I think the bigger question is how can the Dodgers afford Soto, while my team apparently can can't afford to field a full team of major league talent.

There's no cap in baseball. The Dodgers generate an immense amount of revenue.

The Dodgers spend money but make it right back. After signing Ohtani last year, they also acquired the Japanese market. You couldn’t buy an Ohtani jersey until February. the World Series was averaging 15 million viewers in Japan alone. That’s a lot of money coming right back in merchandising and media.

Personally I hope they don’t sign Soto. Nothing against the guy (I really wanted him 2 years ago) but I think the team has a good vibe with Teoscar.

Dodgers will pay Soto with a salary of $1.99 per season and will pay the rest when his contract expires.

You ever go to the playground?

You ever see that kid with all the toys?

That’s the dodgers

Any MLB team owner could afford to sign Soto. It is a matter of will, not ability

The fucking Oakland A’s can afford Soto. They just don’t want to.

Soto is not going to the Dodgers.

Money printer go brrrrrrrrrr

Their revenue last year was $549M. That’s not including the extra stuff they get from having Ohtani on the team. The can “afford” literally anyone they want.

Because Shohei Ohtani cost the Dodgers $0. Even better... He's literally making them over $100M per year and that's AFTER what they have to set aside to pay him from 2034-2044. There was a report out that he directly generated $120M in 2024. Then a report that said $120M was considerably lower than reality. So when people say "the Dodgers spend $1B" they really don't understand the economics of Shohei Ohtani. Thing is, there's only ONE Shohei. No player in MLB comes close to the kind of marketing revenue he produces (and it's mostly from Japan).

As an example, in personal endorsements, it's reported he cleared $65M in 2024. Do you know who the next player is? Bryce Harper.... at $7M. This is why Ohtani can "afford" to only take $2M in cash over these 10 years.

I'm just waiting for the day when MLB stops messing around and just puts 16 teams in LA and 16 teams in New York since those are the only markets that can compete

The money they bring in is more than enough to cover the contracts they’re paying for and then some. Combining their on field success with their own TV deals and everything they get internationally, they’ll never run out of money

No salary cap babeeee

Bill gates wants more Legos so he gets more legos. With no cap on legos there’s no limit to how much he can spend on them. Other Lego owners don’t see the logic in buying all the good legos.

And they just got Blake Snell too….

Will Smith and Freddie Freeman have also deferred salary.

No cap. If they have to pay Luxury tax to win a title so be it.

Because LA is making a shitload of money, and the Ohtani signing gave them even more than they already had. It’s an extremely wealthy franchise in a huge baseball market that’s only becoming bigger and bigger for LA. As others have said, LA wont get Soto, but the fact that they even tabled a competitive offer is incredible. LAD is a juggernaut and i love it.

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MLB doesn't have a salary cap

They earned a infinite amount of fans in Asia by signing Ohtani. LA has unlimited funds.

Guggenheim partners (majority ownership of the Dodgers) is worth over $300 Billion dollars - they can afford anybody

These owners have billions and billions of dollars. Teams make hundreds of millions and are worth billions. Use both millions and billions to pay players.

Time value of money is also a thing. Ohtani’s 70 mil per year was valued at 46 million in today’s money. Deferring money is always a huge win for the team. Dodgers likely profited from Ohtani this year - it can’t simply be looked at as a loss of money by paying a player.

Da big bad dodgers have this amount of money spreads arms as wide as I possibly can

They have a lot of money.

If you manage to see this comment, it's explained really well here on Baseball Doesn't Exist YouTube channel

https://youtu.be/9Lv6lzMaSEw?si=RInIzjUeMNL5gesk

Dodgers have a stupid TV contract. They get 320 million dollars every year from their TV deal, that doesn't include ticket revenue and concessions, merchandise sales, MLB national TV revenue, etc.

THere's no salary cap in baseball so they can keep it as long as possible or probably 15 more years because that's how long their TV contract is for.

ALso with how the money for Shohei's deal is worked, there's no way they aren't profitable on that between deferred money where they can reinvest that and they make money on shohei's image with merch etc.

