There were two prevailing thoughts from some people around the Dodgers organization regarding Juan Soto’s free agency this winter.
The team is probably unlikely to land the 26-year-old superstar, who is expected to command a contract upward of $700 million on a frenzied open market.
But, the Dodgers might as well try nonetheless, since they possess the competitive track record and financial resources to be one of Soto’s few realistic landing spots this offseason.
That pursuit is set to begin in earnest this week, according to a person with knowledge of the situation unauthorized to speak publicly, with Dodgers officials scheduled to meet with Soto and his agent Scott Boras on Tuesday, as MLB.com first reported.
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That meeting will be the latest in a string of presentations from big-market clubs pursuing Soto in free agency.
Already, the four-time All-Star and five-time Silver Slugger has reportedly met with the incumbent New York Yankees, deep-pocketed New York Mets and superstar-hungry Toronto Blue Jays and Boston Red Sox.
Despite helping the Yankees reach the World Series this year in a stellar first season in the Bronx, Soto has also said all teams will have an equal opportunity to sign him.
Landing him, therefore, will likely require winning an unprecedented bidding war.
To this point, the Dodgers — even in the wake of their billion-dollar-plus offseason last year — haven’t been scared away yet.
“Our ownership group has been incredibly supportive, and we’ve talked about payroll, how it fluctuates, and there’s very rarely like one set number,” general manager Brandon Gomes said earlier this month, speaking generally about the club’s ability to spend significantly again this winter.
“Like every single year, the goal is a championship-caliber team,” Gomes added. “They’ve always given us the opportunity to do what we need to, to help us put us in the best position possible for that.”
Soto would certainly fill a major need for the team in the outfield this winter, but the organization would typically be loath to consider such an expensive bid for a free-agent player.
Most of the major acquisitions they’ve made in recent years have come on lucrative yet relatively team-friendly deals, from Mookie Betts’ $365-million extension in 2020 (which could prove to be almost half of Soto’s cost), to Freddie Freeman’s $162-million signing in 2022 (he now has only the fifth-highest tax hit on the team), to Shohei Ohtani’s heavily deferred $700-million deal last offseason (in which $680 million of his salary won’t be paid out until a decade from now).
The Dodgers are also already well on their way to paying hefty luxury tax penalties for a fifth consecutive season next year, with more than $270 million in salary on the books for competitive balance tax purposes (the first tax threshold is at $241 million, and surcharges would reach 110% if they surpass $301 million).
However, the Dodgers are not facing typical financial restraints either.
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Ohtani’s historic deferrals have kept the team’s actual payroll levels flexible, and seemingly made club executives more willing to pay luxury tax penalties long-term.
The team also experienced an economic windfall this season, thanks to the staggering revenue boosts that came with Ohtani’s celebrated arrival and the club’s first full-season World Series title since 1988.
The question is not whether chairman Mark Walter and his Guggenheim ownership group have the money to spend on Soto — or any other top free-agent target this winter — but if they feel the investment would be worth the gaudy price tag.
Last winter, the team made a similar calculation when it came to Japanese pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto. The then-25-year-old right-hander prompted a wide bidding war between MLB teams. The Dodgers, in a break from character, emerged victorious, giving Yamamoto the biggest contract for a pitcher (outside of Ohtani) in MLB history with a 12-year, $325-million deal.
The impetus for that signing, as multiple people with the club later acknowledged, was about more than just winning baseball games.
The Dodgers’ ownership group was eager to expand its footprint in Japan — both for the Dodgers’ own brand, and Walter’s Guggenheim investment firm (right down to having prominent Guggenheim patches on the sleeves of the club’s jerseys).
To that end, Yamamoto’s arrival came with plenty of added value, giving the team a young, talented arm who could also bolster their global marketing efforts (and help deflect some of the spotlight from Ohtani).
Soto’s agent, Boras, has tried to pitch his client similarly.
During the regular season, Boras billed Soto as the “greatest surplus value in free agent history,” highlighting Soto’s incredibly rare combination of age (at 26, his whole prime remains in front of him) and already dominant offensive profile (since 2019, Aaron Judge is the only position player who has been worth more wins above replacement, according to Fangraphs).
At this month’s general managers meetings, Boras doubled down, claiming that a club could potentially “make literally billions of dollars by acquiring somebody like him” over the life of the deal.
“It’s a great business investment,” Boras added. “Getting an opportunity to acquire a player at this age, with this skill, with this character, with this experience, with so much performance gradient established, [teams] understand the surplus value of it.”
The question is whether it will be enough to tempt the Dodgers into another commitment of more than half a billion dollars.
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The team, of course, still has other needs this winter. Among starting pitchers, the Dodgers are considered a likely landing spot for another Japanese star, 23-year-old Roki Sasaki, and have also been linked to top MLB free agents such as Blake Snell, Max Fried and Corbin Burnes. Unless they get Soto, the outfield will also be a priority, especially if the team fails to re-sign Teoscar Hernández.
There are other reasons to engage in the Soto sweepstakes, too. The team could juice Soto’s cost for other championship contenders. Or, they could lurk around the backboard, as president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman likes to say, in case his market develops differently than expected.
Still, the fact the team is even entertaining a meeting with this year’s top free agent suggests the Dodgers, for all the spending they did last offseason, aren’t tightening their purse strings yet.
The last year has transformed the club’s financial outlook and spending capabilities. They might still be long shots for Soto. But at this juncture, there was no point in not trying to make a strong impression upon the star target either.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
