The Los Angeles Dodgers signing another star player to another noteworthy contract had me thinking about a lot last night. Some peculiar to Kyle Tucker, some general about the Dodgers, and all ultimately about the financial state of the game ahead of a Collective Bargaining Fight that undoubtedly just got incrementally uglier.
Random things that came into my mind …
Although Tucker’s four-year, $240 million deal does have deferrals, they are reportedly only about $30 million, and reportedly take the annual value down to $57 million. Still a record that blows away Juan Soto’s number. I think Kyle Tucker is a very good player, and long-underrated. But I did not have it on my bingo card that he would be the guy to get a totally new level-setting AAV. Short-term, yes, but still. Good for him. I don’t want to speculate on the specifics of what was behind it, but I do want to underscore that it’s HIGHLY unusual for a 28/29-year-old star player to prefer a short-term offer when a long-term offer is available (as it reportedly was from the Blue Jays). To be sure, Tucker got paaaaaaid regardless, but usually guys are much happier to lock in the final deal of their career and, say, $350+ million guaranteed, rather than just four years and only two-thirds of that guarantee. The fact that both the Dodgers and Mets were going that route is telling. This is what Tucker wanted. That said, as is always the case when guys take the short-term deal with opt-outs, Tucker very well might wind up making even more money in total if he has a couple great years and opts out ahead of his age-31 season, especially under a new CBA. It’s definitely possible. Because the Dodgers are in the highest tier of the luxury tax already, a $57 million annual commitment to Tucker gets a 110% tax on top of it … so it’s basically like the Dodgers are paying $120 MILLION to Tucker in 2026. Really think about that. Think about what it says that the Dodgers can pay a SINGLE player (who is maybe the fifth best player on his new team) more than THE ENTIRE PAYROLL for many small market clubs. Should those clubs be spending more? Absolutely. But have we LONG passed the point where it’s at all tethered to reality to say that ALL 29 other clubs could be doing what the Dodgers do? Come on. I don’t know that a salary cap is the answer to the financial competitive imbalance in the game, and I’m certainly not going to advocate for one here. But I am also not going to live in a fantasy world that ignores the Dodgers’ $350 million annually GUARANTEED TV contract that is multiple hundreds of millions of dollars more than other clubs, or the market that affords them partnership and sponsorship dollars that simply not available in a number of other cities in this country. Are the Dodgers doing well with their financial advantage? Absolutely. But does that mean they don’t have an extreme financial advantage? Again, come on. Black and white on the money:Est. 2026 Tax Payroll w/Luxury Taxin millions of US $, via spotrac:576 LAD ?373 NYM362 PHI349 TOR323 NYY287 BOS277 SD272 ATL258 CHC251 HOU227 SF224 ARI212 TEX202 LAA200 DET199 BAL197 KC SEA156 MIL150 CIN144 ATH COL143 STL138 WSH134 PIT134 MIN128 CWS117 CLE109 TB100 MIA
— Codify Baseball (@codifybaseball.bsky.social) 2026-01-16T16:37:00.007ZDodgers contracts worth more than $100M:Shohei Ohtani: 10 years, $700,000,000Mookie Betts: 12 years, $365,000,000Yoshinobu Yamamoto: 12 years, $325,000,000Kyle Tucker: 4 years, $240,000,000Blake Snell: 5 years, $182,000,000Freddie Freeman: 6 years, $162,000,000Will…
— Joon Lee (@joonlee) January 16, 2026Guaranteed Salary (2026+) per #MLB TeamLA Dodgers: $2,114,037,500San Diego: $1,266,675,000Toronto: $1,250,387,500NY Mets: $1,140,550,000Philadelphia: $865,173,963NY Yankees: $789,162,500Boston: $670,035,000Atlanta: $656,775,000San Francisco: $652,494,193Arizona:… t.co/HgIk424Dwe
— Spotrac (@spotrac) January 16, 2026 Take all of that together, and you might as well print up the CBA debate points now. The fight about a cap and floor system is only one issue. The revenue-sharing fight among owners? Yeah, that’s going to be extreme. The centralizing of local broadcast rights? When the Dodgers will understandably have ZERO interest in participate more than they already do? Yup, that’s another huge fight. What the Dodgers are doing is good for the Dodgers, but I have a hard time seeing how it’s actually good for the sport overall, or even necessarily how it’s all that great for the AVERAGE player. I want ALL players to get as much as they can, and I’m not sure that fighting tooth and nail to preserve the ability for the outliers to get even more and more extreme deals is actually raising the total share of revenue that goes to the players on the field. Maybe it will, in the end, but I’m at least as interested in seeing pre-arbitration and arbitration-level players do well in the next CBA as I am the big-time free agents (who were the ones driving the bus on the player side last time around). Everybody sees and argues about the Kyle Tucker deals of the world, but for every Tucker, there are 100 up-and-down relievers who might NEVER make life-changing money. Can we fight for and about those guys, too?Hence then, the article about the kyle tucker deal the dodgers financial advantage and the eventual fallout was published today ( ) and is available on Bleacher Nation ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
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