What’s wrong with MLB is now on full display during the NLCS featuring the scrappy small-market Milwaukee Brewers against the behemoth of baseball in the LA Dodgers. The Brewers had the best record in MLB in 2025 and were 6-0 against the Dodgers, so their fans had hope going in. They both had met in the 2018 NLCS, with the Dodgers winning in seven, in what was a competitive & hard fought series. The Dodgers were then handled by the Boston Red Sox in the World Series.
* Later it was revealed the 2018 Boston Red Sox had used Iphone watches to relay signs stolen through clubhouse video, which seriously violated MLB rules on technology use during games, so that year has a fan asterisk on its champion. In 2017 the Houston Asterisks relayed their stolen signs by banging trash cans and this is why MLB now has PitchCom. I’m excited that MLB batters, pitchers & catchers can finally appeal balls & strikes in 2026. It’s about time, as this greatly reduces zealous Yankees, Red Sox, Mets, etc, crowds from unfairly influencing balls & strikes. No fan will miss the art of pitch framing by a catcher in MLB, we’ll be glad it’s gone. Padres SS Xander Bogaerts was punched out on ball four at Wrigley Field in the 9th inning of a deciding game three in the wild card round as his team was rallying. Technology needs to be used to prevent over-excited umpires from doing the wrong thing just to please a home crowd. This is the sports era we live in. Too many people who aren’t really part of the game keep trying to insert themselves into the game. This creates too many asterisks.
In 2025, the Los Angeles Dodgers are showing the baseball world what front office brains, tremendous clout & bottomless spending can achieve. In a game as random & unpredictable as baseball, the Dodgers have virtually ensured themselves a World Series championship. That much is clear after two games of the NLCS, with the Dodgers leading 2-0 and going back to Chavez Ravine for the next three, if necessary. They may only need two, but the outcome already feels inevitable.
As a San Diego Padres fan, it’s our calling to know & dislike the Dodgers. The Padres are like the Brewers & Mariners, they’ve never won it– while Seattle has never been. Mariners are up 2-0 on the Blue Jays and going home in the ALCS. Both these ALCS teams are better than the 2025 Brewers, but neither are going to be able to match the Dodgers. There is a qualitative change in how the Dodgers do things that has led so many fans to this conclusion.
The Dodgers won it last year and were dominant. The Padres were the second-best team according to the champion Dodgers, but there was some distance between them. This year the Padres fell to the 10th-best team in MLB, making the playoffs but losing to the Cubs in the Wild Card round. Among the post-season qualifiers, the Padres only could have beaten the Reds or Guardians, making them the 10th-best MLB team in 2025.
The Dodgers didn’t dominate MLB during the 2025 regular season like they did last year. They had significant injuries on the pitching side, and their bullpen collapsed at times. The Padres had many opportunities to win the NL West, but couldn’t score runs consistently. Their superb bullpen & great defense carried them as far as they got. The Padres were a flawed team, as was every other team in MLB– except the Dodgers.
The Dodgers do things differently from everyone else because they have the clout & brains to do it. For instance, the Dodgers signed LHP Blake Snell last winter for 5/$137M, specifically to pitch in October. The Dodgers only got 61.1 IP from Blake Snell during the season, but they were never concerned and didn’t have to rush him back from injury. Contrast that to 2024, when Blake Snell pitched 104 innings with a 3.12 ERA for the San Francisco Giants and his team wasn’t happy with that. Snell signed late because he had a limited free agent market due to QO restrictions, etc. The 2023 NL Cy Young winner (his second) missed the early part of 2024 with oblique injuries and by the time he got healthy the Giants were out of it and even floated trading Blake Snell to the Yankees at the 7/31 deadline. After the 2024 season, Blake Snell opted-out of his deal and inked with the Dodgers, who only expect him to pitch like an ace in October. The Dodgers are a different animal. Most teams need their ace all season AND in the post-season. Many teams have their World Series aspirations derailed by an injury to their ace. The 2025 Dodgers have four aces.
