Dodgers beat writer Fabian Ardaya says the roster feels incomplete but wonders what else L.A. can do considering their self-imposed financial restrictions.
The Dodgers have had a very slow offseason, making a couple key moves but mostly standing pat. There’s still six weeks before spring training starts, but it’s kind of up in the air whether they’re going to make any more big moves.
Dodgers beat writer Fabian Ardaya of The Athletic was on SportsNetLA on Tuesday evening, and he talked about the strangeness of the current roster composition.
“It feels incomplete, which is strange when you look at where they are around the luxury tax threshold, but they still are just barely underneath that first threshold. They want to stay underneath, they don’t have really any room to work with. And they have to, sort of, make some moves. They still have a hole at centerfield. They still have some possible, rotation could use some help. Bullpen could use some help. You’re looking at Gavin Lux being your Opening Day shortstop — they have a lot of stuff still to do. And it looks like they’re pretty much done doing a lot of the major work so far.”
The fact is, the Dodgers might already be over the luxury tax. All the numbers we’ve seen are just estimates; one or two arbitration deals going a little higher than expected or Noah Syndergaard hitting his bonuses would put them over the threshold even if they don’t add anyone else. Simply put, if they’re unable to trade Trevor Bauer for some salary relief, they might as well just spend some more money, because they’re probably going over the limit.
Of course, there aren’t really any big free agents left to spend money on, unless Carlos Correa becomes a free agent for the third time in the last three months. Otherwise, they’re mostly looking at the trade market. And they don’t really even have any salaries they could trade, except maybe Daniel Hudson or Austin Barnes, neither of which seems likely.
L.A. is kind of between a rock and a hard place, and the solution might be to just give up on getting under the luxury tax this year.
