Broken Record: Dodgers Land Top Free Agent Kyle Tucker While Setting a New Contract Standard
The Dodgers have struck again. For the second winter out of the past three, they’ve snuck in and landed the top free agent on the market, just when he was expected to sign elsewhere. But unlike Shohei Ohtani, who in December 2023 nearly signed with the Blue Jays before agreeing to a 10-year, $700 million contract with the Dodgers, one in which all but $2 million per season was deferred, Kyle Tucker has gone for a short-term deal of four years and $240 million.
According to ESPN’s Jeff Passan, the deal includes a $64 million signing bonus; $30 million of the total salary is deferred, reducing the net present value to $57.1 million a year. That still means that Tucker, who will turn 29 on Saturday, has set a record for the highest average annual value of any contract, exceeding that of last year’s record-setter, Juan Soto, by about 12%, albeit on a much shorter deal:
| Player | Team | Total $ (Mil) | Years | Span | AAV (Mil) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kyle Tucker | Dodgers | $240.0 | 4 | 2026–29 | $57.1* |
| Juan Soto | Mets | $765.0 | 15 | 2025–39 | $51.0 |
| Shohei Ohtani | Dodgers | $700.0 | 10 | 2024–33 | $46.1* |
| Justin Verlander | Mets | $86.67 | 2 | 2023-24 | $43.3 |
| Max Scherzer | Mets | $130.0 | 3 | 2022–24 | $43.3 |
| Zack Wheeler | Phillies | $126.0 | 3 | 2025–27 | $42.0 |
| Bo Bichette | Mets | $126.0 | 3 | 2026–28 | $42.0 |
| Aaron Judge | Yankees | $360.0 | 9 | 2023–31 | $40.0 |
| Jacob deGrom | Rangers | $185.0 | 5 | 2023–27 | $37.0 |
| Gerrit Cole | Yankees | $360.0 | 9 | 2020–28 | $36.0 |
[Update: This table has been revised to remove Blake Snell, whose deferred money drops his AAV from $36.4 million to $31.7 million, and to add Bichette, who agreed to a three-year, $42 million deal with the Mets on Friday morning.]
According to multiple reports, Tucker’s deal includes opt-outs after both the 2027 and ’28 campaigns, allowing him to seek a new contract as he heads into either his age-31 or age-32 season. Until then, he’ll join the star-studded lineup of the sport’s first back-to-back champions in a quarter-century. The Dodgers may sport future Hall of Famers in Ohtani, Mookie Betts, and Freddie Freeman, but their outfield was an area of weakness in 2025. Dodgers outfielders combined to hit .240/.299/.415 while ranking 17th in the majors with a 98 wRC+ and 18th with 4.3 WAR. While Andy Pages had a breakout age-24 season as the team’s primary center fielder, left fielder Michael Conforto was such a free-agent bust that he was left off the postseason roster, and right fielder Teoscar Hernández was unable to replicate his stellar 2024 and was a defensive liability to boot. During the postseason, Dodgers outfielders hit .209/.258/.332, with Hernández accounting for five of the unit’s six home runs.
How manager Dave Roberts will fit the pieces together remains to be seen, but the path of least resistance is probably to return Hernández to left field (where he spent most of his time in 2024) and slot the defensively superior Tucker in right. It’s also possible Hernández could be traded in order to get some salary relief; he’s guaranteed $33 million, including the next two seasons’ salaries and a $6.5 million buyout of a club option for 2028, with much of that money deferred as well.
As for Tucker, he’s not a household name on par with Judge, Ohtani, or Soto, the last three free agents to top our annual offseason lists are, but since the start of the 2021 season, he’s 10th among all position players in WAR (23.4) and wRC+ (143) despite missing half of the 2024 season. Drafted by the Astros out of a Tampa high school with the fifth pick in 2015, he reached the majors in mid-2018 and stuck around for good starting in September 2019. He helped the Astros to six straight playoff appearances, including three World Series appearances and a championship in 2022, and made the American League All-Star team annually from 2022–24. Concerned that they would not be able to retain him in free agency — or more to the point, were unwilling to go as high as the biggest-spending teams — the Astros traded him to the Cubs in December 2024 in exchange for infielder Isaac Paredes, outfielder Cam Smith, and right-handed pitcher Hayden Wesneski.
Tucker made another All-Star team in 2025 while helping the Cubs win 92 games, claim a Wild Card berth, and beat the Padres before bowing to the Brewers in the Division Series. Yet his season was an uneven one. He hit .291/.395/.537 (157 wRC+) with 17 homers through the end of June, but slipped into a protracted slump at the start of July; for a 39-game stretch, he hit .184/.321/.228 with just one homer. On August 21, the Cubs revealed that Tucker had played through a hairline fracture in his right ring finger, suffered during a June 1 slide. While the injury didn’t align with his drop in production, the announcement, which followed a brief benching for a mental and mechanical reset, seemed to provide a jolt. He homered three times over the next two days (August 21–22) and tore the cover off the wall for two weeks, but a left calf strain sidelined him for most of September.
Tucker’s final .266/.377/.464 line thus looks a little disappointing, particularly given his career-low slugging percentage and full-season low 22 homers (plus 25 steals). Even so, his 136 wRC+ matches what he did from 2020–23, and his 4.5 WAR was on par with those season’s marks. It’s the .289/.408/.585 (179 wRC+) line and 4.2 WAR he put up in 78 games in 2024 — with three months lost to a fracture in his right shin — that may have distorted expectations about his ability to land a contract in the $400 million to $500 million range, which looked overly generous even when he got off to a hot start.
Clearly that kind of money wasn’t out there for Tucker at this juncture. According to reports from Tuesday, the Mets made Tucker an offer with a $50 million AAV, though it was believed to be only for three or four years. Reports from MLB Network’s Jim Duquette, the New York Post’s Jon Heyman, and The Athletic’s Will Sammon indicate that the Mets’ final offer was four years and $220 million, with a $75 million signing bonus, the same opt-outs as the Dodgers, but no deferred money — a $55 million AAV. The Blue Jays were said to have made a longer-term offer, though neither the dollars nor the length was specified in the report from ESPN’s Jesse Rogers. The Yankees showed interest but are not known to have made a formal offer; instead, they’e been more focused on re-signing Cody Bellinger, with ESPN’s Buster Olney reporting that they’d offered him a five-year deal with an AAV above $30 million, but that those talks are at an impasse. The Cubs issued Tucker a $22.025 million qualifying offer, but once he declined it, they moved on; earlier this week, they landed Alex Bregman on a five-year, $175 million deal that included deferred money.
The Dodgers, whose $417.3 million luxury tax payroll for 2025 led to them being assessed a record $169.4 million competitive balance tax, had little to no buzz attached to their pursuit of Tucker. They didn’t have any high-salaried players coming off their payroll, and they already made a modest splash during the December Winter Meetings by signing closer Edwin Díaz to a three-year, $69 million deal.
One reason the Dodgers might prefer Tucker on a short-term deal is to avoid blocking their top outfield prospects, Josue De Paula and Zyhir Hope. Both are headed into their age-21 seasons having played only a few games apiece at Double-A at the end of last season (four for De Paula, six for Hope), with the former, a 55-FV prospect who topped the recent Dodgers list, expected to reach the majors in 2027, and the latter a 50-FV prospect expected to arrive a year later. Those aren’t exactly can’t-miss guys, but they are important depth, particularly since the Díaz and Tucker signings carry additional costs. Given that the Dodgers are well over the tax threshold, signing Díaz — to whom the Mets issued a qualifying offer — already meant they would forfeit their second- and fifth-highest draft picks, as well as $1 million from their international bonus pool as a penalty. For signing Tucker, they’ll lose their third- and sixth-highest picks as well.
Courtesy of Dan Szymborski, here’s the ZiPS projection for Tucker:
| Year | BA | OBP | SLG | AB | R | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | BB | SO | SB | OPS+ | WAR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | .268 | .369 | .514 | 496 | 87 | 133 | 25 | 2 | 31 | 96 | 78 | 82 | 21 | 145 | 3.9 |
| 2027 | .265 | .367 | .502 | 486 | 84 | 129 | 24 | 2 | 29 | 91 | 77 | 80 | 18 | 142 | 3.6 |
| 2028 | .261 | .362 | .485 | 472 | 80 | 123 | 23 | 1 | 27 | 85 | 74 | 79 | 16 | 136 | 3.0 |
| 2029 | .254 | .356 | .467 | 452 | 74 | 115 | 22 | 1 | 24 | 78 | 70 | 77 | 14 | 129 | 2.5 |
That’s 13.0 WAR over the four-year span, a projection for which ZiPS suggests a $149 million contract. So yes, this appears to be a substantial overpay even before factoring in the additional taxes this will cost the Dodgers — which should tell you that for as quiet as they’ve been in their pursuit, they really wanted him.
Given that it’s the two-time champions adding the number one free agent on the market, setting a record for AAV, and using some amount of deferred money to flex their muscle, tthis isn’t likely to reduce anyone’s ire towards the Dodgers, or rival fans’ and executives’ discomfort with their combination of spending and success. On the contrary, it will add to the din regarding the game’s financial inequities and the seeming inevitability of a lockout next winter, renew calls for a salary cap, and probably boost sales of fainting couches among team owners. It’s likely that the next Collective Bargaining Agreement will create even stiffer penalties for the crime of trying to win. Until then, the Dodgers are gunning for a three-peat.
