The have won the last two World Series and have one of the highest payrolls in MLB. That, apparently, means things aren’t fair in baseball. Sure enough, after they acquired two-time Cy Young winner , the screaming complaints about parity (or lack thereof) grew even louder.
The Dodgers are aware.
“It just seems like there’s always blowback with us,” manager Dave Roberts said on Sunday (via ). “People are passionate. We feel good about it. There’s nothing that we did that no one else couldn’t have done. I just love our front office. We have to have the players to go pull something like this off, and we’ve still got, you know, arguably the top one or two or three farm systems in baseball. So it’s a credit to a lot of people in this organization.”
There are plenty of fair points in here. First off, teams like the and could have outbid the Dodgers’ prospect package for Skubal and didn’t. Secondly, it’s far too often ignored that one of the reasons the Dodgers can pull off trades like this is that the front office is so good at building the farm system and developing prospects. Flipping out a few minor-leaguers, even one as good as Zyhir Hope, won’t leave a scratch.
Bear in mind, also, that the Dodgers last season were the first repeat champions in Major League Baseball since 2000. They are attempting to become the first National League team ever with a threepeat. Only the (several times) and A’s (1972-74) have ever pulled it off.
“It’s special,” club president Andrew Friedman said, “and we’re not going to be flippant about this moment in time and how special this group, this era can be in the history of this incredibly storied organization. We’re going to do everything we can to keep doing what we can to win the last game of the year.”
At 69-43, the Dodgers trail the Brewers by a half-game for the best record in baseball.
