Are the Los Angeles Dodgers Really Ruining Baseball?
By Jack Zinke | Feb 11, 2025
The rich continue to get richer. After a historic offseason of ludicrous spending following the 2023 season, where they acquired two-way superstar Shohei Ohtani, prominent Japanese pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto, all-star outfielder Teoscar Hernandez, and established top-of-the-rotation starter Tyler Glasnow, the Los Angeles Dodgers were predestined to hoist the World Series Championship trophy in the fall. That feat was unsurprisingly accomplished as they defeated the New York Yankees in five games, winning their second World Series Championship in five seasons. Yet, while already reaching the pinnacle of baseball prowess, the Dodgers somehow were able to craft together an even better roster this offseason, and it’s not even over yet.
Shohei Ohtani, Clayton Kershaw, and teammates celebrate their 2024 World Series Championship in the locker room.
To kick off free agency, the Dodgers were able to bring back super utilityman and 2024 Postseason hero Tommy Edman on a 5-year $74 million extension. This wasn’t some game-changing move for LA, but it certainly added much more depth and security to the field. The following day, Blake Snell signed a five-year $182 million contract, leaving the San Francisco Giants for their biggest rival, the Los Angeles Dodgers. Snell is a two-time Cy Young award winner, who is still in the prime of his career. Not only were the Dodgers able to add one of the best pitchers in baseball to the roster, but they happened to take a key rotational piece away from a divisional rival in need of a top-tier starter. Those two moves alone would suffice for a successful offseason for a defending champion; yet, the men in blue were not done there. To round out the outfield, they brought back middle-of-the-lineup slugger Teoscar Hernandez on a three-year $66 million contract and brought in serviceable Michael Conforto (also from San Francisco) on a 1-year $17 million deal. Next up were two key international players, one from Korea and the other from Japan. Hyeseong Kim of Korea was given a 3-year $12.5 million deal to likely start at second base for LA. Meanwhile, arguably the biggest splash of the offseason for the Dodgers was the signing of Roki Sasaki from Japan. A World Baseball Classic (WBC) teammate of Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Sasaki looks to be going atop the Dodgers rotation in the coming years. His minor league contract with a signing bonus of $6.5 million is an absolute steal compared to the current MLB value of an elite starting pitcher. Additionally, his youth and electric pitching arsenal will allow him to play at a very high level for a very long time. Thanks to international signing laws, both Hyeseong Kim and Roki Sasaki were brought in on extremely team-friendly deals. With MLB fans outraged over the formation of the LA superteam, things did not seem like they could get any worse. Unfortunately, they did.
Within the next week, the Dodgers bolstered their already impressive bullpen by adding Tanner Scott on a 4-year $72 million deal and Kirby Yates on a 1-year $13 million contract. That is the point where we’re at. It is only the beginning of February, and with over a month until Spring Training begins, it would not be very surprising at all to see another notable free agent sign with LA.
Blake Snell at his introductory press conference, following the signing of his lucrative contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Fans across the country are calling for action from Major League Baseball to address the use of excessive spending by franchises like the Dodgers, Yankees, and Mets. Critics say that the assembling of ‘superteams’ is ruining the sport of baseball, with the postseason outcome being virtually predetermined. Most teams will have extremely slim chances of competing for a championship in the next decade as the dominance of the Dodgers and other big spenders will ultimately prevail. Many analysts claim the sport is headed for ruin. Despite the commotion, what if I were to tell you that what the Dodgers are doing is actually beneficial for Major League Baseball, and not harmful?
I’m not necessarily saying that the Dodgers being immensely better than every other team is good for baseball. Instead, I’m saying that their willingness to spend whatever it takes to be a winning-caliber ballclub is what is good for baseball.
