PHOENIX — The Los Angeles Dodgers have been minding their own business, trying to secure another National League West title, hoping for a historic World Series three-peat, and not uttering a peep about the labor negotiations.
But every day they wake up and read the newspaper, turn on the TV, check out their iPhone, someone is dragging them through the crosshairs of the Collective Bargaining Agreement negotiations.
They’re spending too much money.
They’re the reason there needs to be a salary cap.
If there’s a prolonged work stoppage, blame the Dodgers.
The Dodgers have heard enough, and now, it’s about time everyone shuts their mouth.
"My honest opinion is the majority of takes about the Dodgers couldn’t be more lazy," Dodgers manager Dave Roberts tells USA TODAY Sports, "that it’s just about the payroll. It’s about the draft. It’s about layering on where we pick in the draft annually. The player development. How we acquire international talent. How we perform consistently at the major-league level.
"I actually think it’s a competitive advantage in the sense that people feel that way, and not look at themselves in the mirror and see how they can operate things better. So that’s beneficial for us."
Sure, the Dodgers spend lots of money, with an opening-day payroll of $316.6 million, which is still about $40 million less than the New York Mets’ $352.2 million. The Dodgers have spent $1.75 billion the past five years, which is virtually the same amount as the Mets, and within $100 million annually of the New York Yankees, Philadelphia Phillies and San Diego Padres.
"At the end of the day," 2025 World Series hero Miguel Rojas said, "it’s not about wasting money or spending money to buy the best players because that’s not going to guarantee you anything. You can see it. There are another five or six clubs close to us in payroll, and they haven’t accomplished it. That’s why people aren’t talking about them, because they haven’t won.
"People just talk about us."
Anyone blaming the Mets for ruining baseball?
Oh, that’s right, they’ve made the playoffs only twice in the past nine years, and haven’t won the World Series since 1986, so we don’t care.
The Phillies have reached the postseason each of the past four years, but since they haven’t won a World Series since 2008, no biggie.
The Padres have been to the playoffs four times in the past six years, but they have never won a World Series in their 58-year history, so they remain that cute little team in that lovely beach town.
But, oh, those damn Dodgers.
They have reached the postseason 13 consecutive years, won 12 NL West titles, five National League pennants and three World Series championships.
How dare they keep trying to win.
It was just 15 years ago that the Dodgers filed for bankruptcy. Major League Baseball had to step in and take control of day-to-day operations, forcing the sale of the team, and calling them an embarrassment to the sport.
Now that they’re winning, spending money and creating one of the greatest dynasties in the last 50 years, they’re being lambasted again.
So, are the Dodgers ruining baseball because they’re too good and have the greatest business model in the sport, or were they ruining baseball before when they were a financial disaster?
Please, will someone in the baseball hierarchy kindly step up and make up their mind.
"When we hear stuff about the CBA and that kind of stuff, how the Dodgers are ruining baseball," Dodgers left-handed reliever Jack Dreyer says, "it’s kind of what Doc (Roberts) said at the World Series ceremonies last year, 'Let’s just keep winning and continue to ruin baseball until they tell us we can’t.'"
Right now, the only thing the Dodgers are ruining is the carpet inside their clubhouse after all of the champagne showers over the years.
"Having the payroll and the depth that gives you," Roberts says, "certainly is a benefit. No one’s debating that. But I do think that the players we acquire, how we play the game every night, getting younger players to assimilate in a star-studded clubhouse, that’s important. That’s hard to quantify, but that’s of value.
"If you look at the World Series the last couple of years, there’s a lot of home-grown guys making league minimum that have been on postseason rosters."
Take a look at this year’s Dodgers team:
They had 12 homegrown players, including eight who appeared in Tuesday’s 6-5 victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks.
They had five homegrown players in their starting lineup, counting third baseman Max Muncy, who was released by the Athletics in 2017, and signed by the Dodgers to a minor-league contract.
Certainly, anyone could have signed Muncy, who is now their longest-tenured active player with the third-most homers in franchise history, with a team-leading 14 homers this year.
Anyone could have traded for Boston Red Sox MVP Mookie Betts in 2020, but only the Dodgers stepped up to land him.
First baseman Freddie Freeman was without a job in March 2022, but the Dodgers decided to sign him.
Even Shohei Ohtani, who signed 10-year, $700 million contract with $680 million deferred, gave everyone a chance to match the contract, and would have happily returned to the Angels if they said, "Yes." They declined, too.
Having a huge payroll, of course, has enabled the Dodgers to get away with free-agent decisions that could have devastated other teams.
They paid $182 million to starter Blake Snell. He has pitched 64⅓ innings, has won five games since the deal and is sidelined until July.
They did a trade-and-sign deal with the Tampa Bay Rays for Tyler Glasnow and signed him to a $136.56 million contract. He has won seven games since last season, pitched 130 innings and is out indefinitely with back spasms.
