Rise of the National League: Big-spender owners shift balance of power away from the AL

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Rise of the National League: Big-spender owners shift balance of power away from the AL

NEW YORK — The question was inevitable.

On the day Juan Soto was introduced as the newest member of the New York Mets, owner Steve Cohen was asked what it meant not just to sign Soto, but to sign him away from the crosstown New York Yankees. But Cohen was not concerned about the Yankees.

“They’re in the American League. I don’t have to face them until the World Series,” he said. “I’ve got the Dodgers, and the Dodgers are equally formidable.”

The Dodgers, yes. And also the Padres, the Phillies and the Braves. A ranking of the major-league landscape right now would likely feature five of the top six teams originating from the National League, with the Yankees as the outlier. The winter-time dominos could still cascade in a way that evens the distribution of talent between the two leagues, but as the Winter Meetings came to a close last week, the best teams in the National League were improving while the postseason representatives from the American League were treading water. The powerhouses reside in the senior circuit.

It felt that way in October, when the Dodgers were pushed harder by the Padres and the Mets than by the Yankees in the World Series. And it certainly feels that way now, after Soto became the second superstar in as many winters to shift from the American League to the National League without leaving his metropolitan area. Last year, it was Shohei Ohtani driving up I-5 from Anaheim to Chavez Ravine to help lead the Dodgers to a championship; now it’s Soto crossing the Whitestone Bridge into Queens with a dynasty in mind and $765 million heading to his bank account.

Yet the momentary imbalance between the two leagues has been driven less by individual transactions and more by overarching philosophical shifts by a handful of ownerships. The emergence of several spirited spenders in the National League has coincided with an era of American League caution. This situation did not occur overnight. It is more than just a reflection of the last week or the last 12 months. It is the logical outgrowth of years-long approaches.

For two decades, the American League East conducted the sport’s economic engine. Led by the Yankees and Boston Red Sox, the division’s collective spending outranked the others in 19 of 21 seasons from 1998 through 2018. The National League East has taken over as the top spender in five of the last six years, with the National League West the one-year exception in 2020. It’s those divisions that now house most of the sport’s biggest spenders and, perhaps not coincidentally, its best teams. The spending authorized by Cohen, whose net worth is estimated by Forbes to be more than $21 billion, has only furthered that divide.

“We want to win,” Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said last week in Dallas. “And we have an owner that is willing to do whatever it takes.”

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John Middleton, the chairman of the Philadelphia Phillies, kicked off this era of National League ascendance a month after the 2018 season, when he vowed aggressive spending as the antidote for his moribund franchise.

“We’re going into this expecting to spend money,”

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, “and maybe even be a little bit stupid about it.”

In the moment, the adjective appeared apt. The team had posted a losing record for six consecutive seasons. The farm system was not producing top-level prospects. A recent $75 million investment in free-agent starter Jake Arrieta was trending toward terrible. Rather than retreat from expenditures in the open market, Middleton determined the Phillies should double down. He wanted a star around which to build his franchise, and he was willing to behave irrationally to acquire one.

There were two candidates available that winter: six-time All-Star and one-time MVP outfielder Bryce Harper and four-time All-Star third baseman Manny Machado. Each player was entering his age-26 prime. To acquire a player with that level of talent, at that age, represented a rare opportunity. Yet the American League powers stayed on the sidelines as winter turned to spring and the players remained unsigned. The Yankees lacked interest in a long-term commitment with either man. The Astros declined to add an expensive newcomer as members of their core approached free agency. The Red Sox opted for contract extensions to keep that October’s championship band together.

The two most aggressive teams vying for Harper and Machado were franchises accustomed to behaving as doormats. The Phillies had run aground after a five-season stint atop the National League East. The Padres had reached the postseason just twice in the 21st century. In San Diego, an ownership group led by Ron Fowler and Peter Seidler was just as antsy as Middleton. That February, San Diego shocked the sport by signing Machado to a 10-year, $300 million deal, the largest free-agent contract in the history of North American sports. The record lasted nine days, long enough for Middleton to finalize a 13-year, $330 million contract with Harper.

Phillies owner John Middleton’s aggressive spending on Bryce Harper helped lead to the 2022 NL Pennant. (Matt Slocum / Associated Press)

The twin signings did not immediately alter the balance of power in the sport. But they signaled the intention of Middleton and Seidler, who purchased a controlling stake from Fowler in 2020, to compete for elite talent on the open market. In the coming years, a procession of All-Stars would opt to sign with Philadelphia and San Diego, leading to postseason berths for both franchises and burgeoning depth in the National League. The financial might of the league only increased in the fall of 2020, when the other 29 owners approved hedge-fund titan Cohen’s purchase of the Mets.

Cohen, a lifelong Mets fan who was out-bid by Guggenheim for the Dodgers in 2012, did not hesitate in reshaping his new franchise. In January 2021, the Mets traded for Cleveland shortstop Francisco Lindor and later inked him to a $341 million extension. (The contract topped the $340 million deal Seidler authorized for Fernando Tatis Jr. that same spring.) Cohen did not stop there: $130 million for Max Scherzer. $86.6 million for Justin Verlander. A $445 million disaster in 2023. And while this year’s **** Mets looked the part of plucky upstarts, Cohen still financed a sport-leading $329 million Opening Day payroll that included $62 million paid to Scherzer and Verlander to pitch elsewhere.

