The Los Angeles Dodgers sure didn’t waste time after they were eliminated in the postseason by a team with 16 fewer wins than them last year.
They entered the market and made a huge statement: they signed or traded for a myriad of star-level players.
Among the main acquisitions were Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Tyler Glasnow, Teoscar Hernandez, Clayton Kershaw, and James Paxton.
We can’t even begin to tell you how many MVP awards, Silver Sluggers, Cy Youngs, and All-Star Games are in that group of players.
Between Ohtani and Yamamoto alone, the Dodgers spent more than one billion dollars.
If you want to see how a billion dollars look, here it is, via Talkin’ Baseball.
The Dodgers’ billion-dollar men
(via @MLB) pic.twitter.com/MmAYbR9shO
— Talkin’ Baseball (@TalkinBaseball_) February 21, 2024
To get Ohtani, fresh off winning his second AL MVP award in 2023, the Dodgers had to pay $700 million over the next 10 years.
In reality, the vast majority of that money is deferred until after his ten years are up.
That financial flexibility allowed the Dodgers to give $325 million to Yamamoto, who has won the Pacific League MVP and Eiji Sawamura awards in Japan for the last three years.
The $325 million allows Yamamoto to say he earned the largest contract ever given to a full-time pitcher.
He deserves it, too: his stuff and command are top-notch, and he has a career 1.82 ERA in Japan.
We all have witnessed what Ohtani can do: he just hit 44 home runs with a 1.066 OPS for a lousy team last year, and combined that with a 3.14 ERA and 167 strikeouts from the mound.
These are two generational talents that will help the Dodgers be competitive in the playoffs.
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