They signed free-agent closer Tanner Scott a year ago to a four-year, $72 million contract, only for him to pitch so poorly that they went out and signed a new closer in Edwin Diaz to a three-year, $69 million contract. Diaz is now out until after the All-Star break with elbow surgery.
And they signed free-agent outfielder Kyle Tucker this winter, giving him a stunning four-year, $240 million contract, only for him to be hitting .238 with four homers and a .722 OPS.
Yet, here they are, sitting in first place in the NL West with a 39-22 record, with a season-high six-game lead – the largest in baseball – while relying on their uncanny depth, and yes, those homegrown kids.
Who would have imagined that their current starting rotation would include Eric Lauer, Justin Wrobleski and Emmet Sheehan? Their 7-8-9 hitters in the starting lineup Tuesday would be Ryan Ward, Dalton Rushing and Alex Freeland? And that Edgardo Henriquez, Kyle Hurt and Will Klein would be used in relief?
No wonder Roberts believes this is the deepest team he’s had in his tenure, a sentiment echoed by several Dodger veterans.
"The way they constructed the roster in this organization deserves a lot of credit," Rojas said. "It’s not just buying the players and spending money on players, it’s having Plan B’s and C’s behind them, and that’s where I feel the organization is not getting enough credit for building a full team that is capable of sustaining so many injuries throughout the season and having guys ready when they get called up."
It’s remarkable that the Dodgers could have 12 homegrown players with only one draft selection before the 29th overall pick since 2017. They haven’t had a top-10 pick in the draft since 2006 when they selected a pitcher by the name of Clayton Kershaw seventh overall.
The Dodgers, because of all their success and luxury-tax penalties, have had an average first-round overall pick of 29.5 in the past 11 years, but continue to outsmart everyone in the draft with perhaps the best developmental system in the game. They have taken an 11th-round draft pick like Wrobleski and a sixth-rounder like Sheehan and turned them into regular starters in the Dodgers rotation, an undrafted pitcher in Dreyer into a high-leverage reliever, and catcher Will Smith, a 32nd overall pick, into a three-time All-Star.
"Our development system is what gets overlooked," Sheehan says, "how much time and money they put into finding the right people in the minor leagues to make people better. When I got drafted, I didn’t realize how lucky I was coming to an organization like this. Obviously, they put a lot of money into the team here, which is awesome, but there are a lot of guys that contribute way more than people realize, guys stepping up when we’ve had injuries."
Dreyer, 27, wasn’t even drafted out of the University of Iowa when the Dodgers signed him in August, 2021, and had him start pitching in the Arizona Complex League for all of 2022. The next thing he knew, he was making the Dodgers’ opening-day roster in 2025, remained in the big leagues all season, and was pitching in four games in the postseason without allowing a run.
"One of the things that the Dodgers do better than anybody else," Dreyer said, "is that as soon as you get into that organization, they’re doing everything they can to develop you to maximize your potential. When I first got to the Dodgers organization, I had a long way to go before I had a chance at anything. I think they saw something that even I didn’t see in myself, but they kept fine-tuning, and tweaking, and revamping different things until I got to this point.
"Every single guy who’s in the Dodger organization is very lucky with all of the resources the Dodgers provide, so I’m very thankful I signed here."
When the Dodgers call up a player, they always seem to be ready to not only perform in the big leagues, but to be vital contributors to a World Series championship.
"With us bringing up so many guys, it allows them to develop and not get rushed," Muncy said, "which is a really good thing when you look at it that they can plug in immediately and there’s not really a learning curve. When these guys come up, they’re ready. You know they’ve proven themselves. It’s just plug and play with us."
And win. Over. And over. And over again.
Enough to be the posterboys for MLB’s burning desire for a salary cap.
"People are always going to talk about us," Muncy says, "and even when the CBA is over, they’ll talk about us. It is what it is. It’s for the union and the owners to worry about.
"Obviously, we have some say on what goes on, but at the same time, we’ve got to go out there and play and not be dwelling what’s being said about us. It’s not easy. You can have all of the money in the world, you can have all of the talent in the world, but you have to come through in the right moments."
And if you believe you could use just a little more talent in the second half, there’s a certain pitcher in Detroit who would fit in quite nicely in the starting rotation. Can you imagine if the Dodgers acquire Tarik Skubal at the trade deadline, giving them a rotation of Skubal, Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Snell in October?
"They would go ballistic," Roberts said laughing. "But we would have the prospect capital to do that. We are one of the teams that could do that with the Tigers."
So, go ahead, brace yourself with the possibility, and then stick that in your CBA pipe and smoke it.
Follow Nightengale on X: @Bnightengale
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Dodgers fire back at critics of LA's big spending amid MLB CBA talks
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