Rahimi, Harris & Grote Show - Did Kyle Tucker’s contract with Dodgers make MLB's looming labor war worse?

Episode Date: February 13, 2026

Leila Rahimi and Marshall Harris discussed the looming MLB lockout after the 2026 season. Did the Dodgers signing star outfielder Kyle Tucker on a four-year, $240-million deal make the pending crisis worse?

We look at the peril of the 2027 season. And I don't know about you, Marshall, but the headline to this, just so you're aware, what Kyle Tucker's Dodgers contract means for MLB labor peace. And this yet again goes back to the concept of the deferred money, the deferred money to the extreme whenever the Dodgers started the trend, really getting going with Shoddy Minaga's money, and then the Kyle Tucker deal, which I don't know about you, but I had to read it several times.

Here's the paragraph that got me. Because of the tax levied on the teams that spent over the CBT, payroll surcharges intended to dampen the desire for organizations to flex their financial muscles. The Dodgers must pay a 110% penalty on every dollar over the top $304 million threshold. Meaning that a salary adjusted to $57.1 million

to reflect its net present value, Tucker this year will come. cost the Dodgers. 119.9 million. That is more than the current 2026 payrolls of 10 teams. Such a degree of imbalance

is astonishing, even with the reality that nothing in the rules stops other owners from replicating the Dodgers' behavior, other they're in their own willingness to deficit spend, fewer willing, which leaves them pushing for a cap, convincing themselves with Mandalorian obdicracy, that this is the way.

I love that this is the way reference, never pass up on a Star Wars reference. Abduracy, sorry. So, yeah, there's a problem. And there was already a problem. But what the Dodgers said, oh, y'all think there's a problem, watch this. And they just continue to flex and tell other teams, if you don't want to spend like us, if you don't want to defer like us, you're never going to catch us.

Well, it's also what you get what you pay for. The Dodgers sale continues to be one of the biggest deals to discuss in sports period. You know, and the sticking point, as I recall, was not even the TV deal that they had gotten. That's really the issue here. It's not an issue. It's what helps them spend is that massive TV deal they had with Time Warner. Additionally, there were the parking lots.

Do you remember that being such an issue? It was the real estate that backed in the transaction. That that real estate with the parking lots was as much of a sticking point as anything because it is worth so much money. The parking lots at the stadium itself. especially in Los Angeles. So when you've got physical real estate assets and you've got the TV contract

and you have an ownership group who's willing to do whatever, you know, it's one thing when it was, and we've talked about this as well, it's one thing when it's owners versus players, you know, like when you consider NFL ownership versus the NFL players, the 18th game is something that the players union has pushed back on.

But at the same time, NFL ownership has gotten all these other sweeteners as to what they have wanted because of this one issue. They've gotten Thursday night football. We're hearing reports of a Wednesday night game. They're here to take Maction now. You know, they got to take over other days of a week

like Christmas Day, which used to be an NBA exclusive holiday. You know, they've decided that teams need to play international games on a regular basis. The owners, because they're together and they're united in their front, they've been able to get all this other stuff. that the players not necessarily wanted to do. Thursday night is the best example because of the recovery time it takes

and how much of a sticking point it was. And look what's happening. We have Thursday night games now. That's not an issue. And it's not even an afterthought. It's just, that's just part of what it is. It's no longer, you can even say the quality. All because of the dangling carrot of the 18th game.

Exactly. And you could even make the argument that Thursday night football has become much more watchable compared to the inception of Thursday night football. Do you remember how bad it used to be? It was just, it was the best. it was the bad teams and they were the ones because I think the better teams were protected from having

they wanted to recover and now it's just you're right it's part and parcel and now they're flexing Thursday night games to add to the chaos. I say all of that to say this is what the owners are getting because they're united and because there's a sticking point issue that they get to negotiate

against. In this case when it's ownership versus ownership and there is this disparity And then there's the players union that is powerful in Major League Baseball. This is where I can't believe it Kyle Tucker of all people, given what happened here especially, that that's the flashpoint to this extent, where we should be talking about enjoying a 2026 baseball season

where the Cubs are legitimately trying to contend, where they did spend money, or like even observe the fact that the Pirates signed a guide to a multi-year deal, or that the Baltimore Orioles signed somebody like Pete Alonso. That instead, we're still talking about the Dodgers and the Mets and how this is affecting the rest of baseball. But we have to. These are the numbers.

