Rob Manfred Must Be Stopped! He And MLB Have Allowed The Los Angeles Dodgers To Defer Over $1 BILLION DOLLARS In Salary To 7 Players
ESPN - Contracts for Blake Snell and Tommy Edman increased the Los Angeles Dodgers' obligations for deferred payments to more than $1 billion owed to seven players from 2028 to 2046.
Snell's $182 million contract, announced Saturday, includes $66 million in deferred money payable to the pitcher through July 1, 2046, according to contract terms obtained by The Associated Press.
Edman's $74 million, five-year deal, announced Friday, includes $25 million payable to the infielder and outfielder through July 1, 2044.
Los Angeles now owes deferred payments of $1,006,500,000 to seven players.
"It's just how you account for it," Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said Tuesday at a news conference to introduce Snell. "You have to fund a lot of it right now, and having that money go to work for you, we have -- a lot of our ownership group are from financial background and can have that money going to work right now, and just making it -- not something that sneaks up on us. We're not going to wake up in 2035 and [say], 'Oh my God, that's right. We have this money due.' We'll plan for it along the way."
Snell will receive a $52 million signing bonus payable on Jan. 25 and yearly salaries of $26 million, of which $13.2 annually will be deferred. The deferred money is payable in equal installments each July 1 from 2035 to 2046.
It feels like just yesterday I was writing about how Rob Manfred is hell-bent on ruining baseball, with his asinine "Golden-At-Ball" rule that he's peddling at the winter meetings.
Remember when "Bobby Bonilla Day" used to be a huge thing where we would all laugh our asses off and give a nice chest pound to Bobby Bo' and his agent for being ahead of the game? Well it's not so funny anymore because it's not only become the norm, but Manfred and his puppet masters have now allowed the large market teams to manipulate the salary structure to the point they are extrapolating payments out over decades now.
Picture this- It’s the year 2046. We’ve got flying cars, robots mowing the lawn, and Blake Snell is kicking back in his rocking chair while the Los Angeles Dodgers are still sending him checks for work he wrapped up two decades ago. The man will have been retired long enough to collect Social Security, and the Dodgers will still be paying him like he’s a Cy Young contender. And guess what? He’s just one of seven players on LA’s payroll after the singularity.
Major League Baseball’s luxury tax system is supposed to keep teams from running up the score in the spending department. Yet here we are, watching Rob Manfred and MLB’s front office turn a blind eye while the Dodgers turn their books into a creative writing project. They’ve got $1,006,500,000, that’s billion with a B - in deferred payments owed to players between 2028 and 2046. Blake Snell, Tommy Edman, Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman, Shohei Ohtani, and even Teoscar Hernandez (who somehow has the least obnoxious deal of the group) are all part of LA’s futuristic layaway plan.
How exactly is this good for parity, good for competition, and good for baseball Rob?
Blake Snell, bless his left arm, just signed a $182 million deal with $66 million deferred until 2046. The guy probably doesn’t even know what he’s doing this weekend, but the Dodgers are planning his paycheck schedule for 22 years from now. Similarly, Tommy Edman, a perfectly fine utility guy, gets $25 million in deferrals through 2044. Combine that with Ohtani’s absurd $680 million in deferred payments, and you’ve got the Dodgers running a payroll scheme that makes Enron’s accounting department look like amateurs.
The "experts" on social media see nothing wrong with this, and love to over-explain how the Dodgers are operating fully within the rules and that anybody who's knocking this is just mad that their team isn't doing the same thing.
Look, I get it. Teams are always looking for an edge, but this is a straight-up loophole exploitation. The Dodgers’ luxury tax hit is discounted because of these deferrals, allowing them to spend obscene amounts in the present while kicking the financial burden to future ownership groups.
It’s like maxing out a credit card and saying, “Don’t worry, someone else will pay it off later.” Meanwhile, the rest of the league is expected to compete under the same rules, except they don’t have the audacity (or resources) to pull this off.
Smaller-market teams like the Rays and Guardians are over here scrounging for pennies to make payroll while the Dodgers are essentially running a financial hedge fund disguised as a baseball team. And MLB lets them get away with it because, hey, the Dodgers bring in ratings and ticket sales.
Andrew Friedman, the Dodgers’ president of baseball operations, might be the most smug accountant in America right now. At a press conference, he said, “We’re not going to wake up in 2035 and say, ‘Oh my God, that’s right. We have this money due.’” Sure, Andrew. Just like how everyone’s super organized about remembering to pay off their student loans. This whole “We’ll plan for it along the way” shtick feels like a high-stakes version of “I’ll start my diet next week.”
The kicker? Friedman tries to justify it by claiming that their ownership group has the financial expertise to make this work. Essentially, the Dodgers are spinning this as an investment strategy, as if Mookie Betts’ 2033 paycheck is somehow tied to the NASDAQ.
This is where Rob Manfred comes in, or doesn’t. The guy who spends more time worrying about pitch clocks and banning the shift is sitting idly by while one of the league’s richest teams exploits deferred payments to crush the competition. At some point, you have to wonder if Manfred even reads the league’s financial reports or if he’s too busy figuring out how to ruin the All-Star Game for the 18th year in a row.
The Dodgers aren’t just playing baseball; they’re playing the system. Deferred payments are fine in moderation, but when you owe a billion dollars to players who might be dead by the time the checks stop coming, you’ve crossed into absurdity. This isn’t just bad for baseball’s financial ecosystem, it’s a mockery of the idea of parity in baseball.