The Windup: The Roundtable | Are the Dodgers Winning Good or Bad for Baseball?

Episode 185 | October 17, 2025 Hosts: Grant Brisbee, Andy McCullough, Sam Miller (The Athletic)

Episode Overview

In this deep-dive Roundtable, Grant, Andy, and Sam tackle the question: Is the continued dominance of the Los Angeles Dodgers good or bad for baseball? Using the Dodgers-Brewers NLCS as a focal point, the trio explores the implications of big-market spending, the ever-contentious salary cap debate, labor relations, and what the Dodgers' spending power means for the league's competitive balance and future.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Dodgers vs. Brewers: Uneven Playing Field? (02:48–05:50)

• Dodgers up 3-0: The panel agrees the Brewers aren't a bad team, but the Dodgers’ top-tier pitching (Snell, Yamamoto, Glasnow) and deep roster make Milwaukee look overmatched.
• Sam: “Are the Dodgers in trouble?” (03:36)
  • Grant and Andy joke about Brewers’ slim chances and the déjà vu aspect of facing a juggernaut L.A. team.
• Discussion shifts to broader issues: They quickly turn to the economic roots behind these matchups: payroll disparity, transactions, and what separates truly large-market contenders from the field.

2. Is Dodger Dominance a Labor Issue? (05:50–22:53)

The CBA, Salary Cap, and Narrative

• Public discourse and perception: Are we actually supposed to “root” for the Brewers as pro-labor/anti-big spending fans?
  • Sam: “I feel more like in this day and age, there's a sense of overreacting to every step along the way when really most things don't change anything.” (08:44)
• Jeff Passon's Argument: His ESPN piece claims Dodgers World Series wins could fuel calls for a salary cap and affect CBA negotiations.
  • Sam: “I am skeptical… These are long held positions… It feels kind of like assuming a level of amateurishness on the parts of the negotiators to think that the results of this series have anything to do with it.” (07:56)
• Andy reframes the stakes: "It's been very clear from MLB this season that they are trying to create a groundswell for the feeling there needs to be a cap to, quote, unquote, fix baseball." (10:13)

Notable exchanges:

• Andy: “Are the owners willing to, you know, lose a season [over a salary cap]? Maybe, but I kind of doubt it… It doesn't make economic sense.” (12:43)
• Sam: “The whole reason that fans get mad that their owners are cheapskates is because they want them to spend more money so that they will be a better team...” (16:42)
• Sam: “It's not about fairness… It's about them trying to create favorable conditions for their business negotiations.” (35:26)

Ownership’s Motives and Union Resistance

• Salary cap is owner wish for leverage, not competitive fairness.
• Union sees a cap as "the reddest of red lines" and will fiercely resist.

3. Competitive Balance and the Outlier Problem (22:01–36:15)

• Long-view on narrative: Andy suggests owners may be planting the narrative now to influence even future generations of players and fans.
  • Andy: “What if the goal is just to make it so that 10-year-old kids watching baseball, growing up to play baseball think there should be a salary cap…” (22:01)
• Actual player sentiment: Andy finds no widespread resentment among players towards the Yankees/Dodgers; most hope to get paid by big-spending teams, not defeat them ideologically.
  • Andy: “They're like, man, I hope to get to free agency and get paid. If not by the Dodgers or Yankees, then by someone like them.” (27:34)
• Dodgers’ edge is not just payroll size: Luck, good decisions, and the ability to absorb mistakes distinguish L.A.
  • Andy: “They make good decisions very often, and they don’t really get burned when their money doesn’t work out.” (15:56)
• Extreme outliers: The Dodgers (and Mets’ Steve Cohen) are compared to “outliers” whose wealth fundamentally changes team economics.

4. The Real Issue: Outliers or Systemic Problem? (35:02–36:15)

• Grant suggests that calls for “fixing the outliers” (L.A. and N.Y.) may supplant the old salary cap debate among fans.
• Sam: “It’s not a fair sport. It’s never going to be a fair sport. It’s fine. It’s been unjust since the first day.” (35:26)
• The panel underscores that even with a cap, perfect competitive balance is a myth; owners simply want financial control.

