Kyle Tucker reached an agreement with the Dodgers last Thursday, and thoughts have been swirling around my brain ever since. Sometimes I have trouble sleeping because I keep writing this post in my head. I’m fortunate enough to have this website as my outlet, so here goes.
It feels almost quaint that a year ago, the Dodgers signing Tanner Scott seemed to be the straw that broke the camel’s back. I ran a poll around that time, asking, “Do you want a salary cap in the next MLB CBA?” 36,589 people responded, and two-thirds said yes. It was later pointed out to me that I should have made clear that a cap comes with a floor.
If I had phrased it as “a salary cap and floor,” the number may have been even higher than 67.2%. I also think that if I run the poll again in the coming weeks, an even higher percentage will vote for a cap, since the last year has seen the Dodgers win a second consecutive World Series and then add Edwin Diaz and Tucker.
The poll had a second question: “Are you willing to lose the entire 2027 MLB season for a salary cap?” 27,629 people responded to the second question, implying about a quarter of those who answered the first question either didn’t see the second just below it or didn’t care to grapple with the consequences of a salary cap.
For those who did respond, the second question was more evenly split: 50.18% said yes, they would lose the entire 2027 season for a salary cap. That was stunning to me, because I view a lost season as a disastrous outcome that must be avoided.
Evan Drellich of The Athletic spoke to a source who made it clear ownership will push for a salary cap during upcoming CBA negotiations. But according to Drellich’s colleague Ken Rosenthal, a salary cap is “considered highly unlikely by many in the sport” and “many player agents and club executives are skeptical games will be lost” in 2027.
Even if this round of negotiations doesn’t result in a cap, I think it’ll happen in my lifetime. If necessary, MLBTR can adapt to that new world and hopefully become experts in explaining salary cap nuances.
The purported goal of ownership is not to get a salary cap, though. It’s said to be parity, or competitive balance. That doesn’t mean every team has an equal chance to win each year or dynasties are impossible. It does mean that all 30 teams have roughly the same ability to sign top free agents and retain their own stars. I think fans want a small market team like the Pirates to have about the same chance as the Dodgers to sign Kyle Tucker, or to be able to keep Paul Skenes. Perhaps they want a world where teams can differentiate from each other based on drafting ability, player development, shrewd trades, and the intelligence of their allotted free agent signings, but not so much on payroll.
At the risk of stating the obvious, I do not think the Pirates can run a $400MM payroll and remain profitable. The Dodgers reportedly reached a billion dollars in revenue in 2024. Many teams, the Pirates included, generated roughly one-third of that. This does not feel fair or good for baseball.
The Dodgers are so profitable that the “dollars per WAR” they’re willing to pay seems to be on another planet. Tucker projects for 4.5 WAR in 2026, and the Dodgers seem to be valuing that at $120MM including taxes. Even if they think he’s a 5 WAR player, they’re paying $24MM per WAR on him in 2026. With the possible exception of the Mets, who are reportedly not profitable, I don’t think any other teams are willing to pay more than $12MM per WAR.
Which brings us to the desire by many for a salary cap. A cynic might say that while owners and fans are aligned on the need for competitive balance, owners also love the salary cap idea because it will depress player salaries long-term, saving them money and increasing franchise valuations.
I consider a true “salary cap no matter what” stance from ownership to be the nuclear option. If the true goal here is parity or competitive balance, then a cap is just a means to an end, and not the only option or factor. That leads me to a series of questions.
Who should bear the financial burden of restoring competitive balance?
There is often an assumption that this whole problem should just be solved by the players making less money. I certainly understand the logic that Tucker would be just fine making $20-30MM a year instead of $60MM.
But the truth is, the average MLB player does not accumulate the six years required to reach free agency (though he may get there with less service time if he’s released). This is admittedly 18 years old, but this New York Times article points to a study suggesting the average MLB career length is 5.6 years.
