Be amazed all you like by the Los Angeles Dodgers firing out another $182 million for the next five years of Blake Snell’s services. Wonder how much deferred money they will have to pay Snell, the offseason's finest domestic pitching prize, after the club’s current management team is either retired or dead. Speculate in rage about how the Dodgers will invariably get Juan Soto before Christmas and then pick up Roki Sasaki while they're standing in the checkout line like he was a damned Almond Joy. Complain to your spleen's content about how, if the Dodgers ever keep everyone healthy, they will win 146 games and be awarded the World Series by acclamation after the American League champion declares "screw it" and goes on vacation early. They're still doing this world domination thing wrong.
What they should be doing, simply put, is eliminating the middleman. The Dodgers should simply buy Scott Boras.
Let's not worry about the payroll of their Triple-A affiliate in Oklahoma City becoming distended with all the $15 million players the Dodgers can't fit on the big-league roster. Let's not concern ourselves with the heat death of baseball, when the other owners can't sell their teams because billionaires don't like to buy things that won't dominate the market. Let us instead wonder about the Dodgers' essential inefficiency in not just putting Boras, the game's long-reigning turbo-agent, on the payroll. Let him do his weird little nursery rhymes in the boardroom in exchange for his inventory. If the Dodgers’ current deferred-money strategy is going to pay off in the long run for the franchise, as some experts claim, Boras would for sure want that deal just as much as the team would. One-stop shopping is always preferable.
And your favorite team? Collateral damage, nothing more. Imagine Steve Cohen, the multibillionaire who bought the New York Mets just so he can win a World Series for his father, finding out that he can only shop at the Dollar Store now. Consider the Castellini family, the owners of the Cincinnati Reds and the skinniest of flints, looking at their fellow owners with all the smugness Cincinnati can muster and saying, "Now you come to me asking advice about working on the cheap? How the worm turns, moneybags." Revel in the knowledge that every baseball fan in Las Vegas is going to forsake the concept of the West Sacramento Athletics to caravan to L.A. and watch the team that never loses, while John Fisher dies the competitive and financial death he so richly merits.
This does not mean that you, the itinerant baseball fan, have to start rooting for the Dodgers. Not at all. We speak here for Comrades McQuade and McKinney and their Phillies obsession, of Comrades Anatharaman and Theisen with their Tigers devotionals. We speak for Comrades Kalaf (Red Sox) and Paez-Pumar (Marlins) and Petchesky (Yankees) and Kuhn (Pirates) and even Imbler (Hiroshima Toyo Carp or Tokyo Yakult Swallows, just for the cool nonmammalian nicknames). You can hate the Dodgers all you want, and love your team however you wish. You just have to live with the knowledge that the Dodgers once again appear ready and willing to buy the offseason, and as soon as they stop screwing around and buy Boras, too, you can adjust your dreams accordingly. For example: "Maybe we can win the Grapefruit League." As St. Louis Browns minor leaguer Mao Zedong once said, "Let a thousand flowers die."
This is simply a matter of good business, as espoused decades ago by comedian Robert Klein when he said, in the context of slagging the oil companies of the day: "When you have all the supply, you can demand whatever the fuck you want." The way the Dodgers are doing it now is just torturing insects in your parents' driveway: "Oh, maybe the Blue Jays can get Soto." "The Giants need a big signing, so why not Sasaki?" "The Angels got Yusei Kikuchi as part of their slow rebuild? Cool." Balderdash! Letting people hope in the winter when you know they will get nothing in spring, summer, or fall is just cruel. Doing it this way can be construed as a kindness, but only so long as you're the ones holding the magnifying glass and the flash paper. It's how the politicians of tomorrow are made today.
Anyway, it's the holiday season, and you should all be with family, friends, work colleagues or in a pinch, people you actually enjoy being with. You should gather around your table, basking in the multicolored high-caloric and cholesteroltastic generosity of a properly laden feast—right up until the point that Boras wearing a satin Dodgers jacket and an ill-fitting Mookie Betts City Connect jersey kicks down your door, grabs the turkey, and says, "Sorry, this is not your dinner, this is our $116 million backup catcher. Happy holidays, and we'll just leave some season ticket brochures here on the entry hall table. Oh, and we'll be back for the sides and dessert in a minute."
The lesson: If you're going to gorge yourself, do it with both hands holding trowels. It's what you voted for, and nothing says Happy Thanksgiving more convincingly.
