MLB MLB’s latest push for a salary cap is getting closer. The posturing starts now. “We’re a year away. I have owners with really strongly held views that I need to coalesce into a position that ultimately we’ll take to the MLBPA.” Blake Swihart batted .255 in 203 games with the Red Sox between 2015-19. Michael Dwyer
PHOENIX – Here in the desert, storm clouds are gathering. They are still in the distance – whatever two years away translates to in miles – but they are visible all the same: The collective bargaining agreement between MLB’s team owners and the players expires after the 2026 season, and thanks to decreased TV revenue and widening payroll disparities forcing an economic reckoning, both sides are bracing for a gale.
It will be a necessary storm, if only because any issues not fixed sooner will have to be fixed later, and the sport suffers the longer any focus is on its finances instead of its stars. But relentless spending by the Los Angeles Dodgers and diminished broadcast money handcuffing teams in smaller markets have renewed concerns about the gap between big-market and small-market teams.
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And player skepticism of the owners’ motives has not diminished since the lockout-shortened spring training of 2022. The word in Cactus League clubhouses is that players believe owners will renew their push for a salary cap, which the MLB Players Association has resisted with all of its might for decades. Two years from the CBA’s expiration date, the questions are already becoming pointed.
“We’re a year away. I have owners with really strongly held views that I need to coalesce into a position that ultimately we’ll take to the MLBPA,” MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred told reporters Tuesday, denying that his side had a plan to ask for a salary cap or any other new rules. “I don’t think starting that debate publicly is a good start.”
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Some of his owners have started that debate anyway, though their perspectives are not identical. Baltimore Orioles owner David Rubenstein recently told Yahoo Finance, “I wish it would be the case that we would have a salary cap in baseball the way other sports do.” New York Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner, of all people, told YES Network that it’s “difficult for most of us owners to be able to do the kind of things [the Dodgers are] doing now.” Brewers owner Mark Attanasio, whose team did not sign a player for more than $1 million this offseason, said point-blank Tuesday, “We don’t have the financial ability to bring in superstars.”
But Attanasio, a member of MLB’s labor policy committee who therefore has been engaged in CBA-related conversations, echoed Manfred’s comments at this month’s owners meetings, where he said a salary cap is the only way to ensure competitive balance.
“Whatever system there is, I think that would be the goal. It’s more about having a chance than pounding teams at the top,” Attanasio said. “The goal is, how do you get the fans of every city to think they can win? … In the bigger picture, I think about if there’s a playoff game between the [small-market] cities of Buffalo and Kansas City in the NFL and it’s hugely followed, isn’t that good for the sport? And why can’t we figure out how to get closer to that?”
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Part of the answer is that while the NFL does have a salary cap, its teams share the league’s massive national television revenue, a pool MLB has not maximized in recent years as teams have tried to make the most of local cable deals that, other than in the biggest markets, have fallen apart. Big-market teams such as the Dodgers and Yankees continue to reap the annual payouts of billion-dollar cable deals. Small-market teams saw tens of millions evaporate with no way to recoup them. And without rights to Dodgers and Yankees games, no national TV package would be as lucrative as it might be otherwise.
Manfred called the television revenue disparities a “temporal problem” because, eventually, even the Dodgers, the Yankees and others will see their massive deals expire and look for new ones in a less favorable environment. Perhaps then, MLB can consolidate its rights and offer an all-inclusive streaming package or court a bigger national rights deal. In some ways, he said, the disparities caused by cable disintegration are less of a collective bargaining issue than a question of recalibrating.
“I don’t know that the next CBA is really the way to address the media issue,” Manfred said. “I think the way to address the media issue in the long haul is really in the next national negotiations after the 2028 season. I do think baseball needs to alter its approach in advance of those negotiations. I think we need more central control over all the rights, whether they were traditionally thought of as national or local. And we should be making an effort to make our product more national because those national games are worth a lot more than games that are solely in one market.”
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Still, Manfred acknowledged that until all 30 teams are forced to move on from cable revenue, the issue of disparity is real. He said that he receives emails from fans about it daily – and that he wants to be attentive to fan feedback on this issue because fan perception often dictates MLB’s financial reality.
“It’s clear that we have fans in some markets who are concerned about the ability of the team in their market to compete with the financial resources of the Dodgers,” Manfred said. “And if we’ve been consistent on one point, it’s that we try to listen to our fans.”
The last time the CBA expired, the players reluctantly agreed to a more stringent competitive balance tax system in lieu of a salary cap – one in which tax thresholds would be significantly higher than in years past, one that owners felt would be a deterrent to huge spending and that players felt would not hinder top stars’ ability to sign massive deals. To this point, the results vary.
Red Sox President Sam Kennedy indicated to reporters Monday that even recently miserly Boston is willing to exceed the competitive balance tax threshold because, as a first-time offender, the bill will not be large. But the New York Mets will pay more in tax penalties (about $64 million, according to Spotrac) than three teams will pay their entire rosters – even though their owner, Steve Cohen, indicated to the New York Post on Tuesday that he would like to pull under the CBT threshold that essentially bears his name.
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As for the team that any new limitations would be meant to stop, the CBT threshold has done little to deter the Dodgers: Their projected tax bill of about $142 million will be bigger than 10 teams’ payrolls, though the players seem less worried about how much big-market teams are spending than ways to get small-market teams to follow their lead.
“I haven’t heard any player say the Dodgers are bad for baseball. If anything, it fuels our teams to be better,” MLBPA executive board member Marcus Semien of the Texas Rangers said this week. “… I think more teams should be like the Dodgers. That’s always been my thinking.”
Owners, of course, would disagree. Attanasio argued that while the already wealthy Dodgers made an entire postseason of extra revenue on their way to the World Series title, his team made just a few million dollars for its appearance in a first-round series – not nearly enough to cover the cost of a top free agent, he said. As a result, last year’s National League Central champion did not sign one. And somewhere there, between the division champion spending hundreds of millions and the division champion wary about spending hundreds of thousands, is the basis for a perfect storm.