All through the week there have been rumblings throughout baseball that Kyle Tucker was nearing a call. The highest free agent outfielder in the marketplace was projected to land an enormous deal, and all indicators pointed to the Toronto Blue Jays and New York Mets as the favourite to land the four-time All-Star.
Then on Thursday night time, the information got here like a bolt from the blue.
The Dodgers had achieved it once more.
The 2-time defending World Collection champions shocked the baseball world, signing Tucker to a reported four-year, $240 million deal that features $30 million of deferred cash and choose outs after the second and third seasons. Tucker now joins a stacked lineup that already included Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman, Will Smith and Teoscar Hernandez, guaranteeing the Dodgers will stay heavy favorites to assert their third straight championship this coming fall.
The information was met by precisely the response you’d anticipate.
How can the Dodgers hold doing this? How is anybody else alleged to compete? You had requires a wage cap, cries for extra parity and caterwauling about how the Dodgers’ spending will inevitably spark a piece stoppage that wipes out the entire 2027 season.
Primarily the outcry might be boiled down to 1 easy concept: the Dodgers are dangerous for baseball.
Nonsense.
The Dodgers are nice for baseball, and their overwhelming dominance has helped convey renewed consideration to a sport that has typically struggled to keep up its cultural relevancy over the previous twenty years. Everybody loves an excellent David vs. Goliath story, and if the monstrous scores from the previous two World Collection are any indication, even those that declare to be turned off by the Dodgers can’t look away.
Moreover, individuals stated the identical factor concerning the Patriots all through the Tom Brady-Invoice Belichick period. Final time I checked, the NFL is doing simply effective.
Clearly MLB has a special financial system than most different main American sports activities, however what the Dodgers are doing is hardly something new.
From the start baseball has been a sport of haves and have-nots, and for practically a century the New York Yankees stood as the game’s unquestioned Large Dangerous. I’m sufficiently old to recollect the times the place the Yankees’ payroll yearly dwarfed everybody else within the league, and if there was a participant George Steinbrenner wished, he was going to signal him, irrespective of the associated fee.
The Dodgers have merely assumed that mantle, however their success isn’t solely rooted in {dollars} and cents.
Moreover having unmatched monetary assets, the Dodgers are additionally an exceptionally well-run group. Even when MLB have been to implement a wage cap, Los Angeles would in all probability nonetheless be a perennial World Collection contender as a result of they do such a terrific job figuring out expertise and placing its gamers in the very best place to succeed.
How typically have we seen a high-profile, big-money signing blow up within the Dodgers’ face? There have been a couple of missteps, however Los Angeles’s huge bets normally repay. And by the way in which, their smaller bets do too, which is how the Dodgers might prime a latest MLB.com poll for finest farm techniques regardless of not having a single draft choose greater than No. 20 since 2013.
That relentless competence clearly drives individuals loopy, however the different half that bothers opposing followers is the understanding that their golf equipment might do extra.
The Dodgers aren’t the one group in MLB with deep pockets. The Mets are owned by one of many world’s richest males, and big-market golf equipment just like the Yankees and Crimson Sox are nonetheless enormously rich. These and others of their stratosphere are completely able to successful a bidding warfare for prime gamers, however typically aren’t keen to go the additional mile to get their man.
Smaller market golf equipment are clearly in a harder spot, however even when these groups can’t realistically compete with the Dodgers financially, many are able to spending extra to discipline a aggressive roster however are run by cheapskate homeowners who merely select to not.
The payrolls carried by golf equipment just like the Marlins, Pirates and Athletics lately is nothing in need of embarrassing, and their skinflint habits is made extra abhorrent by the truth that a portion of the luxurious taxes collected from golf equipment just like the Dodgers goes to small market golf equipment particularly to put money into their rosters. The entire level of the aggressive steadiness tax system is these funds are supposed to assist shut the hole between massive and small market groups, however that doesn’t work when the small market homeowners flip round and pocket the cash for themselves.
These homeowners — who enrich themselves on the expense of their groups, their cities and the game as a complete — are those who’re truly dangerous for baseball.
