Prepare to be amazed as the Los Angeles Dodgers spend an additional $182 million on Blake Snell’s services over the next five years. I wonder how much deferred money they will have to pay Snell, the offseason’s top national pitching award, now that the club’s current management team is either retired or dead. Speculate furiously about how the Dodgers will invariably get Juan Soto before Christmas and then pick up Roki Sasaki while they stand in the checkout line like he’s a damn Almond Joy. Complain loudly that if the Dodgers ever keep everyone healthy, they’ll win 146 games and win the World Series by acclamation after the American League champions declare “screw it” and go on early vacation . They’re still doing this world domination thing wrong.

What they should do is, simply put, cut out the middleman. The Dodgers should just buy Scott Boras.

Let’s not worry about the payroll of their Triple-A affiliate in Oklahoma City becoming overcrowded with all the $15 million players the Dodgers can’t add to the big league roster. Let’s not worry about baseball’s heat death when the other owners can’t sell their teams because billionaires don’t like buying things that don’t dominate the market. Instead, let’s marvel at the Dodgers’ fundamental inefficiency in not just putting Boras, the game’s longtime turbo agent, on the payroll. In return for his inventory, have him recite his weird little nursery rhymes in the boardroom. If the Dodgers’ current deferred-money strategy pays off for the franchise in the long run, as some experts claim, Boras would certainly want this deal as much as the team. One-stop shopping is always preferable.

And your favorite team? Collateral damage, nothing more. Imagine Steve Cohen, the multi-billionaire who bought the New York Mets just to win a World Series for his father, only to find out he can now only shop at the Dollar Store. Think of the Castellini family, owners of the Cincinnati Reds and the skinniest of Flints, looking at their fellow owners with all the smugness Cincinnati can muster and saying, “Now you come to me and ask for advice on how to work cheap can? “How does the worm turn?” dies the competitive and financial death he so richly deserves.

That doesn’t mean you, as a wandering baseball fan, have to start supporting the Dodgers. Not at all. We speak here for Comrades McQuade and McKinney and their Phillies obsession, for Comrades Anatharaman and Theisen with their Tigers devotions. We speak for comrades Kalaf (Red Sox) and Paez-Pumar (Marlins) and Petchesky (Yankees) and Kuhn (Pirates) and even Imbler (Hiroshima Toyo Carp or Tokyo Yakult Swallows, just for the cool non-mammalian nicknames). You can hate the Dodgers as much as you want and love your team as much as you want. You just have to live with the knowledge that the Dodgers once again appear ready and willing to buy this offseason, and once they stop fooling around and buy Boras too, you can adjust your dreams accordingly. For example, “Maybe we can win the Grapefruit League.” As St. Louis Browns minor leaguer Mao Zedong once said, “Let a thousand flowers die.”

This is simply a question of good business, as the comedian Robert Klein advocated decades ago when he said in connection with the breakup of the oil companies: “If you have everything on offer, you can charge whatever the hell you want.” “The way the Dodgers are doing it now is just torturing insects in your parents’ driveway: ‘Oh, maybe the Blue Jays can get Soto.'” The Giants need a big signing, so why not Sasaki?” “The Angels got Yusei Kikuchi as part of their slow rebuild? Cool.” It’s just cruel to give people hope in the winter when you know they won’t get anything in the spring, summer or fall. Doing so in this way can be construed as kindness, but only as long as you are the one holding the magnifying glass and the flashbulb. This is how tomorrow’s politicians are made today.

Whatever the case, it’s the holiday season and you should all be with family, friends, work colleagues or, in a pinch, people you really enjoy being with. You should gather around your table and enjoy the multicolored, calorie- and cholesterol-lowering generosity of a properly loaded feast—right up to the point where Boras kicks in your door in a satin Dodgers jacket and an ill-fitting Mookie Betts City Connect jersey. grabs the turkey and says, “Sorry, this isn’t your dinner, this is our $116 million replacement catcher.” Happy holidays, and we’ll just leave a few season ticket brochures here in the entrance hall.” table. Oh, and we’ll be right back for the sides and dessert.

The lesson: If you’re going to stuff yourself, do it with both hands holding ladles. This is what you voted for, and nothing says “Happy Thanksgiving” more convincingly.