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Let’s Rally Together and Direct Our Seething Hatred Toward the Manchester City Dodgers
Published:
Kyle Tucker signed with the Dodgers:
They’re totally stacked. Ridiculous payroll and loaded with superstars as they go for a three-peat in 2026.
On one hand, you see a lot of reaction about how this is bad for Major League Baseball, that they’re just going out and buying the best players and deferring money and creating a competitive imbalance.
On the other hand, people rightfully point out that there’s nothing stopping teams like the Pirates, Marlins, and A’s from doing the same thing.
So is it the aggressiveness of the Dodgers or the passiveness of these other franchises that’s sculping MLB’s payroll disparity? It’s really both. This is the haves and have nots, but the have nots aren’t systemically oppressed. They’re the have nots because they’re not even trying.
What’s kind of a head scratcher, though, is that people seem to forget what happened just a few months ago. The Dodgers repeated, but they needed EVERYTHING against a Blue Jays team that pushed them to the brink of elimination. That World Series had so many high-leverage, high-intensity moments, and LA really had to dig deep to get the job done. As much as people are decrying this perceived lack of parity, and what it will do to the game, that was undeniably one of the most entertaining World Series of the last 10 years. And Los Angeles went into the postseason as a three seed that had to play in the Wild Card round before ceding home field to the Phillies and Brewers.
Same team, by the way, that needed five games to get past the Padres in the 2024 NLDS, despite being the #1 seed.
In reality, the Dodgers haven’t been untouchable. They’re in this territory now where people treat them like a Manchester City or Paris St-Germain, one of these powerhouse teams that always wins a foreign soccer league with no salary cap. But PSG ran away with Ligue 1 by 19 points in 2025 while the Dodgers needed seven games to take out the Blue Jays. We’re not totally at the point where this is untenable, but if the Dodgers continue at this rate, then they’re going to resemble an oil-backed Premier League side. They’re Man City on paper, but not yet on the field, not until they win eight World Series in a row.
If anything, LA winning three titles in a row will accelerate the salary cap conversation, but in the meantime focusing our collective hatred on the Dodgers is an interesting angle, and something to get behind.
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com