Welcome to Snyder's Soapbox! Here, I pontificate about matters related to Major League Baseball on a weekly basis. Some of the topics will be pressing matters, some might seem insignificant in the grand scheme of things, and most will be somewhere in between. The good thing about this website is that it's free, and you are allowed to click away. If you stay, you'll get smarter, though. That's a money-back guarantee. Let's get to it.
The Dodgers signed free-agent starting pitcher Blake Snell last week to a five-year, $182 million deal and it caused a bunch of people to lose their minds on social media. Look, it's generally a cesspool out there and fans of teams that didn't just win the World Series and sign a two-time Cy Young winner are going to be overly dramatic, but this was so over the top it was downright embarrassing.
I kept seeing comments, again and again, about how the Dodgers were ruining the sport. Baseball has become a "joke" because the Dodgers "sign all the good players" or something. My lord, people. Get a grip.
Not that I'm surprised. The Dodgers just signed Shohei Ohtani to a $700 million contract last offseason and made a few other high-profile moves before winning the World Series. They also won it all in 2020 and make the playoffs every single season. People are tired of them. For fans of the 29 other teams, spending every winter expecting the Dodgers to keep stacking titles is at best boring. That's premature and I'll get to that, but in running down the reasons to settle down, I'll start with the signing itself.
The Snell signing
Snell's upside is incredible and that's why the Dodgers -- the most well-run organization in baseball -- signed him to a five-year contract.
He is not, however, a sure thing.
Snell does have the two Cy Youngs, but he's never even received a single vote in other years and his only All-Star Game was 2018. He topped 6.0 WAR in those Cy Young seasons, but the third-highest single-season WAR in his career was 2.2. He had a 4.20 ERA in 2021. He was terrible to start last season. He hit 180 innings in his two Cy Young seasons, but otherwise has never gotten higher than 129 ⅓.
Not only that, but is everyone forgetting that he sat on the market all offseason unsigned? He didn't sign with the Giants until March 19.
Did every fan complaining right now about the Dodgers signing him freak out because their favorite team didn't sign Snell to a five-year deal last offseason? You know, when he was coming off a Cy Young? Where were you all?
Premature reactions
Sure, Snell is off the board, but Juan Soto, Corbin Burnes, Max Fried and a host of other needle-moving players are still on the market. Why was there such outcry over Snell signing with the Dodgers when these other players exist and haven't signed with the Dodgers? If they do, OK, I'll probably start to take your side a little bit.
But right now? In early December? Go look at our free agent tracker. Only three of the top 50 free agents have signed. Snell is the only one in the top 19.
Sure, let's talk about rewriting the baseball rules because one big free agent signed with the defending World Series champions.
MLB has excellent parity
Major League Baseball has now had 24 straight champions since the last time a team repeated. Sixteen of the 30 teams have won the World Series in the 2000s. Only six of them have won multiple titles and of those, only the Red Sox (four) and Giants (three) have done so more than twice.
The NBA has seen a team win six titles (Lakers) since 2000 and three others have won at least three in that time period. The NHL has had six teams (Devils, Red Wings, Penguins, Lightning, Blackhawks and Kings) win multiple titles and account for 15 of the last 24. The Chiefs have won three of the last five Super Bowls and currently sport the best record in the league. The Patriots have six titles this century. If any of this stuff happened in MLB, it would be used as proof that the league desperately needs a salary cap.
There have been, again 16 distinct MLB champs in the 2000s. The NBA has 11, the NFL 13 and the NHL 13.
Every single MLB team has made the playoffs at least once in the last decade. Neither the NFL or NHL can stake such a claim and MLB's playoff field is the smallest of the bunch.
Just this last season, we saw the Royals go from 106 losses to the ALDS. We saw the Tigers with a low payroll (among players on the field, at least) go from 53-60 to within a win of the ALCS. The small-market Orioles lost 110 games in 2021 and won 101 in 2023 while now having made the playoffs two straight years.
We could keep going and going here. The simple truth is MLB has just as much parity as any other league and, in many ways, it has more.
When we see a massive turnaround in the NFL, it's used as proof of the league's parity. When the above happens in MLB, I guess these same people just choose to ignore it.
In the other leagues, there are still poorly run organizations, but for some reason (I'll submit: jealousy of the athletes), it's only, apparently, bad for the sport when it involves the players making a lot of money.
While we're talking about money ...
Dodgers spend 2nd highest percentage of revenue in MLB
First off, the Dodgers didn't even have the highest payroll last season. They were third. If this was getting to the point of needing to change the rules due to one team outspending everyone else, that team would have to be pacing the league by a huge margin and for an extended period of time. You don't change the payroll rules because the team ranking third won the World Series. That's absurd.
Secondly, the problem isn't the Dodgers' owners. It's everyone else's owners. Or most of the rest.
Over on The Score, Travis Sawchik created what he calls "The Scrooge Index," an illustration of how cheap some of the owners are. Specifically, it measures the percentage of team revenue spent on player payroll. The Mets topped the list last season at 102% (all hail Steve Cohen's view of how owning a baseball team should be). The Dodgers were second at 67%.
The Dodgers just won the World Series, so they'll have an influx of revenue. Instead of sitting back and pocketing all of the profits, they are continuing to spend money in an attempt to start stacking titles. As well they should.
Focus on the cheap teams
I promise, it is not required for you to cape for billionaires who are pocketing a bunch of the money earned from your ticket purchases and MLB.TV subscriptions in hopes of watching a winning product on the field. In some cases, it almost goes to the level of reverse welfare between the money they are taking from you and other teams (revenue sharing) and in ballpark subsidies.
We often hear about how it's not fair in Major League Baseball for smaller-market teams. And, yeah, they definitely don't have as much revenue as teams like the Dodgers, Mets, Yankees and Cubs (I'll get to you in a second, Mr. Ricketts). It would be foolish to suggest the Rays could spend with the Dodgers (although Stuart Sternberg certainly could open up the purse strings more if he so choose).
The way the sport and payroll structure work, however, spending more doesn't necessarily mean winning. There are plenty of ways to have success while not being the highest-spending team.
Also, many of the teams receiving revenue sharing from the larger teams should spend more.
Look back at the Scrooge Index. The Rays sat 30th in baseball last year in spending an embarrassing 32% of their revenue on player payroll. The A's were 34% and the Tigers were 36%. The Reds were at 39%.
Look at some of those teams that like to cry poor while the owners just laugh all the way to the bank, won't you?
It isn't just them, though.
The Red Sox sat at 40%. At least they are appearing to try this offseason, as they are reportedly heavily in on Juan Soto. The same can't be said for Tom Ricketts' Cubs. They check in at 43% and made a point to tell everyone at the start of the offseason they weren't even going to bother to speak with Soto.
The NL Central division is right there for the taking (again) and the Cubs are more worried about counting dollars than trying to win another World Series. They could be the monster of the NL Central the way the Dodgers have owned the NL West and Astros have owned the AL West. Instead, it's back-to-back 83-win seasons and more talk about staying the course.
The point? More teams should behave like the Dodgers, not fewer. The problem isn't the Dodgers. It's most of the rest of the league.
Now, if the Dodgers sign Soto and Burnes, maybe we can have another conversation. Until then, settle down. It's a long offseason, MLB has a ton of parity and we should be shaming the cheap teams instead of denigrating the one trying hard to win.
