Dodgers Deferrals Face the Next CBA

Rich asked Tom Verducci how the Dodgers are reshaping the economics of Major League Baseball. Verducci reached for a Simpsons line. Homer's toast to alcohol. The cause of and solution to all of life's problems. That, Verducci said, is Shohei Ohtani to baseball.

Ohtani is a dynamo. He is great for the game. But his deferred-payment contract set the template, and the Dodgers used that template to build an empire. Other Dodgers deals have followed the same structure. Ohtani's is the most dramatic because he generates the most revenue, but the model spread through the roster.

Verducci expects the deferred-payment mechanism to be stripped out in the next collective bargaining agreement. Not the salary cap fight. That is the bigger war. The deferral structure, he said, is hard to defend on principle, and it should be relatively easy to shut off for future contracts. Ohtani's deal stays. Year three of ten. Existing deals get grandfathered in. But new deals would lose the mechanism.

The question of who pushes it through is messy. Players probably do not mind. Small-market owners have a real complaint. Some large-market owners do too. Before any of that reaches the players association, which just emerged from its own leadership scandal, the ownership group has to find alignment. That part is not obvious.

Rich zoomed out. He said the game itself is as good as it has ever been. Pitch clock. Shift removal. ABS and the challenge system. All of it working. Verducci agreed. He is sympathetic to the players and to free markets. But the competitive gap tells its own story. Milwaukee won 97 games in the regular season last year. No one accuses the Brewers of lining their pockets. They ran into the Dodgers in October and it was not much of a match. What else is Milwaukee supposed to do.

Verducci suggested the fix might not need to be a full salary cap. The luxury tax could do the work if the math got real. The Dodgers are paying Kyle Tucker roughly double after the luxury tax calculation. Two hundred forty million becomes four hundred eighty. Would the number need to climb to seven hundred twenty for the Dodgers to take a pass? That is the real question.

The answer shapes the next CBA. The deferred-payment piece might be the easy part. The luxury tax ceiling is where ownership has to decide how much parity they actually want.