LOS ANGELES — Welcome to the 2025 epicenter of the baseball universe.
The most talented team in baseball resides in Chavez Ravine, with the highest payroll in the game, the game’s biggest stars, the most lucrative TV contract, two World Series titles in the last five seasons and seriously threatens labor peace after the 2026 season.
These are the mighty Dodgers, beloved and revered in Los Angeles and Japan, but loathed for their superiority throughout the rest of the free world.
“We keep hearing people call us the ‘Evil Empire,” Dodgers CEO Stan Kasten tells USA TODAY Sports. “If we win the next five years in a row, go ahead and you can call us that. But we are a long way for us to be called evil, let alone an empire. We’re proud of what we’ve accomplished, but there’s still a lot left we need to accomplish.
“So call us evil. Call us the favorite. But we’re good for our fans that love us, and we’re good for the fans that hate us.’
The Dodgers, 2-0, who already have the best record in baseball, open their home schedule Thursday against Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal and the Detroit Tigers in front of a sellout crowd at Dodger Stadium where their 2024 World Series banner will be unveiled.
It will be the curtain drop of the highly-anticipated season where the Dodgers are the heavy favorites to become the first team in 25 years to win back-to-back World Series championships. It will be considered a bust if they’re not the last team standing in the middle of a champagne shower once again.
This is a franchise worth about $7 billion that generates $4.29 million per regular-season game, according to Sportico, with a payroll of about $390 million, including $1 billion in deferred payments. They have five players earning at least $25 million annually, including baseball’s first $700 million player in Shohei Ohtani.
It is the team that owners throughout the game loathe, and the team opposing players revere, wishing their own owners would spend in hopes of trying to win the ultimate prize.
“As a player that wants everyone in this game to make as much money as they can,’ says Arizona Diamondbacks Cy Young pitcher Corbin Burnes, “you want teams like that. They go out and win. They make money, and then they turn around and they give it to their players.
“It’s always refreshing to see when you see an ownership group that wants to put the money they’re making back into the team. The Dodgers obviously have done well the last couple of years and put the money back into the team and got a World Series
“So, it’s good to see, I just wish they weren’t in our division.’
The Chicago Cubs are the first team that got a firsthand look at the Dodgers in the two-game series in Tokyo, and despite playing without former MVPs Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman, the Dodgers still swept the two-game series.
“It doesn’t bother me what they’re doing, not at all,’ Cubs All-Star shortstop Dansby Swanson says. “They felt like they wanted to continue to improve their team, and they did. I think that it itself is good for the game. It’s about never settling and always wanting to be better than you were the year before.
“I don’t see how anyone could really have a problem with that.’
Cubs reliever Ryan Brasier, who was traded by the Dodgers to the Cubs in February, will remind you how dangerously close the Dodgers were to being knocked out in the first round of the playoffs last season. They were trailing 2-1 in a best-of-five National League division series with Game 4 in San Diego only for the Padres to be shut out in the last two games.
“I think everybody can get behind the fact that they are doing everything they can to win,’ Brasier says. “I mean, I wish it was more the normal.’
Really, how can you be angry, players and opposing managers say, when all the Dodgers are doing are trying to be the best team in baseball and playing within the rules.
“I ain’t mad at ‘em,’ Los Angeles Angels manager Ron Washington said. “I wish we could spend like that, we got to do it another way, but I’m not mad at them. We certainly can’t tell our owners how to spend their money. Hey man, they do what they got to do because they want to win. And they got the resources to do it.
“The Dodgers are the World Series champions. The championship still comes through LA, and they’re making it tough to come to LA to get it back. But they’re vulnerable. You just got to go whip their ass. They’re good. They’re real good. They don’t just talk about it. They go do it.
“That’s why I ain’t mad at nobody who wants to win.’
The Dodgers are more amused, than livid, at the haters.
They spent $450 million this past winter, after dropping more than $1 billion the previous winter, signed two-time Cy Young winner Blake Snell, two closers in Tanner Scott and Kirby Yates, international free agent infielder Hyeseong Kim, re-signed outfielder Teoscar Hernandez and signed outfielder Michael Conforto.
Yet it was their cheapest signing, the $6.5 million contract for 23-year-old Japanese sensation Rōki Sasaki, that sent teams over the edge and screaming into the night. Come on, did they really need another starter with three-time Cy Young winner Clayton Kershaw and Ohtani each scheduled to return to the rotation perhaps in May?
“We’ve signed a lot of free agents more than the past,’ Kasten says, “and that attracts attention. We spend a lot on the scouting and player development, that’s the main job for us, but obviously it’s the free agency that gets the attention. It’s an easy media narrative because of the big names, and media narratives are good.
“But this narrative didn’t come out until we signed Roki, and he was the cheapest one we signed.
“That’s weird to me.’
‘Something has to change’ or sour grapes?
