Hoornstra: Dodgers Won World Series Because Of Freddie Freeman

JP, how are you? And we also learned that he had a little bit of a cartilage issue with his ribs.

He still went through and decided to light it up. JP Hornstra is here with us, covers all things baseball for Newsweek. When you think about what the Dodgers have done this season and bringing in Yamamoto and all the stars and the salaries that they have, can they really add more people in the offseason? Are they really going to go for somebody like Soto? Yeah, you know, the cop out answer, but the accurate one is it really depends on the kind of contract that Soto or Corbin Burns or Jack Flaherty or any of the better free agents are willing to take.

The Dodgers can only entertain this because they're deferring the majority of Shohei Ohtani's contract until after he's done playing, basically, 10 years from now. And some players are down for that. Some players are willing to accept that. Some players are willing to say, you know what, I'll take that 10-year, $700 million contract even if it only means getting closer to like $450 billion.

In reality, I would fall into that kit. Me personally, I would take those terms if you offer them to me. But I can't sit here and promise you that Juan Soto is feeling the same way. And, you know, there's going to be very competitive bidding for his services. Now, the length of such a deal absolutely factors into that equation. If you're talking about, say, Corbin Burns, he's probably not in line for a 10-year deal and it might actually benefit the Dodgers in this free agent market if they're able to land a pitcher who's willing to take a shorter-term deal, say 10 years or less, because that's going to be easier to pallet because they're going to start owing Shohei Ohtani $60 million a year in 10 years. And that's going to be tough for any team. I would say even the Dodgers to fit a salary around. As the Dodgers move forward, JP, we know that Guggenheim partners and everyone involved, they are certainly willing to spend and they bore the first fruit of their labor in 2020 in the pandemic in a shortened 60-game season. They've now done it again this year, their first year with Ohtani. With the current CBA, are they going to be able to still move forward like this or are they eventually going to get kicked in the ass? Yeah, good question.

Time will tell. I mean, the Dodgers have a couple of things working into their favor. One is that the regional sports network bubble that burst and that really limited a lot of teams in free agency these last two years. The Dodgers seem to be a little bit insulated from that in that they have a very comfortable deal with their regional sports network and no real signs of that ship breaking any leaks. So they're in a very fortunate position, whereas other teams were straight up blindsided when their regional sports networks just didn't even make payments. The teams were owed and I think you saw that play out somewhat in the spending on free agents coming down somewhat relative to expectations this past offseason.

I think you'll see some of that again. Major League Baseball just took over the broadcast of, I believe, three teams confirmed and maybe some more to come. The Dodgers are in that boat, so that's a huge advantage for them.

But it's all relative. Will they give out another $700 million contract? Probably not.

You never put it past them, but probably not. They're going to have to be selective. They're going to have to look at shorter term deals. But again, some players are willing to take shorter term deals. Some players are willing to take deferred money. As long as the Dodgers can beat the free agents that they want on those terms, I think they'll be signing plenty of free agents. J.P. Hornstrass here with us, covers all things baseball for Newsweek. We all know about Soto. We've heard the amount of money that he could potentially net, whether it be from the Yankees, the Mets, whoever, maybe $500, $600 plus million dollars. Who are some other big time free agents, him, Pete Alonso, that people aren't paying attention to that could have an impact on a team?

Yeah. You know, pitchers probably don't get the attention that they deserve just generally, especially the starters, because, let's face it, the role of the starting pitcher has been de-emphasized. They don't go as long as they used to. Complete games, shutouts, those statistics are almost relics of history books now. But as the Dodgers demonstrated during this run in the postseason, the reason that they were able to move on is because their starting pitching stepped up in a way that few people expected them to.

You know, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, you mentioned him. He spent a lot of this season on the injury list, didn't really come back until September, and there were a lot of questions about what he would be able to do, not just given the time off due to injury, but the fact that he needed five days of rest minimum between each start, and yet every time they gave him the ball, more or less, he delivered. You could say the same thing with Walker Bueller. Jack Flaherty didn't pitch his best game there in game five, but fortunately the Dodgers had the bullpen pieces to pick him up. So I think the underrated players in this market are going to be the starting pitchers who, contending teams like the Dodgers, are not necessarily counting on to pitch complete game shutouts every fifth day during the regular season, but could be big pieces of the next World Series run next October.

Guys like Corbin Burns, guys like Jack Flaherty, guys like Walker Bueller. It's going to be interesting to see how their markets evolve, and I think that's probably the area of the free agent market that's getting overlooked the most. J.P., the Yankees' first World Series appearance since 2009, that's a long time for Yankee fans, 15 years, and they end up with an L. What can the Yankees do to get over the hump, besides what a lot of Yankee fans want, probably fire Aaron Boon and everybody? Yeah, well, it's hard to think of what that team would have accomplished this season without Juan Soto. I don't know that I would necessarily give all the money that the Yankees have to want Soto to want Soto, because the biggest difference between the Dodgers and the Yankees, I mean, yes, you can point out the base running, you can point out the fundamental mistakes they made in the field and take nothing away from that, but that's a little bit harder to identify in the... Okay, right, who's the most fundamentally sound player on the market?

