The signing of Freddie Freeman in 2022 marked a turning point for the Los Angeles Dodgers as aggressive free agency spenders. The six-year, $162 million contract awarded to Freeman was the largest free agent contract in team history at the time.
That has escalated over the past three offseason cycles, with the Dodgers handing out massive contracts to Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Blake Snell, Kyle Tucker, Edwin Díaz, and Tanner Scott.
The increase in spending began as a commitment made to Ohtani during his contract negotiations. He agreed to defer all but $2 million of his annual salary with the understanding that the Dodgers would use the savings to continue adding elite talent around him.
But instead of slowing down after winning back-to-back titles, the expenses have continued to surge. None more so than Tucker’s record-breaking four-year, $240 million contract.
This heightened aggressiveness was not something the Dodgers had previously planned, according to Jack Harris of the California Post:
“The moment that we signed Shohei, it was important to back that up and continue to show our commitment to winning and reinvesting in the team,” Friedman said in a recent interview with The California Post. “How that has played out, in conjunction with having Shohei, I think has increased (our willingness to spend) and made it an even more aggressive plan than we initially thought. But again, we didn’t sit down and say, ‘OK, now it can be X instead of Y.’ It was more like, let’s be more aggressive. And as we’ve done that, aggressiveness has beget more aggressiveness.”
While the Dodgers chose to capitalize on the unique situation they created, the organization also recognizes that the current level of spending won’t be sustainable beyond their current window.
The fact that both Tucker and Díaz were signed to short-term deals instead of offering the lengthy contracts they were projected to receive reflects this awareness that the Dodgers are eventually going to have to cut back.
Things will eventually go back to the way they were before, with L.A.’s free agent spending hovering around the upper echelon for big-market teams, rather than blowing every other team’s payrolls out of the water.
MLB expands gambling partnerships
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