Roberts is right! Dodgers are ruining baseball
The Dodgers have become the Harlem Globetrotters. The rest of baseball has become the Washington Generals
Good morning, all! I hope your weekend is going well!
Make that five trips to the World Series for the Los Angeles Dodgers in the last nine years. The best team money can buy swept the Milwaukee Brewers in the NLCS, after going 0-6 against the Brewers in the regular season. The capstone to the sweep was the best performance ever recorded by a player in the postseason by Shohei Ohtani. All he did in Friday’s pennant clinching, 5-1 win was pitch six innings to notch the mound victory, strike out 10 and slug three home runs. Yes, he is the best player in baseball.
In the postgame celebration, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts issued a quote that has resonated across the baseball universe more than he knows:
Before the season started, they said the Dodgers are ruining baseball. Let’s get four more wins and really ruin baseball.
-Dave Roberts
Truer words have never been spoken. The Dodgers are owned by a group headed by hedge fund multibillionaire Mark Walter, who also is rich enough to own another legacy franchise, the Los Angeles Lakers. The Dodgers have become the Harlem Globetrotters. Everyone else is the Washington Generals. Their payroll this season, counting the luxury tax, will reach nearly a half-billion dollars. In fact, their luxury tax may be higher than some team’s payrolls.
Mind you, Walter is doing nothing wrong. He is just playing by the rules of the game. Sadly, other clubs cannot compete with that money, making for an uneven playing field. It is so uneven it leads one to believe what has really changed in sixty years?
Sixty years ago, it was the Yankees who were always going to the World Series and winning most of them. It led to a hatred for the club that exists to this day, so much so that if the Yankees ever win another World Series - and they haven’t won one since 2009 - the hatred for them will be ten times more than what it is for the Dodgers, who are dominating the sport with their money more than the Yankees could have ever imagined.
In 1965, MLB instituted the amateur draft of players, specifically designed to stop the Yankees from signing all the top talent. It worked, but free agency changed all that. Yankees owner George Steinbrenner was the first to exploit the new system and bought three straight American League pennants and two straight World Series titles. The baseball world howled, the Yankees were at it again. However, Steinbrenner’s mismanagement of the franchise prevented further Yankees dominance. Only after he was suspended, and the Yankees built an organization through player development, did they return to dominance in the mid-to-late 90s. But those days are gone. Now all organizations are outspent by the Dodgers, including the Yankees.
Like the Yankees buying Babe Ruth from the cash-strapped Red Sox, the Dodgers bought Ohtani the free agent, except they managed to exploit a loophole in the system buy deferring most of his contract, so their luxury tax didn’t go even higher. They did the same thing with Japanese free agent Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Blake Snell. I could go on and on. Yes, they have a good player development system, but the Dodgers ownership has deep pockets to augment any shortcomings and spend their way to a championship. Already there are reports they are the frontrunners for this off season’s leading outfield free agent Kyle Tucker.
So dominant have the Dodgers become that they are not only favored to win this season’s World Series but next season’s too.
The Dodgers are also Exhibit A why the players association does not want a salary cap. The problem, however, is that with traditional revenue streams becoming more unpredictable, a sport with no salary cap could lead to a sport with reduced fan interest.
These days, baseball does cartwheels when a postseason game gets television ratings the equivalent of a Saturday afternoon, regular season college football game. What does that tell you? It tells me baseball has become America’s regional pastime. Unlike the NFL, college football or even the NBA, if your favorite team is not in the postseason, there’s a good chance you are not going to watch the game.
That is what is meant by “ruining the game” Dave Roberts. Unlike the other major sports, the playing field in baseball is uneven. The NFL, NBA and NHL all have salary caps, so that owners with deep pockets cannot exploit the system. A salary cap levels the playing field, so that the Kansas City Chiefs can build a dynasty on drafting, trades and savvy talent evaluation, so that an Oklahoma City Thunder can win the NBA title and have a chance to repeat; so that the Florida Panthers can win back-to-back Stanley Cups. Yes, those sports have free agency, but a salary cap changes the dynamics. Baseball doesn’t have that system.
In reality, the game is no more different now than when the Yankees dominated pre-1965 before the amateur draft. The only difference is that the Yankees used their wealth to sign players of promise, while the Dodgers with their overwhelming wealth now sign them as established stars.
So go win another World Series Dodgers. You are doing nothing wrong. You are playing the game under its current rules; just don’t be insulted when most of America continues to tune out what was once its national pastime and calls your club the best team money can buy.
Here are some other thoughts as October goes whizzing by:
It might not be the biggest win in the UConn football program’s history but knocking off Boston College of the ACC, 38-23, on Saturday has to rank up there. And to think the Huskies had Syracuse beat earlier, only to fold down the stretch and lose in OT. It is time independent UConn be permitted entry in a power conference.
I’m old enough to remember when Indiana and Vanderbilt were doormats in college football.
Well, I’ll bet no one had Tennessee baseball coach Tony Vitello on their bingo card as the next manager of the San Francisco Giants? That Buster Posey really fooled ‘em, didn’t he?
Today’s Giants-Broncos game could have some sizzle. The Broncos defense has been doing a lot of talking, along the line that they are about to give Giants upstart QB Jaxson Dart an education. We shall see.
That is going to do it for today’s newsletter. Enjoy your Sunday and thank you for subscribing.
DAN