For years, most of Major League Baseball’s (MLB) biggest free agents were spread across various teams. However, on Dec. 11, 2023, the Los Angeles Dodgers signed MLB player Shohei Ohtani to a contract worth $700 million over a 10-year span, the highest total and yearly individual player salary in history. This contract started a series of spending from the Dodgers as they acquired some of the biggest stars in baseball. This conflicts with the long trend of major players being delegated to different teams. The Dodgers now have the largest team salary in American sports history for the upcoming 2026 baseball season. They are spending a minimum of $413 million divided among their players’ salaries. The Dodgers also have guaranteed payments of a total of $2.11 billion to all of their players.
Before 2023, baseball teams would only sign a few stars and then build up prospects or young players. Teams would do this so they could stay below the salary luxury tax of $241 million. Additionally, most major teams knew they wouldn’t need a whole team of stars to win a season. However, the Dodgers have recently signed a majority of the big free agents. Since the Dodgers started their streak of big spending, they have won the World Series every year.
The Dodgers have been able to afford this massive spending largely because baseball lacks a salary cap, allowing them to operate without a budget. In addition, the Dodgers generate revenue from Japan. The team signed players Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamimamoto and Roki Saski, three of Japan’s best, which has created a large amount of Japanese viewership. According to the MLB website, during the 2025 World Series, Japan averaged a viewership above 9.5 million.
Going into spring training for the 2026 season, the Dodgers are predicted to win the World Series for the third year in a row, according to ESPN. Their strategy of signing all the best current players by spending as much money as possible has continued to work. Because this strategy is working for the Dodgers, more teams are adopting a similar strategy. This increases player contracts in price, making it harder for smaller teams to sign players. This has created an increased gap between the skills of the “rich” teams and the “poor” teams.
Because of the Dodgers’ new tactic, fewer teams are in contention to win the World Series this year, according to ESPN. As a result, other teams have decided not to spend as much money, as they don’t feel the need to spend money on players if they’re projected to lose anyway. The Dodgers, on the other hand, continue to spend money and continue to win. They have made the playoffs 13 years in a row.
