Be amazed at how the Los Angeles Dodgers free up another $182 million for the next five years of Blake Snell’s services. Wonder how much deferred money they’ll have to pay Snell, the top offseason domestic pitching prize, after the club’s current management team retires or is dead. Speculate in anger about how the Dodgers will invariably get Juan Soto before Christmas and then pick up Roki Sasaki while standing in the checkout line like he’s a goddamn Almond Joy. Complain to your heart about how, if the Dodgers ever keep everyone healthy, they’ll win 146 games and be awarded the World Series by acclamation after the American League champion declares “screw it” and takes an early vacation. They’re still doing this world domination thing wrong.

What they should be doing, simply put, is eliminating the middleman. The Dodgers should just acquire Scott Boras.

Let’s not worry about the payroll of their Triple-A affiliate in Oklahoma City being swelled by all the $15 million players the Dodgers can’t put on the big league roster. Let’s not worry about baseball’s heat death when the other owners can’t sell their teams because billionaires don’t like buying things that won’t dominate the market. Instead, let’s wonder about the Dodgers’ essential inefficiency in not just putting Boras, the game’s long-reigning turbo agent, on the payroll. Let him do his silly nursery rhymes in the boardroom in exchange for his inventory. If the Dodgers’ current deferred money strategy will pay off for the franchise in the long run, as some experts claim, Boras would certainly want that deal as much as the team does. One-stop shopping is always preferable.

And your favorite team? Collateral damage, nothing more. Imagine if Steve Cohen, the multi-billionaire who bought the New York Mets just to win a World Series for his father, found out that the only place he could now shop was at the Dollar Store. Think of the Castellini family, the owners of the Cincinnati Reds and the leanest of flints, who look at their fellow owners with all the smugness that Cincinnati can muster and say, “Now you come to me asking for advice on working on the cheap price? , money bags.” Enjoy the knowledge that every baseball fan in Las Vegas will abandon the West Sacramento Athletics concept to head to LA and watch the team that never loses while John Fisher dies the competitive and financial death he so lavishly deserves.

This doesn’t mean that you, the traveling baseball fan, should cheer for the Dodgers. Not at all. We speak here for comrades McQuade and McKinney and their Phillies obsession, for comrades Anatharaman and Theisen with their Tigers devotionals. We speak for comrades Kalaf (Red Sox) and Paez-Pumar (Marlins) and Petchesky (Yankees) and Kuhn (Pirates) and even Imbler (Hiroshima Toyo Carp or Tokyo Yakult Swallows, just for the cool non-mammal nicknames). You can hate the Dodgers all you want and love your team all you want. You just have to live with the knowledge that the Dodgers once again appear ready and willing to buy this offseason, and once they stop messing around and buy Bora’s as well, you can adjust your dreams accordingly. For example, “Maybe we can win the Grapefruit League.” As St. Louis Browns minor leaguer Mao Zedong once said, “Let a thousand flowers die.”

This is simply a matter of good business practice, as espoused decades ago by comedian Robert Klein when, in the context of criticizing the oil companies of the day, he said, “When you have all the supply, you can demand whatever you want.” want. ” The way the Dodgers are doing it now is just torturing bugs in your parents’ driveway: “Oh, maybe the Blue Jays can get Soto.” “The Giants need a big signing, so why not Sasaki?” “The Angels got Yusei Kikuchi as part of their slow rebuild? Cool.” Nonsense! Letting people hope in the winter while knowing they won’t get anything in the spring, summer or fall is just cruel. Doing it this way can be taken as a kindness, but only as long as you are the one holding the magnifying glass and the flash paper. This is how the politicians of tomorrow are made today.

Anyway, it’s vacation time and you all need to be with family, friends, co-workers or in need, people you really enjoy being with. You’d have to gather around your table and bask in the multicolored, calorie-rich, and cholesterol-tastic generosity of a suitably loaded feast—to the point where Boras, clad in a satin Dodgers jacket and an ill-fitting Mookie Betts City Connect- sweater, kicks in your door, grabs the turkey and says, “Sorry, this isn’t your dinner, this is our $116 million backup catcher. Happy holidays, and we’ll just leave some season ticket brochures on the back of the hall table. Oh, and we’ll be right back for side dishes and dessert.”

The lesson: If you’re going to stuff yourself, do it with both hands while holding the trowels. It’s what you voted for, and nothing says Happy Thanksgiving more convincingly.