The extent to which Shohei Ohtani has transformed the Dodgers was revealed in more detail Tuesday.
By agreeing to a five-year, $182 million contract with two-time Cy Young Award winner Blake Snell, the Dodgers made their intentions known to the baseball world.
They are building the sport’s next dynasty.
The financial considerations that previously kept the Dodgers from going all-in on an annual basis suddenly feel like they have their backs, and the defending World Series champions now have a legitimate front-line starter in Snell to complement a historic dangerous line-up with Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman.
Read more: Dodgers agree to sign two-time Cy Young Award winner Blake Snell
Stacked rosters don’t guarantee championships, but they certainly increase the odds of winning them, and not since the New York Yankees of the late 1990s and early 2000s has a franchise been so well positioned to win title after title after title.
Ohtani was the main driver of change.
In addition to his unprecedented on-field achievements, Ohtani has given the Dodgers a level of financial flexibility that the already wealthy franchise had never experienced before.
When Ohtani signed, he asked the team to defer $680 million of the $700 million he would be owed over the ten years of his contract.
“That was what Shohei did to help us make sure we put the best team on the field around him,” team owner Mark Walter said last month.
Nearly a year after Yoshinobu Yamamoto received a $50 million signing bonus, Snell will be paid $52 million upfront as long as the southpaw completes a physical to finalize his contract.
Read more: Top 30 free agents in the MLB: Blake Snell joins Dodgers. Are Juan Soto and Rōki Sasaki next?
Between the postponement of Ohtani’s contract and the revenue generated by baseball’s only two-way player, the Dodgers have plenty of cash on hand.
Last offseason, the money saved on Ohtani was used to sign right-hander Tyler Glasnow to a $136.5 million extension after he was acquired from the Tampa Bay Rays. The Dodgers also signed fellow right-hander Yamamoto to a $325 million deal and picked up outfielder Teoscar Hernández for $23.5 million.
Dodgers co-owner Todd Boehly said of Ohtani last month: “He wants to be the greatest baseball player in the history of the world. How do you do that? You win the World Series. And how do you win the World Series? You help figure out how we can make the club so much better. He made the club so much better when he made that decision.”
This winter, the Dodgers could have bet the coming season on Ohtani’s return to the mound and the possible (but not guaranteed) addition of 23-year-old Japanese fireballer Roki Sasaki, but instead they agreed to sign Snell for the third most lucrative place. deal ever awarded to a left-handed pitcher.
The Dodgers could have signed Snell to a similar deal last year when he was a free agent, then settled for a more cost-effective option in Glasnow. Their more assertive approach with Snell this time indicates an overall shift in the team’s mentality.
Read more: Dodgers avoid arbitration with Dustin May and Tony Gonsolin, non-tendering Brent Honeywell
Considering how many $300 million teams they’ve fielded, the Dodgers have been extremely disciplined spenders. The terms of Betts, Freeman and Trevor Bauer’s deals were favorable for the team. In notable trades for players like Max Scherzer, Trea Turner, Manny Machado and Yu Darvish, the Dodgers benefited from salary dumps.
The strategy kept the Dodgers from making crippling mistakes, but also left them at the mercy of market conditions. When crooked deals weren’t happening, they often did little to improve their teams. How many championships were lost because of this?
Instead of letting the market dictate what they can and cannot do, the Dodgers are now dictating the market. At this point, who’s to say they won’t sign Juan Soto?
President of baseball operations Andrew Friedman has called the team’s thirteen seasons under Guggenheim Baseball Management the “golden era of Dodgers baseball,” but that golden era may be just beginning.
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This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
