The Dodgers are heading into the winter with the same financial posture that has defined them for years: keep pushing, keep spending, keep the foot on the gas. President of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said the club expects this offseason to be “business as usual” from a payroll standpoint, unless the next collective bargaining agreement brings a major shift to baseball’s economic setup.
That stance comes after a brutal ending to the Dodgers’ bid for a three-peat. They were swept by the Brewers, a year after delivering Milwaukee the same fate in the NLCS. Now the focus shifts to 2027, and Friedman said the conversation with chairman Mark Walter quickly turned toward what comes next.
“We talked to Mark after we lost, and he was obviously really disappointed,” he told reporters on Wednesday. “But so much of his focus was on, OK, what can we do?
What are our plans? What are our thoughts for the offseason?
And our brains weren’t quite there yet, but so much of his focus was how do we put ourselves in the best position to win in ’27?”
The Dodgers’ financial picture has drawn plenty of attention this year because of reports that investments and loans tied to insurance businesses owned by Walter were under federal inquiry. Walter has already sold his interests in some other sports franchises, most notably the Lakers. Still, Dodgers CEO Stan Kasten said in August that Walter had no plans to sell the baseball team, and he also brushed aside the idea that the non-baseball businesses would force payroll cuts, saying then that “the Dodgers stand on their own pretty well.”
Friedman’s comments line up with that thinking. For a club that has rarely had to think small in recent seasons, there’s no sign that mindset has changed.
The biggest name on the market, of course, is Tarik Skubal. He stands alone as the clear No. 1 free agent and could land a deal that more than triples the next-largest contract signed this winter.
Skubal and agent Scott Boras are expected to chase records for both total guarantee by a pitcher, set at $325MM, and average annual value, set at $43.333MM - and potentially by a wide margin. A $400MM-plus pitcher is very much in play.
Los Angeles doesn’t need Skubal to build a strong rotation, but that’s never really been the point. Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow, Roki Sasaki, and some mix of Justin Wrobleski, Emmet Sheehan and Gavin Stone already gives the Dodgers one of the league’s better starting staffs on paper.
But the Dodgers have shown all year that they’re willing to chase elite talent, especially when the goal is October. That’s also why they’ve been willing to live with the regular-season workload and injury questions attached to Snell and Glasnow.
The rest of the starting-pitching market doesn’t hold the same appeal. Skubal is the only true headliner in a class that otherwise skews toward mid-tier arms, and that matters for a Dodgers team that has little interest in paying for lower-ceiling innings.
The same applies on offense. With much of the position-player core already in place, they don’t have to force a move just to make one.
Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman, Kyle Tucker, Will Smith, Max Muncy and Andy Pages effectively lock in seven spots. Teoscar Hernández is in the final season of his three-year deal, and the Dodgers would probably be better off moving on from him, with top prospect Josue De Paula as the likely left-field answer if that happens. At second base, a combination of Tommy Edman, Alex Freeland and Hyeseong Kim would work, though that is the one area where they could decide to upgrade if they wanted another major bat, such as Brandon Lowe.
If Skubal signs elsewhere, the Dodgers could end up with a fairly low-drama winter. The clearest area of need would be the bullpen, where Alex Vesia and Evan Phillips are both slated for free agency. It stands to reason the Dodgers would like to keep them on two- or three-year deals.
The money is certainly there to support all of it. According to MLBTR’s Payroll Tracker, via contributor Ethan Hullihen, the Dodgers finished this season with a competitive balance tax estimate of around $430.7MM, and next year’s estimate sits around $388MM, even with a relatively light arbitration class factored in. If MLB and the Players Association ever reach a salary-cap compromise, Los Angeles would be the club under the most pressure to trim spending - and that would almost certainly come with a grace period for the biggest payrolls to get back in line.
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Dodgers Are Linked To Another Japanese Bat With One Big Problem
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The fit question is less simple than the interest level. Sato is primarily a third baseman or right fielder and brings real power-hitting ability, but the Dodgers do not appear to have an obvious open spot for him on the current roster. That kind of roster squeeze can complicate even the most intriguing pursuit, and it leaves the next step of their evaluation very much worth watching. [Read more 🡒]