Brooklyn-based Jay Jaffe is a senior writer for FanGraphs, the author of The Cooperstown Casebook (Thomas Dunne Books, 2017) and the creator of the JAWS (Jaffe WAR Score) metric for Hall of Fame analysis. He founded the Futility Infielder website (2001), was a columnist for Baseball Prospectus (2005-2012) and a contributing writer for Sports Illustrated (2012-2018). He has been a recurring guest on MLB Network and a member of the BBWAA since 2011, and a Hall of Fame voter since 2021. Follow him on BlueSky @jayjaffe.bsky.social.
Wow.
They did it again!
Such a wild overpay (WAR wise). But their window is wide open now, and they’ve been printing money, so why not?
Not sure a franchise with unlimited monies ever closes the window. They just have years they lose in the division or championship series.
There’s got to be a limit, though, right? Right?
LOL Darren….apparently not.
I don’t think the window will ever be fully closed for an org with the smarts and resources of LA, but there are still degrees of openness. Right now the window is as wide open as possible – they’re clearly the best team in baseball. The ~2028-2030 Dodgers likely will not be, with Betts and Ohtani and Snell firmly in the decline phase of their careers.
They have a good enough farm system they’ll likely be good, but if I had to pick right now the top projected preseason ZIPS team of 2029, I would take the field over the Dodgers.
ZiPS feels unrealistically pessimistic on him for a guy who averages ~5 WAR going into his age 29 season. But even if you bump up the WAR over those four years to 20, it remains an overpay, but such a slight one; just another reminder that the Dodgers don’t have to peck at the margins, they just do it for fun. They can take a whole bite when they feel like it.
People think he doesn’t like baseball. I doubt that is anymore than yankee talking heads who knew they wouldn’t sign him, but, who knows. Also Cohen had a weird tweet today, implying he has signed Tucker. All weird.
With that said they have a very aging core. Will they just spring for a huge payroll in the future? Probably. But one starter under 31 is crazy. Seeing this contract makes me wonder what dodgers think they know is coming down this offseason.
Is it that pessimistic? ZiPS projects a higher OPS than any of the other projection systems here. It’s chiefly skeptical of (1) his defense, which was not great last season, and (2) his health, coming off of two straight years with injuries. I don’t think it’s reasonable to project 20 WAR over the next 4 seasons when he’s never actually reached 5 WAR in a season to date (despite hitting 4.9 in 3 straight years previously), even if he’s very much capable of it.
Isn’t baseball supposed to be fun?
I think him missing significant time the past two years is hurting his projections. A significant portion of his comps are likely guys who dealt with some serious injuries that limited their abilities in the years that followed.
When teams hand out $200M+ long term deals the logic is that they are paying for the early years and not the decline years and it’s all being stretched out for luxury tax reasons.
When team hand out $40M+ AAVs on short term deals the logic is that they are don’t have to pay for the decline years.
But now we are in a world where a couple galaxy-brained franchises are so desperate to avoid the decline years that they manage to combine a record-setting AAV with a total contract value that approaches the Trea Turner / Xander B contracts from a few years ago.
But flags fly forever.
Yep, and there ain’t any $ per WAR flags.
But by golly there should be. It could have a big $ on a picture of a team owner dressed up like the monopoly man.
Maybe they can dust off the “team that did the most to keep salaries down in arbitration” championship belt and repurpose that
I guess $400M (maybe $300-350?) is the new $200M for the purposes of this argument. I think the teams are still spending according to this plan, but the threshold has shifted abruptly higher, as has the top end of the free-agent market.
I’ve been thinking more about this comment and I’ve concluded that I really want to see a more in-depth analysis of the Galaxy-Brained Contract trend. To me there are two big questions:
(1) about contract length, why are the galaxy-brained teams taking the position that they basically don’t want the decline years at any price, even a comparatively low one?
(2) about multiple opt-outs, why are the galaxy-brained teams happy to take so much of the downside risk, essentially insuring the player against injury and underperformance, while giving up so much of the upside in the form of the player walking away after a good year?
To me these shorter-term, opt-out-laden deals look a lot like deliberately buying a call option instead of buying and holding a stock over a longer period. That is, they seem crafted to express the team’s view that the player’s short-term performance is likely to be far better than his long-term trend, and they just want to buy the short-term performance at the best price they can get, leaving the longer term to other owners.
I literally cannot think of one move since Cubs Rebuild 1.0 started that *isn’t* seen as an overpayz
Think harder
I won’t hold my breath.
Or Gato should just think.
I’d really like to see the kind of seasons that Tucker would have to put up to justify opting out of a guaranteed 2 years/$120M at age 30.
The Mets were willing to pay him $50M/year coming off a rather pedestrian season. What if he puts up 40 HR and a 150 OPS+?
In what world is a 136 wRC+ and 4.5 war a pedestrian season?
With 22 homers, 87 walks, and 4 HBPs, Kyle Tucker was a pedestrian last year… for 3.05 miles.
It’s not a pedestrian season, but it’s a weird platform season to then set the new record for AAV (that was only a year old, for a 26 year old future HOF lock) by more than 10%!
I think a 64m signing bonus and 54m up front changes it a bit. If I read correctly he is due $170m first two years w bonuses etc. some is deferred obv but like it could be something like 2 years 40m left w deferred or 2 years 70m left. Seems unlikely for an opt out, but when you see how front loaded it is, maybe?
Mets final offer was very similar
I figured it as
Signing bonus $64 million
That leaves ($240-64) $176 million to pay out over the next 4 years. IF those are equal payments, then it’s about $44 million per year.
there is $30 million deferred though… its unclear how/if that gets paid out if he opts out. I imagine he would be owed at least some of that. I don’t think it’s crazy that if he is healthy and produces that he could get $100-$150 million over 4-5 years as a FA at 3. Also depends on what happens with the new CBA
Is the signing bonus all paid up-front? Does that mean that, if he opts out before the 2027 season, the Dodgers would have paid him circa $100 million (some deferred) for playing a single season?
The first opt out is after the ’27 season, at which point he will have been paid slightly over $150M
If he stays healthy and remains excellent, he could get $200M+ for ages 31-36 or so. I could see choosing that over his current deal.
It’s probably not 2/$120M though given deferrals and a signing bonus. What if the new CBA bumps salaries 20%.
But in general I agree, it’s hard to see him putting up two seasons that making walking away look wise.
My crackpot theory that LA is spending money recklessly on behalf of all MLB owners to ensure there’s a salary cap in the next CBA is starting to look more and more plausible.
I don’t even really believe that but how else can you justify spending this much on a player that’s been just an all-star corner outfielder every season. The luxury tax penalties they’ll accrue after going over the Cohen threshold means LA will end up paying a shade over what Tucker’s already being paid, and even if he win WS MVP it’s hard to imagine the money making any sense here
i would counter that winning a world series and becoming the global brand of baseball is extremely profitable
Certainly. But does Kyle Tucker really move the needle enough towards that goal? How many Tucker jerseys, in relation to Ohtani, Betts, or Yamamoto, will you see at Dodger Stadium this year? That’s clearly not a rigorous way of measuring Tucker’s impact, but they’re spending upwards of $250M if he opts out after 2 years, likely over $500M if he stays all four.
Dodgers are making so much money. They apparently have this weird tv deal that makes them 300m alone a year that was granted an exemption. Also flags fly forever.
This is the first I’d heard of this. How interesting. Wouldn’t this make the other 29 owners very mad? How did they get this and how have they managed to not lose this exemption/cap on local tv rev share?
Also, legit question – I get that LA is a huge market and they have very strong interest in Japan. But is that still enough to prop up $334M/yr they get from their 8.3B tv deal? I can see it working if tons of people in Japan are buying LA cable packages for Dodgers but is that really happening with the time difference for live games? Wouldn’t someone in Japan just buy mlb.tv or watch highlights if they can’t watch live? Do the realities of cable tv / RSNs dying not apply to the Dodgers?
It was a concession during the McCourt bankruptcy process in 2012. The value of the any future tv contract was capped at $84 million (escalating at 4%) for purposes of revenue sharing for 25 years. I believe the $84 million was adjusted up to $130 million in 2017, but both figures are well short of the $330 million annual value of the deal that eventually got signed.
Had the same thought, that’s what being alive in 2026 will do to ya.
I’m not sure its some sort of conspiracy to promote a salary cap, but it sure is a great advertisement for one. The Dodgers are starting to make me sick to my stomach.
yet You must still have a stomach after the Yankees of ~1990 to 2010 right?
I d not think this has any effect towards a salary cap as it effectively puts the Dodgers on the side of the players in their negotiations against the owners.
Baseball doesn’t need a salary cap because that makes the players responsible for ownership issues. Increased revenue sharing is what’s needed to improve balance. And forcing cheap owners to spend their revenue sharing money to improve their teams instead of pocketing it.
This isn’t the dichotomy, players and owners and balance can all win and these things can happen together. Increased revenue sharing will eventually function as a de facto salary cap – can you imagine what the Dodgers would be doing if there were no CBT hits? And revenue sharing tends to come with requirements on how that money is spent, not to mention any cap would assuredly come with a floor which mandates the money go on the field.
It’s a solved problem – look at the NFL and NBA especially. Caps and floors, players get a guaranteed percentage of revenue. Increase the minimum salary (by a lot, like 3-5x) and introduce a max contract. You get a bigger middle class, the cheapest owners can’t hide their money (or at least not so much of it), small markets can be competitive with larger ones. It’s better for everyone involved…except Scott Boras, which is why the executive committee on the PA won’t go for it and why they all vetoed the last CBA and the rank-and-file approved it.
