Stan Kasten Rejects Dodgers Being Called 'Evil Empire' over Yankees amid Spending

Despite a huge offseason spending spree that saw the reigning World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers get significantly better on paper, team president Stan Kasten rejects them as being labeled MLB's new "evil empire."

In a text message to The Athletic's Jayson Stark, Kasten dismissed the moniker because the Dodgers are "neither evil, nor an empire."

Kasten followed up by telling Stark in a phone conversation that the odds for the 2025 season suggest a team other than the Dodgers will win the World Series.

"Did you know,” Kasten said, "that the oddsmakers claim there’s a 75 percent chance that someone other than us wins the World Series this year? So it’s hard to be that evil or much of an empire if that continues."

While there is definitely a semantic case Kasten is making, the argument that the Dodgers are the new Yankees doesn't really pass the smell test because at the height of the "evil empire" Yankees, they were spending significantly more money than anyone else.

From 2003 to '10, the Yankees spent on average $58.3 million more in payroll than the No. 2 team in MLB. They had three seasons during that span (2005, 2006, 2008) in which they spent more than $75 million than anyone else.

By comparison, the Dodgers were third in total payroll spending last season at $265.9 million. The New York Mets ($317.5 million) and Yankees ($314.7 million) were ahead of them.

The Dodgers do have the highest projected payroll going into 2025 at $321 million, but the Mets aren't far behind at $312.9 million.

Amid all of the questions that the Dodgers might be bad for baseball because they added Blake Snell, Roki Sasaki, Tanner Scott, Kirby Yates, Blake Treinen and kept Teoscar Hernández and Clayton Kershaw, nothing is preventing other teams from offering any of these players the same money L.A. did.

Sasaki was a unique case because he could only sign for international bonus pool money due to MLB rules, so everyone was operating largely in the same financial range, but all the other players were free agents.

There's no salary cap in MLB preventing owners from paying players whatever they want. So many of them just choose not to for whatever reason.

On top of that, the Dodgers have made the playoffs every year since 2013. They had the best record in MLB three times during that span, but didn't win the World Series in two of those years (2017, 2022).

For the record, the "evil empire" Yankees only won the World Series once, in 2009. The history of MLB's postseason indicates having the best record and the best team on paper doesn't guarantee anything.

Few teams know that better than the Dodgers, who won a franchise-record 111 games in the 2022 regular season only to lose in the NLDS to the 89-win San Diego Padres.