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116 sats \ 5 replies \ @grayruby 5 Nov \ on: The Harsh Reality Of The Los Angeles Dodgers... Stacker_Sports
I don't hate the Dodgers. I do think the league should institute a limit on how much money teams can defer. Arbitraging the fiat melting ice cube is a good strategy but if the league is going to have a luxury tax they should probably close the loopholes a little.
Dynasties are good for sport. People like to watch excellence and people also like to root against excellence.
The Dodgers are definitely the model franchise in MLB but it is not so easy to just say other teams should copy what the Dodgers do. That is really only open to a few teams that have resources comparable to what the Dodgers have. MLB doesn't need a cap, the Brewers had the best record in MLB and they aren't a huge spender but I do think MLB needs to crackdown on the deferrals.
Did you watch the video? Curious because the guy makes some good points. I mean, he could be wrong because I don't keep up with other teams but what he says sounds reasonable.
Owners in his view could do better. He provides examples
- Pay players what they are worth, IE sometimes it seems petty how owners respond
- Respect players more in the media and private
- Have more of a long term vision for their teams vs. short term profits
- Build better team development
- Think more strategically
He says, yeah LA is a big market and its ownership group has a lot of money. But that's not the only reason they are winning and why players want to play for them. Players want to win, be respected, and also get paid what they believe they are worth.
A lot of what I hear in my circles is just sour grapes. People start to sound like socialists with their classism comments. They don't think about how rich ALL the owners of these teams are. How much money the owners make. They also act like you can just buy a team. That doesn't work. The Yanks are a good example of how you need more than money.
The dodgers have an amazing list of stars. But, they almost didn't win. Money and the price system are not well understood and it shows when people talk about sports.
I agree with you about the melting ice cube thing. Honestly, when I learned how they were doing that I thought... wow. The guys that are agreeing to defer really wanna win. They wanna get paid too, nothing wrong with that but they wanna win over that.
I do think the deferment thing could backfire on the Dodgers in the long run but who knows. The team leadership has probably thought of this.
The Dodgers have long had a incredible machine for developing players and lets not forget how many decades they went without a title. So, its more than just money. Its being willing to SPEND the owners money we are talking about.
It just makes me laugh for people to attack the Dodgers instead of expect more from their team's ownership. These guys are not poor. They don't need us defending their failure to build winning teams. The smart owners know its about the fans and the players. For many years the Dodgers didn't have owners that understood this. At least not by their actions. Happy to see the innovations the Dodgers are doing. I hope other teams will learn from the parts that are working.
I don't think the Dodgers are ruining baseball. I don't think they are unbeatable and the league needs to fix it to limit them. These positions seem absurd to me.
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I will push back on one point. Yes the owners are all rich but not every owner wants to take a loss on their team and I don't fault them for that. Just because someone is rich doesn't mean they should say "well it's ok if we lose 100M a year so we can keep up with the Dodgers". Regardless of how well the team does some teams simply do not have the ability to generate the kind of revenue the Dodgers do.
In 2023 the Diamondbacks and the Rangers played in the World series. That year the DBacks had revenue of 315M and the Rangers had revenue of 425M. The Dodgers had revenue of 55OM (eliminated in DS). The following season the Rangers spent 60% of that revenue on player salaries which was the exact same percentage as the Dodgers and the DBacks spent 70% of that revenue on player salaries which was higher than the Dodgers. Yet the Dodgers had a payroll of 110M million more than the DBacks and 80M more than the Rangers.
No you can't buy a championship, it's baseball, but having 4 hall of famers in your lineup and 4 ace starting pitchers in your rotation will give you a heck of a head start. Add in the fact that you can add another 70M of value to payroll in the form of deferrals and then say well the Diamondbacks owner should spend 400M a year to keep up when the best revenue year they ever had was 315M is easy to say when you don't have to pay the bills.
Again, I don't think there should be a cap on salaries and I have no problem with what the Dodgers are doing to invest in their players, organization and facilities to build a consistent winner. I am just pointing out it is easy to say teams should replicate the Dodgers but not every team can do it and that if MLB is going to have a luxury tax system they should probably crack down on deferrals (at least in terms of using them to avoid luxury tax penalties).
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You may have a point, I'll give you that. It's still wild to me that even with such a stacked team the Dodgers almost lost. They literally won by inches.