Josh Mason-Barkin

Uh oh. The Dodgers just added Tarik Skubal, the reigning two-time Cy Young winner. The Dodgers already had Shohei Ohtani, Freddie Freeman and Mookie Betts, Freddie Feeman etc. Four months from now, the CBA expires. I said this trade would be the last piece of evidence the owners need to shut the sport down, and it just happened. On pure baseball logic the move was inevitable. Passan reported the Tigers were trading Skubal and named the Dodgers the favorite. Los Angeles has the best record in baseball and arguably the best farm system in baseball at the same time, which is not supposed to be possible. They absorbed the roughly $10 million Skubal is owed without blinking. Bob Nightengale reported the Dodgers were also Skubal’s preferred free agency destination this winter, so this was never a rental. It is a pre-acquisition. Now the calendar. The collective bargaining agreement expires December 1. The owners have proposed the first salary cap since 1994. Multiple owners have told Passan the only real path to a cap runs through missing the 2027 season. One official said they are ready to burn the house down. The mechanism connecting the trade to the lockout is simple. The Dodgers are the owners’ entire case. Buster Olney wrote it plainly. The spending of the top teams has reinforced to the other 28 that change is necessary, and they believe that change is a cap. Every argument the owners make across the table this winter is now a picture of this roster. Ohtani’s $700 million. Deferred money. A rotation of aces. And the reigning two-time Cy Young winner added at the deadline for prospects, because they have so much talent they can buy the best pitcher alive with their surplus. The Dodgers adding Skubal does not just improve the Dodgers. It hands the owners their closing exhibit, timed four months before the negotiation. The competitive balance argument is empirically wrong. Baseball has produced 16 different champions since 2000, more than any capped league. The Dodgers are not breaking a rule. They are excelling within all of them, drafting, developing and spending at once. The punishment for running the best organization in the sport is that the other 29 owners get to point at you and demand a system that makes you impossible. But being wrong does not make the argument weak. It makes it convenient. Small market owners do not want to outspend the Dodgers. They want cost certainty, because cost certainty raises franchise values, and this roster is the best sales brochure a cap has ever had. Every superteam headline between now and December 1 is worth more to the owners’ negotiating position than it is to the Dodgers’ World Series odds. Follow the incentives to the uncomfortable place. The 29 other owners benefit from the Dodgers getting Skubal. Not on the field. At the table.