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First, yes. Yes, is the answer to your question. You’re asking if the Los Angeles Dodgers are swimming in cash, and the answer is yes times infinity, no take-backs.
The Dodgers have a massive broadcast market, national appeal, a highly capitalized ownership group, an aggressive front office, a searingly good player development system, and a corner on the Japanese hunger for Major League Baseball that is conservatively going to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars to the franchise in the short few years to come.
So — yeah. Pretty well funded. And that bothers some people, especially when the Dodgers hoover up available talent at a rate that appears to do nothing but help the rich get richer.
As we sit here today, L.A. has a luxury-taxable payroll for the coming season of roughly $375 million. (MLB calls it a competitive balance tax now, but it means the same: the Dodgers will be paying a pile of money into a revenue-sharing pool.) The next-closest franchise in terms of payroll is Philadelphia — at $300 million. By the time you get to Toronto at No. 5, the Dodgers are outspending the Blue Jays by more than $130 mil. And those teams are at the top of the money pyramid.
But the Dodgers aren’t the problem. They’re not the competitive problem in baseball.