If it needed any further punctuation, the Dodgers established that they — not the Yankees — are the financial heavyweights of baseball yesterday by reaching agreement with Zack Greinke on a six-year, $147 million contract.
Unless the Yankees come out of their economic cocoon, they will not have the largest payroll in the game for the first time since 1998. With Greinke’s signing, the Dodgers are up to about a $220 million outlay — and they do not appear finished yet.
The Dodgers have a 3 p.m. deadline today to finalize a deal with Hyn-Jim Ryu after winning a posting bid for the star Korean lefty 30 days ago. And there have been indications they also may go after a free-agent starter such as Anibal Sanchez.
And keep this in mind: Once Greinke passes his physical the Dodgers will have seven starting pitchers signed for at least $5 million next year with Josh Beckett, Clayton Kershaw, Chad Billingsley, Chris Capuano, Ted Lilly and Aaron Harang. The team was shopping Capuano at the recent Winter Meetings in Nashville.
At this time last year, the Dodgers were in financial peril, still owned by Frank McCourt. But that all changed in May when the Guggenheims partnered with Magic Johnson, among others, and purchased the franchise. Since then it has been “Gentlemen, start your wallets,” in L.A.
Greinke becomes the highest-paid righty in history, and his average value of $24.5 million tops the $24.4 million the Yankees gave CC Sabathia as the most money ever given a pitcher on a multi-year contract. Greinke will become the fourth Dodger (joining Adrian Gonzalez, Carl Crawford and Matt Kemp) to average $20 million or more a season on his contract, joining the Phillies (Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, Cole Hamels and Ryan Howard) as the only teams to have done that. And you can expect Kershaw will join the ranks at some point, as well.
The Dodgers outbid the Rangers for Greinke. So now Texas becomes an even more intriguing club. The Rangers clearly want to add a high-end starter, so R.A. Dickey is in play for them in a trade, as is Tampa Bay’s James Shields, among others. They also now may use the money not spent on Greinke to retain Josh Hamilton, though they have seemed fixated on trading for Arizona’s Justin Upton to replace Hamilton.
If that trade occurs, Seattle is expected to have the largest bid for Hamilton. If Hamilton decides he does not want to play there and will take a shorter-term deal, like three years, it is possible clubs such as the Red Sox and even the Yankees could jump in.
Of course, the way they are spending money and collecting more players than necessary at a position, you never should count out this version of the Dodgers.