LOS ANGELES -- Before they knew Shohei Ohtani wanted to sign with them and well before they beat out an array of suitors for the rights to Yoshinobu Yamamoto, the Los Angeles Dodgers wondered if two of Japan's most popular athletes would dare to be teammates.
The thought that Japanese stars prefer not to play with one another in the major leagues has been bandied about throughout America's baseball industry for years, oscillating between tenet and myth. But the idea was strong enough to seep into the consciousness of Dodgers decision-makers as they navigated the early parts of what became a historic offseason.
They eventually learned it might be their preference.
"Serendipitously," Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said, "I think the Samurai Japan team, the success they enjoyed, the comradery they enjoyed, helped set the stage for both of them really wanting to be teammates and compete for the World Series together."
The Dodgers, the preeminent franchise of this era and the most befuddling postseason team in recent memory, did what felt impossible this winter. They signed a two-way phenomenon, the most unique talent in baseball history, and a 25-year-old starting pitcher coming off three consecutive MVPs in the world's second-most-advanced baseball league. They spent $1.2 billion in one offseason -- for Ohtani, Yamamoto, Tyler Glasnow and Teoscar Hernandez, among others -- and left people throughout the industry marveling at how it somehow felt fiscally responsible.
It was all, in many ways, a culmination. A decade spent striving toward becoming a destination spot and several offseasons highlighted by financial restraint met the moment when two exceedingly unique free agents presented themselves. Japan's stirring run to a championship in last spring's World Baseball Classic might have pushed Ohtani and Yamamoto to want to play together again in the United States. And the Dodgers' own postseason disappointment the ensuing fall might have motivated them to go above and beyond to make it happen.
The Dodgers have won 10 division titles over the past 11 years, winning 106 games the one year they didn't. If you don't count the COVID-19-shortened 2020 season, which saw them finish with the highest winning percentage since 1955, they've won 100-plus games in four straight years.
And yet October, increasingly more random with an expanded playoff field, continues to defy them. The Dodgers have come away with only one championship in this era, captured amid the weirdness of baseball in a bubble. The past two years have seen them get eliminated in their first postseason series by two division rivals they previously dominated, first the San Diego Padres and then the Arizona Diamondbacks.
It might have helped trigger the biggest spending spree in baseball history.
"Obviously we are all incredibly competitive and want to win," Friedman said. "But then you couple that with the immense pressure we feel to deliver for our incredibly passionate and devoted fan base -- I think the disappointment of the last two years probably contributed in some way to being more aggressive. But as much for our fans as anything."
THE DODGERS' OFFSEASON began with their first organizational meeting on Oct. 18, one week after the D-backs swept them out of the National League Division Series. It was around then that Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman learned of the Dodgers' audacious plan to sign both Ohtani and Yamamoto. Word quickly filtered to the rest of the team.
"I didn't know how we were going to pull it off," Freeman said.
Stan Kasten, the Dodgers president and CEO, was a tad more bullish.
"I thought we had the best chance for at least one," he said, "and I thought we had a realistic chance for both."
The Dodgers had spent the past handful of years with this offseason in mind. Their desire to continually remain in contention without mortgaging the future -- a pursuit their general manager, Brandon Gomes, called "agonizing" -- was tested through their efforts to preserve themselves for what awaited this winter.
"I think it was the perfect storm of who was available as far as talent level and immediate impact," Gomes said.
The Dodgers began the offseason with only Betts and Freeman under contract through the 2025 season, an uncommon level of flexibility for a team consistently carrying its sport's highest payrolls. Some of that was pure luck (Anthony Rendon, who has played in only about 30% of games for the crosstown Los Angeles Angels these past three years, chose not to be a Dodger despite the team's pursuit of him in December 2019). Some of it was by design (despite a glaring hole at shortstop last offseason, the Dodgers chose not to chase any of the four members from a historic class at that position).
But the general unpredictability of free agency, the difficulty of lining up on such massive contracts and the mystery that surrounded the proclivities of Ohtani and Yamamoto was enough to temper even the most optimistic expectations.
Instead, the Dodgers acted according to the winter's cadence. They knew Ohtani would sign first, and then, perhaps shortly thereafter, Yamamoto would follow. The Dodgers focused almost primarily on Ohtani for the better part of a month. At one point, before they had any real inkling on where he was leaning, Friedman asked Ohtani's agent, CAA's Nez Balelo, about his willingness to play alongside Yamamoto and was told how much he enjoyed his time with him in March 2023.
Ohtani's eventual signing created the ultimate trickle-down effect -- because of his gravitas, because of the structure of his contract and because of his abilities as a pitch man. Ohtani communicated with Yamamoto throughout his free agency and sat in on his initial recruitment meeting with the Dodgers. When Friedman asked him to help sway Glasnow, he sent him a video message telling him he'd be honored to hit home runs for him in 2024 and occupy the same rotation in 2025.
"I knew that we were getting an elite two-way star in Shohei," Friedman said. "I didn't know that we'd also be getting such an effective assistant general manager."
Friedman didn't hand out a single nine-figure contract in his first five years atop baseball operations. The only deals that topped even $60 million belonged to Clayton Kershaw, Justin Turner and Kenley Jansen, franchise pillars who signed deals to return. Betts finally broke through with a 12-year, $365 million extension in July 2020, five months after being acquired via trade. Two offseasons later, Freeman came over on a six-year, $162 million deal. Under Friedman, the Dodgers were exceedingly choosy about who garnered the massive long-term contracts.