Theoretically, each and every franchise is competing year in and year out to win a championship; yet, in reality, I find that extremely difficult to be the case. If so, most or all teams’ total salaries should be floating around the luxury tax threshold of $241 million. The luxury tax’s purpose is to serve as a deterrent for teams to spend excessively, keeping all 30 teams reasonably ‘competitively balanced.’ When a team’s 40-man roster exceeds the threshold, high tax rates are placed on all overages, starting at a 20% tax that continually increases by being over the threshold for multiple seasons or by exceeding it by higher amounts. However, many teams aren’t even anywhere near the threshold. Below is a list of all 30 MLB teams and their total 40-man roster payrolls (as of 2/5/25):
Los Angeles Dodgers - $303,851,665
Philadelphia Phillies - $279,332,617
New York Mets - $275,600,00
New York Yankees - $273,351,666
*2025 Luxury Tax Threshold - $241,000,000
Toronto Blue Jays - $239,162,379
Texas Rangers - $206,335,000
Houston Astros - $202,683,333
Atlanta Braves - $199,445,000
San Diego Padres - $191,435,453
Chicago Cubs - $181,125,000
Los Angeles Angels - $179,773,094
Arizona Diamondbacks - $177,206,667
Boston Red Sox - $158,494,847
San Francisco Giants - $157,167,856
Baltimore Orioles - $147,187,000
Seattle Mariners - $147,187,000
Minnesota Twins - $127,486,190
St. Louis Cardinals - $125,019,167
Colorado Rockies - $110,199,285
Kansas City Royals - $106,187,070
Detroit Tigers - $103,353,333
Cincinnati Reds - $100,065,833
Milwaukee Brewers - $100,008,000
Washington Nationals - $83,756,429
Cleveland Guardians - $76,777,500
Tampa Bay Rays - $72,616,545
Pittsburgh Pirates - $66,233,500
Chicago White Sox - $61,280,000
Athletics - $54,150,000
Miami Marlins - $43,630,000
Source: https://www.spotrac.com/mlb/payroll/_/year/2025/sort/cap_total2
To put this into perspective, there are only 4 teams out of 30 that are exceeding the luxury tax threshold, meaning that an overwhelming majority of 26 teams fall below that line. Now, I’m not necessarily saying that it’s bad to be below the luxury tax threshold. My point is that a team should be somewhat near that number if they are actually planning on being competitive that season. For instance, the Dodgers exceed the luxury tax by quite a large sum: over $60 million. With that being said, it can be expected that the teams with the lowest payrolls in the league should approximately fall $60 million below the luxury tax. This would make the luxury tax threshold fall right in the middle of where spending lies across the board; however, only the top 10 spenders are in the realm of exceeding the luxury tax by $60 million and falling $60 million short of the luxury tax threshold. This means that exactly ⅔ of MLB ball clubs do not fall in this range of where competitive spenders should theoretically be. MLB’s lowest spender, the Miami Marlins, are almost $200 million below the luxury tax threshold. In fact, nine teams are spending $100,000,000 or less in 2025. Essentially ⅔ of MLB teams are foregoing their season and run at a championship completely.