Though I haven’t run my own study on the average length of ownership, I’ll venture to say it easily exceeds 5.6 years. A case can be made that if one of these parties must be stewards of the game, making financial sacrifices for the greater good of competitive balance, it should be ownership.
I think MLB would argue that they can devise a salary cap/floor system in which players will actually earn more money in total. Drellich reported last summer that commissioner Rob Manfred has suggested just that to players. There’s a trust issue here. Players may not believe Manfred is being forthright on that point or that they have a full picture of team revenue. Furthermore, they may be wary that if they allow for a cap system that grants them a percentage of revenue that is advantageous for them now, owners will eventually chip away at that percentage. Once a cap is in place, it will never be removed.
I believe common sense dictates that a model where players compete for a finite and defined pool of money means they will earn less as a group, though it may be distributed more evenly. If players eventually earn less as a group, then they will be bearing the cost of competitive balance while owners pocket the difference. I think we should at least entertain the opposite: big market teams redistribute more of their profits to smaller markets in the name of competitive balance. More on that at the end of this post.
Why is a cap the default solution for so many people?
Having read the autobiography of MLBPA forefather Marvin Miller, I don’t think there was ever a time that MLB players were winning the PR war over teams. I don’t think Miller cared. Players’ salaries are well-known and huge compared to normal people, and they’ll probably always have an uphill battle getting widespread fan support to protect that.
These days, I doubt Tony Clark has a narrative he can sell to win over a majority of baseball fans. He might say MLB actually does have competitive balance, or talk about attendance records, and World Series ratings, or suggest that some teams don’t try hard enough to win. But Manfred will win the PR battle because he is acknowledging real widespread fan sentiment that the current system is unfair and broken.
I think it’s easiest to default to “baseball needs a salary cap” because the NFL, NBA, and NHL have one. But why do those sports have a cap? Is it because they tried many different approaches toward competitive balance and arrived at a cap? I am admittedly not a labor historian of those sports, but I think it’s mostly that those sports’ players didn’t accidentally fall backwards into a Marvin Miller, and thus their unions caved to ownership demand for a cap.
I won’t speak to the competitive balance of other sports because it’s not my area. But when people ask me whether I think an MLB salary cap would have the desired effect of competitive balance, my answer is yes. If MLB could somehow get players to agree to a cap/floor system with a tight salary range (say, $20MM), I do think the financial advantages of certain teams would be snuffed out and the smartest teams would be in the playoffs every year regardless of market size. I’d be interested to see what the payroll range would be and how small market teams would react to the floor, but the appeal is obvious.
Why does the current system have significant penalties for exceeding various payroll thresholds, but no apparent penalty for running excessively low payrolls?
There are people out there who say the “real problem” is certain MLB owners who won’t spend. I don’t think forcing the Marlins to spend another $25MM on players this winter would solve the inherent unfairness of a competitor having triple their revenue.
Still, in each CBA, MLB has succeeded in increasing the penalties for going over competitive balance tax thresholds – thresholds that sometimes don’t increase even at the rate of inflation. The initial highest tax rate was 35% on the overage; now it’s 110%. I assume that if owners abandon their pursuit of a cap at some point, they’ll at least add a new “Dodgers tier” beyond the current 110% “Cohen tax.”
But in the name of fairness and competitive balance, why is it that no real penalties exist for running extremely low payrolls?
As Rosenthal and Drellich noted in November, “If a team’s final luxury-tax payroll is not one and a half times the amount it receives in a given season from local revenue sharing, it will likely stand a better chance of losing a grievance for not properly using its revenue-sharing money to improve on-field performance, which the CBA requires.” They go on to add that “the Marlins were expected to be among the highest revenue-sharing recipients at roughly $70 million if not more,” which would necessitate a $105MM CBT payroll.
The CBA specifically says, “each Club shall use its revenue sharing receipts (including any distributions from the Commissioner’s Discretionary Fund) in an effort to improve its performance on the field.” If a team falls short of the 1.5x threshold and the MLBPA files a grievance, it’s on the team to demonstrate that it did use its revenue sharing funds to improve on-field performance.
