Hal Steinbrenner admits it’s ‘difficult’ for Yankees, ‘most’ teams to compete with Dodgers’ spending

The owner of the Yankees says most baseball owners cannot financially compete with another ownership group. 

In an interview with YES Network that aired Tuesday night, Hal Steinbrenner looked at the powerhouse Dodgers — who beat the Yankees in the World Series and then added several significant pieces to blow away the rest of the sport financially — and acknowledged other ownership groups can only peer up at the Guggenheim Partners, who control the Dodgers. 

“It’s difficult for most of us owners to be able to do the kinds of things that they’re doing. We’ll see if it pays off,” Steinbrenner told Meredith Marakovits. “They still have to have a season relatively injury-free for it to work out for them. It’s a long season as you know, and once you get to the postseason anything can happen. We’ve seen that time and time again.” 

After knocking off the Yankees in five games with a roster that had added Shohei Ohtani for $700 million and Yoshinobu Yamamoto for $325 million, the Dodgers have added Blake Snell for $182 million, Tanner Scott for $72 million and Roki Sasaki on a bargain deal as an international amateur free agent, among others. 

Before the expected signing of Kirby Yates, which is not official, the Dodgers are running a 2025 payroll for luxury tax purposes that is around $370 million, according to FanGraphs.

The next highest spenders in MLB hover around the highest Competitive Balance Tax threshold of $301 million: the Phillies ($308 million), Yankees ($303 million) and Mets ($294 million), according to FanGraphs’ projections.