Then they splurged like no team ever has. On Dec. 9, Ohtani signed a $700 million contract, though $680 million of it is deferred. Yamamoto inked a 12-year, $325 million deal on Dec. 21. A billion dollars. On two players. In one month. The mindset didn't change, Kasten claimed. The circumstances did. Ohtani and Yamamoto represented two rare talents in their primes, but also two players who could once again establish the Dodgers as the predominant MLB team of Japan -- nearly 30 years after Hideo Nomo's trailblazing season in Los Angeles.
"Either one of those would have been extraordinary in any single season," Kasten said. "To have them both there, that was unique. I think we would've pursued either in any year. And so they were both there in one year, we'll pursue both. That's what it was. It just worked out that way. I think we were uniquely a good fit for both guys, for a lot of reasons. And that helped us stretch to make the deal happen."
TO GET OHTANI, the Dodgers had to beat out the Toronto Blue Jays, Chicago Cubs, San Francisco Giants and Angels, who he spent his first six major league seasons with. For Yamamoto, they emerged from a field that reportedly included the Giants, Blue Jays, Philadelphia Phillies, Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees and New York Mets.
Glasnow -- acquired from the Tampa Bay Rays and promptly signed to a five-year, $136.6 million extension -- agreed to join the Dodgers moments after Ohtani's introductory news conference on Dec. 14, which was seen by 70 million people. Yamamoto picked the Dodgers seven days later. Hernández, starter James Paxton and reliever Ryan Brasier followed.
"Staggering," Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said at the team's Fan Fest event on Saturday -- three days before Kershaw provided an exclamation point by choosing the Dodgers over his hometown Texas Rangers.
"You just kind of sit back and just smile and realize that you're a part of something special," Freeman said. "That's all you can do."
Ohtani didn't just choose the Dodgers; he volunteered to defer nearly 98% of his salary to, at least in part, help them add talent around him. Yamamoto saw the Dodgers as a team that would not only satisfy his desire to win, but, as a pitcher in his mid-20s, perhaps maximize his development. Glasnow, whose best years might still be ahead of him, put off looming free agency and agreed to an extension before even joining them via trade. Hernández, the best corner outfielder available on the market, saw them as an ideal place to rebuild value on a one-year contract.
"A lot of what we have been talking about and trying to achieve over the recent past is having this be a destination spot," Gomes said. "I know Andrew talks about it a lot, but it's true."
The Dodgers tried and ultimately failed to dip under the luxury tax threshold last offseason, largely because of the money they still owed Trevor Bauer in the wake of an independent arbitrator's decision.
Now it seems as if they'll never get under it again.
A team's payroll relative to the luxury tax threshold is determined by the average annual value of contracts as opposed to a player's salary on a yearly basis. By that measurement, the Dodgers will have about $150 million tied to five players every year through 2027 and roughly $100 million tied to three players through 2032. Their competitive balance tax payroll in 2024 is projected to finish at roughly $300 million, according to Spotrac, behind only the Mets for the major league lead and currently on pace to exceed the largest threshold -- a circumstance that, for the Dodgers, would push them back 10 slots in the draft and trigger tax rates as high as 110%.
For a franchise that has proved so adept at developing young players who can balance a payroll with relatively inexpensive production, and now stands to make tens of millions of dollars in additional revenue through Ohtani and Yamamoto's reach in East Asia, it's a pittance. When you consider how Ohtani's deal could in theory pay for itself -- the Dodgers have to place $46 million into an escrow account every year beginning in 2026, allowing themselves to profit off the interest gained from it -- the luxury tax hit seems largely irrelevant.
Dodgers officials bristle at the notion that they have taken advantage of some loophole in the system, noting that the collective bargaining agreement places no limit on deferrals and that Ohtani suggested them himself. They add that though he'll make a $2 million salary as a player, his cost toward the competitive balance tax -- $46.08 million, about the average annual value of the deal's present-day value -- is the largest in the sport.
"I just think it's interesting -- everybody says we can't get it done, and then we get it done and then we're the villains because we went out and got some good players," Dodgers starter Walker Buehler said of the team's aggressive offseason. "We've been developing really good players here for a really long time, and signing big free agents here for a really long time. I don't think any of it is really new. It just so happens that it happened a lot in one offseason. I know internally we're all very excited. And to be honest it doesn't really matter a whole lot what everybody else says. We wanna win the last game of the year."
Roberts noticed a different energy at the team's annual preseason gathering of fans on Saturday. This time of year is usually spent dissecting the shortcomings of prior Octobers, but the excitement of this offseason overshadowed it. The focus was on what was ahead, not what was left behind.
"That's exciting to me," Roberts said. "That's kind of how I live life. And I think our players are resonating with that narrative -- that feel, that vibe. I just want to continue to build on that momentum."
The Dodgers, who open their season with two games in South Korea beginning March 20, will start spring training workouts in Glendale, Arizona, on Friday, nearly a week before everybody else. They're no strangers to outsized expectations, but they're preparing for a season in which, as Betts put it, "every game is going to be the other team's World Series."
They'll have to embrace the villain role.
"We get that, after this winter, we're going to have a bigger mark on our back," Friedman said. "I think we've always had it with just the history of this organization, the success, but my guess is that target will be bigger. As far as expectations, I don't think that there was room up -- in our minds, in our fans' minds, and so in that way it feels sort of similar. But I think we're going to have to revel in the 'big, bad Dodgers' moniker when we travel to various cities."