The Marlins ran the game’s lowest CBT payroll in 2025 at about $87MM. Their 2026 CBT payroll is around $80MM right now. The MLBPA’s grievances on this seem to go nowhere, lingering for years and getting settled in CBA negotiations. I’ve seen no evidence a team has been penalized in any way for failing to meet the 1.5x floor called for in the CBA. One can imagine that if low-spender penalties had been added in 1997 when the luxury tax came into being, certain ownership groups would not have purchased teams and other, better ones might have come in.
It’s often said that it’s much easier to tweak something that’s already in the previous CBA than add something entirely new. Players have been agreeable to ever-increasing tax penalties, rather than a sea change to a cap/floor system.
And the game does already have a soft cap, ineffective as it may be against certain clubs. But I’d argue that language is also already in place for a soft floor, at least for revenue sharing recipients (the Diamondbacks, Rockies, Reds, Brewers, Pirates, Marlins, Athletics, Mariners, Tigers, Royals, Twins, Guardians, Orioles, and Rays). The MLBPA should fight for codified penalties for failing to meet the 1.5x floor, such as simply losing a portion of revenue sharing proceeds depending on how far below the team is.
A better-enforced 1.5x floor would not be a panacea. That floor led to the A’s signing Luis Severino, but certainly didn’t keep Blake Snell away from the Dodgers. But I do think that if revenue sharing money is spent well, it is a step in the direction of competitive balance.
Why do we know everything about player contracts, but very little about team revenue, team profitability, the distribution of luxury tax proceeds to teams, and especially revenue sharing?
We spend so much time on MLBTR talking about player contracts and the resulting team payrolls. This information is readily available for just about every signing; some teams put contract terms right into their announcements.
Everyone knows how much players are making, and it often works against them in terms of public perception. Conversely, we have to rely on an annual report from Forbes (or similar outlets) that provides valuations and estimates of operating income for MLB teams.
Forbes explains that the information used in their valuations “primarily came from team and league executives, sports bankers, media consultants and public documents, such as stadium lease agreements and filings related to public bonds.” The valuations, and I assume operating income/loss numbers, exclude things such as “equity stakes in other sports-related assets and mixed-use real estate projects.”
For me, it’s pretty hard to know how profitable each team is. This information is kept under lock and key by MLB. The Braves are an exception because they’re owned by a publicly traded company, and sometimes their financials are used to form guesses about other teams. Still, fans and journalists are left with inadequate information to determine what a team’s player payroll could or should be.
We also don’t know how much revenue sharing payors are paying out each year, or how much recipients receive. Bits and pieces trickle out on rare occasion. I mentioned the reported $70MM-ish received by the Marlins that Rosenthal uncovered. And Sportico suggested that in 2024, the Dodgers paid “roughly $150 million into baseball’s revenue-sharing system.”
How much money in total is paid into revenue sharing each year? We don’t know. How much of that do recipients spend on player payroll? We don’t know that either. How about these huge tax bills teams like the Dodgers, Mets, Yankees, and Phillies have incurred – where does that money go? The luxury tax brought in a record $402.6MM in 2025. Drellich reported in 2024, “MLB and the players have always essentially split luxury-tax proceeds, with half of the money going to clubs in some form, the other half to player retirement funds.” So perhaps $200MM of luxury tax money went to teams – how was that distributed specifically, and are there any rules about how it’s spent?
If you’d like to understand a bit more about how revenue sharing works, start on page 145 of the CBA. The CBA says, “The intent of the Revenue Sharing Plan is to transfer among the Clubs in each Revenue Sharing Year the amount of revenue that would have been transferred in that Year by a 48% straight pool plan, plus such transfers as may result from distributions of the Commissioner’s Discretionary Fund.” We get payors (like the Dodgers) and payees (like the Marlins) because “the Blended Net Local Revenue Pool shall be divided equally among the Clubs, with the difference between each Club’s payment into the Blended Net Local Revenue Pool and its receipt therefrom producing the Club’s net payment or net receipt.”
