Your team could have done this.
Is baseball headed for a lockout this winter? Yes.
Because the Dodgers traded for Tarik Skubal? No.
The Dodgers play a video before each home game, which includes these words from a sinister-sounding voice: “You need teams like us to point your finger and say, ‘That’s the bad guy.’ ”
In this case, “you” means the owners of the other 29 teams. You can hear them wailing now: Baseball is rigged, and only a salary cap can unrig the sport. The Dodgers are the back-to-back champions, and they just picked up the best player on the trade market.
They. Have. Too. Much. Damn. Money.
But here’s the thing: All the money the Dodgers lavish upon their major league roster isn’t what made the trade for Skubal possible.
Oh, all that money helped put them in position to where Skubal could help them in October, but Skubal could have helped the Milwaukee Brewers or the Chicago Cubs or the Tampa Bay Rays or the Atlanta Braves or the New York Yankees or the Philadelphia Phillies.
When the Detroit Tigers took bids for Skubal, they liked the Dodgers’ offer the best. And here is what the Dodgers offered: three prospects, none a first-rounder, none ranked among baseball’s top 20 prospects.
Outfielder Zyhir Hope was drafted in the 11th round, by the Cubs. When the Cubs needed a corner infielder, the Dodgers shipped them a surplus major leaguer, Michael Busch, in exchange for two prospects. One was Hope, whose professional experience was limited to 11 games of rookie ball.
Pitcher River Ryan was drafted in the 11th round, by the San Diego Padres. When the Padres needed a left-handed bat that could play the outfield, the Dodgers shipped them a surplus major leaguer, Matt Beaty, for a prospect that had yet to make his professional debut, Ryan.
Pitcher Brady Smith was drafted in the third round, by the Dodgers. This is his second professional season.
The Dodgers developed Hope and Ryan from minor leaguers into top prospects, and the Tigers hope some of that Dodgers development dust has rubbed off on Smith.
For now? The prospect rankings on the league website put Hope at No. 25 and Ryan at No. 68. The Baseball America prospect rankings put Hope at No. 55, with Ryan outside the top 100. Neither ranking includes Smith among the top 100.
As Baseball America editor-in-chief J.J. Cooper wrote, Hope was the third-best outfielder on the Dodgers’ double-A team.
That might be the greatest testament of all to the Dodgers’ player development system, particularly considering all of their winning means they draft at the end of every round, every year.
Maybe the trio of prospects never pans out, at least not the way the Tigers hope. Two of three prospects traded at the deadline never do, according to Baseball America research.
Will money come into play here? Yes, but not yet. Skubal is a free agent at the end of the season, and not every team could afford $300 million or $400 million or so to sign him to a long-term contract.
But, for these final months of the season, the cost to pay Skubal is $9 million. Any team can do that. And, if the owner of your team tells you he could not have done that, the proper response would be to laugh, and then chant “Sell the team!”
And, as the Brewers and Cleveland Guardians and Tampa Bay Rays prove just about every year, any team can afford to build an excellent player development system.
Look, I am not going to try to tell you that every team could sign Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Freddie Freeman and Mookie Betts and Edwin Díaz and Kyle Tucker.
But the New York Mets, in the largest market in the major leagues, certainly could. Their Saturday was not spent trading for Skubal. It was spent taking trade offers for players on their last-place team and commemorating the 40th anniversary of their 1986 World Series championship team — their last championship team.
In Anaheim, the last-place team in the second-largest market in the major leagues lost to the Brewers, the team in the smallest market in the major leagues — and, as of Saturday, the team with the best record in the majors.
Market size need not be destiny, if you can scout and sign and coach and develop players. The owners could learn from that, but it’s easier to point at the Dodgers and say, “That’s the bad guy.”
Instead, some poor league employee probably stayed up late Saturday night, planning how to splice clips of Skubal wearing a Dodgers uniform into the “Level the Playing Field” ad campaign the owners are running to persuade fans to take their side in collective bargaining. Imagine what they could do with clips of Skubal waving to fans in a championship parade.
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