Dodgers push back at narrative they are ruining baseball

The Los Angeles Dodgers had already become the modern version of baseball's "Evil Empire" long before their acquisition of starting pitcher Tarik Skubal from the Detroit Tigers late Saturday night. 

It certainly comes with the territory when you are the most successful team in a sport over an extended period of time, and it only gets magnified when you do it by outspending every other team by a significant margin.

And when you land almost every high-profile player that becomes available.

Mookie Betts.

Freddie Freeman.

Shohei Ohtani.

Kyle Tucker.

Edwin Diaz.

And now Skubal.

Saturday's trade for Skubal, the reigning back-to-back Cy Young Award winner in the American League, and arguably the best starting pitcher in baseball, reignited the claims from fans of 29 other teams that what the Dodgers are doing is bad for baseball. And they are tired of hearing it.

Dodgers push back on narrative that they are ruining baseball

President of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said he "passionately" disagreed with the claim, while Dave Roberts said they haven't done anything that any other team in baseball can not also attempt to do.

From ESPN:

"It just seems like there's always blowback with us," Roberts said. "People are passionate. We feel good about it. There's nothing that we did that no one else couldn't have done. I just love our front office. We have to have the players to go pull something like this off, and we've still got, you know, arguably the top one or two or three farm systems in baseball. So it's a credit to a lot of people in this organization."

The trade is not only receiving blowback from the rest of the baseball world because it is another superstar going to a team already full of them, and a team that has already won back-to-back World Series titles, but also because of seemingly low cost in terms of prospects.

While the Dodgers are regarded as having an outstanding farm system, they did not send any of their top-three prospects to the Detroit Tigers, while one of the prospects (River Ryan) is less than two years younger than Skubal with almost no Major League experience.

It just seems like an awfully one-sided trade.

And that is because it is.

The Dodgers, for what it is worth, are doing nothing wrong. In fact, they are operating the way every fan should want their own team to act. They are invested in one thing, and one thing only: Winning. And winning a lot. 

But it's also hard to ignore that they do have significant financial advantages over other teams in a cap-less league, ranging from the fact they have deeper-pocketed owners than most teams, to their wildly friendly TV deal that does not hit them with revenue sharing as much as other teams. 

All of that adds up. Not only in terms of the Major League roster, but also adding to the farm system, player development, and everything else that comes into play with building an organization.

There is also this reality: While other teams could have almost certainly matched the prospect package the Dodgers sent the other way, it's a question of whether or not it would have been worth it when they all knew full well that Skubal would be destined for the Dodgers as soon as he reached free agency in a few months. It would have created a World Series-or-bust mentality for any of those other teams, and that may not have been a risk worth taking. 

Either way, the rules allow the Dodgers to do what they are doing. They have the funds and the means to do it. No amount of complaining from the other 29 fan bases is going to stop it. Not as long as the current system is set up the way it is.