Does the Shohei Ohtani unicorn theory have any validity?
Let’s talk deferrals for a minute. Many fans think this is a huge part of the problem with the Dodgers.
The Dodgers may be the villains of MLB right now, but agent Scott Boras is right there with them for many fans. Between the contracts, press conferences, puns, and dad jokes, Boras does occasionally speak truth. Boras made a statement to Drellich yesterday suggesting Shohei Ohtani is a unicorn in terms of ability and revenue generation:
“The Dodgers are not a system issue. They are the benefactors of acquiring Shohei Ohtani, MLB’s astatine. Short-lived and rare. No other player offers such past or present. Ohtani is the genius of elite performance and additional revenue streams of near $250 million annually for a short window of history. The process of acquiring Ohtani was one of fairness and equal opportunity throughout the league. A rare, short-lived element is not a reason to alter the required anchored chemistry of MLB. The mandate of stability to gain media rights optimums is the true solution to league success.”
Well, yes. Peak Ohtani is perhaps the best and most unique player the game has ever seen, and he’s from a foreign country. As such, he generates a huge amount of money for the Dodgers, which we likely won’t see again in our lifetimes.
Boras didn’t directly mention the other extremely rare factor with Ohtani: he wanted to defer 97.1% of his contract. As I wrote a year ago, “money is worth more now than it is in the future, so players have not exactly been clamoring to wait until retirement age to receive 97.1% of their contract.”
But Ohtani is unique, and it made sense for him partially because of his endorsement money. His decision did have a negative effect on competitive balance. If deferred money had been outlawed, the Dodgers would have had to pay Ohtani a straight $46MM or so per year. That they’re instead paying him $2MM per year right now means they have $44MM extra to spend because of Ohtani’s choice. That is exactly why Ohtani proposed this structure to multiple teams: he wanted to free up money so his team would use it on other players and have a better chance of winning.
(EDIT: Reading the comments on this post, I realized I didn’t explain this well, because it’s true that the Dodgers have to set Ohtani’s deferred $68MM aside. But my understanding is that they are able to invest that money, and I think having a much lower cash player payroll grants them a good amount of extra flexibility.)
Using Kyle Tucker’s $57.1MM AAV as an example, you could say Ohtani’s extreme deferral choice bought the Dodgers 77% of Tucker, probably good for 3+ wins by itself this year (unless you count Tucker’s tax penalty, in which case it’s more like 37%).
If I was the MLBPA, I’d probably just cave on this issue for the PR benefit. Players like the flexibility of deferred money, but limitations could be added that would only affect the next Ohtani-type player who attempts to defer 97.1% of his contract, which is unlikely to ever exist.
In theory, could the competitive balance issue be solved entirely by ownership?
I have plenty of friends who love baseball and feel that MLB needs a salary cap. Most of them don’t seem excited about canceling a season, though, so I’ve floated the question of whether there might be other ways to get competitive balance.
Revenue sharing is a longstanding effort to level the playing field. As the CBA explains, “The Clubs and the Association recognize that the participation of two Clubs is necessary for the production of the on-field competition that the Clubs sell to the public. The net payments and net receipts required by this Article XXIV reflect a continuation of the amounts paid directly to the visiting Clubs and are in recognition of the principle that visiting Clubs should share, and in fact traditionally have shared, in the economic benefits jointly generated by the Game at another Club’s home field.”
Much like the players and the salary cap, in the last CBA negotiations in 2021-22, when it came to topics such as “getting to free agency and arbitration earlier, in revenue sharing and in service time,” MLB took “hardline stances,” according to Drellich. In February 2022, MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand wrote, “MLB has maintained from the start that reducing revenue sharing and expanding Super 2 eligibility are non-starters for the league.”
