The Los Angeles Dodgers have plenty to be thankful for this year, and not only because they won a World Series.
The Dodgers signed free-agent pitcher Blake Snell to a five-year, $182 million contract, giving them the most fearsome starting rotation in all of baseball. But there can only be five (maybe six) starters in a rotation, and that means one of the best starters the Dodgers have had in the last decade is likely on the outs.
30-year-old Walker Buehler, a lifelong Dodger who closed out the clinching game of the World Series, no longer appears to have a spot in the LA rotation. Fittingly enough, he could be bound for the team he just helped to take down in the World Series.
The New York Yankees have already shown interest in Buehler, and their rotation, unlike the Dodgers’, has some wiggle room. Jacob Mountz of FanSided recently named Buehler as a strong fit for the Yankees in free agency.
“Walker Buehler is not one of the top names on the market but he could still be the top arm. Brian Cashman has already picked up on this tidbit of useful information and has seemingly joined the pursuit,”Mountz said.
“Having witnessed Buehler’s postseason excellence firsthand, there isn’t any doubt to why the Yankees want him. This winter, Buehler could be the unexpected prize of the offseason.”
Buehler had a rough regular season in 2024, his first season back after undergoing Tommy John surgery in late 2022. He had a 5.38 ERA in 14 starts, pitching to a 1-5 record. However, he also shined in the postseason, dropping his lifetime playoff ERA to 3.04 in 94 1/3 innings.
It would hurt Dodgers fans to see Buehler in the Yankee pinstripes, but there’s no longer room. for him among all the other superstars in the LA rotation. Mixed emotions would certainly abound if Buehler met the Dodgers in next season’s Fall Classic.
After Blake Snell deal, hate the Dodgers if you must. But they had help building evil empire.
It will soon be rather chic – if it’s not already – to hate on the Los Angeles Dodgers.
To bemoan the rich getting richer. To worry about a Major League Baseball landscape where just a half-dozen markets still get rich off local TV rights and, in some cases paired with a bottomless pit of private equity, will become the stuff of Bud Selig’s oldest nightmares, even as the past quarter-century has given us a diverse slate of World Series champions.
Some of those concerns are almost valid.
Yet in the wake of the Dodgers’ latest nine-figure strike – a five-year, $182 million deal for lefty Blake Snell, who simply wanted a forever home last winter yet had doors slammed in his face – it’s fair to point out who’s complicit in this Gilded Blue Machine they’re building out west.
Not two years removed from their fourth World Series championship since 2004, they suddenly felt an overwhelming urge to become Tampa North, and in February 2020 fairly gifted the Dodgers Mookie Betts, in exchange for three players who would never become Boston mainstays.
Betts needed just one spring to determine he’d like to stay a dozen years in L.A., all on a $365 million deal so heavily deferred its present value is barely $300 million – or the price it probably would’ve taken for Boston to retain him.
We can continue with the Atlanta Braves, who celebrated their 2021 World Series title by kicking Freddie Freeman to the curb, burning prospect capital to trade for Matt Olson and extend him on a $168 million deal, slamming the door on a player who wanted to return so badly, he shed many public tears about it over the next several months.
Yet the point remains: The Giants, the Red Sox, the Yankees – any number of squads could’ve had Snell last winter, probably for that amount of money, maybe for an even lesser outlay. Instead, they went cheap, and now Randy Newman can add another line to I Love L.A.
Austerity Boulevard? We love it!
Sure, none of this is our money, and it’s a little gross to sycophantically line up behind the Guggenheim Bros who own the Dodgers and cheer on every last little bit of pocket change they unearth to bring home an All-Star. They’ll soon have seven players signed to nine-figure contracts – a little insane, yes.
But so much of this is so basic that it even precedes Econ 101.
And destinations are created by intent – in this case, the intent to compete and cultivate a powerhouse.
The most surprising thing about the Dodgers’ most recent outlay of a billion-plus dollars – not even 12 months ago! – wasn’t the fact they guaranteed the great Shohei Ohtani and the indomitable Yoshinobu Yamamoto contracts worth $700 million and $325 million, setting the stage for a World Series championship.
It’s almost like once Ohtani hit the market after six years of hard time in Anaheim that there was no other choice, Toronto flight patterns be damned. And with Ohtani in the fold, where else would Yamamoto go for maximum comfort, paycheck and the chance to compete for a championship?
Five years later, there’s no end in sight to the rivers of revenue. Famously, the Dodgers are already pocketing tens of millions more because of Ohtani than they are paying him, thanks to a cavalcade of Japanese sponsorship deals and Ohtani’s willingness to defer so much of his contract.
Cue the complaining once the Dodgers make their next inevitable blitz, be it because of their financial might or a player’s decision to choose relevance over a reclamation project.
Squabble up, if you must. But know that the vibes in L.A. remain impeccable, and they weren’t bought off a shelf.
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