MLB Salary Cap

Several ways to handle it, but I would suggest:

Graduated cap over a few years
Teams above the cap can't sign any significant free agents until under it
Teams above the cap lose draft picks or suffer other penalties

It's not like the Dodgers didn't know a cap was a possibility, so they aren't being blindsided here. So you just create incentives for them to get under the cap. If lots of teams are under the floor and need to add salary, it should be easy to trade some players too.

 

The Dodgers spending money like drunken sailors has got to be the tipping point.

Let’s not forget that even though an owner can be a billionaire, it’s still a business that can easily have expenses exceed the revenue. And these guys are billionaires losing money.

Not every owner has the luxury of presiding over the Yankees, Dodgers, RedSox, etc…. Those markets print money because they have built in Revenue sources tied in to broadcast, international markets, etc.

So for the sake of the fans, it would be a huge improvement, especially to keep the richest teams from continually pilfering other teams top stars.

 

The floor is more intriguing. That’s a lot of teams that would need to spend more money (moreso than big market teams that need to spend less).

That would be more money for the players regardless of big market cost curtailing.

And if they do it right, it should change yearly like it does in other sports… based on the health of the league finances overall.

This is also likely already agreed upon by the owners… meaning there’s 16 current owners who know they could spend more but choose not to.

 

I think it's time for a cap, MLB is the only major sport that does not have one. Will that create a possible work stoppage, IMO it will and I expect to lose a large part of the season next year before Joe Six Pack gets tired of the millionaire players and Billionaire owners and someone blinks

 

Initial proposals are usually relatively absurd because of the expectation they will meet in the middle. There are a few instances where negotiators presented a more moderate initial proposal and tried to stick to their guns, but that's not typical.

 

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id...lbpa-first-proposals-lockout-salary-cap-floor

Pretty good breakdown of the situation. The article makes a good point about pending 2028 tv revenue and both sides not wanting to destroy the games momentum leading up to that.

I think this probably ends with a salary cap/floor but without escrow or the ability to claw back money from players if revenue goals aren’t met. MLBPA can then still claim some victory if their contracts remain fully guaranteed, which is unlike other sports.

As a fan of baseball I don’t really care whether they have a cap or not, I just don’t want to lose an entire offseason or have to cancel regular season games. I mostly hope the new CBA improves some of the rules around service time, draft pick compensation, arbitration, options, waivers, etc. I also hope they add an international draft.

As an Astros fan, the best outcome would punish the very top (Yankees, Dodgers) and very bottom (Rays, A’s) teams. I think that’s going to happen in some measure regardless of which side wins the battle over the salary cap.

 

It’ll be interesting to see how the new CBA impacts the Astros. For example, if one of the things the owners trade for a salary cap is earlier free agency (potentially as soon as 4 years), all of a sudden guys like Cam Smith and Spencer Arrighetti and Yainer Diaz are on the cusp of free agency and don’t carry nearly as much value, whereas a rule like a franchise tag might make Yordan Alvarez even more valuable than he already is.

 

I fully expect the elite favored teams to have a workaround. They always have. Like, If a favored team violates rules, the league tells every other team not to do it. If a non favored team does the same thing, The book is thrown at them as an example. I do not expect that to ever change.

 

I have always been against a cap. But in 2026 with all the changes made over the last few years that made the game better (in my eyes), I am now for a cap. A floor and cap would ensure that most teams have a fighting chance to win. Splitting tv revenue amongst the teams equally and a salary cap and floor make the game more balanced. It also can get rid of blackouts with the tv revenue split and that is a great thing for everyone. I think with a cap and floor you might return to the days of players staying with their teams the entirety of their career, which I would welcome. The only question I have about keeping your own free agent is maybe there could be a thing like “bird rights” from the nba where you can exceed the hard cap to resign your own player. Keeping players with their teams drives more interest in fans of those teams. We all have players we loved as kids and a player like Bobby Witt for example needs to be able to stay in Kansas City past his long contract already. (He was just used as a stud young player playing for a small market team)

 

Players don't get paid their regular salary (only earned during the regular season) but they do earn all signing bonuses and deferred salary during a lockout. I'm assuming service time only accrues during the reg season as well.

 

Get ready for a strike, the 2027 will not happen in my opinion. Billionaires VS Millionaires is a recipe for disaster, I am in favor of a cap and floor but these greedy bastards will not come to a resolution anytime soon. I am on the side of the fan, unfortunately, we don't hold any cards in this fight. Sure, people will moan and groan and say they won't watch moving forward but that's a lie, we all will, but we will all suffer............enjoy it now boys and girls, cause come next season the rich will eat the rich.

 

This proposal is not simply “small-market owners must suddenly eat the whole floor increase.” MLB is also proposing to pool local media revenue equally, which should shift a meaningful amount of money from the high-local-revenue teams to the lower-local-revenue teams.

My guess is that pooling local media revenue will not completely cover the cost to get to the floor. My guess is that those owners will be spending $5-20M more out of their current revenue to get to the floor, with having a better team hopefully allowing them to make up the difference.

The idea that small market teams could cover the difference from current spending to the floor without a change in revenue structure is not likely close to true (excluding owners willing to lose money).

Edit: I have been disconnected from baseball news and just saw this today. Did not realize this news came out Thursday. Not sure how I missed it. Maybe I should turn up the volume during games.

 

As a follow-up, I'm not sure what surprises me more, owners agreeing to pool local media revenue equally, or the floor being that high.

That said, I doubt MLBPA will support this even though on face value this does not seem to hurt player salaries.

 

Players will oppose it on principle. But that said, this is the way to fix the game longterm - and it works in the NFL and NBA and player salaries keep going up like crazy in both of those. I tend to support whatever evens the playing field as opposed to owners vs players, but this owner proposal, in the big picture, seems really, really good for the game.

 

I'm of the mindset that even with more revenue money (via shared tv deals or via new stadium deals) that small market owners still won't spend close to proposed revenue-generated floor limits unless "forced" to. Nearly every one of those teams that were claiming that they couldn't 'compete' till they got a tax-funded subsidized stadium have now moved the goal-post (minus TB and Oak/Sacramento... for now).

Also, the idea that small market teams can't cover this proposed floor in/of itself is the same "we are too poor" argument that drives most of the MLBPA angst as is.

Depending on who's doing the math, this proposal still seems to give less of a chunk of overall revenue to players. If they figure out how to balance that accordingly, while still having said floor/cap, there is an almost fool-proof way to make this work economically without the players crying based solely on principle.

But, you can't lower the players' overall cut of the revenue.

 

The numbers I've seen have the players getting 47% currently and 50/50 in this new proposal. Which is both an increase, and also is in line with the other big sports (NFL, NBA, NHL).

Of course, devil is always in the details. But a 50-50 split seems fair if we're counting all revenue.

 

thats what I thought initially... then union rep (obviously biased) comes out and says if current proposal in line for this season, players would lose $1 billion. Now they could be just usual gas-lighting/funny math stuff... but this should be easily figured out if you have somebody level-headed enough to coordinate things between both sides.

Prove to the players that they will get increases in overall revenue and see salary projections rise commensurate to normal inflation/growth of game forces (there's been stagflation for the not super-elite players out there)... or prove to the players AND owners the exponential damage a work stoppage would do to the current economic frameworks.

The only thing both sides seem to agree on is that the national/streaming TV money is far too valuable to **** with, and any sort of work stoppage next year puts all of that in flux (as is the premise that they can't use widespread steroid use this go-around to drum interest back up in the game).