Sure sounds like the Padres are throwing a wrench into the Dodgers' superteam dreams

The Los Angeles Dodgers laid down the gauntlet early this offseason, jumping the market to sign Blake Snell to a five-year, $182 million deal. Immediately adding a two-time Cy Young winner to address your roster's biggest need is a heck of a way to follow up your World Series title — and with seemingly limitless resources, Andrew Friedman and Co. are far from done. L.A. may no longer be in serious contention for Juan Soto, but with names like Corbin Burnes, Max Fried, Teoscar Hernandez and Nolan Arenado swirling around, the team is threatening to run away with the 2025 title before Winter Meetings even begin.

Luckily for the rest of the league, however, at least one rival appears poised to hand the Dodgers a rare L. It's no secret that Los Angeles would love to follow Snell with Japanese ace Roki Sasaki, who brings top-of-the-rotation upside at a criminally discounted price. But for once, it sounds like Friedman might not get his wish.

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Padres sound like the frontrunners for Roki Sasaki

While Burnes and Fried are established big-league aces, Sasaki might be even more tantalizing, bringing drool-worthy stuff without the $200 million bidding war. The Dodgers were thought to be the frontrunners when the righty was first posted, especially given L.A.'s success in luring fellow Japanese stars Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto last offseason. The team has the ideal location and a championship pedigree, plus a need in the rotation even with Snell in tow.

But hold on just a minute. The San Diego Padres also check all of those boxes, having pushed the Dodgers to five games in the NLDS this season and boasting Sasaki's friend and mentor, Yu Darvish, in their rotation. And at least one recent report suggests that it's the Friars, not the Dodgers, who are in the lead for Sasaki's services right now.

Sasaki and his team have kept things very, very close to the vest so far, so take that report with a grain of salt. But it's not the first time that the Padres have been made to seem like the favorites here, and we don't really know anything about Sasaki and what he might want; it's possible he doesn't want to play under the bright lights of L.A., or that he doesn't want to share Japanese endorsement deals with Ohtani and Yamamoto.

Poaching Sasaki would be a huge win for the Padres, allowing them to keep pace with their division rivals without adding any significant cash to a payroll that's already getting stretched thin with all the big deals on San Diego's books. Bring the righty in, and suddenly they might have even more pitching depth than the Dodgers, with a lineup that looked awfully dangerous this past October.