On November 1, the Dodgers won their second consecutive World Series, the first to do so since the Yankees accomplished this feat in 2000. When analyzing this World Series matchup, one factor stood out against the rest: money. The Dodgers don’t have a salary cap, removing any constraints from paying players as much as they want. For example, Shohei Ohtani, arguably the best player on the team and maybe in the league, has a ten-year 700 million-dollar contract, making him one of the highest-paid athletes in baseball.
This brings up the question: can you really buy your way to a World Series title? Despite the claims saying otherwise, the short answer is no. For one, the Dodgers don’t have the highest payroll; the Mets do, and they didn’t even make it to the postseason. Even if the players on a team are supposedly some of the best in the league, they still have to perform well, and total reliance on these players is also a good way to lose. Baseball is different from other sports. Shohei Ohtani can’t just carry the Dodgers in the same way Michael Jordan carried the Bulls. Baseball is partially an individual sport, so everyone on a team needs to do well.
Second, though the Dodgers did win the World Series, it was a very close matchup. The series went to game seven, and that game went to eleven innings. The Dodgers and the Blue Jays were close in skill, and either could have feasibly won. Of course, having a larger payroll does help the Dodgers, but the disparity is not big enough to have a large impact on the sport (much less ruin it altogether, as some argue). The Dodgers might have won two years in a row, but the likelihood that this will continue and undermine the sport is essentially zero. The claim that the Dodgers are ruining baseball, though it might seem compelling, lacks evidence and appears to be more about explaining losses than explaining wins.