The Los Angeles Dodgers took an aggressive approach in free agency for the second consecutive offseason as they added Blake Snell, Tanner Scott, Michael Conforto, Kirby Yates and Roki Sasaki to a roster that won the 2024 World Series.
That came one year after the team committed more than $1 billion to bring in Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Tyler Glasnow and Teoscar Hernández.
Fans of other teams have become frustrated with the Dodgers’ willingness to spend and believe it is ruining baseball. Other team owners have publicly said that it is difficult to compete with L.A. for free agents.
Colorado Rockies owner Dick Monfort became the latest to call for the implementation of an MLB salary cap, via Mark Kiszla of the Denver Gazette:
“Something’s got to happen. The competitive imbalance in baseball has gotten to the point of ludicrosity now. It’s an unregulated industry,” Monfort told The Denver Gazette.
“The only way to fix baseball is to do a salary cap and a floor. With a cap, comes a floor. For a lot of teams, the question is: How do they get to the floor? And that includes us, probably. But on some sort of revenue-split deal, I would be all-in.”
Monfort further criticized the Dodgers and believes they are the reason why MLB needs a salary cap:
“The Dodgers are the greatest poster children we could’ve had for how something has to change,” said Monfort, who watched his division rivals in Los Angeles win a championship in 2024, then add two-time Cy Young winner Blake Snell and prized Japanese prospect Roki Sasaki.
“Sports are supposed to have some sort of fairness, right? There’s got to be some purity.”
MLB is the only major North American professional sports league without a salary cap or floor. However, outspending teams doesn’t necessary correlate to success.
Over the last 25 years, the team with the largest payroll in baseball has won the World Series just four times.
Any proposal of a salary cap by team owners would almost certainly be met with opposition from the MLB Players Association (MLBPA). That could set the stage for another lockout when the current collective bargaining agreement expires on Dec. 1, 2026.
Blake Snell: Dodgers not ‘villains’ of MLB
Snell, who signed a five-year, $182 million contract with the Dodgers during the offseason, argued that the team shouldn’t be criticized for wanting to win.
“I don’t look at us as villains,” Snell began. “I look at us as a team that wants to win. If any other teams or fanbases want to get upset, you know what to do. Follow what the Dodgers are doing. They want to win, they’re spending money.
“That’s how you have to do it.”
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