Dodgers push – Facing fresh criticism during MLB’s Collective Bargaining Agreement negotiations, Los Angeles Dodgers leadership and players are arguing that the team’s spending is only half the story—and that the results, and the depth built behind them, are what matter.
PHOENIX — The Dodgers have spent their season doing what they’ve done for years: waking up, checking the standings, and chasing another National League West title.
They’ve also spent the days—between games, between flights, between the noise of a 162-game schedule—reading the arguments that follow them into every headline.
Some critics insist the labor negotiations over the Collective Bargaining Agreement are really about the Dodgers: that they spend too much money. that they’re the reason there needs to be a salary cap. and that if there’s a prolonged work stoppage. the team should be blamed. The Dodgers say they’ve heard enough.
“[M]y honest opinion is the majority of takes about the Dodgers couldn’t be more lazy. ” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “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.”.
He added that, in his view, opponents don’t properly account for how the organization functions: “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.”
The numbers are real, and so is the argument. The Dodgers’ opening-day payroll was $316.6 million, about $40 million less than the New York Mets’ $352.2 million. Over the past five years. they’ve spent $1.75 billion—nearly the same as the Mets. and within $100 million annually of the New York Yankees. Philadelphia Phillies and San Diego Padres.
But Roberts and the players around him keep pointing to a different measure: not only what the club pays for top talent, but how it sustains performance when injuries hit and when rookies are asked to contribute immediately.
Miguel Rojas, a 2025 World Series hero, dismissed the idea that spending alone guarantees championships. “At the end of the day. it’s not about wasting money or spending money to buy the best players because that’s not going to guarantee you anything. ” he said. “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.”.
Rojas acknowledged the pattern—critics focus on the Dodgers, even as other teams sit near them in spending without matching the same postseason success. “People just talk about us.”
He then turned the conversation back on everyone else’s excuses. Anyone blaming the Mets for ruining baseball?. Rojas pointed out that the Mets have made the playoffs only twice in the past nine years and haven’t won the World Series since 1986. About the Phillies. he cited postseason appearances in each of the past four years but said they haven’t won a World Series since 2008. The Padres. in his telling. have made the playoffs four times in the past six years but have never won a World Series in their 58-year history.
And then came the Dodgers’ own ledger of sustained success: they’ve reached the postseason 13 consecutive years, won 12 NL West titles, five National League pennants and three World Series championships.
It’s why the club’s message feels less like a defense and more like disbelief. “How dare they keep trying to win,” one player’s framing echoed through the argument. The Dodgers are being lambasted again. the reporting points out. even though it wasn’t long ago that the franchise was forced into crisis.
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, as they win, spend, and build what the article describes as one of the sport’s most durable dynasties over the last 50 years, the criticism has returned.
Is that because the Dodgers are ruining baseball by being too good—or is it because they were “ruining baseball” even earlier, when they were a financial disaster? The club is asking why no one can settle on a single story.
Jack Dreyer, a Dodgers left-handed reliever, linked the current CBA noise to something Roberts said at World Series ceremonies last year.
“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.’”
Even Roberts has a sharp reply for the day-to-day image of the club as overfunded showboats. Dreyer said the Dodgers are only ruining “the carpet inside their clubhouse after all of the champagne showers over the years.”
Roberts, for his part, acknowledged what critics do get right—having the payroll and the depth that brings. “Having the payroll and the depth that gives you… certainly is a benefit,” he said. But he argued the Dodgers’ roster-building also depends on how players arrive. how they fit into a star-studded clubhouse. and how quickly the younger players can assimilate.
He framed it as something harder to measure than dollars. “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 there’s of value.”
The Dodgers point to World Series rosters from recent years, where homegrown players earning league minimum roles have had a presence in the postseason. The article then puts the spotlight on this year’s Dodgers team and the size of its internal pipeline.
The Dodgers 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. including third baseman Max Muncy. who was released by the Athletics in 2017 and signed by the Dodgers to a minor-league contract.
Muncy is described as the Dodgers’ longest-tenured active player, with the third-most homers in franchise history and a team-leading 14 homers this year.
The club also cites the players it brought in through trades and free agency—while emphasizing that keeping a roster stocked with capable options is what matters when the season turns. Anyone could have signed Muncy, the article notes. Anyone could have traded for Boston Red Sox MVP Mookie Betts in 2020. but only the Dodgers “stepped up” to land him.
Freddie Freeman, out of a job in March 2022, was signed by the Dodgers. Even Shohei Ohtani—who signed a 10-year. $700 million contract with $680 million deferred—was handled in a way the Dodgers portray as a competitive opportunity rather than an inevitability: the Dodgers report that they would have matched if the Angels had said “Yes. ” but they declined too.
