{"id":15107,"date":"2012-12-09T11:38:44","date_gmt":"2012-12-09T11:38:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=15107"},"modified":"2012-12-16T12:56:09","modified_gmt":"2012-12-16T12:56:09","slug":"dodger-dollars-demolishing-the-west","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=15107","title":{"rendered":"Dodger dollars demolishing the West"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not been officially confirmed just yet, but reports state that the Los Angeles Dodgers have agreed terms<\/a> with free agent Zack Greinke.<\/p>\n

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an agreement that always seemed too inevitable not to happen.<\/p>\n

The Dodgers have the deepest pockets of any team this offseason and a desire to make immediate improvements to their roster. Greinke is far and away the best starting pitcher on the free agent market and was rightly seeking a substantial contract to reflect that status.<\/p>\n

The contract reportedly will be worth $147m over six years. That amounts to a total contract value of \u00c2\u00a391.671m, or just under \u00c2\u00a3294k per week.<\/p>\n

The Dodgers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 dealings of late contrast starkly with their approach over the 2011\/12 offseason, when General Manager Ned Colletti could only go shopping in the third-tier of starting pitchers, signing Chris Capuano and Aaron Harang to round out their rotation.\u00c2\u00a0 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a measure not only of how big an impact the new ownership is having already, but also the desperate mess that the Dodgers had been left in by the calamitous ownership of Frank McCourt.<\/p>\n

The Dodgers should always be one of the biggest spenders in MLB. They are in one of the biggest markets in America and are known worldwide as a famous sporting icon. Combine that with the financial\u00c2\u00a0power of their new owners and the Dodgers are well set to regain their status among the elite teams in baseball.<\/p>\n

Their shopping spree is unlikely to end with Greinke. The Dodgers have until 10 p.m. Sunday evening U.K. time to agree terms with Korean pitcher Ryu Hyun-jin after putting up a $25.7m posting fee to win the rights to negotiate exclusively with him. Comments over the last couple of days have suggested the two parties are not close to a deal, but Ryu\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s representatives will be setting their sights high considering the Dodgers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 wealth. Once the deadline looms into view and the Dodgers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 limit becomes clear, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s likely that Ryu will accept and another piece will be added to the roster.<\/p>\n

All of which has significant ramifications for the landscape in the West.<\/p>\n

In the Dodgers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 own division, the NL West, their fierce rivals the San Francisco Giants know they have a real fight on their hands to hold on to their status as the best team in the West, let alone their World Series title.\u00c2\u00a0 The Giants aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t going to be brushed to one side; they retain a strong roster and could make some further improvements before Spring Training comes around.<\/p>\n

However, fans in San Francisco should be especially pleased that their team took full advantage of making it to the World Series twice in three years. A team\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s position as a leading contender should never be taken for granted year-on-year, either due to their own performance being derailed by injuries to key personnel or another competitor suddenly taking a big step forward.\u00c2\u00a0 The Giants could field a very good team for the next five years and not got another sniff of the Fall Classic, but they will have their memories of 2010 and 2012 forever.<\/p>\n

The same cannot be said for the Texas Rangers in the AL West. Back-to-back World Series appearances\u00c2\u00a0in 2010 and 2011 yielded little more than the devastation of being one strike away from glory and yet not taking the prize. Those disappointments were compounded in the 2012 season by a late season slide that saw them lose the AL West division title to the Oakland A\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s and then suffer the ignominy of losing the one-game Wild Card contest against the Baltimore Orioles.<\/p>\n

A big part of Texas\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 plan to get back to the Fall Classic in 2013 was the addition of a top-of-the-rotation starter, namely Zack Greinke. Having lost out to the Dodgers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 dollars, the Rangers now have to regroup and work out where to go next.<\/p>\n

Heading into the offseason, the assumption was that if they missed out on Greinke then Josh Hamilton\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s return to the Rangers would become much more likely. That assumption may be proved correct, while Texas have been strongly linked in trade talks that would see them acquire the Arizona Diamondbacks\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 outfielder Justin Upton and you would expect Texas to either trade for or sign another starting pitcher too now that Greinke is going elsewhere.<\/p>\n

Whatever their plans are, you can expect Texas to be busy Christmas shoppers.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile their AL West rivals the Los Angeles Angels are having to face the reality of their more illustrious neighbours awakening from their self-imposed slumber.<\/p>\n

The Angels were rightfully ridiculed for their rebranding work in 2005 which saw the team change from being the Anaheim Angels to the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim (of the state of California, of the United States of America, of the World etc). It was a very unsubtle declaration that the organization saw a commercial benefit in bringing \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcLos Angeles\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 into the brand.<\/p>\n

While the madness of McCourt was leaving the Dodgers in the doldrums, the Angels made a push to become a bigger player within the wider Los Angeles market.\u00c2\u00a0 A huge regional TV deal was followed a year ago by the headline-grabbing signing of Albert Pujols on a lucrative ten-year contract. Add in the sparkling potential of Mike Trout and it was all set up for the Angels to, if not usurp the Dodgers, at least to be seen on near equal terms.<\/p>\n

The sale of the Dodgers out of bankruptcy to the Guggenheim Baseball Partners group has put an almighty dent into that polished plan.<\/p>\n

The Angels acquired Greinke a few days before the trade deadline this summer in the hope of pushing the team into the playoffs and potentially also giving themselves the upper hand in signing the player as a free agent this offseason.\u00c2\u00a0 Neither of those hopes were realised and in the latter case it seems that the Dodgers basically blew them out of the running completely.<\/p>\n

Instead, the Angels\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 additions to their rotation so far have amounted to a trade for the downward trending Tommy Hunter and the signing this week of the solid, if underwhelming, Joe Blanton on a two-year\/ $15m contract. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s still plenty of time for the Angels to improve their roster, but there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no doubt which team in L.A. is having by far the best of the offseason at this point.<\/p>\n

We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve seen time and time again that winning the offseason doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t guarantee any success when the games begin. However, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s little doubt that the Dodgers are quickly on the rise.<\/p>\n

The other teams in MLB have been able to take advantage of the Dodgers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 troubles over the past couple of seasons. Now, the Dodgers are coming back with a vengeance, changing the landscape not just in the West, but throughout MLB.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The other teams in MLB have been able to take advantage of the Dodgers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 troubles over the past couple of seasons. Now, the Dodgers are coming back with a vengeance, changing the landscape not just in the West, but throughout MLB<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[132,553],"class_list":["post-15107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlb-2","tag-los-angeles-dodgers","tag-mlb-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15107"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15107\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15120,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15107\/revisions\/15120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}