The sad reality of 2021: The Dodgers are the new Yankees

In today's Murdoch Mush, Joel Sherman traces the reasons why the LA Dodgers are quietly directing contract talks over Trevor Bauer and DJ LeMahieu: 

As defending champs and perennial NL poohbahs, they occupy the brocade throne much as the 1999 Yankees once did. They have baseball's best team. They have still-rising stars. They have the money. They have the owner. They have the farm system. They have the market. They have everything the Yankees once had - and still should - if we didn't keep punching ourselves in the Kushners. 

Sherman targets the ongoing LeMahiue crisis, asking:

Are the Yankees... re-signing LeMahieu regardless of cost, or do the Yanks — with the intention of going under the $210 million luxury-tax threshold — have a limit? If it is the latter, could the Dodgers step in? Has LeMahieu grown disenchanted/disrespected enough with the process that he will leave a place he likes? If so, the Dodgers offer the professional, winning environment that made him so enjoy his Yankee time.

Yep. He's basically saying the Dodgers the new Yankees. Or, actually, that they are even better off. In every comparison between the franchises, the massive fatberg dead ahead is Giancarlo Stanton's "from-here-to-Eternity" contract, to which Team Cashman is lashed like Mike Pence to the White Whale. Whatever they do, the Yankees will open new holes in their roster. Meanwhile, the Dodgers will simply add to their strength. 

The Dodgers have managed their payroll so well that Betts is their only guaranteed money beyond 2022... LeMahieu can fit within the Dodger salary structure and play third if Justin Turner is not re-signed, or second with Gavin Lux becoming a super-utility type.. Think of a lineup that begins Betts/LeMahieu. 

Or - gulp - one that begins with Aaron Hicks and his .225 batting average (which we are told, under the new metrics, doesn't matter? Gimme a break.)  The simple reality is that whatever the Yankees do - outbid everyone, or let DJ walk - they look like a team well past its "sell-by" date, and which will need to be remade by a series of trades (Frazier, Andujar, Voit, et al.) 

And we all know how opposing GMs just love to help the Yankees.

Everything hinges on how loudly Hal Steinbrenner wants to poormouth, and whether the Gammonites of NYC will buy it. Hal wants us to think he lost money in 2020. That would make him the only billionaire on the planet to do so. Will the Murdoch Mush rattle a cup on his behalf?