Dodgers Still Aren’t Out On Top Free Agents, Even After Blake Snell, Tommy Edman
The Los Angeles Dodgers are going full evil empire in the 2024-2025 Major League Baseball offseason.
Less than a month after winning the 2024 World Series, the Dodgers made the biggest splash of the free agency period to date, signing two-time Cy Young winner Blake Snell to a 5-year, $182 million contract. Snell provides stability and upside to a rotation that needed it. Then on Friday afternoon, ESPN's Jeff Passan reported that they'd agreed to a five-year, $74 million extension with utility man Tommy Edman. For most teams, that'd be a successful offseason on its own.
Not for Los Angeles.
A new report on Friday from The Athletic's Andy McCullough said that the Dodgers are still seen as favorites to sign star Japanese import Roki Sasaki, and are still in on Juan Soto and other top free agents. The best team in baseball might be getting a whole lot better.
"A lot can happen between now and Jan. 15, when the Chiba Lotte Marines can post Sasaki and permit him to sign with a big-league club," McCullough wrote. "And the Dodgers are poised to do a lot, if they so choose, even after adding Snell. The team can still afford Soto. There are potential reunions with Walker Buehler, Teoscar Hernández, Kiké Hernández, Blake Treinen or even Joc Pederson. Andrew Friedman has reached the state of optionality he always craves, in which no moves are off the board and no matter what happens this winter the Dodgers will enter 2025 as the World Series favorites.
"So the Dodgers will be busy between now and January. But when Sasaki hits the market, it still makes the most sense for him to choose Los Angeles, join a rotation that includes Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, and deepen the team’s foothold in the Japanese market."
MIAMI - Roki Sasaki of Team Japan pitches in the first inning against Team Mexico during the World Baseball Classic Semifinals at loanDepot park on March 20, 2023. (Photo by Eric Espada/Getty Images)
Dodgers Showing They Actually Care About Winning
The Dodgers can't actually sign every free agent. Can they?
Sasaki wouldn't cost much, as he's considered an "amateur" thanks to the agreement between Major League Baseball and the Nippon League in Japan. But Juan Soto is expected to get a contract of around $600 million. At least. Teoscar Hernandez is sure to parlay his 2024 success into a multi-year guarantee.
Joc Pederson is coming off the best offensive season of his career, and while he's essentially a platoon player, he's a very, very good one.
The Dodgers are likely to sign more players, because they do still have holes to fill on their roster. But the fact that so many want to come to LA, and are willing to take deferred money to do it, shows that the front office and ownership group have built a culture and commitment to winning that attracts the best.
It has to be demoralizing for the other teams and ownership groups. But there's an easy fix: spend more money to beat them. The fact so few are willing to do so is an indictment of the rest of the billionaire owners, not the Dodgers. The evil empire is only evil because there's no resistance.