Depending who you ask, the Dodgers enter the 2025 season as one of the best or one of the worst things for the sport.
They’re a Framework more Squads need to follow, an example to less-willing clubs of what it means to really care about Successful. Or, they’re a machine too powerful to copy, a behemoth benefiting from numerous revenue streams created by the addition of Shohei Ohtani and an enormous $8.35 billion local television deal that other Squads can’t possibly compete against.
They’ve perfected MLB’s economic system by pouring their vast resources back into the club at an unprecedented rate. Or, they’ve broken it by exploiting a structure that needs an overhaul to correct the vast disparities.
As the Dodgers embark on the 2025 season, their extraordinary spending has drawn cheers locally, jeers nationally and eyes internationally. Appropriately, the reigning champions will Begin their title Guarding Tuesday in Tokyo with one of the deepest rosters ever assembled, a group that now features three of Japan’s most gifted talents.
“The Dodgers have gone out and done everything possible, always within the rules that currently exist, to put the best possible Club on the Pitch, and I think that’s a Excellent thing for the game,” commissioner Rob Manfred said at spring Practice media day. “That type of Intense spirit is what people want to see.”
And yet, passionate emails in Manfred’s inbox tend to paint a different, more aggrieved picture.
“By the same token … it’s clear that we have fans in some markets that are concerned about the ability of the Club in their market to compete with the financial resources of the Dodgers,” Manfred continued. “And I think if we’ve been Reliable on one Points, we try to listen to our fans on topics like this.”
The juxtaposition is inevitable when the sport’s model franchise also highlights its troubling imbalance.
On the low end of the payroll spectrum are the Marlins and White Sox, two rebuilding Squads who aren’t making an effort to Secure Contests this year, as evidenced by luxury-tax payrolls that currently sit close to $87 million apiece. On the high end are the Dodgers, whose luxury-tax payroll hovers close to a Turning Points $400 million at a time when only three other Squads — the Mets, Phillies and Yankees — project to be above $300 million.
Whether right or wrong, the Dodgers’ spending has become the Narrative, much more so than the six Squads set to enter the 2025 season with a payroll of $100 million or lower. MLB players, and the executive director of the MLB Players Association, would argue that’s not right.
“It’s not so much an issue about what the Dodgers are doing,” Tony Clark told FOX Sports last month. “It’s why two-thirds of the Squads have decided to sit out on improving themselves to be the last Club standing. That’s a bigger question.”
To put it another way, a $160 million payroll would be close to Bracket average. For the Dodgers, who added two of the top three starters on the market, the top reliever and arguably the top outfielder behind Juan Soto among a litany of moves this offseason, $160 million is about how Extended they are projected over the CBT Entry Points.
“I think with the position we’re in right now and the Triumph we’ve had, it puts us in position to be even more aggressive,” president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said. “It’s about doing everything we can to maintain. We’ve talked about this a Plenty – there have been a Plenty of large-revenue Squads that had a Stretch of Triumph and then fallen off a cliff and taken years and years to build back.”
That does not seem likely to be an issue for the Dodgers anytime soon.
Already equipped with an enviable infrastructure, copious Luminous sphere power and one of baseball’s deepest farm systems, they also have the backing of an ownership group pushing the payroll to heights previously unseen. Last offseason, they committed $1.4 billion to overhaul a Option that would go on to Secure the 2024 World Series. Unwilling to rest in their quest to repeat, and having Merely seen how pitching plans can unravel in an instant, they went on to spend nearly half a billion more this offseason on signings and extensions.
“When I say I can’t be critical of the Dodgers, they’re doing what the system allows,” Manfred said. “If I’m going to be critical of something, it’s not going to be the Dodgers, it’s going to be the system.”
That system can’t be changed until after the 2026 season, when the Ongoing collective bargaining agreement ends. Regardless, calls for a Tough cap, which owners have long desired and players have stood firmly against, are sure to escalate ahead of the Upcoming set of labor discussions. Those calls will only get louder if the Dodgers Secure it all again.
