Once Ever

A reason to watch the World Series and even to root for the Dodgers

I’ll admit that I was pulling for the Mariners to win the ALCS, mostly because Seattle has never been to a World Series, but as the final out was recorded in Game 7 on Monday night and the Blue Jays secured their spot in the Fall Classic, my primary interest was still on the team they’ll be facing anyway: The Dodgers.

As I’ve said to a few people in the past couple of days, I don’t think it was going to matter much which of the American League teams got to the World Series, because beating LA is going to be an extremely tall order. I may eat these words in a week or so, but the Dodgers are in a class of their own. And a lot of that has to do with Shohei Ohtani. To me, he’s reason enough on his own to inspire you to cheer for the Dodgers as the World Series begins on Friday.

Rooting for that ballclub probably runs counter to most people’s instincts. After all, the Dodgers have assembled what feels like a superteam using the largest payroll in all of baseball and cleverly deferring salary so they can just keep signing more of the best players. You can see the whole league’s payrolls here, but just take a look at the top few spots:

There are a few observations that could be made just based on the top 5 — a high payroll doesn’t guarantee success, like the Mets, but four of the top five teams were all in the playoffs and two of them are going to face off in the World Series — but the reality is that, like it or not, the Dodgers are not using a strategy that isn’t free for any other organization to try. Some franchises probably don’t have the financial means to do it at the same scale, but until the next contract between the owners and players, LA can spend and defer all they want.

That’s more or less how they got Ohtani.