Dodgers leaning into ‘Evil Empire’ moniker with Death Star giveaway

Brandon Gomes pushed back on the notion his Dodgers are baseball’s new “Evil Empire,” but someone in the marketing department maybe didn’t get that memo.

As part of the team’s promo calendar for the 2025 season is Star Wars Night on May 14, and the giveaway is a bobblehead-sized Death Star hovering over Dodger Stadium.

The Dodgers followed a World Series title with a second straight offseason spending spree that included signing the likes of Blake Snell (five years, $182 million), Japanese phenom Roki Sasaki (minor league deal with a $6.5 million bonus), Tanner Scott (four years, $72 million) and reliever Kirby Yates on a one-year, $13 million deal.

That came a year after the team paid over a billion dollars in contracts for the likes of two-way star Shohei Ohtani, Japanese hurler Yoshinobu Yamamoto, among others.

It’s spurred comparisons to the freewheeling spending of the early 1990s Yankees, who threw big-money contracts at big-name free agents, spurring late Red Sox executive Larry Lucchino labeling the rival franchise the “Evil Empire” in 2002.

Now, however, the Dodgers have inherited the “Star Wars”-themed branding — perfect for a promo night on the calendar.

Unless you’re, say, the team’s general manager, like Gomes, who doesn’t really embrace the idea.

“We are focused on and tasked with making sure our team is as good as possible,” Gomes said on “The Show,” with Joel Sherman and Jon Heyman in January. “If that is creating ire elsewhere, that’s fine, because I think that means our fans are very happy, which is what the goal is. I think the nature of our sport, the nature of the playoff format, you can be technically the best team and it doesn’t guarantee you anything.

“All we’re doing is making sure that we have as talented a team as possible.”