I don't know. The Yankees would probably get him, but more than that, they should get some lineup depth. The Dodgers had the lineup depth that the Yankees didn't. That, as much as anything, is how they were able to overcome a relatively weak starting rotation and make some noise in October, where a few people expected their starting pitching had the run support that they needed to get the job done. I don't know that the Yankees can go into next October with really only two major components in their lineup and expect to do any better than they did this year. If I were them, I would invest in some lineup depth. Some of those fundamental mistakes, some of those mental errors that we saw them make, that can come down to coaching. Anthony Rizzo, I didn't hear anybody complain about his defense at first base going into the game five of the World Series, but where was he looking knowing that Garrett Cole was right in front of him standing halfway between the mound and first base?

I don't know. Little things like that can come down to coaching, and I wouldn't dismiss that out of hand as something that could be a difference maker for them in the long run. Overall, we know that we see so many teams go up, come down. I mean, just last year, the World Series had the Rangers and the Diamondbacks and that they were nowhere to be found in this year's postseason. Are there any teams that you look at next year and say, oh, they're starting to put some pieces together where they might be more competitive to shock some folks?

Yeah. You know, the one team that really stands out the most in that category to me is the Detroit Tigers. After they upset the Astros in the first round in the wildcard series, it would not have surprised me to see them go on a deep run, much like the Rangers and Diamondbacks did last year. Now, they ran into the, you know, the Cleveland Guardians but saw, and that ended that, but that's a team that has really developed well internally and could be, you know, one or two players away from going on a deeper run and there's not too much deeper they can go.

So, I think I would look at them. You know, the Mets, if they sign Juan Soto, that's a really scary looking team. They did pretty well against the Dodgers. They held their own in the NLCS for a while there. And I would look at them as another team. The company thinks that the team with the Mets budget is up and coming, but you just look at what they have on paper, I would say they're one or two players away at most as well.

So, there's two for you. But it's going to be a long off season and there are going to be a lot of moving pieces. So, we'll see. When you look at the amount of money that gets spent, the Dodgers, I would say that they were able to buy this championship. You know, you think about the amount of years like, hey, we can buy two championships out of four years and, you know, 10 years of our ownership.

Okay, you take it. But are we going to see a balance at all when you see the guys at the top spending so much? We see teams that have payrolls like Cleveland's. Like, does this ever balance out or does the ecosystem or the owners of Major League Baseball, are they fine with this?

Yeah, I think that's a good question. We have to be careful and kind of define our terms here because on the one hand, yes, the Dodgers just won the World Series. A lot of people discounted it when they did that four years ago.

And, you know, take that or leave it. The Dodgers have been here every year. It just so happens that this is the year they pulled through.

But it hasn't been fair. The National League West for a while, I mean, they've won, I think, 11 of the last 12 division titles. So, if you're out west and looking at the competitive landscape here, the Dodgers have been doing this for a while and this is nothing new.

I think what is new is the idea that they could get Shohei Otani to accept literally a $2 million annual salary by virtue of the deferrals in his contract. And if you see juggernaut teams start to emulate that, if the Yankees are able to emulate that, the Mets, etc., then they could be getting a lot more top-heavy as well. I would also go back to what I was saying about the regional sports networks. If you're in a major market, you're probably on solid ground.

And if you're in a smaller market, you know, Valley recently rebranded as FanDuel and they dropped all of their major league teams except for the Atlanta Braves. And that's a tough position to be in now if you're a small market team without that RSM money that you've been counting on, really, for the last few decades. So, I think short-term, that's going to be a real factor in teams really having to hit on their draft picks, on their development strategy, and not having nearly the margin for error that they used to until the economics start to even out in that area. But I would say, too, that large market teams are also going to have to be careful about the money they spend. You know, we saw the Angels go out and spend a whole ton of money on Anthony Rendon. How did that work out, right? Money doesn't necessarily buy you championships, but it really does help paper over some mistakes. Oh, it does.

It sounds like the little guy gets screwed. And I see even in last question for you, I see that it looks like the A's, they're going to move forward and move into Vegas eventually, I guess in three or four years, huh? That's the word on the street. I would point to December. I would circle that month on your calendar. I don't remember the exact day in December, but in December there is a scheduled hearing at which the owner of the A's, John Fisher, is expected to show the financials behind his stadium proposal, showing that he has the money to indeed build it. He hasn't shown that yet. And that is rare in the circumstances that we're talking about with respect to relocation. Usually that money isn't a question right now. Usually it's just a matter of when are you going to break ground. So far, it's a matter of if.

Now I will say this, Rob Manfred gave an interview, I believe it was to, I think it was John Orand of Puck. Apologies, John, if I got that wrong. But it is. Yeah. Yeah. OK. Yeah. He said he expects this to be a done deal and you don't get anybody with more power and baseball than the commissioner.

So that's a pretty high authority. But in two months, we'll know. We'll know for sure whether this is going to happen.

I'm a little less than 100 percent sure, but only a little. OK. Well, good luck to them in their temporary home of the Sacramento. A lot of late night baseball coming for the Sacramento A's, the A's of California. I don't know what the hell they're going to be called, but good luck to them. J.P., do you know what they're going to be called? I have no idea.

In all the official paperwork, they're not even bound to any geographical location. They're the A's of the Western Hemisphere for all NLB characters. Just the athletics. J.P., thank you so much for the time. We appreciate it. Where can people follow you and your work? Yeah, go to Twitter, formerly known as Twitter, currently known as X at J.P. Hornstra, Instagram threads, all the social media and go to Newsweek.com.

Click on sports. You'll see me there. J.P., thank you so much. Enjoy the rest of the evening. Go grab some candy for me, OK? I'll work on it right now. Thank you.