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But let’s not get carried away and say the only reason the Dodgers are successful is because of their TV contract. It isn’t. They do a lot of things well.
If it only took money the Mets would be world champions every year. Their owner is worth $21 Billion. The current 40 man payroll standings for 2026 according to Cot’s:
1. Mets: $357.5 Million
2. Dodgers: $309.3 MillionThe “streaming services” or have to have this “service” to watch is taking over. However, from an organizational standpoint and ad revenue standpoint, and fan excitement and fan enticement AND future Cards fans with their Winn and Jj jerseys watching with their family….. wouldn’t it make more sense overall to have 1,000,000 viewers per game, and the ad revenue vs 100,000 folks?
I’m in favor of them starting their own and having prospect interviews, epic games of the past (David Freese game? Albert 3HR game?)
If you build it, they will come. Especially more butts in the seats vs 1.65 Million as in 2025!
The alternate to the current soft cap, is a hard cap with a 75% floor. It takes 8 owners to block a deal. 9 are already shooting sign language at the soft cap. The bottom half of clubs have to buy in to a 183mil floor, without the 20mil each non-payer currently receives in overage taxes (2025). Tough futures sell for those 8 clubs, when you consider Bill DeWitt is in line with the have-nots.
There are many ways to strengthen the current soft cap (CBT) into a mechanism that functions as a hard cap.
1. Tougher tax penalties. Every dollar spent over the cap is a 100% tax for a first time offender, 200% tax for second time offenders, 300% tax for third time offenders, etc…
2. Tougher draft pick penalties. First time offenders lose their third highest pick, second time offenders lose their third and second highest picks, third time offenders lose their top three picks.
3. Tougher penalties for the international draft. First time offenders lose 33% of their allotment, second tine offenders lose 66% of their allotment, third time offenders lose all of their allotment.
4. Eliminate salary deferrals and bonuses that circumvent the cap. If you give a player a ten year deal for $700M then you have to account for the entire $700M, perhaps at $70M per year.
5. Consider the nuclear option of forfeiting games. What I mean by this is that you could force a repeat offender to start the season with a 0-5 record or a 0-10 record before games even begin. They actually do this in the English Football League (Soccer) for teams that abuse their Financial Fair Play rules.
6. Yes a salary floor should be instituted to force the welfare owners to spend their revenuse sharing bonanza on player salaries.
“Massively deferred contracts” is precisely why the Dodgers “only” have the second highest annual payroll. The latter is unnaturally lower because of the former. Payroll in a given season does not tell the whole story. What are the comparable deferred payment commitments between the Mets and Dodgers?
The Dodgers TV contract is not the ONLY reason for their success. But when they have more than a QUARTER OF A BILLION DOLLARS built in revenue advantage each and every year over teams like the Cardinals, it can’t be brushed off, either. It is a huge advantage for them.
Baseball’s finances are broken, at least from the perspective of those who want some semblance of competitive balance.
The MLB payroll system is very complex. I do accounting for a living and I don’t claim to understand all of it. That is why when someone starts reciting payroll numbers I like to know where they are getting their numbers from and which payroll are they talking about.
Cot’s?
Fangraphs (Roster Resource)?
Sportrac?
40 man opening day payroll?
40 man end of year payroll?
CBT opening day payroll?
CBT end of year payroll?For the sake of comparison let’s use the current CBT payroll numbers from Cot’s (since that is supposed to include bonuses, deferrals, and is more of an AAV). Top 5 are:
1. Dodgers $402M
2. Mets $375M
3. Yankees $320M
4. Phillies $316M
5. Blue Jays $304MAll are very high but my point is that the Dodgers are not the only team with a run away payroll. They just get most of the grief because they know how to win.
This is a good history of deferrals, how they got started, and how many teams currently use them (several do).
Godfather of deferred contracts: How Bobby Bonilla's infamous deal set the trend https://t.co/w6OPmWnQjY
— Bob Nightengale (@BNightengale) January 23, 2026
With all of the vitriol directed towards the Dodgers, remember:
The Red Sox chose not to sign Mookie Betts and traded him to LA.
Atlanta walked away from Freddie Freeman.
The Angels declined to match Shohei Ohtani's offer.
The Astros and Cubs didn't want to keep Kyle Tucker.— Bob Nightengale (@BNightengale) January 22, 2026
Thanks for sharing, gscottar. That answers my question.
All I can say is WOW!
“The king of deferrals are the Dodgers, owned by Guggenheim, who have $1.0945 billion owed in deferrals to 10 different players from 2028-2047.”