However right here’s the excellent news. Even with all of their benefits, the Dodgers aren’t inevitable.
The Dodgers have gained the final two World Collection, sure, however this previous October the Blue Jays got here inside literal inches of dethroning the defending champs. Going additional again, the Dodgers have gained 12 of the final 13 NL West titles, however earlier than these previous two titles they solely had one World Collection banner to point out for it.
That’s as a result of in contrast to in basketball the place one or two nice gamers can carry you to a title, baseball is inherently random. However the sport rewards savvy groups that make good selections and develop gamers properly, which is why groups just like the Rays can maintain their very own year-in and year-out, and why huge cash groups like final season’s Mets generally crash and burn.
So sure, the wealthy bought richer this offseason and the Dodgers are going to win loads of video games in 2026. However alongside the way in which they’ll make headlines in each metropolis they go to, and when somebody ultimately dethrones them it can resonate all that rather more.
That may solely be good for baseball.
Manny formally eradicated
We’ve recognized for a very long time that Manny Ramirez would by no means be elected to the Baseball Corridor of Fame by the BBWAA voters, however now it’s official.
Ramirez’s time has run out.
Based on public ballots compiled by Ryan Thibodaux and his tracker group, Ramirez has been mathematically eradicated from reaching the 75% threshold wanted to earn induction in his tenth and last 12 months of eligibility. As of this writing, Ramirez is polling at 40% with roughly half of the whole vote recognized, and in response to Thibodaux’s estimates there aren’t sufficient excellent ballots to make up floor even when he appeared on each single one.
Ramirez’s candidacy will now be handed off to a future Period Committee, and contemplating how suspected performance-enhancing drug customers like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens have fared, the previous Crimson Sox nice will seemingly by no means earn a spot in Cooperstown.
It’s an unlucky consequence for one of many sport’s most memorable figures.
Regarded throughout his profession as one of many biggest right-handed hitters of all-time, Ramirez was a 12-time All-Star, a nine-time Silver Slugger winner and performed a pivotal position in main the Crimson Sox to 2 World Collection championships. For his profession, he batted .312 with 555 residence runs, 1,831 RBI and a .996 OPS, and from 1998-2005 he strung collectively eight consecutive seasons by which he completed top-10 within the AL MVP vote.
These numbers would have made Ramirez a house run, little question first-ballot inductee below regular circumstances, however issues have been by no means that straightforward.
All through his profession the phrase “Manny Being Manny” entered the general public lexicon because of the slugger’s quirky and at occasions mercurial perspective. His habits at occasions veered into problematic territory, and late in his profession Ramirez was twice suspended for violating MLB’s drug coverage.
Whereas some voters have been keen to forgive gamers whose performance-enhancing drug use predated MLB’s drug coverage, gamers who examined optimistic after the actual fact have usually discovered a a lot much less receptive citizens. Such it was for Ramirez, who by no means polled above 35% in his first 9 tries and gained’t fare a lot better in his final try.
The official Corridor of Fame voting outcomes will probably be unveiled on Tuesday at 6 p.m. ET.
Anthony cracks Prime 50
Roman Anthony solely has 71 huge league video games below his belt, however the promising Crimson Sox outfielder is already incomes widespread acclaim from throughout the game.
MLB Community unveiled No. 41-50 on its 2026 Prime 100 Gamers Proper Now rankings this week, and Anthony clocked in at No. 41 total. Anthony completed simply forward of Minnesota’s Byron Buxton (No. 42), free agent Cody Bellinger (No. 43) and Seattle’s Bryan Woo (No. 44), and notably additionally forward of former Crimson Sox slugger Rafael Devers (No. 46).
Anthony is the fourth Crimson Sox participant to seem on the record up to now, following Jarren Duran (No. 58), newcomer Ranger Suarez (No. 79) and Aroldis Chapman (No. 84). Garrett Crochet will nearly actually be included inside the prime 40, which will probably be unveiled in three elements between Jan. 19-22.
