There are serious problems with this world. There are evils that we cannot fully comprehend because while we can fully articulate them, it is impossible to foresee stopping them. And then there’s dumb sports stuff that doesn’t actually matter.

Sports are where those of us who do not believe in the literal existence of karma try to enact a secularized version of it in order to make sense of the world. I am as guilty of this as anybody: on this NFL Divisional Round weekend, I am emotionally invested in the downfall of the Los Angeles Rams, as though the outcome of a football game is going to materially change the absurd wealth of a man who owns more than double the land of area of Delaware in a nation with three-quarters of a million homeless people. These silly little bits of catharsis are the things we tell ourselves constitute karmic justice because, deep down, we understand that we will never, in a substantial way, see true justice.

I don’t have any meaningful problem with the Los Angeles Dodgers as people, by and large. I have genuine affection for Tommy Edman for his time as a St. Louis Cardinal, I enjoy Shohei Ohtani and Mookie Betts purely as a baseball fan on “these guys do cool things and I think that’s neat” grounds, and it would be pretty weird if Freddie Freeman or Will Smith offended me in some way. I do find Blake Treinen personally annoying, but even his existence as LA’s most glaring roster liability provided its own sense of entertainment during their last postseason run.

But also, rooting against a sport’s most big and powerful team is a time-honored tradition. Even cases with retroactive rationalizations are usually borne of pure emotion–yes, I made a lot of jokes about various gate-suffixed scandals involving the New England Patriots, but I didn’t need the discovery of those to loathe them–they just gave it a veneer of respectability. As a child, I didn’t think much about the Los Angeles Dodgers, who tended to be within a standard deviation of average at any given point, but I did hate the New York Yankees, who had a bunch of players about which I didn’t really have an opinion. Guys leave teams I don’t like and suddenly I like them (Kirk Hinrich and Kyle Schwarber are my personal examples, though I think this varies by person) and I choose not to reflect on how telling this is about how stupid sports fandom is.

On Thursday night, the news broke that the Los Angeles Dodgers, the two-time defending World Series champions, had signed Kyle Tucker, the most coveted free agent in the 2025-26 class, to a four-year, $240 million contract with only minor deferrals (an important caveat in discussing any Los Angeles Dodgers contract) and with a player opt-out after the second season. The signing makes sense in the broadest of terms–Kyle Tucker is a good baseball player, corner outfield is just about the closest thing to positional weakness that the Dodgers had, all that. But it’s not like the Dodgers needed Kyle Tucker. They were World Series favorites before they signed him and they are World Series favorites after.

The reactions to the Tucker signing ranged from resigned to the supercharged Dodgers dynasty to existential musings about how the health of baseball. Some called for a salary cap. Some called for investigations into the financial records of every owner that had the audacity to not spend $60 million a year on a player who has proven consistently good but never elite (he has only finished in the top 14 in league MVP voting once).

One thing that I do think should be noted, though, is that the Los Angeles Dodgers probably aren’t going to win the World Series in 2026. They are the rightful favorites, yes, but the nature of baseball, a sport that needs 162 games to decide who the best teams are and then uses three to seven to determine its champions, is organized chaos. The Dodgers themselves were subject to the Wild Card round in 2025 because the Milwaukee Brewers and Philadelphia Phillies finished the season with better records in the National League. In the ninth inning of the seventh game of the World Series, the Dodgers had, by Baseball Reference’s model of Win Probability, an 8% chance of winning the World Series. The implied odds of a Dodgers title from the major sportsbooks are roughly one in three, which is extremely strong odds before the season even starts. But it’s not a given. This isn’t Kevin Durant signing with the 73-win Golden State Warriors in a league where the best team usually wins; in baseball, the best team has the best chance of anybody but is subject to random variance to a much greater degree.

Regarding the salary cap, multiple things can be true, and in this case are true. It is true that most, if not all, MLB teams could afford to spend more money on players and choose to not. It is also true that while most teams could bolster their payroll, very few could reach the payroll of the Dodgers. It is a common and valid criticism of the Major League Baseball ownership class that they broadly vehemently oppose the welfare state but support any redistribution of wealth that benefits them, but there is some value in some parity in sports. Baseball does not need, and ethically speaking ought not to have, a hard salary cap like the NFL whose entire purpose is to suppress player salaries (given how much money every NFL team makes on shared broadcast revenue alone, the league at the least should bump that hard salary cap considerably), but some sort of financial regulation (which, to be clear, does exist currently in the form of the luxury tax) is good for the health of the sport because the strength of the league as a whole creates intrigue. Having thirty teams with some base line level of viability is important–while there is imbalance, the absolutely putrid Colorado Rockies still managed to beat the Dodgers twice last year, and this sense of possibility is pivotal for the health of the league.

The Dodgers do not represent an existential crisis for the sport. But that doesn’t mean that you, an individual who is probably not a fan of the Los Angeles Dodgers, have to like it. The most obnoxious, useless retort to fan frustration at the Dodgers is always the guy who says “Don’t be mad at the Dodgers, be mad at your team’s owner”. You can do both. You should probably do both. The Dodgers do not need to be regarded as some sort of labor heroes because they want to spend a bunch of money and win a bunch of championships. You don’t have to like them. I respect them, personally, but you don’t even have to do that. This is all stupid, irrelevant nonsense in the grand scheme of the world. You shouldn’t root against the Dodgers because their losing will benefit the world in any sort of meaningful way, but if their losing will give you a moment of happiness, don’t let anybody take that joy away from you.