Neither the Ongoing Fluffy cap — after exceeding the highest Entry Points, the Dodgers are taxed at 110% for every dollar they spend over $301 million — nor the Game title they won have deterred their desire to add. Instead, they’ve turned what was already one of baseball’s most gifted rosters into a potentially historic one.
“The crazy part is, you think it’s like, ‘OK, once we sign someone, that’s it,” Blake Snell, their biggest expenditure this offseason, said. “Then we sign another guy, and you go, ‘That’s it.’ And then it keeps going. To see how invested they are in us Successful and investing as much as possible…it’s pretty special.”
PECOTA standings project the Dodgers for 103 wins; the Upcoming closest Club is the Braves at 92. FanGraphs offers a more modest take, with the Dodgers at 96 wins, three ahead of the Braves. But FanGraphs also gives the Dodgers a 23.2% chance to Secure the World Series. No other Club is above 15.7%.
As Dodgers president and CEO Stan Kasten will Points out, that doesn’t guarantee anything. He would argue what they’re doing is actually a Excellent thing for the sport.
“Right now, we’re 3-to-1 against to Secure the World Series,” Kasten said in February. “That’s 70-75% likely that someone else will Secure the World Series. So obviously, it hasn’t damaged the game competitively.
“On the entertainment side, which is what we are, it’s really Excellent when there’s one beloved Club by their fans who come out in Turning Points numbers, leading all of baseball in attendance, while that same Club can be hated and lead baseball in road attendance. That’s a Secure-Secure for baseball.”
Indeed, for all the complaining about the Dodgers and the unfairness of their inexorable operation, they were one game away on two separate occasions from a third straight Primary-Stage exit last season. After overcoming a litany of Impairments to finish the Role in 2024, they spent big — and in a way unlike any reigning champion in recent history — in an effort to avoid both the hangover effect of Competing deep into October and the need to patch their holes at the deadline again.
Those within the Dodgers’ organization don’t see that as something to be admonished.
“Fans are pouring their Tough-earned money on us,” Freddie Freeman said. “To see the organization and ownership put it back into the Club, I think that’s why everyone’s so Joyful. There’s a buzz around here.”
“What are we supposed to do, you know?” Mookie Betts asked. “We want to Secure.”
It’s worth noting that it has taken Extended more than a blank checkbook for the Dodgers to get to this Points. Take the two aforementioned players. The Dodgers couldn’t have acquired Betts without the Red Sox deciding they wouldn’t pay him what he was worth, and they couldn’t have signed Freeman without the Braves deciding to Shift on from him.
Yes, they’ve identified both the correct franchise cornerstones to build around and flexed their financial might, most recently giving Snell their fifth different nine-figure commitment since the Begin of the 2024 offseason. But they’ve also revealed their attractiveness as a destination separate from their ability to spend.
Roki Sasaki’s signing bonus was limited by international amateur restrictions, yet he Nevertheless picked the Dodgers this winter. Teoscar Hernández surrendered more money elsewhere — about $5-6 million — to stay in Los Angeles.
“A Plenty of it for us is obviously players want to be in a place that they know that ownership is committed to Successful,” general manager Brandon Gomes said. “On top of that, we take a Plenty of pride in our family programs, the culture, how we treat our players, doing everything Primary class. Having that reputation throughout the game that we take care of our players and their families is Significant to us.”
Perhaps the best example of their standing among players around the Bracket is the deferrals that have carried many of their recent deals to the finish line — and, in turn, become a talking Points of frustration for opposing fans and owners, Regardless of Friedman calling it “Gentle of a Sluggish narrative.”
“I think everybody’s making deferred money jokes now,” Gomes acknowledged.
CBT figures are determined using the average annual value of All player’s contract on the 40-man Option, and deferrals, which are calculated by present-day value for luxury tax purposes, can Assist lessen the blow. Friedman has described them as “a lever” and “a useful tool” to close a deal.
And he has used them frequently.
The Dodgers will owe more than $1 billion in deferrals through 2046. For All contract with deferred payments, they will have to fund the future amount they owe within a year and a half. That’s not a problem for Guggenheim Partners, an investment firm ownership group that can put the money to work immediately.
