There are a lot of takeaways from the Dodgers’ latest act of free agent gluttony — turning Kyle Tucker, a very good but hardly great support player into a most unlikely record-breaking $60 million per year commodity — but perhaps the biggest one is for the first time uniting all the other owners, big market and small, in support of a salary cap in baseball.
One has to believe baseball commissioner Rob Manfred’s phone has been ringing off the hook since news of the Dodgers’ four-year, $240 million deal for Tucker Thursday night, with calls of outrage that something has to be done to curb the out-of-control Guggenheim Partners. At the same time, it was not surprising that Steve Cohen, Manfred’s Public Enemy No. 2 when it comes to reckless spending, quickly pivoted from losing out on Tucker to signing Bo Bichette to a three year, $126 million ($42 million per) deal. In Bichette’s case, I’m betting, assuming he has a good year in ’26, he opts out after the first year to get a more desired lucrative longer term deal.
If you’re wondering why the sudden three-year deals, it’s because clubs (maybe not the Dodgers and Mets) are gearing up for a hard cap (as well as a floor) coming upon resolution of the new collective bargaining agreement next year. Mind you, there’ll be a battle royale with the Players Association that will likely result in another strike. But unlike previous CBA negotiations when the owners were mixed about a cap, they almost all agree now the Dodgers’ $2.11 billion in guaranteed salaries (nearly $800 million more than the No. 2 Padres), including $1.081 billion in deferred money, is not something any of them could sustain.
Obviously, with the collective balance tax soft cap now in place, the Dodgers are caring less at paying an estimated $169 million ($57.1 million for Tucker alone) in luxury tax next year. So as much as Manfred may love the huge amount of extra revenue generated for the game when the Dodgers are in the World Series, he has to admit they have unleveled the playing field in baseball like never before.
Here are some other takeaways from the Tucker contract:
The Dodgers will very likely break the major league record of 116 wins in a season by the 2001 Mariners and 1906 Cubs, and millions of fans across the baseball landscape woke up Saturday to realize their team has no chance this year.
The Mets’ pivot to Bichette was a result of Cohen panicking in the face of the beating he’s taken from the media this winter after his President of Baseball Operations David Stearns got out-bid by the Dodgers for his closer Edwin Diaz and let go of Met favorites Brandon Nimmo and Pete Alonso with so far no suitable replacements. Other than continuing his stance of no contracts beyond three years, Bichette’s addition as their third baseman (where he’s never played before) would seem to also go against Stearns’ avowed desire to emphasize run prevention, just as there’s no adequate defensive first baseman to replace Alonso.
The Bichette signing takes the Mets well above the third (110% Cohen tax) collective balance tax level and one would assume precludes them doing any more big free agency spending to address their continued need for a center fielder and starting pitching. (For example a signing of Cody Bellinger would cost them $75 million alone in additional tax.) They do, however, have an ample supply of attractive trade chips — Brett Baty, Jett Williams, Luisangel Acuna, Brandon Sproat, Ronny Mauricio, et al., — to fill those needs.
The Yankees insist the Tucker signing has no bearing on their negotiations with Scott Boras on Bellinger. No doubt Boras will attempt to use the $60 million AAV as the new baseline, but the Yankees long ago determined five years at $31-32 million per was a more-than-fair value offer for the 30-year-old Bellinger, who is a nice player but in no way a superstar. Boras is still hoping to find a One Dumb Owner to top that in both years and AAV, but if one does the Yankees are prepared to move on. Hal Steinbrenner, who doesn’t have near the personal financial resources as the Guggenheims or Cohen, is apparently determined to act responsibly. How refreshing!
IT’S A MADD, MADD WORLD
Even before all the end-of-week madcap spending by the Dodgers and Mets, the new owners of the Tampa Bay Rays are sounding the alarm they may have paid for a pig in the poke and are already thinking they may have to move. “In North America, at least in my eyes, there’s not a professional sports team that is more in crisis and has more headwinds than the Tampa Bay Rays,” Ken Babby, the new Rays CEO said last week on the “Hunks Talking Junk” podcast in regard to years of stadium uncertainty in Tampa Bay. At least last week the new Rays owners apparently settled on a site for a new stadium in Tampa — developing the 110-acre Hillsborough Community College district in Tampa just up Dale Mabry Boulevard from the NFL Bucs stadium. No word from Tampa and Hillsborough County officials, who have notoriously refused all public funding for a ballpark for the Rays in the past, about how and from who the stadium and redevelopment project would be paid for. But Babby insisted a new ballpark must be constructed by April of 2029, to which Tampa mayor Jane Castor pushed back on Babby’s “crisis” remark by saying “you can’t build a baseball stadium overnight, so I would utilize the word ‘urgency’ myself.”
