Money Well Spent: Dodgers Top Yankees in World Series

After more than 12 years of pursuit, big ambitions, and perhaps even bigger resources, the Dodgers have finally and fully reached Major League Baseball’s mountaintop in the era of current ownership group Guggenheim Baseball Management.

The Dodgers closed out a five-game World Series win over the Yankees on Wednesday night, coming back from a 5-0 deficit in the game to win their first full-season title since 1988, long before the Mark Walter–led Guggenheim group took over the Dodgers in 2012. The club also won the title in 2020, in the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic. But between the highly abbreviated, 60-game length of that season, the extensive steps required to even play that year, and the lack of a victory parade in Los Angeles due to mass-gathering restrictions, that championship has carried something of an unofficial asterisk. 

No such qualification applies in 2024. After storming out to an MLB-leading 98 wins and their 11th National League West division title in the last 12 seasons, the Dodgers beat the Padres, Mets, and Yankees in the playoffs—the league’s No. 15, No. 1, and No. 2 spenders on player payroll, respectively, this season.

Of course, the Dodgers are an economic force themselves, and like the Rangers last year, used their wallet liberally to advance their push for a World Series title. Backed in part by a 25-year, $8.35 billion local media-rights deal with Spectrum, a revitalized Dodger Stadium, and a perennial status as MLB’s attendance leader, the Dodgers and Guggenheim last offseason secured the game’s most coveted free agent ever: Shohei Ohtani.

The Japanese superstar signed a 10-year, $700 million pact with the Dodgers, shattering all prior records in U.S. team sports, and then doubled down on the uniqueness of the contract by deferring $680 million of that money until after the decade-long term. Ohtani then outdid even the lofty expectations of that deal, becoming MLB’s first player with 50 home runs and 50 steals in a season, and entering the World Series as the biggest star in an event full of them. 

It was another, earlier free-agent deal, however, that made the most difference in the World Series: the six-year, $162 million pact for first baseman Freddie Freeman struck in March 2022. Freeman, who has had three solid seasons for the Dodgers, hit a home run in the first four World Series games, including the walk-off grand slam in Game 1, and was the obvious choice for Most Valuable Player. Freeman’s 12 runs batted in tied a World Series record.

The fairly quick dispatching of the Yankees also cut short what had been the most-anticipated Fall Classic in many years.