5. Great Players Aging: The Christian Yelich & Bryce Harper Dilemmas (36:36–55:58)

Christian Yelich’s Postseason Struggles

• Sam on Yelich: “In his second postseason game…he hit a two run homer. In the 115 plate appearances since then, he has one RBI.” (37:32)
  • “Christian Yelich makes me want to refute that [postseason stats matter]…but it kind of is. It’s rough to watch.”
• Andy explains injuries—particularly Yelich’s chronic back issues—compound post-season frustration, but also praises his leadership: “He really does, like, shoulder that responsibility in a way that is becoming fairly rare.” (39:32)
• The group empathizes with the challenge of playing through pain, highlighting Jackson Chourio’s resilience as well (44:41).

Bryce Harper: Is He Still "Elite"?

• Dave Dombrowski’s recent public comments questioning if Harper can “be elite” again sparked debate.
  • Sam: “Dombrowski just got like, podcaster brain…he’s having this discussion about whether Bryce Harper is at an arbitrarily defined level.” (45:42)
  • Andy: “My read on it was, it was purposeful. I think they, as an organization, are trying to thread the needle of running things back while also trying to shake things up…” (48:29)
  • Dombrowski seems to be subtly challenging Harper (and perhaps others) to maintain or reclaim their superstar form.
• Discussion about aging stars: Is a slight decline (from a .900 to .844 OPS) the start of a worrying trend? Is it fair to expect constant MVP-level production? The hosts debate if this is baseball-speak, real critique, or just “podcaster brain.” (50:24–54:20)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Sam (on rooting implications): “I’m skeptical that rooting for the Brewers as like, some sort of, like, labor solidarity thing… really connects.” (08:43)
• Andy (owners’ position): “They have a huge say in this. The owners, you know, the 30 sort of guys who run their teams are basically able to point to, you know, yeah, the franchise valuation does not immediately equal cash. You know, which, like, we should all have these sort of problems.” (13:00)
• Sam (salary cap logic): "They just want to save money. They see themselves as businessmen. … This will affect player salaries by billions over the course of decades. … That's why, when, you know, like, Jeff says it's about narrative … I think that that's not really true … I think that it is 100% about reality.” (18:41)
• Andy (about Dodger choices): “A lot of that is money, but it's also making good choices. And that's kind of, I think, what is frustrating for fans of other teams.” (15:56)
• Sam (refuting fairness as a main goal): "We have fallen into the trap of, again, talking about whether it's a fair game…And that's the trick, right? It's not a fair sport. … That's the lie. It's about them, you know, trying to create favorable conditions for their business negotiations." (35:26)
• Sam (about Yelich): “Christian Yelich makes me want to refute that position [about postseason stats], but it kind of is. It’s rough to watch.” (37:32)

Timestamps for Important Segments

• 02:48–05:50 – Initial discussion of Dodgers-Brewers: Is the series really in doubt?
• 05:50–22:53 – Deep dive on salary cap discourse, Jeff Passan's article, what’s really driving labor/management tension, and why the current discourse seems more about perception than actual negotiation leverage.
• 22:53–36:15 – Owners’ long-term strategy, union resistance, and re-centering the real motives behind cap debates; public narrative versus financial reality.
• 36:36–45:42 – Aging stars: Christian Yelich’s postseason woes and what role injury and luck play in legacy and team outcome.
• 45:42–55:58 – The Bryce Harper “elite” debate, general managers using public comments as managerial tools, and how aging stars are discussed in modern baseball’s analytical context.

Overall Tone & Takeaways

The conversation is candid, self-aware, and laced with dry humor. The hosts openly dissect both surface-level news (standings, box scores) and the deep structural forces shaping MLB. They resist simple narratives (“Dodgers good/bad”), focus on underlying realities (labor power, economics), and highlight how the public conversation is often a distraction from the slow-moving, deeply entrenched struggles between players and owners.

For fans or listeners without a background in labor issues or union history, this episode is an excellent primer—with clear examples, real-world implications, and enough trivia (like Yelich’s cursed RBI stat) to make it engaging.

If you want fast box scores, this isn’t your podcast. If you want a smart, sometimes irreverent, always informed analysis of why what happens off the field echoes as loudly as what happens on it—this episode delivers.