How can the Giants possibly counteract the Dodgers’ blue deluge of momentous off-season signings? They can get sad and mad. They can shake their fists at the inequity of it all.
And most constructively, they can do everything possible to get their own version of Mookie Betts to start their own cycle of success to vie with their bitterest rival.
That won’t be easy, of course. It took the massively well-funded Dodgers ownership group many years after buying the team in 2013 to build up to fooling convincing the Red Sox to trade Betts in February 2020. In those pre-Betts years, the Dodgers tried other paths — remember Yasiel Puig, Andre Ethier, and Adrian Gonzalez? They spent a lot of money, went heavy into analytics. Didn’t really work, at least at the highest levels. They were in the game, just not winning all of the games, especially in October.
But now … the Dodgers basked in the afterglow of landing Roki Sasaki on Friday by agreeing to terms with top reliever Tanner Scott on Sunday, which slots in with earlier deals to add Blake Snell, Michael Conforto, and Hyeseong Kim, and to bring back Teoscar Hernandez. And oh, Shohei Ohtani can finally pitch for the Dodgers in 2025 — after winning the MVP with a historic offensive performance last season (while rehabbing his surgically repaired shoulder) on the way to the Dodgers’ second World Series championship of this decade.
Ohtani is the greatest MLB player of this period, right in the middle of his prime. Sasaki might be the next pitching superstar. The Dodgers also have Tyler Glasnow, Snell, Freddie Freeman, and everybody else. They could and probably will keep on signing stars from Japan or anywhere else every year. That’s the machinery they’ve set up.
But I’m calling it the Betts Era, because that’s when it started. It’s not only that the Dodgers won their first title since 1988 just months after his arrival, but that’s obviously a key part of the tale. It’s that Betts’ acquisition and subsequent signing to a long-term deal in Los Angeles crystallized everything that the Dodgers had been trying to do. Betts hasn’t been their best player the whole time, but he’s been in the middle of everything. He’s made them tougher, smarter, more disciplined, far more versatile, and purposeful. And cooler. He’s still doing it.
Getting Betts led to the 2020 championship, which led to signing Freeman in 2022, which led to signing Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto in 2023 and another World Series title, which led to signing Sasaki, Snell, and Scott, and more and more into the future. The pieces all fit based on the foundation that Betts helped create.
Sure, the Dodgers are throwing around crazy money, but that isn’t a new thing in baseball. The Giants’ ownership isn’t poor and was in the recent bidding for Ohtani, Yamamoto, Aaron Judge, and several others. They wanted to pay this money. The Mets are doing it right now and we’ll see how it all works with Juan Soto signed to an unbelievable $765 million deal.
But the Dodgers are operating in a way that won over Sasaki — whose compensation was capped by international signing rules — which is the ultimate power move. Sasaki didn’t do this for the money, or else he would’ve waited a few more years when he could’ve cashed out like Yamamoto did last off-season. Sasaki joined the Dodgers because it’s the right place to cultivate a superstar career.
Would any of this happened if the Dodgers hadn’t acquired Betts five years ago? Maybe some of it. But certainly not all of it.
Where’s the Giants’ Betts?
I’ll put it another way: If the Giants had somehow managed to trade for Betts in 2020 and signed him to an extension, would they have won much more than they have lately (or one more game in the 2021 NLDS against Betts’ Dodgers) and been in a much better position to attract Ohtani and Yamamoto last off-season? Or Judge two off-seasons ago? Or Sasaki this time around? Yes, I think so. But one of the great failures of Farhan Zaidi’s tenure was that he never accumulated the prospect capital that could’ve led to landing somebody like Betts.
Well, Buster Posey is in charge now, and the Giants don’t have that kind of farm system yet. It’s up to Posey and his lieutenants to line the system with high-value prospects — either to move into the Giants’ lineup or to package together for a superstar when the time is right.
Until then, the Dodgers will be head and shoulders above the Giants and just about everybody else. They won the World Series over the Yankees basically with two-and-a-half starting pitchers (Jack Flaherty, Yamamoto, and a little bit of Walker Buehler). Who knows about pitching health, especially with the Dodgers, but they should have seven or eight quality starters to choose from during the 2025 season, when they likely will go with a six-man rotation to accommodate Sasaki’s development and several injury comebacks.
But injuries could strike the Dodgers again. They were vulnerable last October, when they had to squirm through a do-or-die Game 5 against the Padres in the NLDS and needed six games against the pre-Soto Mets in the NLCS. They could be vulnerable at some point again in a short series.
In the regular season, though, the Dodgers own the NL West. There’s a quiet bonus to loading up all these layers of talent: The Dodgers really don’t have to stress out about making the postseason. They can write in 95-110 wins, almost no matter what, then maneuver their roster for October. But that doesn’t mean the Giants or another team can’t sneak into one of the wild-card spots and pull off a surprise — the kind of upset that has toppled the Dodgers 10 times in this run of 12 consecutive playoff berths.
Would a splash signing of somebody like Pete Alonso narrow that gap and put a little chill through the Dodgers? Maybe. Probably. But I don’t think the Giants will win a World Series by out-Dodgering the Dodgers. And I don’t think the Mets are going to get out-bid on Alonso, anyway. For now, Posey has added Willy Adames and Justin Verlander, extended Matt Chapman, and is counting on a full return from Jung Hoo Lee. That’s not exactly Betts, Ohtani, Yamamoto, Freeman, and Sasaki, but it’s the best the Giants can do for now. Maybe it will get the Giants into the postseason for the first time since 2021.
In the long haul, though, the Giants need a transformative player. They need their own Betts. They need somebody to do what Posey and Madison Bumgarner did in 2010, when they took off and turned the Giants into a special franchise for a half-decade.
Could it be top prospect Bryce Eldridge? Posey doesn’t want to start the hype train for somebody who just turned 20 and has had only one full minor-league season. But Eldridge sure could be a building block at first base. So could splashy international signee Josuar De Jesus Gonzalez, who is only 17.
How about Vladimir Guerrero Jr., who is scheduled to hit free agency next off-season? Or Kyle Tucker, who is in the same situation after just getting traded to the Cubs? The Dodgers can’t sign everybody. Theoretically.
There’s also no guarantee that any player — signed or developed — will have the same impact that Betts has had with the Dodgers or that Posey had with the Giants. But you’re not going to win if you don’t have a player like that — or four or five of them, as the Dodgers now do.