It should come as a surprise to no one that the Dodgers, buoyed by a new ownership group and TV deal, have a very large sum of money to pay for baseball players. Their 2013 payroll is likely to be near $250 million, or about $60 million above the luxury tax threshold, meaning they’ll pay a tax that will increase their effective payroll toward $300 million.

They took on a bunch of bad contracts in trades in 2012 and have signed expensive players in the offseason that has followed. At least in the short run, we have to assume that the Dodgers payroll constraints are such that we could not reasonably expect them to be met.

Jeff Sullivan, the best of the best at Fangraphs, wrote a piece the other day thinking about what a team of the highest paid players would look like and came to the conclusion that such a team would be a contender, but not a juggernaut. You can read the piece here.

Sullivan’s main argument is that the most expensive player is not the necessarily the best player. On that, we can all agree. What the Dodgers have the ability to do, given their vast financial resources, is outbid everyone for the best players. Put another way, in a world in which we could perfectly predict future performance, they Dodgers would have the best team.

But teams still need to predict future performance to get this right. Most MLB teams think Zach Greinke will be a better pitcher over the next five to six seasons than Anibal Sanchez, so Greinke will earn more money in free agency. But there is a decent chance we’re wrong about this prediction and Sanchez will be better.

If this occurs, Sanchez is the better player and the better investment. He will be worth more and earn less. If Greinke is the better player, Sanchez could still be the better investment because he will earn fewer dollars.

Think of it like this. A player’s value to his team is his WAR. A player’s value as an investment is his $/WAR. If Greinke is worth a healthy 30 WAR over this deal, he will help his team win 30 games, but those 30 wins will cost $4.9 million each.

If Sanchez adds 20 WAR over a five year deal but only makes $75 million, his team will only pay $3.75 million each. Greinke adds more value in the standings, but Sanchez adds more value per dollar.

The Dodgers have only conquered half of this equation. They can pay more per win than any team because they have the most money, but they still need to find the wins. If it turns out that Greinke is worth 25 wins and Sanchez is worth 30 wins over the same period, they should have signed Sanchez.

The Dodgers’ riches don’t make them better at making smart baseball moves, it means they can afford to spend more per win. They can pay Greinke more than any team, but that money will only work if they spend it on the best players. The Dodgers don’t care about the value of their investments, but they do care that their players are the best players.

They can pay $17 million to Josh Beckett to be a fifth starter when most teams would spend $7 million for that level of performance. They can pay Greinke $24 million to be a $19 million arm, but they can’t pay to make Greinke better.

This is the trap of being the Dodgers. The Dodgers are forking over a ton of cash to these players on long term deals because these big deals make sure the Dodgers get the free agent players (and trades/extensions) they wish. But if they choose the wrong players, they are stuck.

While they can buy more players if the current ones don’t perform, can they really afford to spend money to replace a big contract? Greinke makes $24.5 million a season now. If he flames out in two seasons, can the Dodgers replace him? Can they put a $25 million arm in the bullpen or on the waiver wire? Do they really have that much money?

The conflict they face is roster size and future commitment. If Carl Crawford turns out to be terrible for the Dodgers, can they just eat his contract, cut him loose and buy the next big free agent to replace him in LF? Do they have that much money? I don’t know.

The Dodgers can outbid you for the best players and spend more per win than any team in baseball, but can they spend their way out from under these contracts if they go bad?

They can afford at $250 million payroll. Can they afford to pay $250 million to an average team? What happens when they need to get better?

The flip side of this is a team like the Rays who constantly keep their costs down and derives value from young, pre-free agency players. It keeps them from having a high payroll, but it also provides something the Dodgers no longer have; flexibility.

This huge payroll limits the Dodgers flexibility. It creates a logjam. They can’t just go sign Hamilton to replace Crawford. With a $20 million guy at all 8 positions and 5 starter spots, they would pay $260 million plus the bullpen and bench. That’s workable for them I think, but only if those guys perform. What happens if one or more aren’t good enough and need to be replaced? Can they pay $40 million per position? $20 million for the new guy and $20 million for their new benchwarmer. Could they pay $60 million?

The Rays can easily jettison a $1.5 million outfielder and replace him with another, but I’m not sure you can do the same when the player you want to get rid of has four years left on his deal and is making $25 million annually.

The Dodgers can outspend everyone, but that doesn’t mean they’ll be a juggernaut and a force to be reckoned with. They still have to make the right choices. They still have to pick the best 25 players to put on their club. They’ll sign pretty much any player they want, but they have to want the right guys. If they make a mistake, I’m not so sure they can just replace them with a better player during the next offseason.

The Dodgers can outbid you, but they can’t necessarily outsmart you. If Anibal Sanchez is worth more wins than Greinke over the next few years, it will be proof of that.