I’m not sure how the Dodgers or their fans celebrated the 2025 World Series or their recent offseason spending spree with a straight face.
Cheer for the players, sure. They’re a fairly likeable bunch, especially if you believe we were told the whole story about Shohei Ohtani and his interpreter’s massive illegal gambling debt.
But cheering for a championship within such an obviously rigged MLB system? Gleefully envisioning the new addition to the Dodgers’ fantasy baseball starting lineup now that Los Angeles has dropped a few hundred million dollars more into the bucket?
I mean, I couldn’t do it in good conscience. Maybe you can.
Anyway, if you weren’t fed up with the absurdity of MLB’s financial system until this week, you need to be now.
As I said on the Jan. 16 Daily Delivery podcast: When MLB’s collective bargaining agreement expires at the end of the 2026 season, the entire sport needs to disappear down a dark hole and not dare come back up for air until it has a salary cap and a better revenue model that allows every team a reasonable chance to compete for a championship.
I’ll get into the key numbers of the latest affront to competitive balance, and how it illustrates just how broken MLB is, at the start of today’s 10 things to know:
- Kyle Tucker, widely regarded as the best position player free agent in a fairly weak class, has reportedly agreed on a four-year, $240 million deal with the Dodgers. Tucker is a very good player, but he’s never finished higher than fifth in MVP voting and hit .266 with an .841 OPS and 22 homers last year for the Cubs. He has limited range in the outfield and has missed significant time each of the past two seasons because of injury. But yes, by all means, give that man $60 million a year because you can.
- But it’s not just $60 million a year (with opt-outs after two or three seasons, and an average annual value of $57.1 million because of some deferred money). Because of all the other money the Dodgers are spending, they are in the highest luxury tax threshold in MLB. That’s supposed to deter spending, but it does not stop the Dodgers. So on top of his salary, they must pay 110% times his salary in additional tax. That means Tucker will cost the Dodgers $57.1 million plus $62.8 million more. That’s a total of $119.9 million in 2026.
- So the Dodgers’ total outlay in 2026 for a guy who will probably give them a season equivalent to the best Max Kepler ever gave the Twins is almost certainly going to be more than the entire Twins’ 2026 payroll.
- The Twins’ biggest signing since 2023 came this offseason when they gave Josh Bell $7 million. Just this week they made another move, dispatching fringe major leaguer Mickey Gasper for another fringe major leaguer, Vidal Brujan.
- You can say “cheap Pohlads this and that,” and we can argue about whether they should be spending a little more. As it stands now, the Dodgers will spend about four times as much as the Twins this season. There is no universe in which the Twins can compete spending-wise or otherwise with the Dodgers. They would go out of business if they spent like the Dodgers. The Dodgers make a ton of money on local TV and other ventures, which they don’t have to share. The Twins make a few bucks by comparison. A system is broken when half of the teams in a league (at least) go into season without a reasonable expectation of competing because of financial imbalance. The NHL, NBA and NFL do not operate this way. MLB needs to get its act together.
- One final kicker before I move on. If the alleged luxury tax deterrent that the Dodgers blew through in signing Tucker (oh, and the best reliever on the market, Edwin Diaz, as well) wasn’t enough to convince you that they don’t care about the rules in place to stop this sort of nonsense, then read the end of ESPN’s story: “Diaz and Tucker both signed deals after rejecting qualifying offers, which means the Dodgers will forfeit their second, third, fifth and sixth highest picks in this summer’s draft. They’ll also pay both of them more than double in taxes. And in the end, it doesn’t matter. To the Dodgers, only winning does.” Will another hollow and meaningless World Series title follow this spending? Just get the season over with so they can fix this mess.
- Speaking of messes, the Vikings have a big one at quarterback. How they clean it up, and whether their plans will include J.J. McCarthy in 2026, was the subject of a segment with Chip Scoggins on Friday’s podcast.
- Speaking of Vikings quarterbacks (at least past, maybe future?), Kirk Cousins will be a guest analyst for CBS this weekend.
- Chip and I also talked about the Gophers men’s basketball program and positive steps under Niko Medved.
- Anthony Edwards is out again Friday, Jan. 16 when the Wolves face Houston. I’ll be interested to see if he plays Saturday in the second night of a back -to-back against San Antonio.
