Welcome to Snyder's Soapbox! Here, I pontificate about matters related to Major League Baseball on a weekly basis. Some of the topics will be pressing matters, some might seem insignificant in the grand scheme of things, and most will be somewhere in between. The good thing about this website is that it's free, and you are allowed to click away. If you stay, you'll get smarter, though. That's a money-back guarantee. Let's get to it.
Uh oh, the Dodgers signed some players, which means there was a boatload of overreacting on social media. Holy smokes, people really outdid themselves this time. This is all "bad for baseball," didn't you hear?
The Dodgers are the best team in baseball. Yes, I do believe they are. They are not, however, carrying the recent track record or roster to draw this sort of over-the-top angst. It's out of control. I keep seeing stuff about a salary cap and how the salary cap sports are so much more fair. Major League Baseball is the only major team sport with no repeat champions this century. It has the smallest playoff field yet the largest variety of playoff teams by several measures (there's more in here from the last time the Dodgers signed someone and everyone lost their minds).
While the negative attention should be focused on cheap owners, let's take a different route this time around and point out that -- while they are the best team in baseball right now -- the Dodgers aren't this freaking great. The level of whining about them sounds like something targeting a team that has won something like four straight championships and is set to win 130 games.
The Dodgers won the World Series last year, yes. It was their first full-season title since 1988. They hadn't even gotten to the World Series in a full season since 2018 until last year. They won 98 games. They were nearly eliminated in the divisional round. How are we freaking out over this?
And, yes, the roster is loaded, but not historically so. The back third of their lineup is Michael Conforto, Tommy Edman and a dude who has never played in the majors (Hyeseong Kim). How much longer will Freddie Freeman be great? He's 35. Teoscar Hernández just had his career year. What if he takes a step back?
The pitching staff is very deep and totally full of questions. Blake Snell is capable of winning another Cy Young, but he's always been inconsistent. He only has two seasons with more than 2.2 WAR. Tyler Glasnow set a new career high in innings last season ... with 134. Yoshinobu Yamamoto threw only 90 innings in 2024. Shohei Ohtani is coming off major elbow surgery. Tony Gonsolin and Dustin May are also both coming off major surgery. Roki Sasaki has never thrown a pitch stateside. Relievers by nature are volatile and while Tanner Scott, Michael Kopech and Blake Treinen are very talented, would it really be shocking if any of them had a bad season?
The bottom line is I'm gonna need a lot more than 98 wins and one World Series before I start whining about the state of the game and claiming it's unfair. This is loser talk and only serves to provide cover for the real issues, which would be the ownership of teams like the Pirates, Rays, Reds and several others.
In fact, here's the easiest way to tell if this has actually gotten unfair. Let's say you get to pick the Dodgers to win the World Series next year and I get to take the field. Would you take that bet without getting odds? I love my side and would take the field in a heartbeat. Would you truly lay a lot of money on the Dodgers while giving me the other 29 teams?
If the game is truly unfair in favor of the Dodgers, it would be an easy bet. And yet, I'm certain that most of you wouldn't take it.
So, yeah, the Dodgers are the best team in baseball. They are great. They are not so great to elicit this level of whining. Do better and cut it out.
