Dodgers News: $16 million incentive to play baseball in 2020

As if anyone needs more incentive to play baseball in 2020, the Los Angeles Dodgers stand to lose out on more than gate fees and TV money if the season is canceled.

Pretend for a minute that there aren’t already countless billions of dollars at risk if the 2020 MLB season is canceled. From gate fees to television income, teams like the Los Angeles Dodgers stand to lose a lot of money if no baseball is played this season. However, the Dodgers may stand to lose out financially from another angle as well.

As we all know by now, the Dodgers swung a big trade with the Boston Red Sox to acquire Mookie Betts and David Price to further bolster the roster for a 2020 World Series run. As the season continues to slip away, there is an increasing worry that Betts may never play a single game in a Dodgers uniform. That makes the cost to acquire him even steeper, as the Dodgers gave up a slew of prospects including Alex Verdugo, Jeter Downs, and Connor Wong, to pick him up. They even took on David Price to sweeten the pot with Boston.

And that is where the other problem lies.

The potential loss of Betts aside, the Dodgers also stand to lose out on the David Price portion of the deal. When they agreed to take on Price, it was with the understanding that Boston would pay a portion of the remaining salary due to Price through the life of his contract. That amounts to $48 million, or $16 million per season over the three years left.

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As noted in an excellent piece by the MLB Trade Rumors team, any cash considerations that are due for distribution as part of trades will be impacted by the actual amount of games played and how much the current team pays the player for the season. As players are currently being paid through a general fund set-up through the league and the players’ association, the teams are not technically paying the players directly. As such, any days that are lost due to no games played moves the marker down and the Red Sox will owe the Dodgers less than the previously agreed-upon $16 million. If the season is canceled altogether, then the Red Sox will owe the Dodgers nothing in 2020.

Now, of course, that also means that Price is technically not costing the Dodgers anything either, except for perhaps a season of service time. He’s not getting any younger and the potential upside of Price in the Dodgers’ rotation was likely to be in the first two years of the deal anyway, especially if he was on a deal that only cost the team $16 million per annum.

Regardless, it is just another bitter pill to swallow in a deal that is looking like a potential mistake for the Dodgers’ front office.