Isn’t there LESS parity in NFL and NBA than MLB? I’ll bet a lot of billionaire owners would love destroying a pseudo free market with a salary cap. But it seems to me that You’re asking for a “profit cap” on ownership. Other than the Braves (maybe Blue Jays?) most MLB owners books aren’t available to the public, so how are we to know? Forbes estimates?
While this is a baseball context, is there anywhere in history, that anyone on the top of the pyramid has voluntarily reduced their power/wealth? In the name of fairness?
People will quote the parity thing, but what the salary cap has allowed in football is for at various points the biggest teams, most consistent winners being based on Kansas City, Indianapolis, Green Bay, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, etc.
Yes, some of that is drafting the right QB.
Except thats not really true.
-Green Bay and Pittsburgh have been star franchises pretty much their whole existence (IE: long before the cap came in). Cap did nothing for them.
-Baltimore wasnt really a consistent winner in any dominant sense (2 AFC championships this century)
-Indy was successful because they drafted one of the greatest QB’s ever. You could even argue the cap ruined them as it forced them to cut Manning (who went to denver and won another SB)
In reality the greatest dynasty in the NFL Salary Cap era was the Patriots. Who are essentially a Boston based team. And the “biggest” teams in terms of value, fanbase, attention etc are still Dallas and the New York teams.
the ravens have the what like 4th or 5th best winning percentage since like 96. They’re a very successful team lol.
Very successful regular season team! (Which I think should be the ultimate goal anyway, regular season success begets more bites at the apple)
The Pirates were a star franchise once upon a time, too.
Think of other areas that the NFL has had success: Buffalo, Kansas City, Miami, Jacksonville (!!).
In the NFL, the deciding factor REALLY IS scouting, drafting, and developing.
MLB only gives that lip service. Teams that draft and develop will have their occasional day in the sun, but they are short lived and very very cyclical.
In the NFL, the reason the Rams have done well is NOT because they have blown other teams out of the water with spending (22nd in the NFL), but because they have done an amazing job at drafting and developing. The Rams would have the exact same on-field success if they were located in Des Moines.
On the other hand, the Dodgers would not have the same success if THEY were located in Des Moines.
Green Bay is smaller than Des Moines yet they seem to have done quite well.
Having a generational QB talent (Brady, Mahomes, and Montana the prime examples, guys like Manning and latter-career Stafford to a lesser extent) helps too!
Many years ago, Wellington Mara, owner of the Giants, made a decision that set the NFL on its path to success. He was the power broker and, despite being in the largest market in the league, he made the choice that all TV revenue would be distributed equally between the franchises which has enabled Green Bay to compete with New York and the other large cities. This has kept the playing field much more level and has allowed teams to actually pick good players with the 192nd pick of the 2001 draft and not simply outbid the rest of the league. I am very disturbed by the way baseball is going and cringe at the prospect of the acrimony between both sides in the upcoming negotiations.
Prescient move for the NFL, and the NBA has also been successful with national broadcasting deals. We’ll see how MLB does controlling an increasingly large percentage of tram broadcast rights in the next few years, but baseball doesn’t seem to be as well suited to illicit a lucrative national broadcast deal. Maybe because baseball is more regional or the much higher number of broadcast hours.
Team-by-team regional broadcast deals (especially when a team may have equity in the broadcaster) have made the revenue sharing arrangements harder to negotiate between teams. I wonder if an MLB streaming platform or a major deal with streaming giants might change that dynamic.
Bill Gates, Warren Buffett
As much as Gates and Buffett voluntarily reduced their power/wealth , I highly doubt it was in the name of fairness.
Chuck Feeney is the actual answer.
That is really just a function of the games themselves. I team of so-called replacement players is still predicted to win 49 games. In the other sports such a collection of scrubs would be hard pressed to win even 10% of their games. In the other sports, because of the structure of the finance, the teams go through somewhat regular cycles in which they usually bob up and down and do not sustain excellence solely because of the amount of money they have. Even the Celtics and the Lakers occasionally fall well behind the small market Thunder or Spurs.
Yes it’s painful to read otherwise competent people ignore the clear differences in each sport. The 15th best basketball team beats the second best basketball team in a seven game series almost never whereas they have like a 30% chance in baseball. It’s intellectually dishonest
And the Knicks always suck
THANK YOU!! I am so frustrated by the quality of discourse on “salary cap”. Some key points that people tend to completely elide:
A “salary cap” always comes with a floor, so it’s better understood as a payroll band, centered around a negotiated players’ share of revenue. Whether this system, relative to the current system, is good or bad for “players” — players as a whole, that is — is entirely determined by what that negotiated share of revenue is. If the MLBPA negotiated the same fraction as what they currently get (just under 50 percent), the system would be neither pro-labor nor pro-owner — it has zero impact on the capital-labor split in baseball.
One implication is that all of the interesting distributional questions about a payroll band system are within-labor questions. It is trivial to design a new system that holds fixed the current player’s share of revenue while making the distribution of player salaries more progressive. You could:
Again, in a payroll band system, absent outright fraud on the part of owners, there is no way for the owners to depress total player salaries, as is often accused. Total player compensation is determined by statute. Any dollar not spent on player X literally has to show up as pay for some other player. The question then becomes: what is the appropriate distribution of salaries across players? Should FA take a cut to boost pay for the majority of MLB players who never reach arbitration let alone FA? Should the composition of FA salaries be shifted away from stars and towards journeymen? Would earlier FA help provide “insurance” for young players who face injury and underperformance risk?
Unfortunately the quality of discourse suffers badly when many SABR-minded writers and fans treat the word “cap” as a kind of shibboleth. And so we never even get to ask these questions.
Excellent comment and I agree fully.
I assume one major concern from the union on agreeing to a fixed percentage of baseball related revenue is that you are sure to experience leakage due to efforts to classify revenues to fall outside of the definition. This is already an issue that comes up when talking about how much teams make during negotiations. While I tahini this concern is valid, other sports leagues have navigated it.
On the distribution among players point, getting the votes may not be trivial as designing such a system. Pro sports unions tend to be dominated by stars, and I have surprised that many collective bargaining agreements seem to really prioritize the largest earners.
This is 100% the right answer. The revenue sharing formula is clearly broken.
That said I think that the end result when the players don’t budge on the cap is another tax line with slower increases to the current lines than we have had in the past. Which would distribute more money to other markets but not enough.
If that comes with a tax line on teams that spend less than $105M or $115M or whatever they have decided the floor should be that wouldn’t be bad. Might even be a good trade.
Not as good a solution as actually fixing the revenue sharing formula so that teams like the Royals and Brewers can spend more on long-term deals so it doesn’t vary year to year. Or coming up with an ironclad system for having teams spend the revenue sharing money on guaranteed deals. But in a pinch I would take it. Hopefully we don’t have to miss games to get it.
One idea I have been noodling on is that a certain portion of the revenue sharing could be held back and only paid to the extent the team spends more than some agreed threshold like the salary floor.
So if the floor is $110 million, revenue would cover your payroll up to say $140 million. But if you spent only $110 million, you wouldn’t get any of that money, leaving it on the table.
They make A LOT of money. And more winning = more money
I do agree this is all a con to bring in a salary cap. ‘Mericans lap it up too and demand one in lockstep, amazing truly such a deplorable state of mind
We need a block button so I can not see your insanely stupid ramblings.
lol. Seconding this in case meg or appelman read the comments
Always fun when a coward hiding behind anonymity continually snipes at people.
I think the opposite might be true. When the new CBA goes into effect, the luxury tax penalties will reset. Every team will be treated as though they are over the line for the 1st time. A year before the new CBA is the best time to go over the line.
Crackpot is the right word, this is just silly
“hey, one set of billionaires, can you spend hundreds of millions of dollars right now so that in the future we all have a cap on how much money we can spend? also ignore how much money you’re making being successful, that’s surely not the imperative driving your actions here”
I feel somewhat obligated to defend my crackpot theory, so I’ll just add that the owners as a group clearly want a cap, and every free agent who signs with LA moves public opinion towards wanting a cap. It’s the preeminent issue that anyone who supports a salary cap is going to point to. You could say the Dodgers/Mets/Yankees aren’t in lockstep with the other owners and don’t want a cap, but in a time where everyone with any change in their pocket is hyper-focused on profit maximization, I don’t think that’s likely.
There are pretty blatant historic examples of collusion among owners, and more than just the Dodgers would get something out of this. Increased payroll means increased revenue for LA which in turn means increased revenue sharing for the teams that receive it, and the Dodgers get grandfathered into the next CBA with a massive payroll, star-studded roster, and a global brand identity that’ll yield massive gains in revenue well after Ohtani retires. A hard cap would be the cherry on top, as they won’t have to pay the insane amounts of CBT penalties that they’re racking up now. Bringing in Japan via LA means more mlb.tv subscriptions, better ratings on playoff games, and more merch sales, all of which are distributed to some extent among the league.
Then again this is all probably not true and there’s likely some other shady, undiscernible reason for spending $500M for 4 years of a very good but not great player.
I think your last comment about “shady, undiscernible reason” kinda gives away your entire identity and perspective here. Just say you hate rich people and you think they’re all crooked/awful people and it won’t take nearly as much time.
Tucker: best player available, plays a position the Dodgers were weak at last year, has opt outs at multiple times during the contract, removes a star outfielder from other NL teams, the contract doesn’t run through his decline years. It makes sense for all sorts of non-shady, discernible reasons
What an absolutely ridiculous thing to say. That’s without even mentioning the annoying, whiny millennial-speak tone.
