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One afternoon in February of 2019, minutes after a Cactus League victory, Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman boarded a private jet bound for Las Vegas. On the plane with him were owner Mark Walter, team president Stan Kasten and manager Dave Roberts. In his mind, Friedman was sharpening an audacious contract offer to the top hitter on the free-agent market, Bryce Harper.

For years, Friedman had expressed the common executive’s lament about free agency — that in order to land a top player, a team often had to make a lengthy financial commitment that the front office figured would curdle as the player aged. “If you’re rational about every free agent,” Friedman once remarked, “you will finish third on every free agent.” He wondered if there was another route to landing the big fish — a deal that did not last as long, but paid much more per season, the exact type of contract that on Thursday evening netted the Dodgers four-time All-Star Kyle Tucker, the top hitter on this winter’s market.

For the Dodgers, it was not always so easy. The team offered Harper a four-year contract worth a reported $180 million in 2019, which would have set a new record with a $45 million average annual value. The pitch to Harper was unconventional but straightforward: Come to Los Angeles and help the team end its World Series drought, make a ton of money now, and return to the market to accumulate even more riches while you’re still young.

In the end, the gambit did not work. Harper opted for the stability of a 13-year, $300 million deal with the Philadelphia Phillies. “It was about being able to dig my roots,” he said that spring. “Being able to be somewhere I could be for a long time.”

Seven seasons, and three Dodgers’ championships later, the atmosphere among free agents has shifted. This winter, their pitch remains similar to the one Friedman made to Harper. They are offering top-tier talent the chance for a good time, not a long time. The difference is the response.

By landing Tucker with a four-year, $240 million contract, the Dodgers claimed dominion on yet another offseason. The deal came weeks after the club signed three-time All-Star closer Edwin Díaz. Like Tucker, Díaz opted for a deal with shorter length and larger annual salary than expected, spurning his former employers, the New York Mets, for a three-year, $69 million offer from Los Angeles. The Mets joined the trend on Friday through a three-year, $126 million agreement with infielder Bo Bichette.

The spending by the Dodgers has inspired a reaction similar to when the club flung around $1.4 billion after the 2023 season and splurged again after winning the World Series in 2024. Some fans are raging about their owners not spending. Others are calling for a salary cap. All around baseball, rival executives, coaches and scouts are groaning about the prospect of a work stoppage after this season. The Dodgers continue to float on above the fray, embracing the pursuit of a three-peat while the rest of the industry rages. The Dodgers, the thinking goes, can’t keep getting away with this.

A variety of factors have converged to allow the Dodgers to pounce on the market in this way. The presence of Shohei Ohtani has created a windfall that finances this renaissance and offsets penalties wrought by the competitive balance tax. The success of other players who have taken short-term contracts has opened the eyes of other free agents. And the continued on-field success of the Dodgers has convinced more and more players to eschew long-term security and accept deferrals to chase championships for a budding dynasty.

Turns out, the prospect of going to Los Angeles and winning the World Series, while making a lot of money in the process, sounds pretty enticing.

The scene in the visitors’ clubhouse after Dodgers snatched Game 7 of the World Series away from the Toronto Blue Jays was instructive. Wearing ski goggles and puffing a cigar, Tyler Glasnow stood beside Blake Snell. The duo had been part of the Tampa Bay Rays rotation in 2020 when their club lost to the Dodgers in the pandemic-altered World Series. Soon after the Dodgers acquired Glasnow following the 2023 season, he inked a four-year, $115 million extension when he could have waited for free agency after the season. A year later, Snell took a five-year offer laden with deferrals that carried a present-day value of about $137 million.

“We chased this in 2020,” Snell said. “We lost to this team. And now we on this team.”

Glasnow raised his hand for a high-five. “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, baby!” he said.

That clip went viral. But a quieter moment demonstrated how ubiquitous the sentiment was. As retiring ace Clayton Kershaw chatted with reporters for the final time as an active player, reliever Tanner Scott hollered across the room to everyone and no one. “I signed here to win,” he said.

That sentiment was echoed last month by Díaz, who will replace Scott, who flopped in the first season of his five-year, $72 million contract, as the Dodgers’ closer.

“I’m looking to win, and I think they have everything to win,” Díaz said at his introductory press conference. “Picking the Dodgers was easy.”

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.