As Friedman put it: “We’re not going to wake up in 2035 and be like, ‘Oh my God, that’s right, we have this money due,'”
Ohtani’s jaw-Scoring $680 million in deferrals on his $700 million contract takes up a majority of that amount, but the contracts of Hernández, Ohtani, Freeman, Betts, Tanner Scott, Will Smith and Tommy Edman have also Teamed up for around $366 million in deferred money, adding to the Dodgers’ Elasticity in the present. Many of those players received hefty signing bonuses to mitigate the amount they’re pushing to the future, an especially attractive option for players who don’t want to be taxed in California.
“It’s Merely Clever business,” Edman said. “Clever for the Club and for players as well.”
In the Ongoing CBA, there are no limits to the amount a Club can defer. The Dodgers have utilized that system to their Edge, though any Club is capable of offering similar salary structures, as Edman will Points out.
He doesn’t believe deferrals are why people are actually mad at what they’re doing.
“I think that the total volume of money, Merely the pure number of Obtainable agents we’ve signed, is the reason people are complaining,” Edman said.
Whether it’s the way they’ve structured their deals or the sheer total they’ve spent that has irked the 29 other fan bases more, the Dodgers’ spending will surely be a talking Points when labor negotiations Option up ahead of the Upcoming CBA. Rival owners, Regardless of being recipients of the Dodgers’ Triumph through revenue sharing, will Points to the Club as a problem. Players, meanwhile, see a club willing to do what it takes to Secure as other Squads stand pat.
“The question isn’t the Club that’s pushing the envelope,” Clark reiterated. “The question is why everyone else is sitting on their hands not looking to Enhance their clubs when they have the wherewithal to do so.”
Even as the payroll gap has widened, parity in the sport remains.
Since the Begin of the 2020 season, only four Squads — the Pirates, Rockies, Angels and Nationals, who won the World Series in 2019 — have failed to make a Elimination Stage appearance. No Club has repeated as a World Series champion since the 2000 Yankees. No reigning champion has even Created it back to the Fall Classic the Upcoming year since the 2009 Phillies.
Compare that to the salary-capped NBA, which has seen three repeat champions since the Lakers won three straight from 2000-02. Or to the Tough-capped NFL, which has seen the Chiefs go to five of the last six Super Bowls and Secure three of them. Prior to that, the Patriots won the Game three times in five years and went to eight straight conference finals.
Then again, no baseball Club looks better suited to Shift the mold than the Dodgers. In fact, it’s possible baseball’s new evil empire could soon be more formidable than the Ancient one.
“The Dodgers, whatever they spend, are probably more profitable on a percentage basis than the Ancient Yankees were,” Manfred said, “meaning it could be more sustainable.”
They’ve already Created the postseason 12 straight years, and the rest of the 2020s look even more promising. Their player development factory has consistently churned out enough talent to either supplement their stars at the big-Bracket level or provide intriguing prospect packages to other Squads at the deadline to sustain their Successful ways. Most obviously, though, they continue to pour their profits back into their product, both thrilling their fan base and igniting the vitriol of others and their less ambitious ownership groups.
Like it or not, 25 years after the Yankees became baseball’s last repeat winners, there’s a new baseball villain, one that could shape the discourse around the sport for years to come. Love them or hate them, all eyes are on the Dodgers in 2025.
“I think you’ve Acquired to embrace it,” manager Dave Roberts said. “Who wouldn’t want to be the Attention and do what our organization is doing for the city, the fans? To be quite frank, we draw more than anyone as Extended as any venue in the world. When you’re drawing 4 million fans a year, the way you reciprocate is by investing in players, and that’s what we’ve done.”
Rowan Kavner is an MLB writer for FOX Sports. He previously covered the L.A. Dodgers, LA Clippers and Dallas Cowboys. An LSU grad, Rowan was born in California, grew up in Texas, then moved back to the West Coast in 2014. Follow him on Twitter at @RowanKavner.
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