Big RHP Tyler Glasnow (4/$117M) pitched only 90.1 innings during the season, so he’s recovered, rested & ready to go for the playoffs, with an arm that most MLB post-season starters had in June. DH/RHP Shohei Ohtani 47 IP, 2.87 ERA during the season in which the entire organization has been building him up as a post season starter. RHP Yoshinobu Yamamoto (12/$325M) is the Dodgers true ace, making 30 starts with 173.1 IP and a 2.49 ERA. They didn’t overuse him trying to make the post season because they knew from the start they would probably win their division and surely make the playoffs. This is programmed planning that begins well before spring training. The Dodgers used homegrown pitchers to eat innings during the 2025 regular season, which allowed them to save their expensive aces until the playoffs. No other team can do that.
LHP Clayton Kershaw is a Hall-of-Famer, but he’s no longer dominant. In his final season he gave the Dodgers 112.1 above average innings as a starter. In the 2025 playoffs Clayton Kershaw is a middle-leverage reliever, and to his credit he accepts his role. RHP Dustin May pitched 104 innings and was good enough during the season, but gets left off the post-season roster. Tony Gonsolin is another Dodger homegrown righty starter who doesn’t make their post-season roster due to injury and/or ineffectiveness.
The Dodgers just use these guys and many others like them in the bullpen, to get through the regular season while allowing their championship level pitchers the season to recover and be ready to win in October. The Dodgers are playing a different game as compared to the rest of MLB. Even the Yankees have to struggle and fight with everything they’ve got just to reach the post-season. The Mets didn’t even make the post-season with a $320-350M payroll in 2025. The Dodgers spent the same or more than the Mets. The Shohei Ohtani contract currently defers $68M annually, so payroll commitments for the Dodgers are really over $400M/season. On top of that, their clout is all-powerful. Last winter in international free-agency, the Dodgers grabbed ace RHP Roki Sasaki, who is now their post-season closer. The Padres were in the Roki Sasaki running, but were forced to concede to the Dodgers, otherwise MLB would cancel (or at least downgrade) their TV deal.
It’s a fluid situation season-by-season these days, but in 2025, MLB produced & distributed local broadcasts for five teams: Arizona Diamondbacks, Cleveland Guardians, Colorado Rockies, Minnesota Twins, and San Diego Padres. These are teams that couldn’t negotiate a lucrative-enough TV-rights deal on their own, so MLB broadcast their games and paid these teams much less than others with their own deals.
For instance, on January 28, 2025, the Dodgers and Time Warner Cable signed a 25-year broadcast agreement valued at $8.35 billion, which would see the establishment of a new channel known as SportsNet LA. By comparison, the Padres lost $80-100M in the Diamond Sports Group bankruptcy, announced in March 2023, and have been trimming payroll while trying to remain competitive ever since. By the time Roki Sasaki was conceded to the Dodgers last January, all the remaining top international prospects had been signed, so the Padres were shut out of the 2025 international draft after signing the top prospect two years running. It’s like shoving sand against the tide for Padres GM AJ Preller.
And most fans feel pretty much the same at this point. No other league allows one team to outspend its competitors by 3-4 times. The NFL & NBA understand that star salaries need to be capped, while most athletes understand there needs to be more payroll equity at the bottom– especially for younger players. MLB is probably heading towards an owner lockout after the 2026 season.
There are serious labor rights issues here, along with ownership-league issues on competitiveness. These inequalities are distorting the game to the point where whichever big-market team manages itself the best and wins the hot stove season is virtually guaranteed a World Series. When MLB gets to the point we are now, radical new thinking is required. The same old tweaking, and revising of a broken system just leads to more conflict. The root issues are money & power over the game.
Players need to start taking more ownership of their game. It’s their labor that creates the game with all the fan interest. Billionaire owners mostly don’t understand baseball and only want to make money for themselves from it. This hurts the players, the fans, and the game itself. Capitalism is about crushing your competition, and that’s what the Dodgers are doing to baseball right now. MLB needs 30 teams competing on a level playing field for the game to be interesting again. In 2025, we have MLB hyping its behemoth for maximum ratings, while fans who have already anticipated the outcome are rapidly losing interest.
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