The Los Angeles Dodgers continue to accumulate long-term financial commitments, and the figure now exceeds a historic threshold in Major League Baseball. According to ESPN, the Los Angeles Dodgers organization owes more than one billion dollars in deferred payments extending through 2047, a direct consequence of their aggressive signing policy and the structure of several of their star contracts. The report states, “The Dodgers now have commitments of $1,064,500,000 through 2047 owed to Edwin Diaz, Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, Blake Snell, Freddie Freeman, Will Smith, Tommy Edman, Tanner Scott, and Teoscar Hernandez.” The figure includes deferred salaries and bonuses agreed upon in various contracts signed in recent years. One of the most recent cases is that of reliever Edwin Diaz, who signed a three-year, $69 million contract during the offseason. The agreement includes deferred payments between 2036 and 2047. According to the same report, Diaz will receive a base salary of $14 million in 2026, in addition to a $9 million signing bonus. He will then earn base salaries of $23 million in the 2027 and 2028 seasons, although the club will defer $4.5 million in each of the three years of the contract.

A practice that redefines financial power in MLB

The commitment made to Diaz is relatively smaller compared to other contracts currently in place within the organization. Shohei Ohtani tops the list, with $680 million deferred between 2034 and 2043, while Mookie Betts has $115 million in deferred salary between 2033 and 2044. These figures reflect the magnitude of a strategy that has allowed the Dodgers to remain competitive without the immediate impact being fully reflected in their annual payroll. Given the questions surrounding how the team will handle these payments in the future, journalist Joon Lee pointed out in October that the Dodgers had already recouped the entire $700 million committed to Ohtani during his first season with the club, thanks to commercial revenue.sponsorships and the global impact of the Japanese player.

The organization also expects its revenue to continue growing in the coming years. The size of the Los Angeles market, coupled with the team's enormous popularity in Japan due to having stars like Ohtani, Roki Sasaki, and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, reinforces the perception that money will hardly be a problem for the franchise in the long term.