Now, why would any team not even try to compete when a World Series Championship is the mission statement for every MLB team? Well, the sad truth is profit. Team owners and their organizations’ front offices figure that spending less on team payroll will lead to increased profits. These owners and teams figure that when they spend less on salary, the more profit they will make. This is evident in the MLB team profit rankings for the 2023 season:
New York Yankees - $679 million (2.4x Total Payroll)
Los Angeles Dodgers - $549 million (1.8x Total Payroll)
Chicago Cubs - $506 million (2.8x Total Payroll)
Boston Red Sox - $500 million (3.2x Total Payroll)
Atlanta Braves - $473 million (2.3x Total Payroll)
Philadelphia Phillies - $458 million (1.6x Total Payroll)
Houston Astros - $445 million (2.2x Total Payroll)
San Francisco Giants - $443 million (2.8x Total Payroll)
Texas Rangers - $425 million (2.1x Total Payroll)
Seattle Mariners - $396 million (2.7x Total Payroll)
New York Mets - $393 million (1.4x Total Payroll)
Los Angeles Angels - $388 million (2.2x Total Payroll)
St. Louis Cardinals - $372 million (3.0x Total Payroll)
Washington Nationals - $355 million (4.3x Total Payroll)
San Diego Padres - $345 million (1.8x Total Payroll)
Minnesota Twins - $342 million (2.7x Total Payroll)
Toronto Blue Jays - $328 million (1.4x Total Payroll)
Baltimore Orioles - $328 million (2.2x Total Payroll)
Milwaukee Brewers - $320 million (3.2x Total Payroll)
Cincinnati Reds - $315 million (3.2x Total Payroll)
Cleveland Guardians - $315 million (4.1x Total Payroll)
Arizona Diamondbacks - $314 million (1.8x Total Payroll)
Colorado Rockies - $313 million (2.8x Total Payroll)
Pittsburgh Pirates - $309 million (4.7x Total Payroll)
Detroit Tigers - $306 million (3.0x Total Payroll)
Kansas City Royals - $302 million (2.8x Total Payroll)
Tampa Bay Rays - $301 million (4.2x Total Payroll)
Miami Marlins - $295 million (6.9x Total Payroll)
Chicago White Sox - $288 million (4.7x Total Payroll)
Athletics - $241 million (4.5x Total Payroll)
Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/193645/revenue-of-major-league-baseball-teams-in-2010/#:~:text=The%20New%20York%20Yankees%20are,million%20U.S.%20dollars%20in%202023.
According to the list above, it appears that teams that spend big produce big profits, as both the Yankees and Dodgers top the list in total profit earnings. However, relative to total payroll spending, the profit doesn’t seem like as great of an outcome compared to the teams that spend substantially less. To display this, I have rearranged the above list based on the ratio of profit to total payroll:
Miami Marlins - 6.9x Total Payroll (30th in Spending - Lowest)
Chicago White Sox - 4.7x Total Payroll (28th in Spending)
Pittsburgh Pirates - 4.7x Total Payroll (27th in Spending)
Athletics - 4.5x Total Payroll (29th in Spending)
Washington Nationals - 4.3x Total Payroll (24th in Spending)
Tampa Bay Rays - 4.2x Total Payroll (26th in Spending)
Cleveland Guardians - 4.1x Total Payroll (25th in Spending)
Cincinnati Reds - 3.2x Total Payroll (22nd in Spending)
Milwaukee Brewers - 3.2x Total Payroll (23rd in Spending)
Boston Red Sox - 3.2x Total Payroll (13th in Spending)
Detroit Tigers - 3.0x Total Payroll (21st in Spending)
St. Louis Cardinals - 3.0x Total Payroll (18th in Spending)
Kansas City Royals - 2.8x Total Payroll (20th in Spending)
Colorado Rockies - 2.8x Total Payroll (19th in Spending)
San Francisco Giants - 2.8x Total Payroll (14th in Spending)
Chicago Cubs - 2.8x Total Payroll (10th in Spending)
Minnesota Twins - 2.7x Total Payroll (17th in Spending)
Seattle Mariners - 2.7x Total Payroll (16th in Spending)
New York Yankees - 2.4x Total Payroll (4th in Spending)
Atlanta Braves - 2.3x Total Payroll (8th in Spending)
Baltimore Orioles - 2.2x Total Payroll (15th in Spending)
Los Angeles Angels - 2.2x Total Payroll (11th in Spending)
Houston Astros - 2.2x Total Payroll (7th in Spending)
Texas Rangers - 2.1x Total Payroll (6th in Spending)
Arizona Diamondbacks - 1.8x Total Payroll (12th in Spending)
San Diego Padres - 1.8x Total Payroll (9th in Spending)
Los Angeles Dodgers - 1.8x Total Payroll (1st in Spending - Highest)
Philadelphia Phillies - 1.6x Total Payroll (2nd in Spending)
Toronto Blue Jays - 1.4x Total Payroll (5th in Spending)
New York Mets - 1.4x Total Payroll (3rd in Spending)
So, truly, teams that spend the least tend to profit the most relative to the size of their payroll. Take a look at the Athletics, formerly the Oakland Athletics, who are 2nd to last in spending, but make the 4th highest profit relative to their total payroll. Furthermore, the Marlins make the most profit relative to their total payroll by far; yet, they are last in spending.
