Don’t hate them because they’re rich.
The Dodgers have used their financial muscles annually since the Guggenheim Group took over ownership, carrying one of – and frequently – the highest payrolls in baseball each season.
But this winter’s billion-dollar flex took things to another level.
The Dodgers have done the ‘super team’ thing before. But they open spring training this week having bought and paid for (or put on layaway to pay later) the best free agents available this winter – domestic (Shohei Ohtani) and international (Yoshinobu Yamamoto) – and one of the best players to change teams via trade (Tyler Glasnow), adding in a few extras (Teoscar Hernandez and James Paxton) along the way.
This spending spree was not universally cheered.
“There’s just something about those guys that you don’t like. Can’t explain it,” San Francisco Giant ace Logan Webb said after the Dodgers’ binge. “It kind of added to that.
“Giants players, we all texted each other. We didn’t like it.”
Former Dodgers right-hander Ross Stripling started the winter as one of those Giants players before a trade to the Oakland A’s. On a podcast, he said the Dodgers had crossed a line with this winter’s moves.
“The way I look at it is that they are just going full villain mode in a way,” Stripling said. “They’ve always had the payroll. But they’ve done an unbelievable job in drafting and developing talent. I think that World Series team (in 2020) had, like, 16 homegrown Dodgers on it. Now, it’s Freddie. It’s Mookie. It’s Shohei and Yamamoto and they’re coming for everybody.”
Stripling is not wrong.
Of the 27 players who appeared in the 2020 World Series for the Dodgers, 13 of them were homegrown products. The roster most likely to break camp and head for the season-opening games in South Korea this spring could have as few as five homegrown Dodgers on it with only three – Will Smith, James Outman and Gavin Lux – likely to be…
Read the full article here
