In 2022, the “It’s not my Moneyball” series was created in response to the lockout imposed by the owners that disrupted Spring Training and arguably cost Clayton Kershaw a perfect game in Minneapolis (I had fun). As the season starts, the World Baseball Classic concludes, we must revive this series as trouble looms in the distance, hanging in the air, exactly in the way a brick does not.
The current consensus among MLB pundits is that the sport will slam to a grinding halt in December 2026; to which I respond: Where were you lot literally three years ago, when I pointed out the clear writing on the wall?
The following point needs to be repeated loudly because most owners are counting on everyone in the media and the fans to ignore the following immutable truth: there is absolutely no reason for a lockout to occur; if the current collective bargaining agreement (CBA) were to expire, the players and owners could proceed under the current system until a deal for a new CBA is struck. The only reason owners impose a lockout is to pressure the Players’ Union into accepting a salary cap, which the Union is hellbent on rejecting.
Admittedly, I was wrong about who the “culprits” of the impending lockout would be, but my reasoning was generally sound, even if the owners were trying to act as if they were doing something while doing nothing. The owners have stopped playing around with optics and faux committees.
Back in 2023, the baseball world quivered in fear of Steve Cohen bullying the league with his seemingly limitless financial resources for the Mets, and looked at the efforts of Peter Seidler doing his best Mike Ilitch (Mr. I) of the Detroit Tigers impersonation as Exhibit B of why the sport would grind to a screeching halt in December 2026.
The fears were misguided as the Mets continued to find entertaining ways to set money on fire, and like Mr. I, Peter Seidler passed away all too soon, leaving a wake of family trauma, which rippled outwards to the organization and is only now reaching a conclusion.
A juggernaut did arise on the horizon, but it was not the (LOL)Mets, but our very own Los Angeles Dodgers.
If anything, if you want a starting point to the villain arc (apart from the league’s failure to punish the 2017 Houston Astros for cheating — just a piece of metal, huh? — and the 2023 Arizona Diamondbacks whipping the mostly-busted 2023 Dodgers out of the playoffs), one need only look at the Dodgers after one particular signing: Shohei Ohtani in the 2023 offseason.
Lest anyone forget, Ohtani devised the structure of his massively deferred deal and presented it to the Dodgers (who clearly accepted), the San Francisco Giants (who probably should have offered more money), the Toronto Blue Jays (it is a sore subject still), and the Anaheim Angels (who declined).
Far too many people forget that Ohtani proposed the structure, likely in part because on a team with eventual-first ballot Hall of Famer Mike Trout, the closest the Angels could get to the playoffs was buying a ticket to see it with the rest of the hoi polloi.
The Dodgers largely operated with a standard deviation in spending during the first part of the current CBA until Ohtani. However, when presented with the opportunity to win with a unicorn like Ohtani, one would be an absolute fool not to try to leverage both the maximum results on the balance sheet and in the trophy room.
Unlike the Angels, the Dodgers read the room, read their hand, and shoved their chips into the middle.
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2022 – $293,330,382, including $32.4 million luxury tax bill
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2023 – $268,198,867, including $19.4 million luxury tax bill
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2024 – $353,015,360, including $103 million luxury tax bill
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2025 – $417,341,608, including $169.4 million luxury tax bill
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2026 – $538.7 million, including ~$142.6 million luxury tax bill (projected)
Half a billion dollars on a team’s payroll is the fever dream of those playing MLB: The Show. In essence, the argument about the Dodgers is really three parts of the same conversation, which will be separated below:
The Dodgers have more revenue than anyone in baseball; therefore, the season is over before the first pitch is thrown! And thus baseball needs to have a lockout in 2027 to stop the madness!
Half of the above statement is true and an ironclad fact, which we shall break down and examine over the next two essays.
Living that Scrooge McDuck Life — for better and worse
Detractors are correct: the Dodgers are lapping everyone in revenue, based on what we publicly know.
Having the biggest revenue deal in baseball (in part due to the incompetence of MLB’s other owners), leading baseball in home and road attendance every year since the pandemic, and having a generational international superstar who is a cross between Michael Jordan and Babe Ruth, worthy of a documentary that basically ignores him, will do that.
No one can credibly argue that the Dodgers do not lead baseball in raking in the money. One need only look at “probable Law and Order”-extra Kyle Tucker and the literal king’s ransom he will be paid over at least the next two seasons. So goes the cry before the impending lockout: the Dodgers broke baseball through wanton spending, and no other team has a chance to compete. In fact, reporters like Jeff Passan are starting to carry water for this position.