Yes, Tucker is a good baseball player, and the Dodgers were only averageish in the outfield. Nowhere has that been denied. Tucker just isn’t close to being worth what he’s going to end up costing the Dodgers. No single player is, because it’s baseball and there’s a limit to how much impact one player can have. Ohtani is the one guy you could make the argument for at this number + penalties, but he’s a once in a generation talent.
Billion dollar enterprises do not become that way through giving away money. Tucker increases WS odds by what, a couple ticks at most? And that’s worth $500M?
You’re the one trying to craft conspiracy theories around why they signed him w words like “shady and undiscernable”. You literally yourself admitted it’s ‘crackpot’ and yet now are desperate to defend it, for some reason?
I’m just telling you that the reasons are, in fact, discernible. The ownership team wants to make more money and wants to win, and likely wants to leave a lasting legacy. Those are all valid and obvious reasons for spending lots of money
Also you keep calling Tucker a ‘good’ player, when in reality he has been a top 10 position player over the last 5 years.
Again, the crux of my point is that with the salary and CBT penalties, this deal will end up costing LA close to or upwards of half a billion dollars for four years of Kyle Tucker. A player that I described as very good but not great, which is the most accurate way I can think to put it. The Zips projection in this very article points to a very good player, but he’s a tier or two below the Judge, Ohtani, Soto cohort. I’d put him below Jose Ramirez, Corbin Carroll and Ketel Marte even, but an argument could be made he’s in that tier.
That just isn’t worth half a billion dollars over four years. Maybe the CBT penalty structure will drastically change with the new CBA, but that is an unknown. I just can’t accept the explanation the Dodgers all of a sudden don’t care about the return on a half a billion dollar investment. If you think Tucker is really worth that much then we just fundamentally disagree here.
Value is a thing that can be applied in various contexts. Why didn’t the Dodgers sign Pete Alonso? Could it be because they have both an elite DH and an elite 1B?
Perhaps then they view an elite OF for their team which is decidedly without an elite OF as a great get, as it elevates their offense substantially higher, while also removing the ability for every other team to raise their offensive bar equally substantially higher (or even more, given that the Dodger’s roster baseline is higher than any other team). There’s a concept in finance called convexity, which applies here. You view it as diminishing returns, they view it as convexity, Andrew Friedman recognizes this. Or do we suddenly just think that the best front office in baseball doesn’t care about value and is making stupid decisions? Your answer is no, and therefore it must be shady, which is dumb.
Kyle Tucker is obviously not worht $500m in pure baseball talent alone. But again, things like optouts create a potential outcome where he doesn’t have to be. Also, who are the elite FAs coming to market in subsequent years? Nobody like Kyle Tucker is available. The iron is hot, so to speak.
Further, and I don’t think this can be stressed enough, this team is looking at a generational opportunity with a once in a lifetime roster in order to go all in on. If they 3 peat this year, and potentially 4peat the year after, that’s the greatest team of all time. Legacy is important to people, and can at times obscure notions like “oh idk if tucker is worth that much”.
There’s a totality of valuation here and you’re ignoring it to point out his WAR and say “well this is a bad contract duh”.
you really missed the subtext, the obvious irony, in what beanbong was saying
There is no subtext, he just wanted to say something silly and then he did, and then doubled down by pretending there was any seriousness regareding what was initially sillly.
I hate rich people and [I] think they’re all crooked/awful people.
that said, I agree with beanbong’s more nuanced points.
That’s fine, you can have those opinions
I just think they’re silly
There’s not nothing here. A lot of teams could spend more but don’t because 1) The Dodgers are so strong and why cut out checks for a futile effort… and 2) If the Dodgers win it all again, then a salary cap becomes more likely.
(For the record, we need a hard cap and hard floor. What we’re seeing now with the Dodgers taints the game: The NL West will be over on Opening Day and still remain the Vegas favorites to hoist Manfred’s piece of metal, despite being older and theoretically every other team should be more hungry to take them down…)
“every other team should be more hungry to take them down…”
Hence, why they are fighting to stay in top
If the Dodgers have an extra $500 million to spend to improve the team, how else are they going to spend it? They can’t spread it around over multiple players. Who are they going to get to improve on Betts, Freeman, Smith, Snell and Glasnow?
All they can do is concentrate it in one player. That’s the player that they wanted they made sure that they got him.
the average person’s inability to think about anything that happened more than 5-10 years before present time is astounding
Calling it this is feeling increasingly unfair!
Boy I could have dealt with losing him to the Blue Jays a lot more as at least he was in a different league. That would have sucked too but not as much as it does with the Dodgers getting him. Yeah, it’s overpay but it’s on a short term deal and he was the biggest bat available in free agency the next few years. I can’t blame him for choosing the Dodgers and I can’t get on my Mets for falling short they offered him a 75 mil signing bonus and a 55 mil aav. He would have fit so well here or really anywhere.
I dont see the Mets offering Bellinger 5-6 years nor would I want them too. I’m not sure what they do next. They’ve been tied to Valdez as well as Nootbar and I’m sure Benge will have a great shot at making the team, but yeah I would feel a lot better at the Mets chances with Tucker.
I think You’ make a good point about market context here! Other than Soto last winter, Tucker is probably the top outfield bat during winters of 2024, 2025 and 2026.
Stink? (Probably as a wild-card team that gets bumped in the early rounds.) There’s no viable backup plan for them to be among the best teams in baseball in 2026, but they’ll still be good enough to contend, if not to make fans feel better.
Apparently sign Bichette. To play third base? This is going to be weird!
Who needs outfielders? Maybe they’ll play a five-man infield every day.
I’ve long been the guy whose like it isn’t broken etc, but this seems a bit much.
I mean they still have better odds of not winning the World Series than winning, because baseball is random. Still, just feels sort of off-putting.
A line I came across today was how “every team can do this” and maybe to an extent they can. But one thing every other team cannot do is give out a 62m signing bonus, 52m of which is up front.
Then reading about how the mlb essentially gave them 300m a year on a tv deal due to a special exemption.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out Japan is in MLBs best interest. More people, not as a % but total watch the World Series there than here. No one is playing outside the rules per se, but something feels a bit off.
Again, they could easily for 90-72 and lose in WC round to the Dbacks from a resurgent Arenado who went to the annoying Judge coach on Twitter and revived his career on way to down ballot mvp votes. But it doesn’t feel likely. Players can sign wherever the hell they want, but money is always the underlying factor.
No one wants a cap, but with the luxury tax hit Tucker is costing them at least $126m this year. That’s insane and doesn’t really seem to fit any sort of competitive balance rules. No clue what the answer is, but this current system also isn’t right.
Edit fangraphing drunk. I keep repeating myself and misspelled some stuff. Was watching the new Boyle pic. His last one sucked, but the 2026 28 days later was good imo
Honestly one of my favorite places to be in life. Moderately inebriated a little after midnight, in the cinema literally by myself with some food and beer I snuck in (scrambled eggs w tomatoes and beets, trust me on the beets ) and frantically refreshing fangraphs to see who got the article up. Mostly coherent, making semi intelligible comments on fangraphs. Not driving, a brief 10 minute walk home in crisp 49 degree air. Walking by fresh cut grass and for the first time this year you get that baseball smell and you know it’s just right around the corner. 40’years old smiling ear to ear
hard for me to put into words how much i enjoyed reading this. godspeed my brother
would those beets be pickled??
I would really like to see someone make the argument that this contract would make sense for more than about 5 teams in MLB. That would be funny, and wrong.
I don’t even know what I think of this deal for the Dodgers, but I know that this AAV level is so far beyond what even mid-market teams can do. This is the province of teams with global brands only.
Same, and bonus points if the same author can suss out this beets thing
I like various root vegetables but am not on board with the beets in the inebriated cinema setting. At least not with eggs
I’ve never, ever considered eating eggs in a movie theater.
I love this website so much.
Not even when watching John Woo’s greatest film, starring Chow Yun-Fat and Tony Leung?
I had second thoughts too, but then I checked online and I was literally the only person and thought lets go for it
But I don’t know what to do with those picked beets and scrambled eggs….they’re calling again…
Ive been saying for a couple years now that the Dodgers are just in a different financial space than every other team now because they have this opportunity to cement MLB in the Japanese baseball market and themselves as the team of preference in the market, and in the long run that is worth an enormous amount of money, so it makes sense to go all the way in on the Ohtani prime and put rings on that man’s fingers.
This is well framed.
Yankees, Mets, Dodgers, Red Sox, Cubs, Giants, Jays, Phillies could all do it, but a few of them have sorted outfields.
I do not think there is any way this makes sense for the Phillies or Giants, and the Jays and Cubs are iffy.
We don’t actually have any idea how much money the Jays make, they could be Yankees-level or Phillies-level.
The Cubs are likely right on the border of where this would work for them, I don’t think they have the same sort of global fanbase and they have a lower amount of revenue than the Red Sox.
Realistically the Mets shouldn’t be able to do this either, but the rules don’t apply to them and they have global brand aspirations.
Not every team can do this. It’s not quite right given the bonus and deferrals, but the $126 million annual cost for Tucker ($60mm/year + 110% luxury tax) would ranks 21st in MLB payrolls. Tucker is good, but he’s no Bugs Bunny.
