"You got them playing checkbook baseball" - Cardinals' Miles Mikolas throws shade at Dodgers' offseason spending, aims to 'stick it' to NL team
Miles Mikolas and the St. Louis Cardinals will kick off the 2024 season against the Los Angeles Dodgers. LA has been the talk of the offseason after opening up their checkbook to acquire guys like Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto.
The Blew Crew committed $1.025 billion dollars from these two players alone. That does not even count the big contract the team already had on their books and some of the other moves they made, like extending Tyler Glasnow.
Mikolas is not impressed with LA's big-time spending and will come into the matchup with some extra motivation. He is ready to "stick it" to the club that outspent what multiple clubs combined spent this offseason.
"We're not exactly a low payroll team, but you got the Dodgers playing checkbook baseball. We're going to be the hardest working group of Midwestern farmers we can be. ... It would be great to stick it to [them]" stated Mikolas.
When looking at the current payrolls, the Cardinals currently have the 10th-highest payroll in the league, while the Dodgers have the 9th. However, Shohei Ohtani deferring a large portion of his yearly salary helps.
Cardinals pitcher Miles Mikolas is not the only person who feels frustrated by the Dodgers' spending
Cardinals pitcher Miles Mikolas is not the only person who feels frustrated with how stellar of an offseason the Dodgers had. From other players to fans of other teams, LA has received a lot of hate for their winter spending.
It is something that All-Star slugger Mookie Betts does not understand. If your goal is to win a World Series title at the end of the year, why not bring in all the top players that your organization can?
"I don't know what you want us to do? You want us to not win? I don't know what you want us to do. When you're blessed with an ability, why would you not use that?" stated Betts.
Teams spending heavily over the offseason and catching hate for it is nothing new. However, the baseball world has not seen an offseason like this in quite some time.
Spending does not directly correlate to winning, so LA still has to get the job done. This will be an interesting season for them. If they somehow cannot perform as expected, they will catch way more hate than this did coming into the season.