked against back-to-back titles with raw brute force.
“Ownership did it for us,” infielder Miguel Rojas said. “When they went out there and got all the free agents and re-signed the guys, they sent us a message: ‘We’re not just happy with winning one championship. We want to do more.’”
The most stunning part of the Dodgers’ extravagance is that the roster was already ridiculously stacked with talent. They committed more than $1 billion last offseason to bring in Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, adding them to a squad that had three other former MVPs in Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman and Clayton Kershaw. It made the Dodgers dominant enough to dismantle the New York Yankees in the World Series.
That apparently wasn’t enough for the Dodgers’ ownership group, which is led by Guggenheim Partners chief executive Mark Walter. So once they paraded through the streets of downtown Los Angeles, the Dodgers opened up their wallets again
When the spending spree finally ended, they had shelled out another $400 million to land nine major-league free agents, including ace starter Blake Snell, slugging outfielder Teoscar Hernández and three top relievers.
And that doesn’t even include perhaps their most significant acquisition of all, the Japanese pitching phenom Roki Sasaki, who could’ve signed with anybody for roughly the same amount of money. Yet Sasaki chose the Dodgers, the team that probably needed his services the least.
Roki Sasaki is set to join the Dodgers’ rotation this season. Photo: joe camporeale/Reuters
So by the time longtime fan favorite Enrique Hernández reupped with the Dodgers last week (for a measly $6.5 million), he knew he was joining a roster that “was more full than a Bad Bunny concert.”
“That’s because of the support of our fan base,” Dodgers president Stan Kasten said. “They invest in us by buying tickets, by buying merchandise, by media deals, and so we can take that and continue to invest in them by putting the best product on the field.”
As their budget has grown to seemingly limitless heights, the Dodgers have emerged as baseball’s resident villains, enraging fans around the country who are envious of their untold riches. Within the industry, the Dodgers have sparked ferocious debate over what their abundance means for the rest of the sport.
Other owners, all billionaires themselves, have grumbled publicly and privately about their inability to compete with the Dodgers’ wealth. Even the Yankees’ Hal Steinbrenner said in an interview with the YES Network this winter that, “It’s difficult for most of us owners to be able to do the kind of things that they’re doing.”
What’s clear is that the Dodgers are absurdly talented. They are not only loaded with superstars, but they have also accumulated enough depth to withstand a barrage of injuries that would cripple their competitors.
It’s why Rojas said on a recent podcast that he thinks the Dodgers could win 120 games this season, surpassing the Seattle Mariners’ record 116 victories from 2001. Asked about that bold prediction last week, he didn’t back down.
“If I wasn’t thinking that was a possibility,” Rojas said, “I wouldn’t have said it.”
Miguel Rojas, right, and Mookie Betts run drills during spring training. Photo: Matt York/Associated Press
There now appears to be just one thing still capable of stopping the Dodgers, and that’s the utter randomness of October. There is a reason nobody has repeated as champions since the Yankees won their third straight title in 2000. Baseball is structured to promote chaos when the games matter the most.
After enduring what Kasten describes as “the crucible of 162 games” in the regular season, teams are forced to survive several short series where, history has shown, there is no such thing as an upset. Sixteen different baseball franchises have won a title this century, the most of any major North American sport.
The Dodgers understand that reality as well as anyone. They’ve qualified for the playoffs in 12 straight seasons and have just two championships to show for their efforts.
“It doesn’t matter what kind of roster you have,” Dodgers infielder Max Muncy said. “Time after time teams have shown that when you get into the playoffs, anything can happen.”
The Dodgers hope they have uncovered the secret that has eluded them and everybody else in baseball for the past 25 years. And all it took was $392 million.
