A labor battle is officially brewing in Major League Baseball.
And the Dodgers –– surprise, surprise –– are getting caught in the middle of the mayhem.
Over the coming months, there will be a narrative-flinging rock fight between the league and the players’ union. A prolonged tug-of-war for the hearts and minds of fans over the owners’ recent proposal for a hard salary cap, and the union’s staunch stance against it.
In the center of the crossfire, of course, will be the Dodgers.
No other team is more symbolic of the current state of the sport.
No other club, in this chess match of a negotiation, will be as big a pawn in a dispute that could threaten the 2027 season.
There is their record-setting payroll. Their back-to-back World Series titles. Their seemingly endless stream of resources and revenues, creating a modern-day dynasty with no clear end in sight.
And already, the commissioner’s office has used the club as a prime example in its pro-cap messaging.
The league invoked the Dodgers (and their hefty luxury tax bill) by name to refute an initial non-cap proposal from the MLBPA. It used the Dodgers’ payroll (and, once again, luxury tax bill) to illustrate financial disparities it has argued necessitate bigger changes in the sport.
Most recently, commissioner Rob Manfred even cited the Dodgers directly while discussing labor talks at the owners’ meetings earlier this month.
“I think that the Dodgers understand there is a need to update the overall economic model in the industry and that the upside associated with that, in terms of growing the industry, growing the popularity of the sport, is big for large markets, small markets, owners and players in every way,” he said, according to ESPN.
Again, none of this is surprising.
But that doesn’t mean it’s gone unnoticed by an unamused Dodgers clubhouse.
“Of course they’re always gonna go after the people spending the most,” said catcher Will Smith, who serves as the union representative for the Dodgers’ roster.
“We shouldn’t be the reason why they propose something like that,” veteran infielder Miguel Rojas echoed. “It is annoying.”
Granted, Dodgers players aren’t blind to the realities of their nearly half-billion-dollar payroll, or the competitive advantages that indisputably come along with it.
“Obviously, having those resources is gonna make your team so much better,” Rojas noted. “I understand all that. I’m not shying away from all that. It’s great to be a Dodger.”
The counter-argument, however, is that their success has been (by and large) good for the health of the league.
Shohei Ohtani’s stardom has exploded since signing with the team, growing MLB’s international appeal. The club’s trips to the past two World Series netted some of the largest television ratings in the event’s recent history.
The Dodgers winning both times certainly didn’t ease parity concerns.
But, their players have argued, they very easily could have lost during either postseason run, needing more than just money to overcome bouts of October adversity.
“The thing that I’m most proud of is the culture that we have created,” third baseman Max Muncy said in the wake of the team’s Game 7 triumph in Toronto last year. “I hope that’s what’s talked about the most.”
Something else not lost in the clubhouse: It was just last spring that Manfred seemingly praised the Dodgers’ approach when asked about their spending at the start of the 2025 season.
“The Dodgers have gone out and done everything possible, always within the rules that currently exist, to put the best possible team on the field,” the commissioner said during last year’s Cactus League media day. “I think that’s a great thing for the game. That type of competitive spirit is what people want to see.”
In that same press conference, Manfred did plant seeds about concerns the league claimed to be hearing from fans regarding “the ability of the team in their market to compete with the financial resources of the Dodgers.”
Yet, up until recently, MLB had largely touted parity levels within its sport, as The Athletic detailed earlier this month.
As one Dodgers player, who declined to speak on the record, noted: “Two years ago, everything was fine. And now that we’ve won twice, [the sport] is broken?”
From the union’s perspective, MLB’s competitive balance problem is a byproduct of having too many low-spending teams. It’s part of the reason the MLBPA, instead of a salary cap, proposed a “competitive integrity tax” that would require teams to raise payrolls to a higher minimum amount.
Rojas has personal experience with that dynamic, having spent eight seasons with the Miami Marlins from 2015-2022.
Every year of that stretch, and in every year since, Miami ranked in the bottom third of the league in payroll. Even after surprise playoff runs in the 2020 and 2023 seasons –– the first of which, Rojas played a key part in –– the franchise has not made significant jumps in spending.
“You always want ownership and the team to follow up what the players are doing, you know,” Rojas said. “They always ask you to get better on the field, and if not, you’re gonna get demoted or you’re gonna get released. So as a player, you want the same thing from ownership and the front office.
“And in Miami, it was really hard to draw fans. They did everything they could possibly do to draw fans in a different fashion. Putting new things in the stadium. Changing colors. Changing the uniform and all that. But at the end of the day, that’s not baseball. You have to give the team a better opportunity with more talent, spending so much money. And it’s not my money, so it’s really easy for me to say … I don’t know what the situation with the owner is. But at the end of the day, that’s what the players are always looking for.”
A long-standing lack of trust between players and owners has only added to such complications.
While the league has framed a salary cap –– something that exists in each of North America’s other major pro sports leagues –– as a way to level the playing field and promote more parity, players see it as a ploy for owners to increase their franchise values by controlling labor costs.
Using a successful, albeit historically big-spending, team like the Dodgers as an example for the merits of a cap, Rojas insisted, won’t be persuasive to players across the league, either.
Case in point: Just this spring, rival star players like Bryce Harper and Manny Machado actually praised the Dodgers as being good for the game.
“It’s been kind of annoying continuing to hear that we are the ones that need to take the hit,” Rojas said, “for the league to be in better shape.”
For now, closed-door negotiations and open-air PR campaigns regarding a new collective bargaining agreement remain in a nascent phase, ahead of the expiration of the league’s current CBA on Dec. 1.
Just like in every other MLB clubhouse, Smith will apprise his Dodgers teammates of each new proposal, and solicit feedback from the room to take back to the union.
“We got one vote as the Dodgers,” he noted.
They’ll just be the ones to loom largest in the process.
“[The league is] trying to get a salary cap, they’re gonna do anything they can to get it,” Smith said. “And we’re gonna do everything we can to fight it.”
