Outfielder Kyle Tucker signed a four-year, US$240-million deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers.Nam Y. Huh/The Associated Press
In signing Kyle Tucker to a four-year, US$240-million deal on Thursday, the L.A. Dodgers didn’t come over the top rope. They jumped out of a helicopter.
Tucker is a very good corner outfielder who hits for power. He isn’t one-and-a-half Aaron Judges, which is what that number puts him at.
Like many Dodger signings recently, this isn’t a baseball move. It’s a power move. Look on the top four of my batting order, ye mighty, and despair.
The Jays wanted Tucker as a baseball proposition – long term, on a deal that put him in line with the rest of their roster.
Toronto is a team built on vibes. That kind of outlay would have harshed it. So, on paper, it was right to say no.
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It still had one more move to make – Bo Bichette. It would have been a second-best sort of scenario for club and player, but they could have both pretended it was true love all along.
Instead, Bichette signed with the New York Mets on Friday morning.
If this was Bichette’s way of getting back at the Jays for letting him reach free agency in the first place, then well played. He waited for the moment of maximum pain to inflict it.
He gets his revenge as well as a panicked overpay from the Mets, who’d also just lost out on Tucker.
Bichette is a good player. Is he a three-years/US$126-million sort of player? Not unless his lower half has been made bionic over the winter.
In baseball terms, the Jays made the right decision in both instances. But in L.A. Dodger terms, they blew it.
Would the Dodgers have let the Mets outspend them on Bichette if people expected him to go to California? No. Absolutely not.
Which means the Jays shouldn’t have allowed it to happen either. It was okay to get only one of Tucker or Bichette, but they had to get that much at least.
You have to start thinking about these negotiations as the Dodgers do. It isn’t about Bichette as a player. It’s about Bichette as a statement: ’You put one of mine in the hospital, I put one of yours on the payroll.’
Bo Bichette signed with the New York Mets on Friday morning in a three-year, US$126-million deal.Chris Young/The Canadian Press
The Jays were this close to people saying they’d owned free agency. Instead, they finish in second again.
It may turn out that Toronto has the best team in baseball by the time the upcoming season ends. But until that happens, the best team in baseball is the Dodgers. I don’t care if they lose their first 30 games, people will still believe they are the best. That certainty is what they’ve bought, and what they continue to buy.
L.A. will dominate every baseball conversation. Its players will be the most sought out for comment. The way in which it handles its business is considered industry leading, because it’s the Dodgers doing it.
Whoever they play will be afraid. Some teams will be beaten on the drive into Chavez Ravine.
Toronto had a chance to join this company. It has the roster, the momentum, the cash and the seeming intent to play foil to the Dodgers. Instead, it flinched.
Once again, the Dodgers will control baseball’s story. They are America right now – flush with theoretical future cash, short on tact, and absolutely certain that things will go their way in the end.
I am hard pressed to think of a more smug franchise in sport. From the manager down, they exude friendly arrogance. It’s unbearable. Something needs to stop it.
But who? While others dither, the Dodgers act. When their act doesn’t get it done, they add a zero.
The Jays had their chance. Two of them in less than 24 hours. They missed both times.
The greatest, non-salary-capped teams in the world – which are all soccer teams, plus the Dodgers – do not make decisions with their accountants in the room. What they’re after is status, regardless of the cost.
There is no formula for status acquisition, but everyone recognizes it once you’ve got it. It’s not recorded in any box score, and it is the most important tool in sports.
Think about that ninth inning in November. A part of you just knew, right? How? Not because it made any sense that L.A.’s No. 9 hitter would put one out of the park against Toronto’s No. 1 closer. But because it was the Dodgers. All the money they’d spent and all the hype it built set them up for that moment, and it cracked Jeff Hoffman.
I guarantee you that if it was Hoffman versus any other hitter on any other team in baseball, the Jays are World Series champions today.
Edward Rogers can ask himself – do I want a good baseball team or do I want that?
What the Dodgers did to Hoffman, they just did again to the entire Jays organization. ‘You think you’re winning this one? Yeah, no.’
The Jays can go into this season one of two ways. The first way is the way they’ve always done it – that they’re playing to win the AL East. They have to beat Baltimore and Tampa this many times, and stay tight with New York and Boston, and things should turn out okay. Then, as summer becomes fall, they start to think about the playoffs.
The other way is to decide they are playing the Dodgers from April on. That they are going to make the playoffs, because that’s what they want to do, and that once there, there isn’t anyone good enough to stop them from making the World Series.
Along the way they will make any deal to improve their team, even if it costs far, far too much to make any fiscal sense.
It’s a ridiculous way to think. No one else in baseball thinks that way. Except the Dodgers. Which is why they win so consistently at baseball, even when no one’s playing.