This is the reality. And if you don't believe us, listen to what Matt Spiegel had to say through his sources in Lawrence Holmes and Matt Spiegel show yesterday. They talked to sources within multiple MLB franchises. Over the last five years, MLB has been withholding a small portion of each team's share of national television money, as well as a portion of each team's share of the licensing revenue. And these dollars have been consolidated by MLB to what will be given to teams next year as a war chest, a $75 million per team war chest that should allow each franchise to

withstand the potential loss of an entire baseball season. That's the new information that I was able to confirm and put out today. So there's going to probably be some tightening of the belts around the league, not maybe in the way that you would see, but a way that we would see. Like there's going to be, I don't even want to call it hiring freezes, but I imagine that some of that is going to go on, Speegs. Every department of every team is well aware of the day. danger that looms beyond November and there is, there are preparations that are taking place within

multiple departments about, you know, what they can do, what they cannot do. Just every facet of the baseball world is preparing for this like, like never before. This is bad news. And it's bad news because what I've been preaching, I was like, hey, yeah, it's going to stink when we don't have a 27 season. With Matt Spiegel's sourcing, that becomes not just a reality, but a likelihood, a strong likelihood, because of the different warring factions involved in creating a CBA that everybody can sign off on. Just the descriptions of these contracts.

That's the part that's so hard to wrap your head around as well. And it makes sense as to why other owners, like the Cubs, yes, they did the right thing. They followed suit. they decided to give Alex Bregman deferred money, which a lot of teams are doing because that's how you compete, and I don't mind it. But then there's the Shohei Otani contract, for example. And here's another excerpt from the Passan article.

Los Angeles is paying him $2 million a year and delaying for a decade payment on the remaining $680 million. That its present value is more in the mid-400 millions. One year after Otani shouted the salary scale, Juan Soto upped him with a 15-year 770. 65 million deferral-free deal with the Mets. And that's what makes us so wild. But Tucker's is, you know, that's, he's not even the best player on the Dodgers, as we know.

He's the what, blank best player on the Dodgers? Let's just say hitters. He's what, the fourth best hitter on the Dodgers? I think fourth is fair. Like it's about, you can argue third. Yeah, where are you putting him in the light of? And not after last two years, he's not the third best hitter on that team. Yeah, you could easily say,

Shohei, Freddie Freeman, and of course, Moogie Betts, those guys, one, two, three, and they've got the World Series titles to prove it. You know, they've got future entry into the Hall of Fame, Cooperstown, to prove it. Nearly, never in the 50 years of free agency before Tucker turned it down, had a player turned down a $300 million plus offer.

That's a lot of money. Oh, to have those problems. But, like, the fact that he could turn it down, that says where we are. I think players are smarter, too, about what they accept and understanding, hey, I can jump on this train and continue to win World Series. But that, and it's, you know, I think Albert Breer did a good example of talking about it when we had him on a while back.

I want to say it was about a year ago where he said, when I was, when I was in charge of this type of stuff, the cap was your budget. You know, that was it. And we've seen how in the NFL it's a little easier to see where the money goes. you know, you can see it kicked out. This is accounting that is tricky. It is slick. And when it divides ownership among itself,

that's when I think, especially when you have deferring factions of the big market teams who can't agree on how to do this, that first of all is pure competition. But secondly, none of this really is. You know, it's a league where you already have all these oversights into place.

MLB isn't really the it's not the avenue for the pure unfettered capitalism you think you're getting. And so that's why this is hard. You know, it's like you can't, you're choosing when you want to compete in that way and when you don't.

And it's cool as long as everybody agrees to them, but when you get some new ownership in town, then everybody's competing at a different level and they've changed the game on you. Well, it seems like what I believe to be two classes of owners has really separated in now three classes of owners. There's the millionaires, billionaires, thousandaires, and then there's the dollar menunaires like us.

I'm not going to go that far. I will say this. I used to think it was just big market owners versus small market owners. But now I'm seeing it's big market owners versus big market owners. Oh yeah. And by the way, most of the owners are small market owners. You see what I'm saying? Like the top, you know, five, six markets, whether you want to talk about San Francisco,

the Chicago teams or team, depending on how you want to look at it, L.A., New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and then you look around and everybody else is not willing to get up to par, whether it's the brewers who have won despite not having exorbitant payrolls. And for them to figure that out is going to take longer than I thought. Well, to add to this is the problem of TV rights deals for other teams. We just saw several teams, including ones who compete with the Cubs and the White Sox, get taken over by Major League Baseball. So we'll get into that.

And then also another story from The Athletic that's worth your time by Evendrelic. And the discussion of a salary cap, because those words are now coming into play here. That's all next here on Rahimi Harrison Grotie and Marshall's Massive Panera Cup on the score. And handless Tim Anderson Bumblehead doll. We've got to find the hand. I'm sorry, T.A.