Along with the biggest TV contract by a lot, they are well-backed.
Guggenheim Partners manages over $350 billion in total assets, with figures around $357 billion reported recently, encompassing both Assets Under Management (AUM) and Assets Under Supervision (AUS) across investment management, banking, and insurance services for institutional and high-net-worth clients. While the firm’s value isn’t a single “net worth” figure like a person’s, its substantial asset base highlights its significant financial scale as a global investment and advisory firm. (from Google)
At least Moneyball was about baseball (OBP). This version of Moneyball is about off the field wonks.
But let’s not get carried away and say the only reason the Dodgers are successful is because of their TV contract. It isn’t. They do a lot of things well.
I haven’t seen any say their money is the only reason for the Dodgers success. It just gives them a leg up same as it will for the Mets this next year as well. The Dodgers get more in tax breaks due to their special exemption than many teams will spend on entire payroll this year.
I will agree cheap owners are absolutely a problem as well for the same reason as they just don’t help bring coem semblance of parity to the league.
I believe the core problem is not the cheap owners (or even the high spending ones). It is the weak rules that allow both ends of the economic spectrum to operate unfairly with minimal penalty for doing so.
The general solution is simple (even though the details are challenging). Don’t let the big boys overspend and don’t let the low end teams live off the welfare from the other teams.
Manfred’s biggest problem is that he is employed by those who need to make changes that they don’t want to make.
I agree with all of you guys comments. I think the MLB payroll rules need to be changed. I did a post yesterday outlining how the penalties could be stiffened.
I just think focusing on one team only is misguided and I don’t think focus really has that much to do with revenue and payroll. The real reason people dislike the Dodgers is because they have won the world series three times since 2020. Fans don’t like to see the same team win over and over. For the last two decades the NFL has seemingly been dominated by the Patriots and Chiefs and both of those teams became very unpopular beyond their own cities. By the way, the NFL has a salary cap so if you assume a cap will prevent dynasties then think again.
There are many non-Dodger players with large salary deferments. Dylan Cease, Francisco Lindor, and Alex Bregman come to mind. You don’t hear a peep about them.
The Mets, Yankees, Phillies, and Blue Jays all have obscene payrolls but since they haven’t won a world series in many years you don’t hear a peep about it. I think we are oversimplifying why the Dodgers are winning World Series and not being honest about why people really dislike them.
Let’s bring it closer to home. I think there should be a discussion about why the Brewers win the NL Central almost every year. It certainly isn’t money. The Cardinal and Cub fans should be focused on that instead of obsessing over the Dodgers.
The fans biggest problem is no representation at the CBA negotiating table.
The top and bottom 11 budgets already have their approaches. The Cubs #11, and #19 STL, both have clearly defined organizational directions. Haves and have nots. The revolt will need to be led by the middle 8 budgets for a hard cap. TBD.
Here are the current payroll rankings from Cots. The Cubs are top 10 and the Cardinals are in the 20’s.
On deferrals, please provide some numbers for context. The article shared yesterday states the Dodgers have almost $1.1 BILLION in deferrals. My wild guess is that is more money than the other 29 teams in total.
This is a huge competitive advantage for them, powered in part by the most lucrative TV deal in MLB, and all within the current rules.
To be somewhat fair, there should be a point where a team loses their first and maybe even their second round draft pick(s) if they purchase their way into such a huge competitive advantage.
Some good stuff here folks. I agree that the solutions are obvious and should not be too difficult to implement. But getting an agreement is not easy.
Kind of like social security. Getting the system fixed is pretty easy, but getting getting it done is another story.
Brian, to be honest I don’t know how much money each team has deferred. I would have to go through each team’s profile on Cot’s and add them up. Haven’t had the time to do that. I do know that deferred contracts are getting more and more popular with teams. In fact Cleveland did one this morning.
What I do feel confident in saying is that there is nothing the Dodgers are doing that Steve Cohen can’t do. In fact the largest contract in the history of baseball resides on the Mets payroll. No one cares because the Mets haven’t won a world series since 1986.
More deferrments.
Source: Guardians and face of the franchise José Ramírez are working toward a contract extension that would keep him in Cleveland through 2032. The deal, if finalized, would tack on an additional $106M over four years, with about $70M deferred.
Details: https://t.co/aE3rMF8uWJ
— Zack Meisel (@ZackMeisel) January 24, 2026
I found this article published by a corporate attorney who does work in sports law. It is a rather detailed explanation of how deferred contracts work with an emphasis on the Dodgers. His conclusion is that the success of the Dodgers the last decade is likely not because of deferred compensation.
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