Along these lines, the Dodgers’ recent financial success is why players like Max Muncy, Enrique Hernandez, and Evan Phillips get to enjoy reunions, and where players like Justin Turner and Cody Bellinger (with justification!) were shown the door. When you have built a sponsorship engine that literally is equal to half of the league, when you have built a franchise that likely brought in a billion dollars in annual revenue, a team can flex its financial muscle and avoid saying farewell to veterans who might have been allowed to leave before the Ohtani Age.
Not setting $102 million on fire for a signing that never made an iota of sense, even with the benefit of hindsight, causes positive dividends in the future? Who knew! The team is thought to be the first MLB team to bring in a billion dollars in annual revenue, even going so far as to sell naming rights to the field that no one other than Joe Davis, Stephen Nelson, et al. will ever use.
Yes, the Dodgers have arguably perfected an imperfect system, much to the annoyance of the 29 other fanbases. Yes, the Dodgers are the first repeat champions in 25 years. But it’s not as if the team has slapped the league with impunity over the past 24 months.
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The 2024 Dodgers’ playoff rotation included “rookie” Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Jack Flaherty (who literally alternated from good and bad between starts), Walker Buehler (who was awful in 2024), and Landon Knack (bar trivia personified)
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Tommy Edman (’24 NLCS) and Freddie Freeman (‘24 WS) had the literal series of their lives to drag themselves to glory.
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The ‘24 New York Yankees managed to outmanage themselves (Game 1) and blow their legs off in historic fashion (Game 5) to ensure the Dodgers’ first full-season title since 1988.
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Orion Kerkering. That’s the bullet point. (Seriously, though, the Philadelphia Phillies were pretty good in 2025.)
If any one of these bullet points zigs instead of zags, the Dodgers are not the kings of the league. Dave Roberts would not be a surefire lock for induction in Cooperstown, etc., etc. Lex Pryor of The Ringer published an essay that largely covers these financial points from the position of a scold, rather than my position as a Dodgers fan and writer.
The Dodgers are not interested in winning 120 games in the regular season, only to lay an egg in the Division Series. They took that terrible route in 2022, which was arguably the last time that the Padres were relevant. Even in situations where things are relatively equal (say, the Roki Sasaki sweepstakes), the Dodgers still prevailed over the league. The Dodgers won 93 games in 2025, good enough for the three-seed, and, as a bonus, just about everyone was in peak form.
Did those facts stop the offense from being largely absent after the Wild Card round? Not really, but from the way people carry on, one would have thought the Dodgers went 13-0 rather than being pushed to the brink against the Blue Jays. If the Dodgers romp to 120 victories (they won’t) and sweep the postseason (inshallah), I will revisit whether the payroll disparity is truly bad for baseball.
What baseball does have in spades right now is a perception problem, one that threatens to engulf the sport in quick order.
The Party is likely over this December
Ben Lindbergh of The Ringer aptly summarized the state of things in MLB:
Are the Dodgers bad for baseball? Maybe. More accurately, though, they’re becoming a bad look for baseball. And they don’t seem to care what they look like, as long as they win.
The sport is having a renaissance with steady upticks in attendance and ratings. Game 7 of the 2025 World Series was the most-watched baseball game in over 30 years, drawing in about 24.3 million viewers in the United States and Canada. When Japan is included, that figure rises to 51 million viewers.
In contrast, the 2026 World Baseball Classic Final drew 10.784 million viewers, a record for the tournament but still barely a fifth of what Game 7 pulled in. Baseball should be basking in this era of success, but, like an illness that has been ignored for too long, things are less than 260 days away from slamming to a dead halt.
Like a dog that catches a chased car, nothing good will come from the perception that the Dodgers somehow broke baseball. It takes eight owners to scuttle a deal, and I see at least a dozen owners would rather burn the sport to the ground in the name of short-term thinking rather than refine the system that currently exists.
Accordingly, ownership is on the precipice of unleashing a Pandora’s Box of self-inflicted harm and stupidity by catering to the perception of inequality rather than the roots of inequality. I would encourage everyone to savor every last drop of the 2026 season, because while colleagues like Eric Stephen believe that no games will be lost in 2027, I do not share their optimism.
The stupidity and greed run thick, and I would genuinely be shocked if we get even half of a season next year. I have not lost a single case or a single night’s sleep by underestimating people’s greed and stupidity. Next essay, we introduce the twelve franchises that will likely run the sport aground in nine months’ time. I would dearly love to be wrong, but after all, it’s not my money(ball).
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