From $372M Payroll to ‘Sell the Team’ Chants: MLB Imbalance on Display

As an economic divide in MLB continues to grow, the impact of teams’ both spending money and not spending money in preparation for the 2025 season was on full display this past weekend.

The defending champion Dodgers, already aggressively retooling through key offseason acquisitions such as free-agent pitcher Blake Snell and Japanese phenom Roki Sasaki, extended their aggressive ways by signing reliever Tanner Scott to a four-year, $72 million contract, according to multiple reports. Scott was one of the best players available in a significantly slowed free-agent market. 

The latest acquisition raises the Dodgers’ projected 2025 payroll, by luxury-tax calculations, to about $372 million, according to Spotrac. That figure is nearly $75 million clear of the closest team, the Phillies at $299 million, and more than six times the comparable figure for the No. 30 club, the Marlins at $60.5 million. 

The Blue Jays, meanwhile, looked to shed their frequent runner-up status, reportedly completing a five-year deal with slugger Anthony Santander worth more than $90 million. Toronto had lost out on many top free agents in recent years, despite intensive efforts, including Shohei Ohtani and Sasaki. The Blue Jays now rank fifth in MLB in 2025 luxury-tax payroll at $245 million. 

At the Other End …

While some MLB teams were continuing to spend, fan unrest was palpably present for some others as they held their offseason fan fests to help generate excitement for the coming season. 

The 2025 edition of the Cubs Convention, annually one of the top winter events of its type in baseball, was highlighted in no small part by the club publicly reconciling with former star Sammy Sosa, who had been estranged from the team for about 20 years due to steroid allegations. Team owner Tom Ricketts, however, received plenty of criticism from fans for not spending along the lines of the Dodgers, Mets, and Yankees—franchises that, like the Cubs, play in big markets and have their own regional sports networks. The Cubs are currently 14th in luxury-tax payroll at $183 million.

“They think somehow we have all these dollars that the Dodgers have or the Mets have or the Yankees have, and we just keep it, which isn’t true at all,” Ricketts said during a convention appearance on WSCR-AM. “We try to break even every year, and that’s about it.

“I don’t think fans should spend all their time thinking about which team has more money or how much they’re spending. It just becomes a big narrative that’s a distraction,” he said.

A similar sentiment could be found further east in Pittsburgh, where the Pirates have long struggled under Bob Nutting, to the point of “Sell the Team!” chants breaking out at that team’s convention. Pittsburgh currently ranks 26th in luxury-tax payroll at $88 million, and the club’s spending has also become a political lightning rod.

“We know that there is frustration, frustration because we are not winning, with the expectations of winning,” said Pirates CEO Travis Williams. “At the end of the day, that’s not due to lack of commitment to want to win.”