MLB revenue is something like $13 billion annually, and the Dodgers reportedly account for $1 billion of that. That means the other 29 teams average $400 million (and note this includes the Yankees, Mets, et al that earn significantly more). They can all definitely afford $200mm+ payrolls. They cannot all afford $300mm+ payrolls, much less a total wage bill of $500mm. The Dodgers are in a completely different universe, and as a fan of a team in a much smaller market I am pissed about it. I fully support paying players. I’m not on ownership’s side when the league cries poor. But I am on the side of restoring some semblance of sanity to inter-team spending.
People love this kind of stuff
Can you imagine how many people will be watching the playoffs hoping the dodgers lose? it’s the 2014-2019 Golden State Warriors all over again, which plenty of people consider one of the best eras in NBA history
hell yeah dude
MLBPA only looks out for the top 5% of players. They could care less about pre-arb guys.
I disagree. The MLBPA looks out for the top and the bottom, but is limited what it can do for the middle vet.
Pre-arb players see league minimum increase and a Pre-Arb Bonus pool.
Top tier playes (and their agents) have uncapped, very open contracts that are able to be reached.
But without a Cap or Max deal, that leaves the middle tier of player to be squeezed out. You pay for stars, and league minimum guys. The Arb guys and free agents are squeezed in between.
This is basically the first time the union has done anything to meaningfully look out for the lowest paid set of players. And even then, it sends less money to that class of player than the Dodgers are giving as a signing bonus to Tucker.
I’d like the MLBPA to fight for a much greater league minimum. Something like $1-2 million (or more) for pre-arb players would make spending a bit more for the middle-tier veterans – instead of just giving those jobs to unproven players – more of an option for penny-pinching, yet competitive, clubs.
I think there are a lot of things the union could do that would look out for a much greater number of its members than its current bargaining position, including higher minimum salaries, age-based free agency, and revenue share guarantees, removing free agent draft pick compensation, and larger performance bonuses for young players. Getting all of those things might even be worth a salary cap, or trading off things like a max player contract or a form of restricted free agency for first time free agents. But it would definitely require a wholesale overhaul of how the union views its duties, and since the longest-tenured players are more likely to hold union leadership and more invested in the current system, it’s really hard to imagine that happening.
I strongly agree with this. It also functions as a de facto salary floor too.
Well, considering that most of the players are likely Republicans, why wouldn’t you expect their union to cater to their own 1 percenters?
What.
This is not really about party affiliation at all, but more than even most other vaguely comparably union labor aristocracies it does have a shade of “temporarily embarrassed [centi-]millionaire” ideology about it. Most guys who’ve been around long enough to be active in the MLBPA have already made a pile in free agency, and the teammates they have to sell on their agreement all have long-nurtured hopes, realistic or unrealistic, of doing so as well.
The rich Republicans dig was only partially tongue in cheek, but any union with those in power populated by multi-millionaires is going to behave very differently than say a teacher’s union.
What matters is the CBA, because that’s how the MLBPA’s power is manifested. And the first way the CBA is ratified is if the execute subcommittee approves it.
In 2022 that included: Zack Britton, Jason Castro, Gerrit Cole, Francisco Lindor, Andrew Miller, James Paxton, Max Scherzer, and Marcus Semien. This is a group of massively disproportionately high-dollar players. Five of the eight are represented by Boras. They unanimously rejected it. Their poorer colleagues approved it, because for the first time it wasn’t really aimed at making the richest richer.
So yeah, the MLBPA doesn’t care about players making less money because those players aren’t represented on their board and it takes a secondary vote for those voices to be heard. As much as the owners are reasonably vilified for being the greedy skinflints they are, the PA is exactly the same, except they’re voting against the interests of a majority of their own members, which we know because when those members get to vote they go the opposite direction.
This comment should be publicly post so all intelligent baseball fans could be aware. I didn’t realize WHO represented the players in the CBA discussions. You’re right it matters a lot
It happens in all unions, as longer-tenured members have more experience, clout, contacts, and are just better known by other members. Baseball has the extra challenge on representation of fringe players and rookie contract guys because it isn’t clear how long they will actually be in the league.
This is how you end up with new auto workers getting put on a second tier salary scales with no pension benefits and baseball players getting less movement on minimum salary, arbitration, and time to free agency.
Mark Walter flipped his couch cushions and $60m fell out. $60m for Guggenheim is equivalent to my $0.18.
If I ever found exactly $0.18 under a single couch cushion I’d start checking all my pants for holes, that’s way too many coins to lose at once
Ha ha ha why does this even happen
“Another example of the genius of the Dodgers player development machine.”
The hilarious thing is, just yesterday, some poster caught hell and got massively down voted for saying the Dodgers are just buying WS wins.
I bet a few people who down voted his comment are reconsidering now?
Its also easy to trade your top prospects for other players when you can literally trade every top prospect you develop, since theyre all blocked anyway. Other teams dont have that luxury. They can’t make every one of their top prospects available in trades for Tarik Skubal, for example.
Make no mistake, the Dodgers dont win because of their player development. They win because they sign every free agent they want, and then some they don’t even need.
At some level though, your core ages out, and it becomes harder fill in the gaps via free agency. That’s why the Dodgers are very good, but not a 120-win juggernaut. Eventually, Ohtani will no longer be a money maker, and they’ll likely become a ‘normal’ big market team once again. But for now, could probably spend $200M a year or more before breaking even.
And I’ll say it again here, louder for those in the back:
The Dodgers are not playing the game of winning at baseball. They are playing winning at money and then using that money to have zero consequences for any baseball decisions. They are Walmart pushing out the local department store.
This is bad for the sport. It’s got something to do with cheap owners. It’s not a reason to underpay players. But the idea that the response to this behavior is exclusively that owners are cheap and if they cared they would just do things like this or that there is no way to cap this sort of spending without every player in a bread line or that this is just good and competitive behavior is so unbelievably naive.
I mean, rich teams have tried to just buy success before and it does not work out so well most of the time
The reality is that the Dodgers have everything you would want: very high quality executives and leaders, tons of money, a willingness to spend it, and a culture that gets both stars and role players to focus entirely on the team result.
Rich teams *want* to do this, but they usually fail (see: recent Cohen Mets, lots of later Jeter Yankees teams, etc). They have all the things. And they are behaving like they think winning is an extremely profitable activity. I am inclined to agree, and think that winning (especially winning everything) has disproportionately high payoff for them vs the rest of the league, and therefore their willingness to invest in that (probably rig ht up to and possibly past year to year break-even) is completely worth it.
Japan has more people than Canada. Baseball is already one of the most popular sports there and has been for a long time. Shohei Ohtani is Taylor Swift there. Every bit of success they have with him helps MLB displace NPB with the Japanese baseball fan, and makes even casual fans – of all ages – primarily fans of the Dodgers. They are simultaneously expanding MLB’s international presence and cornering the market in that new area. It is not just very profitable today (estimates of what Japanese companies are paying in sponsorship deals each year is a 9 figure sum), it has the potential to be enormously profitable for decades to come. Every success – every award – every ring on Ohtani’s finger (especially when it comes with things like hero Yamamoto) is worth enormously more than those same awards and accomplishments are for any other player on any of the other 29 teams.
That’s why they’re behaving like this. And that’s also why I don’t really think that the other owners, or players, are as upset as people think they should be. That’s why you see Harper defending them, and Hal Steinbrenner. They know that the Dodgers are in a unique position to do something valuable for the league in the long term, and that in the short term, the Dodgers will reap the vast majority of the rewards.
This would, in my view, be a bigger problem in a league where the postseason outcome was less random, but there’s literally nothing the Dodgers can do to exceed 25% or so World Series odds. They can’t actually corner the market. They probably won’t three-peat. They definitely won’t four-peat. I think its probably likely that Ohtani will get another ring or two before he retires, but I doubt he’ll get to 5 or 6. I think MLB, and the owners, and the MLBPA are all willing to pay that price for the long term benefit of having a MLB player who is a true international superstar in a way that MLB players are not, and to expand MLB’s reach into Japan (and probably the surrounding areas!) the way that they are. It is good business for all of them.
Shohei Ohtani is an international figure in a way that no MLB athlete has been in my lifetime. Everyone knows who he is. Iconic athletes in other sports turn on MLB games and talk about how incredible he is. He is a LeBron or Jordan or Tiger Woods or Cristiano Ronaldo level celebrity, one that draws attention and engagement from people so far outside of where baseball usually reaches. He is a once in a century or more athletic talent. The greatest athletes in the world marvel at what he does. He is probably the most famous baseball player of my lifetime by a factor of 50. And it will probably grow from here.
And it is driven by the results. This couldn’t happen with the Angels. It is almost certainly the best thing for MLB if Ohtani plays in the postseason every year from now to 2035. He is a transformative figure. And everyone involved is behaving like they recognize that.
During the World Series, I saw this commentary from David Carr (a good example of baseball reaching places it usually doesnt), which was: This team is filled with superstars, future hall of famers, and they are entirely focused on the team. We should celebrate them. They are some of the best players on earth, and they do not care about their own results or accomplishments. They are the example we should want our kids to see of putting the team first and focusing on working towards the shared goal, and not being concerned with your own numbers or playing time. That’s what we want our kids to learn when they play sports.
>>I think its probably likely that Ohtani will get another ring or
>>two before he retires, but I doubt he’ll get to 5 or 6
You’re probably right about this, but why do I feel like I should bookmark this comment for a good laugh at how naive we were when Ohtani has retired?
Look, Shohei Ohtani has real life main character syndrome so i would not rule it out, but also think about like the Derek Jeter career, where they won 4 out of 5 and lost in game 7 of the 6th, and it looked like he was a permanent fixture of the world series, and then he played in one more after that.
