David Lennon: Hollywood script flips as Dodgers owner Mark Walter faces sudden financial trouble

The ink was barely dry on Steve Cohen’s $2.4 billion purchase of the Mets when the new owner expressed his desire to emulate the Dodgers — sort of an East Coast version of the Chavez Ravine juggernaut, if you will — based on Los Angeles’ sustained winning process that extended from the front office down through the lowest rungs of the farm system.

In subsequent seasons, Cohen’s Dodgers envy only grew. There were the back-to-back World Series crowns, of course, the first coming at the expense of the Mets’ own dashed title dreams in 2024, a Flushing thrill ride that stretched all the way to NLCS Game 6.

This past week, however, the Hollywood script flipped, both because of the Dodgers’ surprising on-field struggles and the considerably larger problem involving owner Mark Walter, who is the subject of a government probe targeting questionable loans made against insurance companies under his purview.

We won’t get into the complicated legal issues here, but the seismic charges are damaging enough that Walter spent the past week shedding some of his other sports holdings with astonishing speed. He dumped the Los Angeles Lakers, one of the NBA’s Tiffany franchises, for $12 billion only two years after buying the team for $10 billion. He reportedly also is in talks to sell his stake in Chelsea FC, which would be another massive cash grab.

Walter’s desperate rush to raise money has led to speculation that the Dodgers could be next on the block, a shocking development for a team whose three-peat bid suddenly is looking shaky for really the first time all season. The suggestion that the Dodgers’ finances might actually be a house of cards, all the while carrying MLB’s highest payroll at $417 million, is an incredibly destabilizing concept for the sport as a whole — especially with a bitter labor battle involving the owners and players already underway.

Against that backdrop, I asked Cohen this past week about the Dodgers’ predicament. Obviously, the Mets are in no position to challenge the back-to-back defending champs this season. But Cohen, who is baseball’s richest individual owner with an estimated worth of $25 billion, stands to gain if the Dodgers’ throne begins to crumble.

“It’s an investigation,” Cohen said. “Don’t really know exactly where it’s going. I hope Mark can figure it out and put it behind him. The Dodgers are still a strong team — strong revenues, solid process. I think the Dodgers are going to continue to be a good team.”

Good, sure, but the team’s veneer of invincibility has shown cracks lately. Since July 1, the Dodgers are barely a mediocre team, just a tick above .500 (22-21) after getting bailed out Friday night by Tommy Edman’s walk-off single in the 10th inning to beat the Pirates. That’s identical to the Mets’ record in that same period, which puts both in the middle of the MLB pack.

After acquiring back-to-back Cy Young Award winner Tarik Skubal two days before the trade deadline — a blockbuster move that was supposed to make them unbeatable — the Dodgers were 9-9 through Friday’s games and slipped below the small-market Brewers ($154 million) for MLB’s best record.

To some degree, the Dodgers’ dip can be chalked up to the fluctuations of a six-month season, and everyone by now is familiar with their ability to dial things up come October. The way the Dodgers always slow-play their IL stints, it’s as if they’re mapping out playoff plans as early as June or July.

But their once-perceived infallibility, particularly in these parts, has taken a few big hits on a pair of winter prizes that basically were swiped from the Mets.

The more prominent of those two — from a Flushing perspective — is former Mets closer Edwin Diaz, who figured to be the Mets’ No. 1 offseason priority before he bolted to the Dodgers for a record three-year, $69 million contract.

Losing Diaz was embarrassing for the Mets. After missing the playoffs by a single game on the final day of the 2025 regular season, president of baseball operations David Stearns — and Cohen, for that matter — were under immense pressure to fumigate the stench left by the collapse. Diaz was instrumental in that pursuit, but Stearns got outmaneuvered by the Dodgers as well as outspent (the Mets said they were never given a chance to counter L.A.’s best offer).

Eight months later, the Diaz fiasco turned out to be a fortunate miss by the Mets. On Tuesday, he was placed on the IL for the second time this season with what the Dodgers described as “right-side neck inflammation.” Diaz had made only nine appearances since coming off his previous IL stint, when he missed three months after surgery to remove loose bodies from his right elbow, and posted a 12.91 ERA with three blown saves in six chances.

Diaz’s latest MRI came back clean, and the Dodgers expect him to return at some point this season. But can they count on him to be effective?

He had a 10.50 ERA through his first seven appearances before the surgery and then pitched even worse afterward for a Dodgers bullpen that ranks 23rd in ERA (4.60) since July 1 — right below the Mets (4.57) during that same span.

Last season, Diaz had a 1.63 ERA in 62 appearances.

“Given where he’s at,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts told reporters, “I don’t see a situation where he’d be out for the year.”

Judging by Diaz’s performance to date, it’s tough to tell if that’s good or bad for the Dodgers.

Which brings us to the next Mets winter target who wound up on the West Coast: Kyle Tucker, who took a four-year, $240 million deal from L.A. that included deferred money and a $64 million signing bonus. The Mets offered a four-year, $220 million contract with zero deferrals and a $75 million signing bonus. Both included opt-outs after the second and third seasons.

The Mets made their aggressive 11th-hour push for Tucker in mid-January, thinking they could capitalize on what seemed to be an unexpectedly cool market for the offseason’s most coveted free agent.

Whiffing on Tucker, with the Dodgers again emerging triumphant, was tough for the Mets to swallow, and they quickly pivoted to Bo Bichette, giving him a three-year, $126 million deal with opt-outs after each season.

File the Tucker episode as another lucky bounce for the Mets. Sure, Bichette had a terribly slow start with the Mets, which was attributed to his bumpy adjustment in New York with a new team. But the high-priced Tucker, who is pulling in a record $57.1 million annually, has been an unmitigated disaster in Los Angeles, to the point that he appeared to be fighting back tears in the dugout this past week after misplaying a routine fly ball in rightfield amid boos at Dodger Stadium.

Tucker was hitting .230 through Friday — well below his career .267 mark — with 11 home runs and a .690 OPS (compared to .841 last season). In dOver his previous 10 games, he was batting .081 (3-for-37) and recently snapped an 0-for-26 slump. Tucker’s 0.2 fWAR ranks 131st out of 137 qualified players.

Bichette, for all of his early issues, ranks 95th with a 1.8 WAR and is up to hitting .266 with 13 homers and a .706 OPS — not to mention filling in at shortstop for the injured Francisco Lindor for 47 games.

It’s only Tucker’s first season with the Dodgers, and plenty of players have rebounded from disastrous debuts, but this would be 10 times worse for him if he were playing for the Mets. He wouldn’t be hiding in a star-studded lineup headlined by Shohei Ohtani on a World Series favorite. The volume of those boos, however, is only going to get louder as the stakes get higher, and they will be further amplified if the Dodgers continue to struggle.

“It’s been a struggle in the sense that I’d like to help our team win and perform better for the guys in the clubhouse and the fans that come to the games,” Tucker told reporters Friday at Dodger Stadium. “In that aspect, I wish I would’ve done better this year.”

Chin up, Kyle. The year isn’t over. And Dodgers fans will have short memories if their team manages to pull off the three-peat, something that baseball hasn’t seen since the 2000 Yankees. But nobody is looking at the Dodgers quite the same way because of some unforeseen tough times in Hollywood, and this sequel no longer is guaranteed to have a happy ending.

By David Lennon

dave.lennon@newsday.comDPLennon

David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.