It would seem, then, that both sides have at least one “non-starter.” For the players, it’s a salary cap. And for MLB, one of their various non-starters is revenue sharing. Perhaps the players don’t have a seat at the table on how much money is paid into revenue sharing, how much each team receives, and how that money is spent.
We know that 14 teams are receiving revenue sharing, apparently topping out around the Marlins’ $70MM in recent years (that does not include luxury tax distributions). We also know that the Dodgers have a level of revenue and profit that many feel are breaking the game. Fans are very concerned about competitive balance, and the commissioner says he wants to address their concerns.
A salary cap is the widely-discussed solution, but one that could cause the loss of a season. It’s worth noting, too, that regular season games and the World Series could get cancelled and owners still might fail in installing a salary cap, as happened in 1994-95. In that scenario, we get all of the destruction of the game and none of the desired competitive balance.
Another solution, then, is for MLB’s 30 owners to solve competitive balance themselves. On a rudimentary level, this would involve a team like the Dodgers contributing even more money into revenue sharing, and recipients being required to spend most of it on player payroll.
This is all theoretical, but there is an amount of money that Marlins could receive from revenue sharing that would enable them to sign Kyle Tucker for $60MM a year and still be a profitable team (whether that’s a good use of $60MM is a whole other story). The competitive balance goal is for small market teams to be able to compete for top free agents and retain their own stars, I think.
Similarly, there likely is a level of taxation, draft pick loss, and revenue sharing (all basically penalties that form a soft cap) that would make the Dodgers choose not to pay $120MM for one year of Tucker. In the present system, we have clearly not reached that level for the Dodgers, but that’s not to say it doesn’t exist. Perhaps if the Dodgers end up moving from “wildly profitable” to just “profitable,” Guggenheim would decide to sell the team to an outfit that is comfortable with that.
You can guess why we’re not actually going down this path of MLB owners solving competitive balance themselves: they’d never agree to it. Approval would be needed from 23 of the 30 ownership groups. To me, this idea is just the flip side of a salary cap, to which the players have said they will never agree. I believe both approaches to be equally viable toward improving competitive balance, except that neither side wants to be the one paying for it.
For those who read this entire post, thank you. I’ll be interested to read your takes in the comments, and I encourage everyone to be respectful. For Trade Rumors Front Office members, my mailbag will return next week.
I didn’t read all of that.
Deferred reading until 2030
Me neither: the dog ate my Cliff note.
An excellent breakdown, Tim. And of course there are nuances, but really, a cap and floor are necessary or MLB will kill its Golden Goose. And I am willing to forgo an entire season to make it happen.
Growing up—although they weren’t my team—I loved seeing the Pirates, the Reds, the Tigers and other mid and small market teams compete. And see their great players (Clemente, Rose, Kaline and others) shine in the World Series.
I’m a fan of a major market team but I want fans of all teams to be invested in their season, that way everyone (including the owners) profit in multiple ways. Right now, the Dodgers (in particular) are gorging at the trough. Time to limit deferrals and install a cap and a floor.
“A cap and a floor are necessary or MLB will kill its Golden Goose”
Sounds great, but what does that actually mean? What is that Golden Goose? If it’s that obvious to fans who have no access to the finances of private MLB companies, why aren’t owners and players up in arms? Are MLB teams better off now than they were 20 years ago? Are players better off? Where is the evidence of Baseball’s imminent demise?
If you put a salary cap on MLB teams, what happens to all those revenues that can’t be paid to players? We’ve heard for years that the goal of players in contract negotiations was a fair share of revenues that wouldn’t exist without players. Why would anyone think that players would agree to that? Sure, let’s cap the amount of revenues paid to players and let owners keep the extra dollars.
MLB teams (except ATL) are private businesses. I don’t know where MLB owners got the money to buy their teams, but it’s their money – not mine. How would you feel about people taking your money because fans in Pittsburgh don’t see as many championships as New Yorkers?
