Over the last couple of seasons, the Los Angeles Dodgers have dominated the free-agent market which led them to a World Series title in 2024. Even though they are coming off a championship season, they have continued to spend an astronomical amount of money and add more — stars Blake Snell, Roki Sasaki, Tanner Scott, Hyeseong Kim and Teoscar Hernandez — to their roster.

The Dodgers are able to obtain a ridiculous amount of talent thanks to the construction of deferred contracts, like Shohei Ohtani’s, but the organization does not care to pay players a little more than what they are worth either. For example, while Teoscar Hernandez is a great power-hitting outfielder, it is hard to imagine any other team in baseball giving him a three-year deal worth $66 million. To some, it looks like the Dodgers have a huge advantage. The reality is that other big market teams are just letting this happen. Jack Flaherty’s signing with the Detroit Tigers is proof.

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Yesterday, Jack Flaherty signed a two-year contract worth $35 million to return to the Detroit Tigers. With Max Scherzer signing with the Toronto Blue Jays last week, Flaherty’s name moved high up on the ‘most wanted’ free agent list. Given his popularity, the details of his contract were pretty shocking.

There are teams like the Atlanta Braves, Houston Astros, New York Mets, and Texas Rangers that have cap space available and need starting pitching who very well could have outbid the Tigers for Flaherty.

Of course Flaherty spent the first half of the 2024 season with the Tigers and posted very good numbers so he could just be comfortable in Detroit. At the end of the day, money talks. It just appears that other big market teams were not willing to spend a lot of money. The Dodgers will continue to dominate the free agent market if other teams repeatedly refuse to aggressively pursue players of Flaherty’s caliber, even if that means overpaying.