Dodgers golden era could end sooner rather later

Enjoy this while it lasts.

Because when a salary cap or some other mechanism to limit spending is implemented – and it will be implemented – the golden era of Dodgers baseball will be over.

This isn’t to say the Dodgers won’t remain one of baseball’s smartest franchises. They will. This isn’t to say they won’t still be considered a destination team for free agents. They will.

Thinking that a bright front office and winning culture will allow the Dodgers to maintain their current level of dominance, however, fails to appreciate how special the current roster is and the role money played in building it.

How good are these Dodgers?

They won a second consecutive World Series last year, and their players later acknowledged they didn’t even play well. Think about this: How much better does a team have to be than its competition to play so-so and come out on top in a sport in which the best team usually doesn’t win the championship?

In Major League Baseball right now, there are the Dodgers and there is everyone else. 

That doesn’t mean I believe the owners want to impose a salary cap because of concerns about competitive balance. Many of these same owners have never seemed to care enough about winning to place a competitive product on the field, and that was the case even before Shohei Ohtani signed with the Dodgers and handed them a blank check to build their current super team.

Whether the owners are making good-faith arguments doesn’t really matter. They want to control the cost of labor, and they will. The current collective bargaining agreement will expire Dec. 1, and the players will almost certainly be locked out. In the negotiations for a new deal, time will be on the owners’ side. Both the players and owners will be hurt if games are lost in 2027, but the owners are better positioned to withstand the damage. They have more money.

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Why the owners want to do this is another subject to be explored on another day. The point is that when the Dodgers return from the anticipated lockout, they will return to a new reality, whether it’s with a salary cap or more severe luxury-tax penalties. The regulations designed to break up their team might not take effect immediately – there’s an assumption in the industry that teams will be granted a grace period of a couple of seasons to become compliant – but those rules will eventually be in place.

Dodgers management has downplayed the possible effects of spending restrictions by pointing to the numerous advantages they have. 

“We have an organization that whatever rules or regulations, constructs are put in front of us, we’re going to dominate,” manager Dave Roberts said.

Roberts was right – up to a point. The Dodgers have a well-stocked farm system that regularly produces plenty of serviceable major leaguers. They have a robust analytics department. They have a capable front-office leader in Andrew Friedman. They have a clubhouse peacekeeper in Roberts. The restrictions on spending won’t apply everywhere, and if the Dodgers continue outspending their rivals in those areas, they could remain the sport’s leading franchise.

But prevent them from spending $400 million annually on players and they will go from being a historically dominant team to just an extremely well-run team. A club that should win the World Series every season will become a club that could win the World Series every season. That’s a significant difference. 

This isn’t football. Ohtani can’t be involved in every offensive play, as, say, Patrick Mahomes was for the Chiefs when they won Super Bowls. There’s a reason baseball didn’t have any back-to-back champions in the 25 years between the Yankees and Dodgers. Safeguarding against the dumb luck that presents itself in the sport, particularly with an expanded postseason field, requires a team to be much, much, much better than everyone else. Building in that kind of margin is close to impossible without an enormous advantage in financial resources.

The Dodgers will always have their stars, and when Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman slow down or retire, they will still be able to replace them. But the players a level below will be affected. Bringing in high-level supporting actors such as Teoscar Hernandez and Tommy Edman will become more difficult. And when the Dodgers make mistakes, they won’t be able to just throw money at the problem, as they did this winter when they signed Edwin Diaz to make up for the Tanner Scott gaffe.

More of their roster will have to be homegrown. If the Dodgers were already living in that world last year, Alex Freeland might have been starting for them in the World Series instead of Edman. They would have lost a little here, a little there, and suddenly, the gap between the Dodgers and every other team wouldn’t have been as large as it was.

Whatever happens, the Dodgers should remain the best team in baseball. But they won’t be what they are now, which is one of the most powerful teams in history, if not the most powerful. The clock is ticking on this version of the Dodgers. Enjoy this while it lasts.