Los Angeles Dodgers they had moved into the shadows for much of the offseason as other teams, such as the Padres, blew the house out the window, landing Blake Snell and Yu Darvish. But wow, in the last few weeks they’ve left everyone again spending over $ 150 million on three free MLB agency players from Blake Treinen, Trevor Bauer and Justin Turner.
The former, who served as both a coach and a relative for the Dodgers in 2020, received a two-year, $ 17.5 million contract to return to the team.
On the other hand, Bauer, this year’s bomb company, received three years for $ 102 million in outflows after each year and in years one and two would break the record for money earned in one year by 40 and 42 million. of dollars. , respectively.
Eventually, the Dodgers and their captain Turner had to give up to turn around, because while one only wanted to award a one-year contract, the other wanted three years or more. Finally, they agreed in two years for 34 million.
When most teams have limited their spending somewhat since the onset of the pandemic, the Dodgers have done the opposite. Let’s not forget the Mookie Betts contract. In fact, so far they are the only team to cross the luxury tax barrier, the Red Sox are the closest with 208 million.
The dodgers before these last contacts were still below the pre-luxury salary limit of 210 million dollars. Now, according to Roster Resource and Cot’s, the team is between $ 254 million and $ 256 million for the 2021 season. Exceeding a limit of over $ 40 million is important.
Why? MLB’s luxury tax has three levels, each costing a little more.
- First level: 20% of the amount over the limit of up to 20 million
- Second level: 32% in value between 20 and 40 million
- The third level: 42.5% worth over 40 million, but must also give up 10 places in the project.
This is only for the first year you are in luxury tax, each year you repeat you have to pay a higher amount.
That means the Dodgers, if they keep their salaries that way, will have to pay 4 million for the level, 6.4 million for the second and 2.9 million for the last level. In total, the total Dodgers salary and luxury tax would be around $ 270.2 million.
The Dodgers could make a change to release a few million to reduce the tax, such as the change of David Price, although it does not draw much attention to the teams at this time, because at any time he can decide not to play this year as in 2020 .
We’ll see if it works for the 2020 champion team.