The avalanche of indignation towards the Dodgers indeed began on Jan. 22 when Sasaki announced he was signing with the Dodgers. Baltimore Orioles owner David Rubenstein lashed out three days later at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that baseball needed a salary cap. Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner came out a week after Sasaki’s signing saying that it would be difficult for any team to keep up with the Dodgers’ spending. Colorado Rockies owner Dick Monfort went off two weeks ago saying the sport needs to be fixed with a salary cap and a floor, citing that nine teams have payrolls that aren’t one-third the size of the Dodgers’.
“The Dodgers are the greatest poster children we could’ve had,’ Monfort told the Denver Gazette, “for how something has to change. … The competitive imbalance in baseball has gotten to the point of lunacy now.’
The irony of all this disgust towards the Dodgers is that while they have won 11 division titles in the last 12 years, they have won only one World Series in a full season since 1988. Where was the anger towards Atlanta when they won 14 consecutive division titles and reached the World Series five times in a nine-year span? How about the Houston Astros’ seven consecutive American League championship series appearances with four pennants and two World Series championships?
“I don’t know, maybe it was just more about the baseball and not all of the noise around it,’ says Atlanta manager Brian Snitker, who is beginning his 49th year in the organization. “It wasn’t talked about and written as much because there wasn’t social media back then. There wasn’t as much exposure.
“Our payroll was really good back then; I just don’t know if it was crazy over-the-top stuff.’
Terry McGuirk, Atlanta’s team chairman, says no one complained because of its constant turnover. McGuirk recently researched their dynasty and discovered they averaged 10 to 12 new players a season. And only once, in the 1995 World Series, did Atlanta have the same payroll as the Yankees, the top spenders.
“It was just a different time, a different market,’ says Kasten, Atlanta’s president from 1987 to 2003, winning more games than any other team in baseball. “We were dead last in attendance and last in the division. When [owner] Ted (Turner) asked me to take over the Braves, I said, ‘You have to stop signing free agents. We need to invest everything in player development. It will take time, but we will be good for a long time.’
“Here in LA, we couldn’t say that. We couldn’t say, ‘Get back to us in five years.’ We were able to do both, scouting and player development, and sign free agents, putting the best team we could on the field.
“It’s a different time and circumstance than then.’
Atlanta actually went to the World Series twice before they even signed their first marquee free agent, Cy Young winner Greg Maddux, with a five-year, $28 million contract in December 1992.
The Dodgers, who went through a 25-year stretch where they failed to make the World Series, going through two ownership changes and a bankruptcy, didn’t have the patience for a complete rebuild.
They play in Los Angeles, the second-biggest market in the country, and were drawing as many as 3.7 million fans a year.
“We couldn’t wait for the kids to grow in LA,’ Kasten says. “We had loyal fans for 60 years. We couldn’t do that in LA. It was different in Atlanta when we were under 1 million in attendance. Here, because of our fan base and the support they gave us, it gave us the opportunity to not just build, but put a team on the field right away.’
No California love
It’s not as if the Dodgers relied strictly on free agency. Anyone could have had Betts when he was with the Boston Red Sox, but only the Dodgers traded for him in February 2020. Anyone could have had infielder/outfielder Tommy Edman with the St. Louis Cardinals, but only the Dodgers traded for him last summer. Anyone could have signed All-Star first baseman Freddie Freeman, but only the Dodgers stepped up to get him for $162 million in March 2022, after Atlanta walked away.
So why all of the animosity towards the Dodgers when Atlanta and the Yankees were only praised?
“I don’t know, it just seems different than when the Yankees were rolling there and the Braves were winning every year,’ Rockies manager Bud Black says. “They were similar with great, solid organizations, and really good pitching, but the Dodgers seem to encompass it all. The star is just incredible. I mean, it’s a real powerhouse.
“Maybe it’s just the way times are, but it wasn’t as glamorous as it is now. It’s not that the Dodgers have a bunch of showy players, but it’s like the Lakers were with Showtime and Magic. It’s just different.’’
Cubs manager Craig Counsell remembers Atlanta’s star power with Maddux, John Smoltz and Tom Glavine being acquired via free agency, trade and the draft, but he echoes Black’s sentiments.
“I think some of those guys were a little more understated,’’ Counsell says. “It’s because it’s Los Angeles, and (Shohei) Ohtani has a lot to do with this because of his worldwide appeal. Everybody’s fascinated with him, and rightfully so. The Braves’ guys were great players, but it just felt they were more understated in the way they did it.’’
Indeed, while Ohtani earns at least $10 million a month in Japanese endorsements, and he markets everything from shoes to airlines, the most famous endorsements for Atlanta’s stars were Maddux and Glavine’s “Chicks Love the Long Ball’ Nike ad and Fred McGriff’s $10,000 Tom Emanski baseball training video.
But while Atlanta was baseball’s model franchise, there was always the Yankees, keeping them from perhaps earning their rightful place in baseball lore.
“We had a dynasty in the NL,’ Kasten says, “but no one called us a dynasty because the Yankees were going through their stuff. Remember, too, until ’95 there were fewer playoffs. You had a better chance to win the World Series if you had a great regular season. It’s different now.
“So, let’s see what happens.’
And if the Dodgers go out and win the World Series for the next five years?
“Then,’ Kasten says, “you get to call us whatever you want.’’
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