I can understand how it would appear that way, but that's not even what I believe is actually happening.Originally Posted by GrenadaRoger
more and more, its becoming apparent that in the free agent market, the Dodgers act as a fluffer to hamstring long term financially the winning bidder by pushing up the price with little intention of getting the player signed...maybe the Yankees can deal with a long term contract going bad, but the Angels will struggle and maybe the Nationals too if their deals go south.
The problem is that the Dodgers are cheap, and they also have a GM who cut his teeth running a small market team, and is terrified of giant, expensive, multiyear contracts.
So, like with Rendon, the Dodgers were interested, but put a ceiling of $200 million on him. Once they saw he was definitely going to get offers in excess of that, they bailed out. Same thing with Cole, though their ceiling on him was higher (but not anywhere close to what the Yankees paid).
This financial restraint could be seen as refreshing (so they don't become another Phillies and ruin the team for a decade after winning a championship), but there are two problems with this approach.
First, they're basically shutting themselves out from getting any free agent superstars.
Second, they've mostly sucked at signing mid-level free agents, which have added up to dead money equivalent to those big contract anyway. For example, AJ Pollock and Joe Kelly for 3 years could have paid for one of those superstar free agents for those same years.
If you're a big market team, sometimes you just have to go for it, and stop obsessing over getting 100% value out of the big contracts. As much as I hate the Angels, they're not afraid to reach for the stars with big contracts, though sometimes to their own peril (Albert Pujols, anyone?)
Anyway, looks like the Dodgers aren't going to make a big splash this offseason, but they're still going to come in as the big favorites to win the NL West yet again.
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