Ohtani could win 8 rings and I would not consider that completely out of left field, but I am a fan of the Dodgers and I have seen the best team in baseball with the best world series odds lose A LOT of LDS and LCS series. My guess is that 2 wins/4-5 more appearances during the Ohtani contract is probably the 50th percentile outcome.
the yankees won 4 out of 5, and then really 4 out of 8 with a chance at 2 more cause they lost in 01 and 03!
the yankees went:
lost ALDS in 5
won WS (4-2, braves won the first two games)
lost ALDS in 5
won WS (4-0)
won WS (4-0)
won WS (4-1, lost g3)
lost WS in 7
the yankees SWEPT back to back WS, after winning 4 WS games in a row two seasons prior. then won another WS 4-1. can you imagine if the dodgers three-peated and only lost 1 WS game out of the possible 21 to play. people would be trying to disappear mark walter like he was funding a drug cartel.
The dodgers have higher than 25% odds to win the World Series per Vegas odds *right now*. Betting tne NO side of that is one of the few use cases for the gambling sites disguised as “prediction markets” since a lot of books dont let you bet NO. Win some money if you disagree. Obviously baseball is uniquely random and I agree that it can withstand this insanity more so than any other American sport but let’s not pretend them having literally 5x the World Series odds of any other one team isnt a big competitive advantage that can be directly traced to your team being able to spend 300% more than many teams
I am in Mexico now (nowhere near the border) and there are tons of LA hats around and people saying “Shohei Ohtani” with a Latin accent. Having a massive, massive star on a winning team works really well overseas, like Messi in the US. All these hats and shirts add up.
I said it there and I’ll repeat it: they have the same financial might as the other big dogs. They just use it better. Theyve been dominant for more than 10 years now, in a much more competitive landscape than ever before. If it was just about money the mets, yankees, jays, etc would be just as good
That’s simply not true, no matter how many times you say it.
Those other big dogs do not have the TV revenue the Dodgers have. Not even in the same galaxy. The Jays, Mets, Yankees, Boston, are one class of “big dogs”. The Dodgers are a Direwolf.
To be fair their player development is probably better than league average.
But people have crazy ideas about what the Dodgers are doing and what their competitive advantage is.
The Dodgers have natural geographic and historical advantages in revenue, they know how to turn that into even bigger advantages, and they are good about allocating that money to veterans whose decline phases are gentle or far off.
Correct. When ranking the advantages the Dodgers have over the rest of the league, #1 by a mile is their spending.
#2 is their natural geographic advantage, which is huge for Japanese players, and really anyone who wants to play in beautiful weather every day, with like 1/10th the stress of playing in NY or Boston.
Player development is a distant #3. I don’t know why some people like to pretend otherwise.
Plenty of organizations develop players as well as the Dodgers. Nobody is matching them in the other categories.
I think the thing about the Dodgers’ player development is that it was true, say, 4-5 years ago that they were an industry leader in that area, and they continue to have very smart people and a very large investment in it now. A lot of their advancements have proliferated around the league, and so they do not stand out in the same way, but the respect for them continues, because I think a lot of the competition expects that they are more likely to have new discoveries that separate them again in the future, and I think that’s likely.
There were five teams that were way ahead of everyone else at something at various times: The Indians in the mid-90s, the A’s in the late 90s, the Red Sox in the early 00’s, the Rays in the late 00’s, the Astros in the early-10’s.
The A’s guys didn’t move around the league much and the ones who did, they didn’t have much success. But if you look at almost any team in major league baseball you will see that something like 19 teams right now are led by guys who directly descend from Hart and then Shapiro (Cleveland), Epstein (Boston / CHC), Friedman (Tampa Bay / Dodgers), or Luhnow (Houston).
(I say “something like” because that depends on whether you think Byrnes or DePodesta is really running the Rockies right now).
There are a couple other “families” out there, such as the Dombrowski tree (Dombrowski, Anthopolous, Dana Brown, Minaisian), and the Dayton Moore Tree (Picollo, Getz). That’s five more, and then you have Cashman, Preller, Krall, Forst, Posey, and Daniels. That’s it. Almost two-thirds of the league is running the Cleveland / Boston / Rays / Astros playbook. It’s really hard to stay ahead of everyone else when people are moving around this much.
Will Smith, Andy Pages, Justin Wrobleski, and Emmet Sheehan (drafted/signed and developed Dodgers) all contributed to winning Game 7 of the World Series. 4 out of 26 isn’t exactly a lot. Their whole roster IS NOT free agents.
This type of comment has come up a lot and it always feels like someone is saying “don’t look at the forest! Look at these very specific trees!”
LOL, exactly.If your argument is “look at this middle reliever and spot starter who helped them win one game last year!”. You probably don’t have a very strong argument.How do you look at the Dodgers roster, and come to the conclusion that homegrown drafted players are really pulling a lot of weight here?Edit: Also, Pagas and Smith exist as Dodgers because elite CF’s and catcher rarely hit FA. If they did, rest assured the Dodgers would sign them.
Also, at what point should a player no longer count as homegrown when thinking of the financials? Smith would have very likely left as a free agent had he gotten his start with a small-market club. I’m certain that developing a player gives you the inside track to extend them, but you have to have the financial might to actually do it.
FWIW, in my (completely meaningless) accounting, if they stay with the team, they’re always homegrown, even if they’re resigned as a FA. In my mind, in 2025, the Mets would still get credit for Nimmo, McNeil, and Alonso being “homegrown”, even though they had hit FA, and were expensive.
Fact is, the Mets farm system still drafted and developed them. I’d consider Pagas and Will Smith homegrown Dodgers in 2032, if they stayed with the organization the entire time, even if they were then making 40 mill apiece.
I have no idea where the point when someone no longer counts as “homegrown.”
Jose Ramirez is homegrown under any definition and is 100% the result of some excellent scouting and player development, and he’s signed below-market extensions with them twice. He’s also got 11 years of service time.
Aaron Judge is homegrown under any definition and is 100% the result of some excellent scouting and player development. But he made it to free agency and the Yankees had to make the top bid in order to get him back.
Andrew McCutchen is homegrown under any definition and is 100% the result of some excellent scouting and player development. I think he signed a below-market extension too. But then the Pirates traded him to the Giants. He bounced around the league for a while, and then ended up back with the Pirates, which he probably only did because he loves Pittsburgh.
I feel like we are moving farther and farther away from what the term “homegrown” means here.
It also feels like you have to define the term “homegrown” every time you use it. Kind of like the term “ace” for a pitcher.
will smith has an AAV of $14mm/year if he was hypothetically drafted and developed by a small market team and left that is 100% the fault of the team that let him leave, not the hypothetical large market team he would hypothetically sign with
its such a crazy thing to say when they won three WS in part because of major contributions by Will Smith, Seager, Bellinger, Kershaw, Buehler, Pages, Barnes, the development trio of Muncy/Turner/CT3, Enrique Hernandez, Joc, the reliever/swingman group of Vesia, Brusdar Graterol, Evan Phillips, Dustin May, Victor Gonzalez, Urias, Wrobleski, the “We’ll Fix Your Broken Guys” like Kopech and Edman, etc etc.
i get that its frustrating and it may or may not be “fair”, but its so lame and intellectually dishonest to say one team “buys all the good players and thats why they win”.
It is truly astonishing how much the Dodgers (and other suitors) were willing to overpay to have Tucker patrol their outfield. He’s a very consistent performer, but one whose value based on fWAR is substantially less than this record-setting AAV.
And the fact that it was the Dodgers, well, kudos to them, they are a well-run organization with enormous resources. They are all-in on the World Series every year. I admire that. But there’s no question this will disengage many fans nationwide outside of LA and for that reason may be bad for the game
Agreed! Even as the consensus top hitter available, he’s still a guy who has never put up more than 5.5 WAR in a single season, and he doesn’t really bring any star power to the table the way guys like Ohtani and Soto do. Nothing against him, I’m happy to see players get what they can– he just seems like an odd guy to spark a bidding war and set the new record for AAV
Agree with both jb and Foxx. Does this mean that the best hitter available in ensuing seasons is going to command a contract that exceeds all reason regardless of his actual value? I see the contract Bregman signed in the same light. I also think that a lot of fans, me included, are looking at the Dodgers as the new, and true evil empire
Current odds imply a c30% chance of a World Series win. Probably secures a 100% chance of a 2027 lockout
30% seems really high considering the randomness of the playoffs.
Less high when you know they’re almost certain to get the bye, largely due to the incredible depth they can afford. Such high randomness doesn’t really hurt them so much when they start out with one fewer coin flip series to win. And playoff randomness is also surely at least partially tied to wear and tear from a full season, which, again, being able to afford the quality of depth that they have mitigates significantly.
First, as a ‘Merican I am obligated to say: overpayz!! My $/WAR sensibilities I’m clutching pearls begging all to think of the children! Oooooh lord pls help, pls protect our job creators society builders gods chosen by you, why forsake them like this?
Great move to support a HoF coredation that maybe just added one more. Think I said it but I’m reminded of how the Cardinals loaded up around Pujols
Has anyone thought that maybe these players are collaborating with eviiiiiil around the globe (obvy not here, the good guys are here supewhewoes fweedom fightews) and these contracts are being used to deplete our ability to defend ourselves? What do they have on our owners? We *must* stand and fight, think of our owners’ children the next generation. They cannot live under such oppression. They’re just children for god’s (aka their dads) sake….Who will guide us if these players continue their coup, their reign of terror? Who will guide our children if the next gen of rulers, gods is depleted? Who will defend us? Who will educate us? We have to fight for our Future, tell terror not today
Friend, have you been drinking? You sound like you are not in a great place right now.
