San Francisco Giants CEO Larry Baer disputed the calls that the Los Angeles Dodgers are “bad for baseball,” stating that having a team to beat isn’t bad for a sport.
The Dodgers have come under fire after winning their second consecutive World Series championship and bringing in two of the top free agents this offseason, with fans believing they’re ruining the sport.
“Let’s just take all the sports: here we are at Super Bowl week, I think having a dragon to slay in a sport, if you go back in the NFL, once upon a time, it was the Cowboys, the 49ers had their run,” Baer said. “That’s not all bad. The Yankees did that in baseball. You could say that’s the Dodgers now. Having a dragon to slay isn’t necessarily a bad thing for the sport. We want to beat the Dodgers, and we want to be at the top of the division. One day, we want to be the dragon to slay.
“Baseball is unpredictable as well. When we won three championships in 2010, ’12 and ’14, we weren’t predicted to win any of those years. And we didn’t have a top-five payroll any of those years. So hats off to the Dodgers organization, because they’ve done it with obviously high-priced players, but also they’ve done it with farm system and development.”
Baer is one of a several MLB personalities to speak out in favor of the Dodgers recently, as All-Stars Manny Machado and Bryce Harper also had good things to say about the Dodgers’ offseason dealings. Machado said the Dodgers’ spending is “great for the game” while Harper commended how the team as a whole is run.
Are the Dodgers Favorites for the World Series Again in 2026?
The Dodgers, after signing All-Stars Edwin Diaz and Kyle Tucker in the offseason and keeping their main pieces together, cemented themselves at the top of MLB and are heavily favored to win the World Series once again.
An ESPN projection from earlier in the offseason gave the Dodgers a 22.4% chance to win the World Series again this season — the highest percentage of any team by a wide margin.
If L.A. can play up to their potential, they’re sure to secure the franchise’s first three-peat at the end of the season.
Do you think the Dodgers will win the three-peat?
