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Jeff Passan, ESPNDec 22, 2023, 11:15 AM ET
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- ESPN MLB expert
Author of “The Arm: Inside the Billion-Dollar Mystery of one of the most Valuable Commodity in Sports”
They’ve been outlining this for many years. Strategies, obviously, break down all the time, whether they’re for supper or a conference or taking control of the whole baseball world by signing the very best gamer anybody’s ever seen to the greatest agreement anybody’s ever gotten and after that chasing after that less than 2 weeks later on with the biggest offer a pitcher has actually ever gotten. For all of it to line up so stunningly for the Los Angeles Dodgers– for this superteam to put together and take goal on the video game– left individuals around baseball stunned and woozy from the scale of all of it.
They ensured two-way star Shohei Ohtani a 10-year, $700 million agreement. They followed Thursday by providing his Japanese accomplice Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who has actually not tossed a pitch in the major leagues, $325 million over 12 years. After a short minute of austerity– $50 million in totally free firm on only 1 year agreements last winter season– the Dodgers lavished more than $1 billion on 2 gamers. And now, in 2024 and beyond, they are going to be extremely, excellent.
Their lineup includes the ruling MVP, 2 more future Hall of Famers in Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman, plus catcher Will Smith, center fielder James Outman and slugger Max Muncy. They went into the winter season with Bobby Miller, a novice this year, as the only lock for their 2024 rotation. Now they’ve got Yamamoto to begin Opening Day versus the San Diego Padres in Seoul and Tyler Glasnow, whom they obtained in a trade with the Tampa Bay Rays and signed to a five-year, $136.5 million extension, to pitch the 2nd video game of the season’s opening series.
They will, unquestionably, be a force in the National League West, probably its champ next year. Come 2025, when Ohtani returns from his 2nd Tommy John surgical treatment and most likely signs up with the rotation, the Dodgers will be that much better. This triggers reasonable consternation for fans in smaller sized markets like Pittsburgh and Kansas City, whose whole franchises aren’t worth a great deal more than the Dodgers ensured Ohtani, Yamamoto and Glasnow. The entire sport, honestly, is on tilt. Even the New York Yankees, New York Mets and San Francisco Giants, all of whom pursued Yamamoto with vitality, ended up jilted due to the fact that they might not provide the mix of cash, sunlight and rejoining Ohtani, who captained Yamamoto and the rest of Team Japan to the World Baseball Class title this spring and plans to duplicate that sometimes over with the Dodgers.
Easy as it may be for anybody beyond Los Angeles County to worry, stew, lament, fret and complain the existing state of affairs in Major League Baseball– to crown the Dodgers,
