The Best Team got the Best Player.

Back-to-Back Cy Young Winner joins Back-to-Back World Series winner.

So what did you expect?

The Dodgers did what the Dodgers always do, make a significant acquisition in the middle of the pennant race.  

Andrew Friedman is Andrew Friedman, dealing from a big check book budget and an equally big checking account of blue chip talent.

Whether it’s rentals like Jack Flaherty, Max Scherzer, Trea Turner or the blockbuster type deals for Mookie Betts all the way back to Adrian Gonzalez, if it’s August, it’s time to add.

And so Tarik Skubal and his fastball, his (3.29-ERA) and his (32M) salary comes to LA as another fixture to their starting rotation looking towards the playoffs.

Skubal-Yamamoto-Ohtani-Sasaki-Wrobleski-Lauer.  How’s your batting order going to lineup with that?  Neon Light names in  a quality rotation.

Oh-lest we forget, on the brink, the returning  Blake Snell-Tyler Glasnow.

The stunning part of all these Friedman deals, he never gives up the best of his bluechip players.  Yes, Zahir Hope projects to be a very good major league outfielder.  Alot expected of River Ryan and Brady Smith in future years on the mound.

Yet the Dodgers retain the star studded group in the minors led by can’t miss prospects Josue DePaul, Mike Sirota, Eduardo Quntera and a host of others.  Equally surprising the Dodgers did not give up, or the Tigers did not ask for, Emmit Sheehan, Bobby Miller, Hysegon Kim, Dalton Rushing.  

The sidebar conversation going forward now will swirl about Skubal and his agent Scott Boras and whether a (50M) a year price tag is what LA will have to pay to keep the hurler as free agency approaches.

The next conversation is what does this mega deal do to the MLB proposal ‘we need a salary cap to promote competitive balance.  The Dodgers seem in a very different solar system, maybe a different galaxy, compared to the rest of baseball.

What they are doing is not illegal.  This CBA allows these deals.  But where it takes us once this season ends, remains to be seen.

Will there be a salary cap?  What happens to the deferred payments the Dodgers have?  How is the massive spending configured (grandfathered in) in whatever the new set of rules are?  Are the lst place Dodgers about to pass the 1st place Mets in all time luxury tax payments?  Does this way of doing business  make  anything better in any of the small markets in your baseball standings?

We know one answer-this Dodgers pitching staff is 5-Star Gold.  The rest of the baseball questions about ‘economics’ remain to be answered.

It all falls under the ‘Dodger Way’

============