I strongly believe that this list is the most important of the three above because it shows how financially beneficial it is for a team to spend so little on their 40-man roster. Furthermore, it also clearly displays that the biggest spenders sacrifice higher profits for a higher win total and higher payroll (evident with the Dodgers and Yankees, who both made it to the World Series), while the lowest spenders sacrifice competitiveness for higher profits and lower payrolls.
In case you haven’t gotten my point yet, I believe that the true problem is not the excessive spending of the Dodgers. Instead, the problem lies within the teams that refuse to spend anywhere near a substantial amount of salary. It is actually these teams that create the huge separation between the best and worst in Major League Baseball. They choose profit margins over organizational success, going against the idea that each team goes into the season with a goal of winning a World Series championship. Instead, they’d rather see dollar signs. The Athletics, Marlins, Pirates, and White Sox are the teams ruining baseball, not the Dodgers.
The Athletics’ former home ballpark, the Oakland Coliseum, nearly empty.
Just to be clear, I am not a Dodger fan. I actually despise the Dodgers, since my favorite team is their biggest and most historic rival: the San Francisco Giants. It pains me to say that the Dodgers are good for baseball, but I truly do admire what they are doing. As long as they are working within the bounds of the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), I have no issue. They obviously want to compete year in and year out, and in order to do that, a team has to actually spend money. Since there is no concrete salary cap in baseball, any team is theoretically able to spend as much as they’d like to. The salary cap serves as a deterrent, but if a team chooses to spend past that limit, they are able to do so. They just have to pay more in taxes. It all depends on the willingness of a team to win and compete in today’s version of Major League Baseball. The Dodgers want to compete. The Yankees want to compete. The Mets want to compete. The Phillies want to compete. Nearly every other team has proven that they don’t have the willingness to spend in order to win a World Series championship.
I want to reiterate that not every team has to exceed the luxury tax threshold. Instead, I’m merely suggesting that they should aim to be within that $60 million range below that line. That proves that a team is somewhat competitive and isn’t just in it for the lucrative profits that a bottom dweller, like the Marlins, craves.
To be fair, not all faults can fall on the lower-spending organizations. Of course, factors such as location, team history, and various other factors have an effect on the success and profits that an organization brings in on a yearly basis. One critical factor is the current Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) in place. As stated previously, there is not a concrete limit on how much a team is allowed to spend on its 40-man roster; however, there is a luxury tax that is placed on teams whose payrolls exceed $241 million in 2025. Yet, this serves only as a deterrent, not as a stoppage for excessive spending. Furthermore, there is not a minimum that a team has to spend on their team payroll either, allowing a nearly $250 million gap between the highest and lowest payrolls in MLB to exist.
The current CBA is set to expire in December 2026. It’s overwhelmingly clear that changes need to be made to the agreement when the expiration occurs. I believe that the luxury tax is actually a good thing for baseball and that it should not be done away with. Instead, my proposal is for the implementation of a salary cap and, more importantly, a floor.
MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred speaks to the press after reaching the current CBA deal in 2022.
Both the NFL and NBA have salary caps worked into their CBAs. Some might argue that the NBA’s cap is a little too high as teams still prove to be overwhelmingly dominant when spending frivolously (Kevin Durant and the Golden State Warriors), but there is not as large of a disparaging gap between the larger and smaller market teams in the NBA as there is in MLB. The NFL’s cap has proven to work wonderfully for the league as every team’s total payroll is within $70 million of each other for 2024.
