Bring on the Dodgers, a superteam that’s good for baseball
The defending champs, with their 8-0 record and projected $400 million luxury tax payroll, are in town to play the Phillies. In early spring, it could be a preview of the fall.
The ball touched down on a screen beyond the center-field wall, 399 feet from home plate, and the best player in baseball — probably the best ever — raised his right arm in triumph.
It was Sho-Time. Again.
And with that, here come the Dodgers. Off to an 8-0 start after Shohei Ohtani’s Wednesday night walk-off in Los Angeles and led not only by their incomparable two-way star but also Mookie Betts and Will Smith and Blake Snell and Yoshinobu Yamamoto and on and on, they charged into town for three games beginning Friday night against the Phillies, no slouches at 5-1.
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Hold on to your torpedo bats.
Because the Dodgers aren’t merely World Series champions — or even just the first defending champ ever to win its first eight games. They’re a Goliath, a certified superpower (on two continents, no less) in a sport that has been bereft of a dynasty for a quarter-century.
And they only keep getting better.
Never mind that they brought back all but one of their top 11 position players from last season based on FanGraphs’ wins above replacement. Or that they expect Ohtani — maybe Clayton Kershaw, too — to pitch again later this season. The Dodgers signed a two-time Cy Young Award winner (Snell), the best pitcher in Japan (Roki Sasaki), a former 30-homer outfielder (Michael Conforto), and two closers who were All-Stars last year (Tanner Scott and Kirby Yates).
The Dodgers’ projected luxury-tax payroll stands at nearly $400 million, roughly $70 million more than the No. 2 Mets and $90 million ahead of the No. 3 Phillies. And that’s only present-day value. Many of the Dodgers’ deals, including Ohtani’s, feature huge salary deferrals.
“It’s difficult for most of us owners to be able to do the kind of things that they’re doing,” Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner told the YES Network before spring training. “We’ll see if it pays off.”
Indeed, the Dodgers’ spending has prompted some owners to call for a salary cap in the next round of collective bargaining, always a nonstarter with the players’ union and an idea that surely would threaten a lengthy work stoppage after the 2026 season.
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Right now, though, the Dodgers’ relentlessness is raising another question: Is a superteam actually good for the sport?
“For me, it’s just wanting to win and doing everything they possibly can to try to win each and every year,” Phillies shortstop Trea Turner said. “I feel like they’ve done that for 12-13 years. Not every organization or city can do it. [The Dodgers] have the best of a lot of different things. They have funds and whatnot. But they obviously spend the money. What sticks out for me is just trying to win.”
Not every team can make that claim. The Pirates, for example, have 22-year-old ace Paul Skenes in their rotation and a projected luxury tax payroll of only $112.3 million.
And Turner’s perspective is valuable here. Three years ago, he belonged to the Dodgers’ galaxy of stars. Acquired with Max Scherzer in a trade-deadline blockbuster in 2021, he batted near the top of the order, alongside Betts and Freddie Freeman, and helped set a franchise record with 111 wins in 2022.
Even then, two years before Ohtani joined the party, the Dodgers had the air of a superteam.
“It just felt like a different situation when you had Cody Bellinger hitting eighth and [Max] Muncy and all those guys,” Turner said. “Even my first year, you had [Corey] Seager and name after name after name. It’s like, ‘If it’s not me, it’s going to be the next guy. If it’s not him, it’s the next guy.’ It’s a good feeling.
“I mean, it almost felt — not too easy, but you knew you were going to have a good shot at the postseason. You’re basically a lock. We had competitors, so it wasn’t like we were going through the motions per se. It just felt like you were [just] playing. Everything seemed to go right over there for the most part. There was very few bad stretches."
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Until October. In 2021, the Dodgers bowed to the eventual champion Braves in the NL Championship Series. A year later, an all-time regular season only got them as far as the divisional round, where they were upset by the wild-card Padres.
And that’s the reality in baseball. Over 162 games, talent and depth almost always win out. The Dodgers are industry leaders in both categories. But best-of-five or best-of-seven playoff series are more, let’s say, random.
It explains how the Dodgers won 11 of the last 12 NL West titles but only two World Series. And it’s why, even amid their perfect start, the projection systems at FanGraphs and Baseball Prospectus give them only a 22.7% chance to win the World Series.
“In 2015, the Nationals, I thought we were going to be one of the best teams in baseball, especially when we signed [Scherzer], and it didn’t go as well as we thought,” Bryce Harper said. “I’m not saying that’s going to happen to the Dodgers. But you’ve still got to play the game.
“The Dodgers have done a great job building a team. They’ve got depth in all the places they need to have depth. They’re the Los Angeles Dodgers. You expect them to go out and do those things, just like the Yankees did in the ‘90s and 2000s. It’s just what kind of team they are. They’ve got guys that defer money and do things the right way. It’s a great team over there.
“But there’s some really good teams in baseball. There’s a lot of sneaky teams as well that nobody talks about.”
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No team gets talked about as much as the Dodgers. And that’s good for baseball, too. Love them or loathe them, superteams never fail to provoke reactions.
Make way, then, for Ohtani, Betts & Co. for their weekend visit. In early spring, it could be a preview of the fall.
“It’ll be nice to match up,” Turner said. “Any time you can go up against the best, it’s fun.”