The World Series champion Dodgers sign the free agent left-hander Blake Snell to a Five-year, $182 million contract. The deal isn't easy, however, and delving into the details gives you a better idea of how the Dodgers can continue to improve their ballclub for the rest of this offseason.
Snell collapse
Snell will receive a $52 million signing bonus and $13 million per season in deferment over five years. reports the New York Post. The signing bonus helps give Snell back some of the present-day cash value that was lost by deferring $65 million to a later date. Snell will receive a check for $52 million as a signing bonus, but that value will be spread over the five years of his contract on the Dodgers' books for CBT purposes.
The deferrals do not change much when it comes to the competitive balance sheet tax. The CBT counts an average annual value rather than the exact figure the player earns per season to prevent heavily backloaded deals from creating additional leeway early in the contract term.
With the signing bonus, deferments and everything else, the $182 million five-year average ($36.4 million) shrinks a bit to $32 million and changes for the CBT.
Deferrals
If the CBT actually taxed teams the full contract value per season as an average annual value over the life of the contract, Snell's figure would be $36.4 million. Shohei Ohtanis A 10-year, $700 million contract would obviously mean $70 million per season. However, Ohtani's CBT number stands at $46,076,768 thanks to all of his deferments.
So while there is a limit to how much can be worked around, the Dodgers did some creative math with these deals.
Still room to maneuver
The Dodgers are obviously one of the richest teams in baseball, but it should be noted that they spend their money. About the score, Travis Sawchik created what he called the “Scrooge Index.” to show how many teams simply pocket a lot of money and then beg in front of their fans. Usually it works. While the Dodgers ranked second in baseball, spending 67% of their revenue on payroll (the Mets were initially at 102% RaysAs, tiger And Redness All spent less than 40% of their revenue on player payroll. Some other big market teams like this Red Sox (40%) and Boy (43%) are also not doing well.
However, the Dodgers are more interested in winning and that's better for the fans who spend money on the product.
You'll also likely have more to spend.
As it stands now, the competition balance is certainly over $300 million, so the Dodgers will be taxed (which means they'll be writing checks to a bunch of poor teams).
But the actual 2025 payroll is currently around $260 million due to the signing bonuses and deferments mentioned above.
Looking at the roster right now, the 7-9 batsmen seem to be it Gavin Lux, Andy Pages And James Outman. You could easily fit a Teoscar Hernández reunion here without breaking the bank. We have heard many rumors linking her to them Juan Sototo. If he's willing, this may become a heavily deferred contract.
Let's also remember that Roki Sasaki, the NPB ace scheduled to be deployed this winter, will not receive a monster contract due to his status as an amateur free agent. He and the Dodgers were linked all season long.
All of this means the Dodgers still have room to add after signing Snell. They could still grab Soto if they wanted. Perhaps more realistic is a reunion with Teoscar and a commitment from Sasaki.
Whatever the case, the Dodgers aren't done yet and they don't even need to be short on payroll to keep making gains.