Neither the NFL nor the NBA have a floor,, so you might wonder why I am proposing this when there isn’t a current example of it actually being beneficial to a major sports league in America. My answer is that I don’t think that the floor should be a permanent fixture in MLB’s CBA. Rather, I believe that it should be in place for a limited time to lessen the gap between baseball’s highest and lowest spenders. When it has become evident that this gap has exponentially decreased and will continue to trend in that direction, slowly dismantle the floor.
If MLB chooses to keep the luxury tax threshold at around the same amount of $241 million, my proposed salary cap would be $300 million and my proposed floor would be $120 million. This would make 12 organizations bring their salaries up above the proposed floor and limit the current team with the highest payroll from spending any more on their roster. An argument could be made that teams will just end up paying the current players on their roster a boosted salary, just so they’re above the floor. My counterargument is that with teams like the Dodgers, unable to add anyone else to their roster, the smaller market teams will have a better shot at signing remaining free agents on the market. If a team has to spend at least $120 million, they might as well spend to improve their team. There is no negative at that point in doing so. A team with a lower payroll might also offer a more inflated contract to a free agent so that they will be able to be above the proposed spending floor, evening the chances of a small market team landing a heavily sought-after player over a big market team in the offseason. I really don’t see a negative to a salary floor for Major League Baseball and would love to see its implementation in late 2026.
Another way to combat the Dodgers’ gathering of stars on the open market is for teams to sign their top prospects and young, emerging stars early on in their careers to guaranteed, long-term contracts. MLB players’ minor league contracts and draft deals are not nearly as lucrative as the NFL’s and NBA’s. Traversing the minor leagues is an extremely difficult and long process in baseball. MLB is arguably the hardest of the major American sports leagues to produce talent within one’s own system. The long and grueling process makes sure-handed draft picks hard to come by and thus, young players are signed for cheap. But, when young stars finally make their way to ‘the show,’ their talent becomes evident very early on in their big league careers. That is why it’s important to sign these young prospects as early as possible, while their salaries are still manageable. A younger player will sacrifice a larger per-year salary in order to land less, but fully guaranteed money over a longer period of time. There is no guarantee that a player’s early success will continue or that medical issues will arise, and so when offered a large contract early on, a prospect will likely take it.
For example, the Atlanta Braves have implemented this strategy beautifully. Ronald Acuña Jr., one of the best players in baseball currently, signed with the Braves very early on in his big league career for 8 years and $100 million. If he had waited until he was a free agent, he would’ve garnered much more, but he wanted a guarantee right out of the gate. The Braves jumped at that opportunity to bag a future star at a great price. They did the same thing with Austin Riley, snagging him for 10 years and $212 million. Again, they traded for a young Matt Olson to replace their expensive upcoming free agent, Freddie Freeman. They gave Olson a contract extension worth $168 million over 8 years and he has proven to be one of, if not the best first basemen in baseball. In doing so, the Braves built their core for the extended future on very cheap, long-term contracts. On the other hand, the Dodgers have largely depended on free agency to build their star-studded roster, which is much more expensive than the Braves’ strategy. So, if teams want to combat the Dodgers without spending $250+ million on their yearly payroll, maybe they should model a strategy after the Atlanta Braves.
There isn’t a point in complaining about the Los Angeles Dodgers and their spending tactics. They are fairly and smartly working within the bounds of what MLB allows franchises to do. They want to win and are fully committed to doing that. My hope is that other teams see this as a challenge to want to do the same. Implementing new strategies and being more aggressive in the offseason can help combat the dominance of the Dodgers. Hope is not lost and baseball is not ruined…yet. But it will be if the bottom dwellers and teams in the middle of the pack refuse to spend a competitive amount on their payroll. Don’t hate on the Dodgers for wanting to be the best. They’re just doing what every other franchise should be attempting to do.
