People who say the Los Angeles Dodgers are ruining baseball are usually the same people who can’t stand the idea of them having a stacked roster.
With big names such as Blake Snell, Freddie Freeman, Mookie Betts, and arguably the face of baseball, Shohei Ohtani, it’s easy for fans to think that the Dodgers are buying their wins.
Let’s look at the facts.
Out of the top 10 teams with the highest payrolls entering the 2025 season, four failed to make the postseason: The New York Mets, Texas Rangers, Houston Astros and Atlanta Braves, according to USA Today and MLB.com.
That’s not all. Five of the bottom 14 teams with the lowest payroll made the postseason: The Detroit Tigers, Seattle Mariners, Milwaukee Brewers and Cleveland Guardians, according to those same sources.
So, is payroll really what matters or is it how you use it?
Two current Dodgers pitchers, Snell and Tyler Glasnow, previously played for the Tampa Bay Rays. Both are high-caliber arms that the Rays chose not to pay long-term.
The Dodgers needed help to bolster their starting rotation during the 2023 offseason.
At the time, the Rays were unwilling to keep Glasnow and instead looked to move away from his contract.
As a result, the Dodgers acquired him in a trade and immediately signed him to a five-year $136.5 million contract, according to MLB.com.
Snell was traded to the San Diego Padres in 2020 after the Rays wanted to free up some salary space and help build for their future, according to MLB Trade Rumors.
After stints with the Padres and the San Francisco Giants, he ended up signing with the Dodgers during the 2024 offseason, according to MLB.com.
The starting point of all of this comes down to one thing: The Rays were not willing to pay Snell the money that he deserved.
Let’s also not forget the dynasty that the New York Yankees had in the 90s up until 2000.
The Yankees won four World Series championships from 1996 to 2000, three of which came consecutively from 1998 to 2000, according to ESPN.
In the span during which the Yankees won those three consecutive titles, they ranked second in payroll in 1998 and first from 1999 to 2000, according to stevetheump.com.
But times have changed from then to now because you never hear anybody talk about how the Yankees were “ruining baseball” or “buying wins.”
Instead, fans and teams realized that you just have to find a way to beat them.
That’s ultimately what the Arizona Diamondbacks did in 2001, when they beat the Yankees in the World Series, according to Baseball Reference.
From there, the Yankees didn’t win another World Series title until 2009, according to The Enterprise.
This shows that until a team finds a way to get the best of the Dodgers in the postseason, they will still reign victorious.
In the words of broadcaster Joe Davis as the Dodgers secured the final out to win back-to-back World Series titles: “To beat the champ, you gotta knock ‘em out.”
