LOS ANGELES — Shoutout to all the pocket-watching haters. All the poor schmucks crying foul ball; that it’s just not fair!
Baseball needs a salary cap! Someone needs to rein in the Dodgers! With their Guggenheim Baseball Management consortium, they’re just too rich! As if that ain’t rich coming from anyone supporting the ball club that barged into the postseason with the best record in baseball.
It’s not that complaints are falling on deaf ears here in L.A., it’s that the chorus of complaints are music to Dodger fans’ ears. Cry harder, in fact; L.A. is loving this song. Loving having an ownership group that does everything it can – and most everything right – to help the Dodgers win.
Because, yes, the Dodgers have awoken from their regular-season hibernation and now find themselves right where they planned to be: One victory from a second consecutive trip to the World Series, hungry.
After sweeping the Cincinnati Reds in their Wild Card Series and making quick work of the Philadelphia Phillies in the National League Division Series, Goliath beat David again Thursday in the NLCS. The Dodgers’ 3-1 victory in Game 3 gave them a commanding 3-0 lead in the best-of-seven NL Championship Series.
Those “Above Average Joe’s” playing for Milwaukee – as Manager Pat Murphy recently called his fellas – now are on the verge of an NLCS appearance that lasts only about as long as it takes to get a cup of joe.
It isn’t the NLCS slugfest so many wanted. It’s not setting to be a seven-game showcase between the star-studded favorites and the plucky underdogs on the other side. It’s looking, instead, like we might just get a sweep.
How dare the Dodgers bully the 97-win Brewers like this? How dare baseball’s reigning champions step up to the plate and play like champions against the club that beat them all six times they met in the regular season?
How dare the Dodgers figure it out when it matters most.
How dare they operate so smartly. Out-competence the competition. Get their money’s worth – make sure their major-league-leading $350 million payroll pays off.
Does their payroll significantly exceed the small-market Brewers’ $122 million? Quite. Does it dwarf completely what the Chicago White Sox ($78.8 million) and Oakland A’s ($78.3 million) and Miami Marlins ($67.9 million) are paying their players? Totally.
But ask yourself, is it the Dodgers who are Bad For Baseball or the cheapskate bottom-dwellers unwilling to invest what it takes to compete?
Also, pop quiz: Don’t the New York Mets have essentially the same payroll as the Dodgers? Yes, they do – $342 million. Do they feel like virtual shoo-ins for the World Series? No, they don’t. They didn’t even make the playoffs this year, despite signing Juan Soto to a $765 million deal.
Elsewhere in the NL, this season the Arizona Diamondbacks added ace right-hander Corbin Burnes on a $210 million deal and the San Francisco Giants spent $182 million for shortstop Willy Adames, and neither team made the postseason.
Shoot, there’s an NBA team around here with no titles despite having allegedly paid more than permitted by a salary cap – further proof, possibly, that it’s not what spend but that you have to have good fortune on your side to, maybe go about things the right way.
So, yes, this past offseason, the Dodgers picked up two-time Cy Young Award winner Blake Snell on a five-year deal, paying him an annual salary of about $36.4 million – “heck,” Murphy said the other day, “Snell makes more money than our entire pitching staff.”
But Snell – who faced the minimum amount of Milwaukee hitters possible in Game 1 before being pulled after the eighth inning and who looks lined up to start Game 5, if we get that far – could’ve made a similar amount had he opted into the final year of his deal with the Giants.
Why’d he choose to leave and come to L.A.? “This is where you want to play,” he said.
Same reason Japanese sensation Roki Sasaki – who has emerged as the Dodgers’ surprise solution at closer – brought his talents here.
The Dodgers scored highest on the “homework assignment” he gave all his MLB suitors, none of whom could outlandishly outspend the others because Sasaki is considered an international amateur by MLB’s rules and could only sign a minor-league contract with a limited signing bonus.
“Right in our wheelhouse,” Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said of the assignment. “Our ability to showcase our performance-science group, our training staff, our performance staff, our pitching coaches, how connected those groups are, we felt like really highlighted a strength of ours.”
Athletes will always want to go where they can win, where they trust they’ll be put in the best position to win. Build a winner, and winners will come.
Sorry, not sorry.