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@James_Schiano The Mets are 51-67 after spending over $350M.

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@BlakeHHarris He keeps throwing sliders like that and that losing streak will keep getting longer. That was a shit pitch

[Talkin' Baseball @TalkinBaseball_]

Valid @ChrisRose crash out

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@flowkokurama I don’t think the dodgers are worried about that

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@GiantHotTakes I’m guessing baseball’s 2026 will be its best year in decades.

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@CabooseO @DMAC_LA “Lack of parity”? That team got beaten for YEARS in the playoffs. Win 100+ games, first or second round exit.

Dbacks embarrassed them in ‘23. They were nearly beaten in ‘24 by SD. Toronto was a Hoffman hanging slider away from doing it in ‘25.

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@TAT1SSZN Are people seriously saying that Milwaukee shouldn’t have pushed their chips in to try to win their first World Series ever? Is that the argument being made?

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@ImGarbino most of you who say you’re “done” will be in the stands when LA comes to your town, hoping that your team beats them. That’s the beauty of having a super team. They are the big bad guys.

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@CabooseO @DMAC_LA There it is. Not really about parity, it’s just about “I want the team I hate to lose” lo

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@FAmmiranteTFJ if the dodgers aren’t doing this, would you be anti cap? Or would you still be in favor?

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@MrNOVApolitico @RapidResponse47 yeah because it became profitable to sell US oil again, due to his Iran war.

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@SleeperBrewers The loaded brewers farm couldn’t beat that? Seriously?

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@gavinmchughh Salary cap prevents this .. how?

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@burackbobby_ meh, owners wanted LA to make this deal, plenty of other teams could have stepped up and beaten this offer. They want a cap and the LA roster is their exhibit A. I hope they fail.

Liberal twitter defending billionaires is hilarious

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@ClayTravis Lol, exactly what salary was exchanged here?

Best farm in baseball (Milwaukee) didn’t even try. LA pushed their chips in now to win.

Lazy narrative from a lazy talk show host, probably salty “his” team hasn’t won in decades (if ever).

[George Jarjour @GeorgeOnTap]

Uh oh. The Dodgers just added Tarik Skubal, the reigning two-time Cy Young winner. The Dodgers already had Shohei Ohtani, Freddie Freeman and Mookie Betts, Freddie Feeman etc. Four months from now, the CBA expires. I said this trade would be the last piece of evidence the owners need to shut the sport down, and it just happened.

On pure baseball logic the move was inevitable. Passan reported the Tigers were trading Skubal and named the Dodgers the favorite. Los Angeles has the best record in baseball and arguably the best farm system in baseball at the same time, which is not supposed to be possible. They absorbed the roughly $10 million Skubal is owed without blinking. Bob Nightengale reported the Dodgers were also Skubal’s preferred free agency destination this winter, so this was never a rental. It is a pre-acquisition.

Now the calendar. The collective bargaining agreement expires December 1. The owners have proposed the first salary cap since 1994. Multiple owners have told Passan the only real path to a cap runs through missing the 2027 season. One official said they are ready to burn the house down.

The mechanism connecting the trade to the lockout is simple. The Dodgers are the owners’ entire case.

Buster Olney wrote it plainly. The spending of the top teams has reinforced to the other 28 that change is necessary, and they believe that change is a cap. Every argument the owners make across the table this winter is now a picture of this roster. Ohtani’s $700 million. Deferred money. A rotation of aces. And the reigning two-time Cy Young winner added at the deadline for prospects, because they have so much talent they can buy the best pitcher alive with their surplus.

The Dodgers adding Skubal does not just improve the Dodgers. It hands the owners their closing exhibit, timed four months before the negotiation.

The competitive balance argument is empirically wrong. Baseball has produced 16 different champions since 2000, more than any capped league. The Dodgers are not breaking a rule. They are excelling within all of them, drafting, developing and spending at once. The punishment for running the best organization in the sport is that the other 29 owners get to point at you and demand a system that makes you impossible.

But being wrong does not make the argument weak. It makes it convenient. Small market owners do not want to outspend the Dodgers. They want cost certainty, because cost certainty raises franchise values, and this roster is the best sales brochure a cap has ever had. Every superteam headline between now and December 1 is worth more to the owners’ negotiating position than it is to the Dodgers’ World Series odds.

Follow the incentives to the uncomfortable place. The 29 other owners benefit from the Dodgers getting Skubal. Not on the field. At the table.

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@KeithbPa Doesn’t matter man, they’re gonna keep getting elected in Monty and they know it

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@CaseyBHead My high school class was more than 2x this town

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@FocusedCompound and yet you morons continue to line up to buy it

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@ChadMoriyama * 5.32 ERA lol