LOS ANGELES — “What’s wrong with being the bad guy?”
That rhetorical query is requested by actor Jason Bateman earlier than each Dodgers residence sport within the group’s Opening Day hype video. It performed once more Thursday night time earlier than the Dodgers defeated the Seattle Mariners, 6-2, at Dodger Stadium, bettering to an MLB-best 69-40 and lengthening their lead within the NL West to 12 video games.
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The video embraces the Dodgers’ new identification as baseball’s villain.
“If being the best makes you bad, then so be it,” Bateman says over highlights from final October’s World Series celebration. “They want to beat us because they want to be us. But if we’re being honest, sometimes it’s fun to root for the bad guy.”
The Dodgers leaned into that role all offseason. The back-to-back World Series champions signed four-time All-Star outfielder Kyle Tucker, the premier free agent in the marketplace, to a four-year, $240 million contract. They additionally added three-time and reigning Reliever of the Year Edwin Díaz on a three-year, $69 million deal.
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It wasn’t merely the wealthy getting richer. It was like Elon Musk profitable the Powerball. It felt nearly unfair.
Now the Dodgers are closely favored to land Tarik Skubal, the reigning two-time American League Cy Young Award winner. At simply 29 years outdated, Skubal is within the prime of his profession and has established himself as the perfect pitcher in baseball over the previous two seasons. If the Dodgers purchase him, they might add one other famous person to a roster already chasing historical past as they try and grow to be the primary group for the reason that 1998-2000 New York Yankees to win three consecutive World Series titles.
After the Dodgers swept the Milwaukee Brewers in final 12 months’s National League Championship Series to clinch a second straight World Series look, supervisor Dave Roberts smiled and mentioned, “Before the season started, they said the Dodgers are ruining baseball. Let’s get four more wins and really ruin baseball.”
The Dodgers obtained these 4 wins, capturing their third World Series title in six seasons.
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Ironically, the most important menace to baseball will not be the Dodgers however baseball itself.
Major League Baseball seems headed towards one other contentious labor battle, with the present collective bargaining settlement set to run out in December. Many of the proposals anticipated to dominate negotiations appear designed to curb the Dodgers’ aggressive benefits.
A proposed wage cap would slash payroll flexibility, with a projected cap sitting at roughly half of the Dodgers’ present payroll. Other proposals embrace limiting contracts to 5 years and eliminating deferred cash altogether. Those adjustments would have made Shohei Ohtani‘s groundbreaking 10-year, $700 million contract unimaginable. The similar can be true for Yoshinobu Yamamoto‘s 12-year, $325 million deal.
No one is aware of how lengthy a possible work stoppage may final. It could possibly be temporary, or it may wipe out a complete season as occurred in 1994. No one is aware of what the subsequent labor settlement will appear like both. A wage cap and stricter contract guidelines may dramatically shrink what has gave the impression to be the Dodgers’ seemingly countless championship window.
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That’s precisely why the Dodgers should not hesitate to go all in now.
Trading for Skubal could have appeared like a luxurious a number of months in the past. Today, it is a lot nearer to a necessity.
Three of the 4 beginning pitchers the Dodgers relied on throughout final postseason — Shohei Ohtani, Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow — are at the moment sidelined. All are anticipated again, however there isn’t a assure they’re going to return on the similar degree they carried out final October, not to mention on the degree Skubal is pitching proper now.
Adding Skubal is not nearly strengthening the Dodgers. It’s additionally about stopping one other contender from doing the identical. The Milwaukee Brewers, only one sport behind Los Angeles for the perfect document in baseball, would grow to be an much more harmful October opponent in the event that they landed him.
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The Dodgers have embraced being baseball’s dangerous guys all season. If that is really the role they’re prepared to play, they should not cease now.
Bad guys not often get pleased endings. They exit in a blaze of glory and are remembered ceaselessly.
At the tip of the Dodgers’ hype video, Bateman says, “You need teams like us so you can point your finger and say, ‘That’s the bad guy.'”
If followers are pointing at a three-time defending World Series champion, the Dodgers would gladly put on the black hat for so long as they will.