{"id":7371,"date":"2026-08-21T06:38:24","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T06:38:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nextcitydigest.com\/?p=7371"},"modified":"2026-08-21T06:38:24","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T06:38:24","slug":"kurtenbach-the-giants-biggest-win-of-a-disastrous-season-the-looming-downfall-of-the-dodgers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nextcitydigest.com\/?p=7371","title":{"rendered":"Kurtenbach: The Giants’ biggest win of a disastrous season? The looming downfall of the Dodgers"},"content":{"rendered":"
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When the Golden State Warriors \u201cruined\u201d the NBA at the end of the 2010s, most of the league quietly packed it in and waited out the storm.<\/p>\n

Read more 49ers\u2019 Purdy makes preseason debut after scarce interceptions this camp<\/a><\/p>\n

You don\u2019t wrestle a hurricane. You board up the windows, drink a beer in the basement, and wait for the wreckage to clear.<\/p>\n

It turns out the San Francisco Giants ran the exact same playbook against the Los Angeles Dodgers.<\/p>\n

They didn\u2019t do it on purpose, of course.<\/p>\n

No, they did it through a dizzying mix of front-office paralysis, botched free agencies, and pure, unfiltered baseball incompetence mixed with old-money San Francisco hubris.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019ll be damned: It might have worked.<\/p>\n

Because the biggest win of this cursed, forgettable Giants season isn\u2019t happening on the diamond. No, it\u2019s happening in the pages of the Financial Times and at the desks of the Department of Justice.<\/p>\n

And that win is the sudden, frankly shocking realization that the Dodgers\u2019 terrifying empire was built on a hilarious house of cards.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

For years, the rest of Major League Baseball was subjected to endless lectures about Chavez Ravine exceptionalism.<\/p>\n

We were told the Dodgers simply wanted it more than everyone else.<\/p>\n

If your team didn\u2019t hand out $700 million IOUs deferred until the next century, your owner was just a cheap coward.<\/p>\n

The Dodgers weren\u2019t just richer; they were smarter, cooler, and operating on a higher plane of fiscal enlightenment. They were breaking baseball and the only thing you could do to stop it was to stop playing the game altogether while highly-paid lawyers decide what\u2019s best.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

Well, grab some popcorn. That reality is collapsing in real time.<\/p>\n

It turns out that Dodgers controlling owner Mark Walter didn\u2019t discover some magical money tree in Southern California. No, he \u2014 allegedly \u2014 just made all the money up.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the cut-and-dry of it: Walter runs an asset management firm alongside massive insurance companies.<\/p>\n

The strategy was straightforward: take policyholder premiums from those insurance arms \u2014and loan the cash to other companies he controls.<\/p>\n

In high finance, you can occasionally do that if you follow the rules and report every cent.<\/p>\n

Walter allegedly did it constantly and forgot the whole \u201cdisclosure\u201d part.<\/p>\n

Now the Department of Justice is knocking on the door, and Walter is scrambling to unwind deals and pay back billions before the feds bring the hammer down.<\/p>\n

His lightning-fast sale of the Los Angeles Lakers to Josh Kushner and Bob Iger \u2014 it reportedly came to pass over the course of a weekend \u2014 eased the ledger a bit.<\/p>\n

Read more 49ers Studs and Duds: Stribling shines again, Black shows serious power in blowout win over Chargers<\/a><\/p>\n

But if what\u2019s being reported in the financial pages is even close to true, the Lakers sale won\u2019t nearly be enough. No, he likely needs billions more by the end of the year to make the books look passable.<\/p>\n

According to Bloomberg, Walter is now shopping around private deals that offer double-digit yields, putting up his own personal stake in his asset management firm as collateral.<\/p>\n

When a billionaire starts seeking the Wall Street equivalent of a payday loan, things are officially off the rails.<\/p>\n

If that insane offer doesn\u2019t plug the leak, the fire sale begins.<\/p>\n

Everything is on the table: his shares of Chelsea FC (reportedly already on the market), the Los Angeles Sparks, his PWHL club, and his motorsports empire across NASCAR, IndyCar, and Formula 1.<\/p>\n

And yes, even the crown jewel itself \u2014 the Los Angeles Dodgers.<\/p>\n

Think about what this means for the MLB.<\/p>\n

The league is hurtling toward an ugly lockout, with owners preparing to cry poverty and demand a hard salary cap to stop the spending monster in Southern California.<\/p>\n

If the Dodgers\u2019 financial juggernaut was a fiction funded by undisclosed insurance loans, so much justification for the lockout disappears.<\/p>\n

You don\u2019t need a labor war to fix a systemic spending problem that was really just one guy running a high-stakes shell game.<\/p>\n

Yes, I\u2019ve spent years hammering the Giants\u2019 front office and ownership in print, and I won\u2019t take back a single syllable. The boring rosters, the passive-aggressive press conferences, the endless parade of mediocre seasons \u2014 cresting and falling with an inexplicable 2021 and 2026 \u2014 has been brutal to watch.<\/p>\n

But at least their mediocrity has been entirely, painfully, and honestly earned.<\/p>\n

The Giants\u2019 ownership group might be many things, but outside of the concession prices, I don\u2019t think they\u2019re crooks. They didn\u2019t cook the books or play fast and loose with old folks\u2019 life insurance money. No, they paid for their bland, overhyped product in clean, boring cash.<\/p>\n

The Dodgers, meanwhile, bought an empire on layaway and hoped the bill would never come due, all while the man cutting the checks hoped the bags could move around forever.<\/p>\n

So no, the Giants never possessed the foresight to orchestrate a long-term waiting game. They just tripped over their own shoelaces for the better part of a decade.<\/p>\n

But in the process, they might have accidentally landed safely outside the blast radius.<\/p>\n

In baseball, it\u2019s always better to be lucky than smart.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s even better to be stubbornly mediocre while your archrival builds a billion-dollar sandcastle right as the tide rolls in.<\/p>\n

Read more Motorcyclist killed, driver arrested in suspected hit-and-run in Palo Alto<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Say what you will about Giants ownership, but at least they achieved their mediocrity through honest means.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7370,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"yoast_head":"\nKurtenbach: The Giants’ biggest win of a disastrous season? The looming downfall of the Dodgers - Next City Digest<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/nextcitydigest.com\/?p=7371\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Kurtenbach: The Giants’ biggest win of a disastrous season? 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