The Most Daunting Aspect Of The Dodgers Signing Of Kyle Tucker

The Dodgers have more than lived up to their role as baseball’s Goliath. They’re the most talented team around, a two-time defending champion, and they’re never satisfied. In my book, these are largely good things – I’ve never been one to go out of my way to root for the underdog.

But this one is going to leave a mark. No, Kyle Tucker is not the most talented player the Dodgers have brought aboard. And thanks to Shohei Ohtani he’s not the most expensive, either. But the club’s signing of the former Cubs and Astros’ outfielder to a four-year, $240 million contract just might be the final straw that breaks the sport’s economic structure.

The courtship of Tucker developed along the lines of other high-end free agent dalliances of recent offseasons. There was a team willing to go long in terms of years, with a competitive annual salary. In this case, the Blue Jays emerged as the most serious of such suitors. And there was a team willing to go bonkers in terms of annual salary over a much shorter period of time. That team was the Mets in this case.

And in most past offseasons, the player would have to decide his personal priority between term and AAV and make a final decision. Everybody would then move on to the next free agent.

Tucker, a really, really good but not elite player, got elite short and long-term offers and the Dodgers steamrolled both, giving him a combination of term and AAV that no one could possibly have imagined. Mets’ GM Steve Cohen has absolutely no problem spending money on his team, and he got blown out of the water. Forget the other 28 teams (we’ll get back to them in a minute) – if you can make Cohen seem poor, your pockets are pretty deep.

There is no parallel to this situation in any other major North American sport. They typically have salary caps and some sort of parity among clubs when it comes to player costs. In baseball, Kyle Tucker’s 2026 salary will be basically even with a couple other clubs’ entire payroll.

But that problem existed before Tucker, and before the guy before him. Owners unwilling to spend a reasonable percentage of club revenues tended to fall behind, and deserved it. Clubs like the Brewers and Rays didn’t spend much, but carved out their own competitive advantages and remained in the hunt on a budget. There were tiers of owner types, with the Dodgers, Mets, Yankees and others at the top and the usual suspects at the bottom. Baseball’s inherent randomness kept them all within hailing distance of one another competitively.

I fear that era is now over, permanently. The Dodgers are officially a tier of one. Luxury tax? They don’t care. They’re swimming in funds. They do appear to have at least one unfair advantage over their peers, a carve-out from previous owner Frank McCourt’s sale of the club that exempts their local TV revenue from the revenue-sharing formula, but they have earned other advantages. Their minor league system is still excellent – this is not a top-heavy organization that has sold out the future for the present. They scout and analyze well. They’re creative financially, deferring enough funds to the future to make their near-term cash flow workable, but not too much to drive away their targets during negotiations. Most importantly, they tend to hone in on the correct player targets. The Dodgers aren’t throwing money at the majority of free agents who are primed to decline relatively quickly.

Baseball’s Collective Bargaining Agreement expires after the 2026 season. It’s long been expected that negotiations between players and owners will be historically acrimonious after a fairly lengthy period of labor peace. This deal makes that point more obvious than ever, and raises the stakes. Fellow free agent Bo Bichette signed with the Mets right after Tucker signed with the Dodgers for way more money than was rumored just a day earlier. This deal affects every star contract to be negotiated moving forward.

The critical mass of MLB owners who couldn’t or wouldn’t compete before are now in a totally different financial stratosphere compared to the Dodgers. The cries for a salary cap/floor are only going to get louder and garner further support. If baseball misses most or all of the 2027 season, where does it go from there? Will teams be sold? I seriously doubt that there are 30 prospective owners or ownership groups that wish to run an MLB club like the Dodgers do.

Most likely, any work stoppage will end within a year or so, and a cap/floor will be put in place. This will allow the Dodgers to be the Dodgers (perhaps with some restraints built in) while forcing the bottom-feeders to spend more, likely growing the overall pie available to MLB players. Competitive balance would likely increase, and not simply due to randomness.

But what’s the worst-case scenario? Teams go out of business? Contraction, with the game’s middle class of players again taking the biggest hit? These outcomes would be unlikely, but within the realm of possibility.

For all the fire you can give this contract, the Dodgers are getting his prime age 29-32 seasons. He won’t be remembered as one of those guys who staggered through the final third of his mega-deal. Ultimately, however, I think he could well go down as the guy that broke the system.