D-backs Owner Had Bold Statement About Competing With Dodgers

The Diamondbacks aren't going to roll over this season.

7. Ken Kendrick, Arizona Diamondbacks: $451,200 donated Mlb Nl Wildcard Practice | Michael Chow via Imagn Content Services, LLC

The Arizona Diamondbacks play in one of the toughest divisional environments in professional sports, sharing the NL West with a number of highly-competitive teams. The ever-present threat of the Los Angeles Dodgers and their historic spending poses a significant challenge to teams like Arizona, with smaller resource pools.

That was one of the points of emphasis in Diamondbacks managing general partner Ken Kendrick's comments to the media on Sunday, as Arizona began its first day of full-squad workouts at Salt River Fields.

Kendrick spoke about his message to the team, and the extent to which a team like the Dodgers creates a challenging environment.

"I talked to the guys about my feeling about how competitive I think they can be. Obviously, it's a big challenge with the folks over in LA being, as I said to someone the other day, the 900-pound gorilla, but my memory of the way it works in the jungle, the gorilla doesn't win every fight," Kendrick said.

"I think we're going to have a group of guys are going to bust their butts through the year. ... I hope our fans will will see that we have a club, and we will prove to them that we are a competitive club that's going to be playing baseball in October this year."

Though Los Angeles' spending has led to many conversations surrounding a potential salary cap and floor, Kendrick does not take issue with how the Dodgers conduct their business.

"The Dodgers are a very financially successful enterprise, very, very large revenues," Kendrick said. "The Dodgers are honestly not overspending their revenues. They're playing by the rules, and good for them and bad for us that they have a lot more revenue than we have. But I don't have any bad feelings about what they do and how they do it."

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With that in mind, the D-backs have spent more this offseason than anticipated. Though the general expectation was a reduction in payroll, Arizona has continued to make investments — particularly on the pitching side.

The D-backs brought back starter Merrill Kelly on a two-year, $40 million deal. They also reunited with former ace Zac Gallen on a one-year, $22.025 million contract, with a large portion of that deal deferred. And those are just the high-dollar signings, with a number of smaller investments also littering the offseason.

Kendrick said the D-backs were among MLB's top five in terms of the percentage of revenue that was re-invested into the team in 2025. He said Arizona is "back in that spot" to begin 2026, as well.

"We spent more than I thought we would [this offseason]," he said. "Sometimes you surprise yourself in life. I want us to be successful. I want our fans to feel that we are committed to investing every dollar possible and putting the best team we we can put together on the field."

"I don't want to overplay it, but, but to a degree, we're in a partnership with the fans," Kendrick said. "They generate revenue by buying tickets and coming to ball games and supporting us. And as a good partner, we need to take the money they spend and invest it wisely, and that's what we're trying to do."