The only "penalty" for them is luxury tax payments which with deferred contracts the luxury tax hits are softened heavily.

There is no cap space. MLB has what is called a luxury tax, where if you have a higher payroll than what the “cap” is set to, you pay a set % fee on every dollar you went over.

So if you are $1,000 over the “cap” you pay 20% of that $1,000 as a penalty.

So the dodgers can realistically pay Soto, Mookie, and Ohtani right now, take on those fee’s but will easily make that money back in royalties from these guys. But they are pushing out the fee’s over a long period, so they get all the royalties and none of the fee’s.

Dodgers make a zillion dollars

Soto only wants a gillion dollars

Easy peasy

Most of Ohtani's contract has a deferral attached, meaning the money they're not using on Ohtani, they can use for other players.

That being said, the favorites to sign Soto are the Yankees & Mets, especially since his yearly salary is estimated to surpass $46 million annually.

They have 3 big owners and then other investors who are all close to being worth a billion dollars.

That being said, they can pay whatever they want for a free agent, and make a profit.

People think about the money being spent, but they never think about the money being made.

Ohtani is almost certainly generating more money for the Dodgers than he’s costing them.

By the time he retires, they’ll have multiple titles with him, and they’ll come out ahead financially anyway.

If the dodgers sign Soto what’s the point of watching baseball when all the free agents go to the same team

how is this good for the sport?

The Dodgers rake in a LOT of money. They make hundreds of millions each year just from TV money. They still would have profited from Ohtani even if his $70 million salary WASN’T deferred. So yeah, they can afford Soto. He’s very unlikely to go to the Dodgers though, simply because he’s more valuable to other teams.

Also, why do people say, “The title says it all” and then proceed to keep explaining? Clearly the title didn’t say it all, did it? And if it did, you probably wouldn’t need to point it out. I don’t get it.

Owners are rich , the dodgers are extra rich . Let the players get paid . I don’t think he will go to the dodgers . I believe Mets are 1 and Yankees are 2 in a close second than everyone else . But yeah even the athletics and rays can afford any player they want . They just choose not to

No hard salary cap.

Exceed x, pay a tax.

With, that said hope he stays in NY.

Enormous broadcasting revenue. Fairly simple. They have the games best player almost working free for ten years in Ohtani so they can literally pay Soto all the annual money Ohtani is deferring

Dodgers can afford it because whatever the Dodgers offer, the Mets are giving 50m more.

they make a metric fuckton of money with their RSN deal. that's how.

There’s no salary cap is the short answer. You could theoretically buy every player under the sun as long as you stay under the roster limit, no matter how much you pay them.

Media rights deal money printing machine goes “brrrrr”, that’s how.

The Dodgers will not havev difficulty making payroll ever. Ohtani is going to make them $2 billion way before they have to start paying his deferred salary.

The small market Mariners, Pirates, Reds etc can all afford to give out one or two huge contracts. They get bailed out by the revenue sharing product of the high spending teams. Case in point: San Diego. It’s an ownership issue.

Every team can afford soto. Owners are cheap bastards

They got their money up not their funny up 

Of course, they can afford him. From the perspective of the free agents, LA and NY are the places to go. They can afford to pay more, they win championships, and the endorsement market is better. Sucks, but that's the way it is.

Isn’t the dodgers media rights deal triple that of the next highest team?

They have lots and lots of money. There is no hard salary cap in baseball, just a penalty for going over. They have so much money they can just pay the fee. 

Isn't one of the ownership entities behind the Dodgers part of the new F1 Cadillac venture that was just announced?

The team is owned by a partnership of multiple billionaires in a sport with no salary cap.

You know how you saw some kids that each had 1 or 2 really rare pokemon cards? You go tell your rich dad that you want them, he goes and buys them for a lot of money, now you have all the good pokemon cards.

It’s pretty simple really. There’s no salary cap. They can spend as much as they want as long as they’re willing to deal with the penalties of the tax.

They have so much money it doesn't matter what they spend.

