By Spencer Tracy, Staff Writer

Eleven division titles in the last 12 years including five 100+ win seasons: There’s no doubt the Los Angeles Dodgers have been the best-run organization in baseball over the last 15 years. They’ve won two rings in the last five years and have been one of the most dominant teams in the sport each year over that span. Now here we stand, after another active offseason with the white and blue adding even more talent. The Dodgers have quickly become the culprit for ruining Major League Baseball. They are easy to point fingers at, but they’re the wrong team to blame.

Now let’s take a trip back to 2019. The Dodgers just won their seventh-straight division title, but continue to end their seasons in heartbreak following early playoff exits and a few World Series losses. Understandably, they had earned the narrative as “chokers” in the postseason. The handful of talent on their roster was known for shrinking when the lights were extra bright in October.

With nothing to show for all their regular season success, it was clear they were missing something. In 2020, they traded for Red Sox outfielder Mookie Betts, who is widely considered as one of the better hitters in the game. After accomplishing a championship during COVID-19, the Dodgers still weren’t respected. The following season, they added eight-time All-Star Freddie Freeman, who may go down as one of the greatest first basemen in all of baseball.

Fast forward to 2024. They signed Japanese superstar Shohei Ohtani to a record-breaking 10-year $700 million contract. This started to really grind the gears of fans of the other 29 teams. They traded for Tampa Bay Rays pitcher Tyler Glasnow and signed Japanese superstars Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki. Now fans are irate.

Let’s be clear on something. I was born and raised in the Bay Area, making me a die-hard San Francisco Giants fan. I hate the Dodgers as much as everyone, but it is blasphemy to blame them for “ruining” baseball. 

An important rule to note is baseball has no salary cap, which would limit how much teams can spend on players. Instead, they have a Competitive Balance Tax (CBT), meaning it’s legal to spend over the CBT set limit, but the more you spend over that limit the more you are taxed. 

This leads me to the most common argument against the Dodgers: “Baseball needs a salary cap because it’s unfair the Dodgers can afford to spend money since they are a big market team.”

With no salary cap, the owners control how much their team can spend, and spoiler alert: Each owner is practically a billionaire. For example, Rays owner Stuart Sternberg, has a net worth almost 17 times the total payroll of the team. Athletics owner John Fisher has a net worth of $3.1 billion. Since 2020, the Athletics have had one season with a total player payroll of more than $62 million. The Rays have never had a payroll north of $98 million in their franchise history, yet last year’s average was $166 million. This tells us that owners can afford to expand their team’s payroll, but instead decide to increase their profit through merchandising, tickets sales and others while minimizing player spending. 

The other commonly used argument I hear is that “the Dodgers only sign all of these great players because they are located in beautiful California.” This is a pathetic excuse. If that’s the case, why don’t the Los Angeles Angels steal all the superstars off the market? Shohei Ohtani literally left the Angels for their neighbors! Players want to go where they develop talent, have a top-tier minor league system providing a healthy future and past winning success.

Finally, let’s debunk this “deferred money is unfair” narrative, and as Sully Sullenberger would say “can we get serious now?” MLB is not the WWE, so if the Dodgers can legally do it, so can the rest of the league. As a matter of fact, the Toronto Blue Jays just signed All-Star outfielder Anthony Santander which included, you guessed it, deferred money. 

Blaming the game is an easy option, but we as baseball fans have to understand this isn’t a big market problem. This is a small market problem. The fingers should be pointed right in the face of the billionaire owners who care more about adding zeros to their net worth than anything else.