The Los Angeles Dodgers, which has a long team history and is home to the central city of the American continent, Los Angeles, is the second highest-grossing team in the league after the New York Yankees. The Dodgers made a virtuous cycle of profits by using this revenue as expenses and recruiting many stars.
One of them is Ryu Hyun-jin (36‧ Toronto). Prior to the 2013 season, Ryu Hyun-jin knocked on the door of the major leagues through the posting system (private competitive bidding). While several teams showed interest, the Dodgers was the team that won the sole bid with the highest posting amount at the time.
The Dodgers wrote in about 25.73 million dollars as the posting amount, which was difficult to imagine at the time. This posting amount is still the highest posting amount among players who went from the KBO league to the major leagues. In addition, he decided to pay an annual salary of $ 36 million for 6 years. In all, it invested about $61.73 million over six years. Although he lost about two years due to shoulder surgery, Ryu returned all of this investment by playing for the Dodgers until 2019.
On the 7th (Korean time), the fan site ‘Dodgers Way’ listed the size of the Dodgers’ past contracts in order (based on internal and external FA recruitment, excluding extension contracts within the contract), but the size of Ryu Hyun-jin’s contract is larger than we thought. It can be seen that it is quite large. In terms of annual salary, $36 million ranks 14th all-time.
The media said, ‘The Dodgers, which entered the Korean market, recruited left-hander Ryu Hyun-jin, who spent seven impressive years in the KBO League Hanwha Eagles. Shoulder surgery and a subsequent injury prevented him from pitching for two and a half years in six years, but after finishing fourth in Rookie of the Year voting in 2013, he was an All-Star and No. 1 in ERA in 2019. ‘Then he left for Toronto, and in 2022 Tommy John had surgery. With the Dodgers, he went 54-33 with a 2.98 earned run average in 126 games,’ he recalled. 안전놀이터
However, $36 million is only the annual salary of Ryu Hyun-jin, and the ranking goes up further based on $61.73 million, which can be said to be the actual investment of the Dodgers. He falls between No. 8 Chris Taylor’s 2021 four-year, $60 million contract and No. 7 Justin Turner’s four-year, $64 million contract in 2016. Of course, if you add up the history of extended contracts, there are more contracts of a larger scale than this, but it can be seen as a leaderboard that suggests that the money invested in Ryu Hyun-jin was by no means small.
The Dodgers’ highest spending based on external free agent recruitment is Freddie Freeman, who invested $162 million over six years ahead of the 2022 season. In the history of his contract extension, Mookie Betts’ 12-year, $365 million is the best.
However, there is a possibility that this record will be broken next year. This is because there is a possibility that the Dodgers will start a battle to recruit Shohei Ohtani (29, LA Angels), the biggest player in the free agent market. This is because the Dodgers are likely to be selected as one of the teams that will go ahead in the race to recruit Ohtani, and Ohtani is highly likely to spend at least $400 million, if not up to the much-talked-about $500 million.