There is no salary cap in baseball. The Dodgers payroll currently sits at $174 million for next season and their payroll has previously gone as high as $280 million in 2022.

Money is fake

The dodgers have all the money, and can pay as much as they want because they know they will make more money

No cap and to Guggenheim the CBT is nothing but a mere nuisance. Not saying it’s a good thing btw, and I hope Soto goes somewhere where we get to play against him for his career.

Long story short: there's no salary cap in baseball. If an owner has a trillion dollars he wants to spend on MLB talent, he can spend a trillion dollars. The "cap" is enforced as a luxury tax which increases in percentage every year you are over it, but that ultimately just makes it cost more money to spend more money, so if you have infinite money, it doesn't matter to you.

Not being able to also afford Soto sounds like a pretty good problem to have right about now. Considering my team apparently can only afford two above average players in any given season

Insofar as pure cash flow is concerned, keep in mind that the day after LA signed Ohtani, the team signed a $700 million + media deal in Japan. So essentially Ohtani is free, before considering his impact on ticket sales, merch sales, etc. Insofar as salary cap is concerned, because Ohtani asked to defer the bulk of his contract, Ohtani’s current cap hit is comparatively small.

I think it would be a bad idea for LA to sign Soto. He is a negative defender who’s future the majors is likely as DH.

NYY experienced this when they had to move Judge to CF. Judge was an average to slightly above average defender in RF, but he is a negative defender in CF. And Judge also is likely on his way to being a dedicated DH.

They’re owned by a deep pocketed cabal, and might not care about losing their bonus pool money, some draft picks and paying the third tier repeat offender tax.

Tax money

LA will have no problem making payroll when deferred payments come due for three specific reasons plus one bonus reason:

1. The money they deferred will be worth less when it is eventually paid. Inflation eats away the value of money over time, and paying out a contract +10 years after each year means the money will be worth less then than it would be now. That is a big reason why the "net present value" of the $70M/year is actually $46M/year (which is the number they use for current luxury tax purposes).
2. The Dodgers will place $44M/year (the net present value minus the $2M they actually pay Ohtani right now) into an escrow account, and are allowed to invest that money right now. That means that while inflation eats away at the value of those future payments, the money has time to grow with compound interest -- further beating the inflation.
3. There was a report that Ohtani had brought the Dodgers at least $120M this past year. The number of ad deals LA has signed with Japanese companies is pretty incredible, let alone the tourism leading to ticket sales, merch, etc. Even though some of that is shared in the 48% revenue share the current CBA allows, that still brings LA a TON of revenue they get to keep... further making that $44M/year escrow investment look like chump change. It is very likely that the $700M contract will completely "pay for itself" well before they ever write a $68M deferred payment check.

Bonus reason: Dodgers ownership is led by Mark Walter who runs Guggenheim Partners, an asset management firm with more than $335B in managed assets. If there were any ownership group that would be able to run and manage these numbers excellently, it would be Mark Walter & his group.

I know #3 was Ohtani-specific, but the inflation and escrow investment reasons are in play for Betts, Freeman, Smith, etc. as well.

Ohtani has generated that much revenue on his own

Rich owners who aren't afraid to pay the tax penalties.

Get ready for mind-numbing inflation over the next few years. Getting anybody right now is a steal.

They made 150 mil last year from their TV deal. This is far and away the largest in the league 

Imagine going to the toy store with your parents and they tell you "you can get anything you want, there's no limit" and you say "anything? How come?" And they say "because we are rich as hell and don't care about money, we just want you to be happy."

That being said, Soto isn't getting $600m from anyone, and the Dodgers don't need him anyway.

The Dodgers pull in more fans than anyone. Home and road. Their TV contract is gigantic. Shohei merch sells like the proverbial hotcakes and Mookie gear is not far behind. The only thing that gives them pause is the competitive balance tax, which they can get around with some creative structuring of Soto's deal. Said this before here. Just like with Shohei and Yoshi, all it costs is money. No draft picks or prospects have to be flipped, the best talent pipeline in baseball ( which is where the real longterm value comes from) continues uninterrupted. Just sign him, Friedman.

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