Even with those acquisitions, the Dodgers’ pushback toward “spending only” criticism leans hardest on what they describe as their built-in contingency plans.
The article includes examples of high-cost decisions that didn’t land as hoped—then argues that other parts of the roster and development system filled the gaps.
They paid $182 million to starter Blake Snell. He pitched 64⅓ innings, won five games since the deal, and is sidelined until July. They made a trade-and-sign deal with the Tampa Bay Rays for Tyler Glasnow and signed him to a $136.56 million contract. Glasnow won seven games since last season, pitched 130 innings, and is out indefinitely with back spasms.
They signed free-agent closer Tanner Scott to a four-year, $72 million contract a year ago, but after poor results, the club 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.
They signed free-agent outfielder Kyle Tucker this winter to a four-year, $240 million contract, but the article notes that he is hitting .238 with four homers and a .722 OPS.
And yet, the Dodgers are described as sitting in first place in the NL West with a 39-22 record and a season-high six-game lead—the largest in baseball—built on depth, including the homegrown core.
The roster illustration is stark: the article lists “the Dodgers’ current starting rotation” as including Eric Lauer. Justin Wrobleski and Emmet Sheehan. It lists the 7-8-9 hitters in the Tuesday starting lineup as Ryan Ward, Dalton Rushing and Alex Freeland. It also lists Edgardo Henriquez, Kyle Hurt and Will Klein as part of the relief group.
That depth, Roberts said, is the deepest team he’s had in his tenure. Rojas echoed that idea: it’s not just buying players and spending money on them. “It’s not just buying the players and spending money on players,” Rojas said. “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.”.
The article also zeroes in on the Dodgers’ draft and development numbers—because that’s where the criticism usually returns.
It says the Dodgers could have 12 homegrown players with only one draft selection before the 29th overall pick since 2017. It adds that they haven’t had a top-10 pick in the draft since 2006, when they selected a pitcher named Clayton Kershaw seventh overall.
Because of success. luxury-tax penalties. and the math of where they pick. the article says the Dodgers have had an average first-round overall pick of 29.5 in the past 11 years. Still. it says they “outsmart everyone in the draft” with what it describes as one of the best developmental systems in baseball.
Examples in the article include taking an 11th-round draft pick like Wrobleski and a sixth-rounder like Sheehan and turning them into regular starters in the Dodgers rotation. It also mentions an undrafted pitcher in Dreyer into a high-leverage reliever. and catcher Will Smith—a 32nd overall pick—into a three-time All-Star.
Sheehan, speaking to the Dodgers’ development system, said, “Our development system is what gets overlooked,” adding, “how much time and money they put into finding the right people in the minor leagues to make people better.”
When he was drafted, Sheehan said he “didn’t realize how lucky” he was “coming to an organization like this.” He added that the organization invests resources into the team, while “there are a lot of guys that contribute way more than people realize, guys stepping up when we’ve had injuries.”
Dreyer’s path is presented as another rebuttal to the idea that everything is about spending. Dreyer, 27, wasn’t drafted out of the University of Iowa when the Dodgers signed him in August 2021. He began 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. stayed in the big leagues all season. and pitched in four postseason games 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.”
He said that when he first got to the Dodgers organization, he “had a long way to go,” but they “saw something that even I didn’t see in myself,” then “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,” Dreyer said. “So I’m very thankful I signed here.”
Muncy framed the roster turnover as part of why the team stays ready to win—even when new players arrive midseason. “When these guys come up, they’re ready. You know they’ve proven themselves,” he said. “It’s just plug and play with us.”
The club’s message lands on an ending that sounds less like argument and more like fatigue. “People are always going to talk about us,” Muncy said. “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.”
He added that players still have their responsibilities, no matter how loud the outside debate becomes. “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.”.
Then the article closes with a wink at what fans and critics might do next: imagine the Dodgers adding more talent. specifically a pitcher in Detroit. The piece notes that Roberts joked about acquiring Tarik Skubal at the trade deadline. describing a possible October rotation including Skubal. Ohtani. Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Snell.
“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.”
For now, the Dodgers aren’t trying to settle the CBA argument in public. They’re trying to keep playing—and keep winning.
So, in the background, the offseason debate about salary caps and spending continues. On the field. the Dodgers are 39-22. up by six games in the NL West. and still presenting the same counterpoint: results. depth. and the players they say they’ve built to be ready—whether critics are talking about payroll. draft picks. or something they insist is missing from the conversation.
Los Angeles Dodgers MLB CBA negotiations salary cap payroll Dave Roberts Miguel Rojas Jack Dreyer Max Muncy Blake Snell Tyler Glasnow Edwin Diaz Kyle Tucker Freddie Freeman Mookie Betts Shohei Ohtani