Over the weekend, the Los Angeles Dodgers traded for Detroit Tigers ace Tarik Skubal, and the baseball internet began to mourn the 2027 MLB season. The thought process is that the Dodgers landing Skubal will ensure them a third straight World Series victory this October, and with the owners looking for a salary cap and the players vehemently against one, a lockout is bound to ensue.

The question is how long it will last.

The easy talking point is that the Dodgers keep acquiring the best talent each and every year, which has made it more difficult for other teams to compete. In free agency, they have become the destination for top free agents — partially because of the money.

"I don't really sympathize with people that blame the Dodgers for anything they've done," Skubal told MLB on Fox. "They've developed a really good organization and they draft well. They acquire talent really well. They retain talent. It's a winning organization. I don't sympathize with the people that are complaining, because the Dodgers do all the right things." 

Skubal also pointed out that any team could have traded for him. He didn't have a say in the matter. That's the bigger talking point that people seem to be missing with the Dodgers. They have resources, yes, but they are also using those resources and not hoarding them.

The Milwaukee Brewers could have traded for Skubal if they wanted to. They have the top prospect in the game and zero World Series trophies in their history, dating back to 1969. While trading Jesús Made wasn't going to happen for a rental, Milwaukee has five top-100 prospects. It took two for the Dodgers to land Skubal. 

Instead, they'll probably have to face Skubal in the postseason. A two-time Cy Young winner for two months plus the postseason was going to run any club about $9 million in salary, and some good prospects. The Dodgers anted up. They've also won the past two World Series with this strategy, while nobody else wants to try and compete. 

"Coming from somebody who's been in that locker room, they're doing the opposite of ruining baseball," former reliever Shane Greene said in a recent post. He added that he played on plenty of big-market teams like the Cubs, Yankees, Tigers and Braves, but "the Dodgers do it the best.

"They give you the most information, and they translate that information the best as well. I was a Dodger for 20 seconds and they sat me down and said I'd been tipping my slider for the past three years." 

The owners proposals have all been about cutting the costs of running a baseball team, with a salary cap being the biggest sticking point. With a salary cap, the players wouldn't have nearly enough power in free agency to demand their real worth, instead needing to settle for a deflated figure while owners pocket the savings. 

"They want prime years at a cheaper rate," A's player representative Zack Gelof told Athletics Roundtable in June. 

The player's proposals have been focused more on increasing spending in a number of ways, with the goal of the negotiations being to increase the competitiveness around the game. That includes incentives for teams to spend money and put the best possible team on the field. 

"We want owners of teams to want to win, and we want to incentivize that," Gelof said.

Players and fans are after the same things, but the general sports fan looks at other leagues, sees a salary cap, figures that if the owners want one and it will stop the Dodgers, then it can't be that bad.

Not all teams can spend like the Dodgers. That's a fair claim. But to turn around and change the rules and the economics of the entire league because of that fact is quite literally insane. MLB is seeing soaring profits right now with the Dodgers on top and "ruining the game." 

As Greene pointed out, the Dodgers do everything better than other teams. You can limit their financial might, but they'll just pour that money into other aspects of player development, building up their farm system and acquiring players via trade more than they currently do. 

Why not try and make the other 29 owners put effort into their clubs before instituting a cap across the entire sport and see how that works out? 

A cap isn't the fix that people think it is.

In the NFL, the Kansas City Chiefs have won three of the past seven Super Bowls and had a streak where they appeared in five of six. That was with a salary cap. Before them, the New England Patriots ran off six Super Bowls from 2001-2019 (Chiefs streak started in 2020). MLB hasn't had a run of dominance anywhere near those levels. 

The Dodgers have currently won three of the past six, but this isn't an issue that will last forever. In other sports these dynasty teams are revered. In baseball, the entire game needs to be flipped on its head to save the poor owners money.

Somehow the minute after the Athletics left Oakland, owner John Fisher found money (while also paying for a new ballpark in Las Vegas) to extend both Brent Rooker and Lawrence Butler — something that the fans in Oakland had been begging for over the course of two decades.

If he can find money in that scenario, other owners shouldn't have much of an issue either. He may have also inadvertently proved the larger point—when owners are incentivized (in this case, building legitimacy in a new market after decades of cutting costs), then there are more funds to go around. 

The San Francisco Giants won three World Series in five years, so even with LA's 2020 title, the Giants have been the more consistent champion. Baseball seemed to be just fine then, and now the Giants are bad again. The Dodgers will be bad again too as the roster continues to age.

Back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the New York Yankees were the team that spent more than everybody else, and they won four titles in five years from 1996-2000. They would make the World Series again in 2001 and 2003, but would lose to the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Florida Marlins. 

The Yankees would ultimately win again in 2009, and have been chasing the next ring since. 

That team was assembled similarly to how the Dodgers are put together these days too. A mix of high-priced free agents, prospects they drafted themselves, shrewd trades, reclamation projects, and role players. 

The biggest difference between those Yankees teams and this Dodgers team is that teams back then were trying. The Boston Red Sox were trying to keep pace with the Yankees. 

Who's trying to keep up with the Dodgers? 

That's the problem that the players are looking to fix — and a salary cap isn't going to do the trick.