The inefficiency of the spending has not deterred Cohen. Soto offered him another chance to demonstrate his might. Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner bid an astonishing $760 million, $60 million more than Ohtani will receive and none of it deferred. It was still not enough. Implicit in Soto’s reasoning for choosing Queens over the Bronx was the idea that Cohen wouldn’t stop spending after this record deal.

“We continue to have resources,” Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns said. “Throughout their time here, Steve and Alex (Cohen) have supported the baseball initiatives to the fullest extent, and I’m very confident they’ll continue to do so.”

The adoption of the universal designated hitter ahead of the 2022 season has aided the National League, as well. Certainly, it would have been less comfortable for the Mets to offer Soto 15 years without that fallback plan; the Dodgers would not have been able to sign Ohtani at all.

All of this occurred at a time when some of the best clubs in the American League were either stagnating or, for reasons that remain puzzling, tearing down.

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Nearly 15 months after Middleton discussed “stupid” money, the adjective could be slapped upon a franchise-altering trade by the Red Sox. The decision to ship out Mookie Betts, a four-time All-Star who had won the American League MVP during the 2018 championship season, reset Boston’s luxury tax figure heading into 2020 and indicated a strategic retreat. While the Red Sox have reached the postseason only once since the decision, the Dodgers have benefited from the largesse — and established themselves as a full-blown hegemon on the West Coast.

In Betts’ first season in Los Angeles, the Dodgers won the World Series and extended a run of success that began when Mark Walter’s Guggenheim group purchased the team from Frank McCourt in 2012. The Dodgers have not missed the postseason since 2012. The perpetual cycle of winning lured Ohtani to join them last winter on a historic, if heavily deferred, $700 million contract. Ohtani helped the Dodgers capture another World Series in October, and the club figures to enter 2025 as the betting favorite to repeat.

The sustained ascendance of the Dodgers coincided with the emergence of a homegrown collection of stars in Atlanta. Alex Anthopoulos, who took over the Braves front office heading into 2018 after a two-year stint with the Dodgers, made a series of savvy trades to augment a core that already included future National League MVP Ronald Acuña Jr. As the Braves returned to prominence in the National League East, Anthopoulos negotiated contract extensions with Acuña, third baseman Austin Riley, first baseman Matt Olson and several others. The Braves won the World Series in 2021 amid a string of six consecutive division championships.

The streak ended in 2024 — at the hand of the Phillies. The dueling behemoths in Atlanta and Los Angeles set a lofty target for challengers, which only incentivized teams like the Padres and the Phillies to keep spending. That same dynamic applied to clubs like the San Francisco Giants, who spent the early portion of this decade desperate to find a star free agent willing to accept their cash. That chase led to a six-year, $151 million extension with third baseman Matt Chapman and a seven-year, $182 million contract with shortstop ****** Adames so far in 2024.

In the National League, teams are racing to the top. In the American League, it’s a race to the middle. Seattle Mariners president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto received criticism last year when he outlined his club’s goal to win 54 percent of its games over a 10-year *******. He was merely offering some simple arithmetic to explain a decision that owners across the sport have made: It is easier to aim for 88 wins and hope to make some noise in the expanded postseason than it is to attempt to forge a dynasty.

Boston’s decision to trade Betts — and to forego a larger return in exchange for greater salary relief — was fueled by another shift in owner John Henry’s perspective. For years, Henry had alternated between spending lavishly in free agency and cautioning against the long-term risks of doing so. But late in the 2019 season, he initiated his most drastic change of course, firing Dave Dombrowski less than a year after winning the World Series because he viewed the club’s spending level — which had helped spur two championships and four first-place finishes over the previous six seasons — as unsustainable.

From 2011 through 2019, the Red Sox spent, on average, 56 percent more on payroll than the average major-league team. From 2020 to 2024, the Sox outspent the league average by just 25 percent; last season, Boston spent just eight percent more than the average team.

The superstar trade notwithstanding, Boston is not alone here. Similar stats could be deployed to describe the financial and often competitive retrenchment in Anaheim and Baltimore, Cleveland and Detroit. Houston filled some of that void: Amid the most successful run in franchise history, owner Jim Crane financed a top-10 payroll in six of the past seven seasons, according to Cot’s Contracts. That run may be drawing to a close. After failing to crack the 90-win threshold this past season for the first time in a full season since 2016, the Astros appear poised to allow third baseman Alex Bregman to depart in free agency, just as the club did earlier this decade with outfielder George Springer and shortstop Carlos Correa.

Crane has made clear his distaste for long-term deals with players willing to test the open market. Two days after the Winter Meetings concluded, the Astros pre-empted another free-agent standstill with a homegrown star. The team traded away three-time All-Star outfielder Kyle Tucker. His new destination? The Chicago Cubs, who are hoping to establish a foothold in the National League Central.

The Yankees had haggled with Houston about Tucker. Yankees general manager Brian Cashman managed to find a silver lining in not reaching a deal.

“At the end of the day,” Cashman said, “I’m glad that Mr. Tucker is not in the American League.”

(Top illustration of Juan Soto and Steve Cohen: Dan Goldfarb, The Athletic; Photos: Getty; Mary DeCicco / MLB Photos)

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