Get ready to learn Daytona, baseball fans, because right around the time when pitchers and catchers are supposed to be reporting for spring training, the 2027 NASCAR Cup Series season is due to begin with the "Great American Race".
Maybe it's a good thing that there likely won't be baseball in 2027, and baseball fans who have grown used to watching about eight minutes of actual in-game action each night can turn their attention to a sport featuring three and a half hours of nonstop competition (minus much-maligned stage breaks, of course) on a weekly basis.
If it wasn't clear already, the Los Angeles Dodgers continue to "ruin baseball", thanks to their recent trade with the Detroit Tigers for two-time AL Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal (along with about 10 other moves they've made over the past two and a half years, due to their egregious media deal and seemingly bottomless pile of cash).
Of course, they're not doing it alone. The lack of a salary cap doesn't help, nor does the ability to defer so much money until like 2050 or something. But neither does the lack of a salary floor, which basically encourages cheap owners to continue to be cheap owners, because if their 67-95 franchises still generate profit, who cares about the fanbase?
MLB is moving closer and closer toward a lockout that would likely cancel the entire 2027 season, due to player insisting that a salary cap is totally not okay. Somebody like Bryce Harper can't fathom making $24 million per year instead of $25 million, even though we all know he can rake in that FanDuel money from Cameo whenever he so pleases.
But I digress.
At the end of the day, the Skubal trade was the (most recent) nail in the coffin, but baseball fans need to wait about another four months as they watch that coffin finally get buried upon the expiration of the current CBA.
Why? Because the Dodgers traded their No. 5, No. 7, and No. 17 prospects for arguably the best pitcher of this decade.
No, not No. 5, No. 7, and No. 17 MLB prospects; No. 5, No. 7, and No. 17 prospects in their own pipeline.
Even MLB: The Show doesn't allow such a bogus offer to go through, and quite frankly, in an age of ChatGPT, I half-thought the graphic was fake at first.
No disrespect to River Ryan, Zhyir Hope, and Brady Smith, but the fact that this was even considered a serious offer was always going to mean they'd catch a few strays in the aftermath.
Hard to imagine nobody offered more. But that got us thinking.
What would a Dodgers-fleece-style NASCAR trade look like?
Let's use Kyle Larson as our Skubal. Sure, he hasn't been at his best in 2026; neither has Skubal, thanks to his injury. But he's still been pretty dang good, sitting eighth in points with the second-most laps led. And, of course, the two-time champ is the reigning series champion. He's still the standard, and it's been that way for the past five-plus years.
Pick a random mid-pack O'Reilly Auto Parts Series, Craftsman Truck Series, and ARCA Menards Series driver, and that's basically what the Dodgers pulled off.
Larson for Harrison Burton, Andres Perez de Lara, and Bobby Dale Earnhardt.
Who does a better job in the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet? Larson, or that rotating cast of characters?
They've all jumped around the lower series, with varying levels of success. Burton has even spent time at the top level. Like the newest three Tigers prospects, they've done nothing specific to generate any unwarranted criticism. But none of them are generational stars, and none of them are even close.
And this would obviously never happen, which is kind of the point.
If the "conspiracy theory" goal that many now believe exists really does center around getting the fans to side with the owners come 2027, congratulations; the owners win.
But really NASCAR wins, because as we saw when it was the first sport to return during the COVID-19 pandemic, fans deprived of their favorite sports do indeed tend to flock to other sports in droves.
Oh, and NASCAR also wins because they don't have to deal with this sort of complete and utter ridiculousness.
Add us as a preferred source on Google