Mark Walter (center) in October 2024Mary DeCicco/MLB Photos via Getty Images
Owner: Mark Walter and Guggenheim Baseball Management since May 2012
Record: 1,215-790 (.606 W/L%)
Playoffs: 12 appearances, 4 pennants, 2 World Series
This is counting the 2012 season, in which the Dodgers won a respectable 86 games. But since the team hasn’t won fewer than 90 games in a full season since then, even that sum looks laughably quaint in retrospect.
The Dodgers lead all teams with 1,129 regular-season wins and 64 playoff wins dating back to 2013. They’ve made it at least as far as the NLCS seven times, and they are the only team to win multiple World Series titles in the 2020s.
Purchase Price vs. Value: $2 billion vs. $5.45 billion (2nd in MLB)
2023 Revenues: $549 million (2nd in MLB)
Average Payroll Rank: 2.8
2024 Spending vs. Projected 2025 Spending: $51 million increase
The Dodgers were subdued with their spending in the 2010s. Though they consistently ranked among MLB’s highest-spending teams, president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman didn’t do any nine-figure deals between 2014 and 2019.
The Dodgers have since done eight of those, starting with Mookie Betts’ $365 million pact from 2020 and peaking with Shohei Ohtani’s $700 million megadeal from last winter. The final bill for the latter came to over $1.4 billion.
An awful lot of the money the Dodgers owe is deferred, but they seem unlikely to run into the same problem the Diamondbacks had back in the day. They’re already printing money, and the brand is only growing stronger.