Should huge up-front signing bonuses be applied towards the NPV/AAV similarly but in the opposite direction as deferrals? Tucker is getting 22.5% of his contract on day one. The value of that money now is more than it would be if it was paid out as regular salary over four years, and it seems the calculations should account for that factor.
Yes, the fiscal reporting on things like this is mildly irresponsible. Soto’s contract doesn’t get “but the NPV” because there aren’t deferrals, but it’s so long that the end of it will be paying a substantially different real dollar amount than the front.
There should be one of three ways to report contract totals: total dollar amount, NPV, or adjusted AAV, where you consider both upfront signing bonuses (or those paid in subsequent years) and NPV each year of the deal individually. For 10-15 year deals, those numbers can be very very different.
You are spot on about signing bonuses. Signing bonuses, not deferrals, are actually the biggest way to game the salary cap calculations, as they are just spread evenly across all years of the deal even though they are more valuable to the player because of the time value of the up-front money. On the flip side, deferrals are discounted at an artificially low rate discount rate and are bad for salary cap math (unless you are owned by a finance firms that thinks it can get excess returns on that deferred money).
its also a way to work around state income tax though, same as the snell contract. its not *solely* a “high payroll team can afford to pay more now” thing, theyd rather not pay more now!
It feels like the Dodgers know they’re gonna get absolutely destroyed (as they should) in the next CBA and are getting theirs while they can. Can’t blame em.
This is the odd contract where it makes perfect sense for the Dodgers, but would be a complete catastrophe for just about any other team.
The Dodgers are so rich and so talented already that Tucker “only” being worth $40M or $50M doesn’t really matter. As I said in their ZiPS article, they currently aren’t built to be sustainable anyway, so it makes total sense to maximize this window. And Tucker gets $120M and as close to a guaranteed ring as you’ll get in baseball (which is still definitely far from guaranteed!)
What’s the gap btw 40, 50, and 60?
Agreed. The Dodgers are very very old and expensive.
On Roster Resource, look at the 6th column from the left, and read down.
I hate this timeline.
In a Top 100 Worst Things About This Timeline list, the Dodgers don’t even get an honorable mention.
bread and games?
This feels like getting a bit of salt in a massive wound that is not healing and is going to lead to major blood loss. It is absolutely not my biggest concern right now but sometimes the real problems are so big it’s the little things that make you mad.
Cool? Never said they were. Everything sucks and the dodgers are part of everything.
“It’s likely that the next Collective Bargaining Agreement will create even stiffer penalties for the crime of trying to win. ”
Don’t pee on me and tell me it’s raining. The Dodgers are spending nearly $600 million in payroll+ luxury tax. It’s true that my team is cheap. Even if they spent like drunken sailors they still could never approach half of this.
Next you’ll tell me that it is a good thing that petrol states own European soccer teams.
People get so mad about capitalism in important things like baseball. “It’s not fair!”
But are so willing to accept it in unimportant things like people’s lives.
First of all I’m not so sure that this audience in particular is happy to accept capitalism in their own lives.
Second of all baseball isn’t a capitalist economy, or at least it’s not a typical one, because it’s closed. No matter what the Dodgers do, the Pirates won’t go out of business, and no matter how much someone might want to own a MLB franchise, they can’t just start one.
I’ve thought of this… how much $$ would someone need to pay ~40 MLB level players instantaneously? Not like an expansion draft or anything, but pure free agency.
“Hey, want $5M because You’re a baseball player? Not gonna play anyone, because I’m not a part of the state sanctioned monopoly… But I can pay You to practice with a few other guys.”
get paid to play baseball like in the Sandlot… what am I doing typing this like this…
20 fanbases know their teams can’t compete at this level. Could and should those teams spend more?
Yes, but even if the payroll cellar dwellers all suddenly doubled spending today they’d be nowhere near the Dodgers outlay (not even thinking of the tax hit) this is the kind of inequity that doesn’t just annoy people, it starts to create apathy.
After all, if only a handful of teams have the resources to properly compete, and mine isn’t one of them, why should I bother watching?
I’ve got no problem with players getting paid, I do have one with an uneven playing field. I’ve moved into the pro cap and floor camp, share all the revenue, peg team salaries to 50% of sport income or whatever to make it fair, but stop this idiocy.
The NFL is set up that way (internally socialist, but aggressively capitalist with the League wrt the ecosystem as a whole), and it’s basically printing money.
BUT – you can only do that because the owners all got on board, saw proof of concept, and nobody wants to kill the golden goose. Plus, the union has a certain level of trust/transparency that they are really getting that 50%.
About the only thing all (or substantially all) MLB owners can agree on is that they have ZERO interest in financial transparency/trust with the union. They want it broken completely.
Very hard to have productive labour negotiations when there is no trust nor anything close to a common goal. And that’s even if you have a well-run, good faith operator union (also highly debatable).
All looks to be headed full steam into the cliff face, and no idea how one changes that.
“It’s likely that the next Collective Bargaining Agreement will create even stiffer penalties for the crime of trying to win. ”
Winning is archaic, inefficient, and for poor people too stupid and entitled to know there is way more to life like payroll efficiency and Future
Also: Yes, yes it should be considered a crime. These owners have families to feed and a society to build. Has winning ever built a charter school with public funds? What abt a for profit hospital? For profit university? For profit senior home? For profit daycare? For profit childcare?Has winning ever defended me from turr? I’m sick to my stomach and feel unsafe.
Signing players is 1) an overpaidz and 2) cheating. The Right Way is Development, which ftr better be done by the time MLB or I will unleash the wrath of a ‘Merican without cheeseburger
With the luxury tax, Tucker will cost the Dodgers $119M this season or millions more than the bottom 11 teams in the league.
We are in the territory where the Dodgers’ luxury tax payments alone are going to be substantial enough for individual teams to sign actual major league free agents. Like, the A’s are going to get so much money that they’ll be able to get a setup man or something purely from the revenue sharing they get from the Dodgers specifically. That’s great for the setup guy, but real real bad for baseball.
A’s don’t really get any money unless they increase local revenues separately from this. It’s actually not a bad incentive…better than spending wastefully on Luis Severino
Idk if that’s bad for baseball. If the poor owner of the A’s can’t afford to sign a setup guy without a handout from the 2nd or 3rd wealthiest team in the league, it’s probably good for them to get that check.
Borrowing from Porfirio Diaz, “Poor NL West. So far from God and so close to the Dodgers.”
They saw that the offense was aging and more dependent on one guy. When they looked around all that was left was Tucker. Buy him as a patch if Freeman, Betts, Muncy, and Hernandez continue their decline.
Que the annual Fangraphs article on how this is good for the sport. “Parity is alive and well!”. I’ll read it again as I watch the Dodgers Death Star three-peat.
#salarycapnow #dynastiessuck
the yankees once won 7 titles in 10 years. then they won 4 in 5. i am just shocked sometimes at the level to which people seem to forget this.
From 1923-1962 the Yankees won 51% of all the World Series played.
Dynasties are great! The Bulls dynasty of the 90’s was the biggest thing to ever happen to basketball. The Patriots dynasty of the aughts gave us a national villain to hate. The Yankees dynasties of the early 20th century established the modern media perception of baseball, and their dynasty at the turn of the century helped rescue baseball from the damage done by the strike and definitely made postseasons like 01 and 03 that much sweeter. Without Goliath, David is just a weird short kid with a proclivity for slings.
Finding out that the Dodgers pay less than half of what they should from their media deal because of a 25 year concession that MLB gave McCourt during his financial issues puts all this spending in a very different light.
If so it is a bit like the deal that apparently gave the Giants veto power over an MLB team moving to San Jose. These deals need to come with a much smaller duration. There is no real reason why these deals should exist indefinitely or with far-off expiration dates.
Yeah, MLB wanted out of that McCourt bankruptcy proceeding fast. Probably made sense at the time given how much power bankruptcy courts have to ignore other agreements, but the tv contract vastly exceeded the agreed on cap.
The Dodgers spending that money on players rather than just pocketing it seems like the better outcome, but maybe it would be better for the sport in this particular instance if they just kept more of the windfall for themselves.
The rich get richer….so America 2026
Man, am I the only one that enjoys watching this juggernaut? The years of Yankees and Red Sox dominating the game every year is my favorite memory of the game as a child. I’m a Rays fan but when they lost to the Dodgers in the World Series I didn’t think of changing the system. I enjoy the story, I enjoy the business, I enjoy seeing MLB become more global and getting engagement from Japanese fans tuning in to every Dodgers game.
I mostly agree with you. I really wanted the jays to win last year, and I’ll be rooting for whoever the dodgers go up against, but juggernauts are fun to me. In the most popular sport in the world, this is just how it works, and I think its more compelling for it.
With that said, I think its tremendously boring that Tucker decided to do this. He seems kinda like a loser, and this sort of confirms that to me.
I think Tucker isn’t the only very good baseball player who has specifically found the fact that the Dodgers have so many bigger names that he won’t be the face of the team to be a positive reason to go there.
Even Mookie has expressed sentiment along those lines.
Why do you say that Tucker seems like a loser outside of this signing?
I didn’t have much exposure to him before 2025 as a Cubs fan, annd felt from every public appearance last year that he might be the most boring man alive.
