Tuesday Rockpile: Are the Los Angeles Dodgers ruining baseball?

Colorado Rockies news and links for Tuesday, February 11, 2025

No MLB team has had a better offseason than the Los Angeles Dodgers, who have signed a litany of stars: Roki Sasaki; Blake Snell; Teoscar Hernández; Tanner Scott; Michael Conforto . . . There are more, but I have limited space.

With all these additions, the Dodgers will head into the 2025 season with a payroll of about $377 million (with $1.778 billion in guaranteed salaries). As Jeff Passan wrote on January 23, “The $120 million or so the Dodgers are in line to pay in luxury tax penalties on top of their payroll is more than the projected Opening Day payroll of 10 teams.” (And that was before the Dodgers signed Kirby Yates to a one-year, $13 million contract.)

After detailing the Dodgers’ process in signing Sasaki, Passan added this:

The anger — from disillusioned fans, from dispirited front offices, from owners made to look as if they don’t care — is very real. And it’s growing to the point that people at the highest levels of Major League Baseball acknowledge it concerns them. Most worrisome is the rhetoric that fans are done with the game. That what L.A. is doing is unfair. That the financial imbalance ruins the sport.

Purple Row is, I realize, a Rockies-centric site — and I’ll get to them in a second — but it’s worth parsing Passan’s assertions here.

I’m no fan of the Los Angeles Dodgers — and I’m really not a baseball economist. But you have to respect an organization that maximizes its productivity.

Passan notes, for example, that they scouted Sasaki since he was in high school, and when the time came to recruit him in earnest, they did so. They have created an elite player development system (for a team that consistently drafts late). They have an effective analytics department and front office. They hired a skilled president of baseball operations, Andrew Friedman, and built a juggernaut that attracts players.

Do the Dodgers have a profitable television contract? Yes. (It’s $8.35 billion over a 25-year period.) Do they have good attendance? Yes. They led MLB in 2024 with more than 3.9 million attending games. Are they in a large market? Absolutely.

Clearly, these are all advantages.

I’m just not buying the other 29 extraordinarily wealthy people who own baseball teams saying they can’t compete. Sorry, but that’s a choice.

As Michael Baumann put it in his article “Sick of the Dodgers signing all the free agents?Well, get off your butts and do something about it”:

Money isn’t just an incentive, it’s an illustration of institutional want-to. As much as free agents love money, they love want-to just as much. The Dodgers have it easier than most other teams, it’s true. But that advantage is not so great that the other teams couldn’t do something about it if they tried. Trying… now that’s a novel idea I can get behind.

Look, the Tampa Bay Rays exist. I’m not here to defend their ownership group — guys, spend some money — but they’ve shown winning isn’t tied to a big payroll, attendance, or television contracts. Rather, it’s about how the money is spent.

I have trouble, for example, believing the Ricketts family, who owns the big-market Chicago Cubs, cannot spend more to win. Tom Ricketts said in mid-January, “They think somehow we have all these dollars that the Dodgers have or the Mets have or the Yankees have and we just keep it . . . . Which isn’t true at all. What happens is we try to break even every year, and that’s about it.”

I would argue that’s a choice being made by a person whose family has a net worth of $4.2 billion. The Cubs, according to Forbes, are worth $4.225 billion, the fourth most-valuable franchise in MLB, which would suggest they have a sizable revenue stream.

MLB owners, if you’re going to cry poor, open the books and prove your penury. We’re not taking your word for it.

Then there’s the fact that baseball is amazing, and sometimes (like in, say, 2023), a team catches fire (like, maybe, the Arizona Diamondbacks) and they sweep a presumed champion (perhaps, the Dodgers) en route to the World Series.

Tied to these issues of the Dodgers spending are questions about an MLB salary cap. Last week, commissioner Rob Manfred said he was receiving emails from concerned fans about it. However, as Steve Drumwright explains here, MLB does not need a salary cap. The system is working.

That brings us to the Colorado Rockies.

If there’s anyone leading the “poor us, we’re a mid-market team” contingent, it’s Rockies owner Dick Monfort. And, to be fair, with a reported net worth of $700 million, he is less wealthy than some of his fellow owners. Moreover, to his credit, he has been willing to spend. The Rockies are, consistently, in the middle of the pack in MLB spending. (Witness Kris Bryant’s seven-year, $182 million contract.)

The problem is how the Rockies spend that money. (Again, witness Kris Bryant’s contract.)

The Rockies’ problems are embedded throughout the organization. Evan Lang has cataloged their failed player development systems, both through the MLB draft and international signings. Skyler Timmins has documented their resistance to change — and the fact that Bud Black stays employed despite how bad the Rockies have been for the last five years boggles the mind. Ben Clemens wrote about the Rockies’ inability to make productive outs. (Seriously, this is a mortifying read.)

I could go on, but you get the idea.

Yes, the Rockies have a smaller budget than other teams, but they also spend the money they do have badly. Giving them more money — whether through changing the economics of baseball or TV revenue sharing — would do little to change the Colorado Rockies. The owner does not appear to be committed to winning, and there is no sense the organization the value in fielding a winning team. The Denver Broncos, Colorado Avalanche, and Denver Nuggets suggest this is misguided. Winning sells — and creates an investment in life-long fans.

Sure, Coors Field provides a terrific in-park experience, but that’s not enough.

For me, this comes down to working the problem (e.g., define the problem; diagnose the root cause; identify and implement a solution; and sustain the results). When you have a problem, don’t cry foul and ask to have the problem changed (e.g., a salary cap, TV revenue sharing, or divisional realignment). Instead, use your resources, and work the problem — like the Rays have.

Too many MLB teams refuse to work the problem because they are not incentivized to get better.

The Dodgers should not be penalized for taking the resources they have and maximizing them better than other teams have.

They’re winning, and they’ve earned it.

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This week on the internet

We tend to think of sports teams as valuable assets and the owners as extraordinarily wealthy — which is true.

But in the grand scheme of the corporate world, they’re kinda mid.

I think the message from this is clear: Coors Field needs Krispy Kreme kiosk.

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You should be mad about the Dodgers spending — but not for the reasons you think | Bleed Cubbie Blue

I’ve been thinking about this article for a while, and this seemed like the right time to share it. Sara Sanchez writes of the Dodgers’ more-than-$1 billion in deferred salaries, “[T]he players get less than fans think they are getting and the billionaires at the helm profit on the interest off the difference in that money.” This one is worth your time.

Five Rockies prospects with most at stake as non-roster invites to 2025 spring training | Denver Post ($)

For Kyle Newman, it’s about four pitchers (Chase Dollander, Carson Palmquist, Sean Sullivan, and Gabriel Hughes) as well as KB-lookalike Benny Montgomery.

The strangest looking MLB mascots and how much they make | Bola VIP

If you wondered how Dinger compared to his peers, here you go.

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