Fellow Major League Baseball owners aren’t happy with the Dodgers’ big spending.
After the two-time defending World Series champions agreed to a deal with Kyle Tucker, adding to their embarrassment of riches and league-high payroll, chatter is growing on how to stop them.
The Athletic’s Evan Drellich reported Tuesday that a source told him there’s “a 100 percent certainty” that the other 29 teams will push for a salary cap during upcoming collective bargaining agreement negotiations.
“These guys are going to go for a cap no matter what it takes,” the anonymous source told the outlet.
The Tucker pact, a four-year, $240 million contract with $30 million in deferred money, intensifies talks of the coming labor battle — and potential lockout — when the CBA expires in December.
The massive free agent signing brings the Dodgers’ projected luxury tax payroll to $402.5 million for 2026, per Cot’s Contracts.
That’s more than the bottom-four payroll clubs combined, outnumbering the sum of the Marlins ($79.3 million), Rays ($93.9M), Guardians ($103.5M) and White Sox ($105.1M) with some time to go before Opening Day.
The Tucker-Dodgers marriage wasn’t the only move this offseason that has owners upset, per Drellich, though.
The Mets’ three-year, $126 million deal for Bo Bichette “also raised dander,” according to the report.
“The Dodgers and Mets might be the only teams that will try to stand in the way of a cap,” the source said.
The Amazin’s aren’t far behind the Dodgers in terms of spending, with a luxury tax payroll sitting at $345.7.
Agent Scott Boras, who has long been one of the biggest pro-labor and anti-cap voices in the sport, described the Dodgers as an anomaly, and “not a system issue.”
“[The Dodgers] are the benefactors of acquiring Shohei Ohtani, MLB’s astatine,” Boras said in a statement to The Athletic. “Short-lived and rare. No other player offers such past or present. Ohtani is the genius of elite performance and additional revenue streams of near $250 million annually for a short window of history.
“The process of acquiring Ohtani was one of fairness and equal opportunity throughout the league,” he continued. “A rare, short-lived element is not a reason to alter the required anchored chemistry of MLB. The mandate of stability to gain media rights optimums is the true solution to league success.”