The Dodgers have reached the point where the rest of baseball has to stop pretending this is normal.
On the latest Cleveland Baseball Talk podcast, Guardians beat reporters Joe Noga and Paul Hoynes argued that Los Angeles has taken over the old “Evil Empire” label once attached to the Yankees. Their example was the Dodgers’ trade for Tarik Skubal from the Detroit Tigers, a move that feels less like a splash and more like a statement about how far ahead this franchise is operating.
Noga said it plainly: “The Dodgers becoming the evil empire on the west coast now, getting Skubal, and really sort of beyond this season, beyond the postseason this year,”
That’s the heart of it. This wasn’t just about one October run.
It was about a team that already had Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Tyler Glasnow when healthy, Blake Snell when healthy, and Shohei Ohtani adding another frontline arm to the pile. Skubal, one of the American League’s best left-handed starters and a two-time Cy Young Award winner, gives the Dodgers what Hoynes described as “enough guys for two rotations.”
In his words, it’s “an embarrassment of riches.”
The reason Los Angeles can keep doing this is simple: the Dodgers operate with a financial freedom almost nobody else gets.
“The Dodgers obviously are in a position where they can just go out and get anybody they want,” Hoynes said on the podcast. “They don’t care about the luxury tax or spending more, going over that and accepting the fines that go along with that.”
That kind of move has already spilled into the bigger labor conversation around the sport. The current collective bargaining agreement expires in December, and the Skubal deal is being used as another example of why MLB owners want a hard salary cap. The players’ union has resisted that idea for years, but the Dodgers’ ability to absorb Skubal’s $32 million arbitration contract - which Noga said “broke the whole arbitration system” - only sharpens the argument.
Detroit’s return also drew scrutiny. The Tigers landed outfield prospect Zyhir Hope and right-handed pitchers River Ryan and Brady Smith.
Hope is considered a real prospect, but he is not Josue De Paula, the Dodgers’ top outfield prospect. Noga said, “I think a lot of people looking at that trade might be critical of Detroit for not getting more for Tarik Skubal.”
Hoynes wondered why other teams, including the Tampa Bay Rays and the New York Yankees, didn’t jump in harder. His read was that the asking price in prospects was enough to scare off contenders, while Los Angeles had the financial muscle to take on the deal without hesitation.
And that, more than anything, is what makes the Dodgers such a headache for everyone else. Hoynes pointed out that they are not just buying stars.
“They’ve got a great developmental system and they draft well,” he said. “They’re doing everything, you know, a good organization does - besides being rich.”
For Guardians fans and anyone watching the AL Central, there’s another layer to the trade. The Tigers are supposed to be climbing toward contention, but moving their best starter suggests they’re looking at the timeline differently than Cleveland would prefer.
The full discussion on the Skubal trade, the Dodgers’ dominance, and what it could mean for baseball’s future is part of the Cleveland Baseball Talk podcast.
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