I think if I had media asking me questions every day I would keep my answers pretty boring too!
He can’t keep getting away with this!
So he strained his calf, pulling the ivy off the walls in Wrigley? That sounds miserable.
*small typo. “ball” not “wall” was probably the intent. I’m looking for work… maybe I could be an editor hahahahah.
This is not the crime. The crime is the structural inequality in MLB’s economic system (namely: we have clubs in markets with wildly different economic characteristics, which contributes to a resource disparity that all but predetermines which teams can reasonably acquire which caliber of players).
I don’t blame the Dodgers for leveraging their advantages to the hilt, just like I wouldn’t blame a team who, by some quirk of the rules, was allowed to put 10 men on the field. But if I saw that, I would sit up in my chair and say, “That rule’s wrong! We should fix it!”
MLB has weird incentives here. Because baseball is more of a regional sport (where is harder to package an MLB wide broadcast deal and gate revenues are much more meaningful than the NFL), having successful large market teams probably maximizes the overall size of the pie. That would still leave the question of how to divide the pie more evenly.
And, if it goes too far (as some here certainly feel it has), then the whole system can break and then everyone, including the big market teams, end up losing.
I guess this moves Teoscar to LF. It’s a good move but they’ve got a whole bunch of slightly past their prime stars – Betts, Freeman, Smith, Muncy. It’s probably not in their DNA to trade to get younger, so they could just go all out for the next 2-3 years and worry about it then.
Any interest in a research project on spending v winning curve? i.e. what’s the correlation look like to say 88 wins v 90+? Did the Dodgers just buy 30% playoff odds in signing Tucker?
Hard thing to express but I’m going to try:
We live in a world so incredibly subsumed by the superstructure of capitalism that, as Fred Jameson put it, “its easier to imagine the end of world than it is the end of capitalism”. I don’t like that this is the case. At all. But I get really confused when I see people (seemingly thoughtful, intelligent people), get very up in arms about unfairness and inequity of Major League Baseball. In many ways, this is an industry in which labor has successfully leveraged itself over capital, yet it still follows the rules of profit maximization. This system, one that prioritizes profit above all else, is the air we breath, the soup we swim in. But it seems to me that many baseball fans want to create a fantasy world where those rules don’t apply, and in a way that is beneficial to the rapacious owners at the heart of all of this, cry for equity in an industry that is competition itself. As has been pointed out countless times, the calls for the restraining of the market is functionally a call for socialism amongst sports owners, in an arrangement that benefits no one but them. There are no provisions to salary caps that would make the game more affordable for fans, that would stop them from promoting gambling at every turn, changing the absurd streaming structures that we have to deal with. There is this crazy clamor for cushy treatment and equity amongst the worst people on earth that have taken the sport you love and have done everything in their power to bastardize it.
From a labor perspective, MLB is the biggest success story. Those gains are so real that now the owners have been able to create a narrative that players are making too much, while they’re able to conceal their own earnings. Like Maggie Thatcher blaming coal miners and Reagan publicly shaming air traffic controllers, millions of baseball fans have taken the bait hook line and sinker.
If you feel compelled to call for equality, direct it towards LITERALLY ANYTHING ELSE!!!
This is really well put.
All-time banger of a comment, and maybe the first in site history to quote Fredric Jameson. Thank you for this!
Preach!
amazing. my sentiments exactly. thanks.
100% agree
Articulate, thoughtful but also unfair. Another view is that baseball fans love the game. I can believe that my mental bandwidth would be probably be better spent on more substantive matters. Unless you are a fan of a major market team, the spending disparities make you enjoy the game less. They team you love has a materially lower chance to thrive because of spending differences. You would like to change that. There are anti-player ways of doing that, which I don’t agree with, but there are ones that share the profits with the player and also allow similar level of resources to each team.
Would I also like these other things to perhaps be mitigated? Sure. But paying too much at the park, annoying streaming, etc. do not affect my team’s competitiveness. The spending does. Do I dislike those things? Sure, but also, if they are profitable, resigned that they are going to happen.
Your argument seems to be: there are much worse problems in the world, so, non-large market fan, let it go. Anyone on these boards probably spend too much time on baseball unless it is their profession. So all of us are guilty of caring about something that ranks very low in the societal importance. We love it for varying reasons but we do. But while some may wax poetic about the beauty of the game (and there is a lot of it) having your team win brings true joy and your team lose, sadness. Wanting to change a structure that unfairly hurts your team does not seem unreasonable and should not so blithely dismissed.
This is the good stuff
lol
What were the crowdsourcing results for Tucker? I’m pretty sure I overestimated the contract duration, but underestimated the AAV.
I’ve always been against it, but bring on the hard cap and floor.
To me there is a logical solution but one I think the owners in large markets will dislike.
Outline:
MLB “Player” Revenue gets defined (e.g. what revenues to MLB can be tracked and verified)
MLB and MLBPA negotiate over what % of that goes to players.
That negotiation x MLB Revenues = $ to players, in aggregate
That spending $ allocated evenly across all teams
Each team has a band around that number (above, below)
The MLB revenues are tallied in aggregate, divided evenly across teams. Transfers are made between rich vs middle, lower teams
If spending, in aggregate, below target, MLB pays a tax on that unspent, and that goes to MLBPA and the number carries forward. If that money still unspent the next year, another tax at a progressing rate.
With this teams are functionally equivalent in terms of resources. No draft since everyone can equally negotiate. Just an open market because teams are equal. Maybe some draft order to help poorly performing teams, but don’t really need it.
Maybe split the league into two but big vs small and this functions but within those two groups, so the owner transfers are smaller within each other (different salary avgs in those two leagues but reorder the league into David and Goliath; WS would be billed as such)
Ownership needs like a 5/6 majority to approve a CBA so something unpopular in large markets is actually DOA.
Okay, but logically this would make sense and make baseball competitiveness a non-outlier compared to the other major sports. I don’t like caps implemented as just taking value from players and giving it to owners. This shares the economic gains with players and balances the playing field. If you were one of the downvotes, I appreciate you replying. Welcome others’ critiques.
Everyone seems to forget that outside of dominating the Japanese market they also dominate the Mexican market(and have been since Fernando). That’s 2 huge baseball markets where Dodger things probably comprise 80% of the market share.
The Dodgers are making some serious coin.
Lot of feels over this one. It’s going to be ok, guys.
The crazy thing to me is it only took 240 mil guaranteed to sign Tucker. This is a bargain! What are these other teams doing?
Much like the Freeman signing, LA sat back for months and waited until late in the offseason here. They saw the market develop and eventually the opportunity to add an elite player was too good for them to pass up. This was a no brainer for them at this price. An absolute no brainer.
The bottom third of the league is the Washington Generals. Bought and paid for as punching bags for the rich teams so that they can all be winners. Boring.
This will be wildly unpopular take. I’ll get downvoted to hell, and that’s OK.
Been a baseball fanatic for a few decades.
As last season came to a close, I was pretty sure I was tapping out over the offseason. The insane spread in payrolls in MLB is a major reason why. It’s been bad for a long time. Maybe it’s gotten worse…maybe I’ve gotten more sick of it. Probably a combination of both.
I’m referring to the spread among MLB team payrolls — not that the players individually “make too much, they’re just playing baseball!” or whatever Curmudgeon McOldguy might claim. I think the players deserve every penny they can get.
As of right now, the Dodgers have committed $429 million to their 2026 payroll. Nearly $100 million more than 2nd place, over 2.5 times the median payroll, about six times last place. The Dodgers have committed more to 2029 payroll than 24 of the other 29 teams have committed to this year.
Maybe those numbers are approximately true for the Yankees in 2005 or so, too. That, I think, would be just as bad. It would mean in 20 years, MLB has done doodley-squat to keep things even vaguely fair. If they tried something, it sure as hell hasn’t worked.
I wish I could enjoy watching a third of the league’s fanbases get kicked around like hackeysacks for another year. I just don’t enjoy it anymore. I think this signing is a good example, or a prime reason, why.
Cheers…
“Maybe those numbers are approximately true for the Yankees in 2005 or so, too. That, I think, would be just as bad. It would mean in 20 years, MLB has done doodley-squat to keep things even vaguely fair. If they tried something, it sure as hell hasn’t worked.”
the spread of the yankees vs the field in the 2000s was substantially worse than the dodgers vs present day. time to fire up the time machine and go back two decades to stop becoming a fan then
No, it wasn’t substantially worse. Based on your numbers below, it was pretty similar.
(Per Roster Resouce, Dodgers currently sit 6.2 times #30 and 2.67 times the median.)
Anyhow, to reiterate the point you quoted me on 🙂
“Maybe those numbers are approximately true for the Yankees in 2005 or so, too. That, I think, would be just as bad. It would mean in 20 years, MLB has done doodley-squat to keep things even vaguely fair. If they tried something, it sure as hell hasn’t worked.”
fwiw yankees payroll (#1) was 7 times greater than #30 and 3 times greater than the midline
That ZiPS projection is really ugly. It also speaks to why Tucker couldn’t land a 10-year deal.
I’m more optimistic and think Tucker will be healthy and back on his game with an off-season to heal and be a 4-4.5 WAR player for a few years. But still that’s $15M/WAR before luxury tax penalties.
And given Tucker has been derailed by significant injuries two years in a row and there really hasn’t been a good explanation for his second half decline, there’s a decent chance that his production matches ZiPS or is even a below that.
Point of order: “ tore the cover off the wall for two weeks…” what wall? Fix this typo!