Lastly – are fans willing to forgo a season – meaning fans force owners and players to lose millions while fans spend their time watching something else and lose nothing financially? I’m sorry, but that is dumb survey question. What serious person would suggest that’s a good idea? Forgo all the seasons you want without hurting the players, owners and other fans – stay home and read a book!
Goose Gossage? Dont kill him. Put him down maybe
I agree with most of your free market principles regarding baseball, but just to play devil’s advocate here for a minute on the salary floor.
My argument would be that if baseball as a whole is driving great revenue, then a respectable salary floor makes sense and would help dissuade teams from tanking the season. And if an ownership can’t generate enough revenue to sustain say a $150 million payroll, maybe there should be penalties for that or they should move / sell the team.
People say the Dodgers are ruining baseball, but I think there’s a stronger argument to be made the small market teams are ruining baseball. Tanking season after season, never quite putting a competitive product on the field.
Those teams should be forced to pay fines for such behavior and MLB should change the draft system to disincentivize tanking. A good example would be if you drafted in the top 5 last year, you’re ineligible for those positions the next year and will be slotted at the next available slot (6-10 if you tank again). That will force teams to increase their salary and stop abusing the draft system.
The cap is never going to happen. Maybe a soft cap, but even that I find unlikely. But a floor needs to happen and it needs to adjust with contract inflation. There are other ways to make sure not every contract goes to 1 team. One idea I had is to set a cap on AAV spending. So if a team spends more than $30M annually on a free agent contract, for example, that team can’t sign a player with a higher AAV than $10-15 million next off-season. That would prevent the Dodgers from being able to win every free agency. Something along those lines.
Combine that with restricting deferrals to some extent and I think you’ll reel things in and make MLB more competitive again.
I am saving it for the lockout. Gotta have something to do during the cancelled 2027 season,
I might watch March madness for the first time and then after the NBA finals end in June I will cry for months until the NFL starts
For me, I’m gonna watch NASCAR. At least they turn left.
I gave up on all the other sports a while back. I like movies, but that is basically my fall and winter pastime. Maybe I could take up basket weaving or candle making or something.
The answer is simple if the owners want competitive balance without a salary cap. Divide ALL the TV and radio revenue equally among all the teams. That would close the gap immensely. Now will the haves go along with that? The fight amongst the owners would be very interesting.
Unless you are a world class gambler watching sports is a waste of time. It’s not making you any $. Neither is movies tv YouTube TikTok. Mlbtr is my time vampire. Using the bathroom or riding in vehicle it’s fine but a big trade it really goes beyond that. Trade deadline is 2 days of unproductivity. Games aren’t bad. I use them as background noise while I work. Distracting but still get things done.
Get some exercise. Vitamin D. Repair remodel your house. Make YouTube videos. Get some deals online shopping. Sell some stuff online. Work. Side hustle. Learn new skills. Make love. Go out to eat. Cook a gourmet meal. Work on hobby. Find new hobby. Preferably a hobby that makes you $. Those are productive things to do.
Unproductive get a rc car or drone. Camp. Vacations. Astronomy. Movies. TV. Video games. Learn to play instrument. Draw. Paint. Sculp. Read. Listen. Again it’s nice to collect things as a hobby because if you educate yourself you can upgrade your collection buy selling so the hobby pays for itself and when you stop you have a valuable collection to sell. Or activities that increase your fitness survival.
No baseball is fantastic opportunity to turn useless time into useful.
I’d at least love to see the owner’s responses to this proposal.
IIRC a big part of the revenue gap is related to local TV contracts. Splitting that money seems kinda’ fair anyway.
That’s what the NFL basically does but will never happen in baseball. You can’t say attendance and viewership is the same in LA as it in Miami. Baseball is 162 games not 17 with basically every game having a national or potentially national audience. To some extent you have that with the game of the week and the mlb app. (those revenues are shared)) But local revenues will never be fully shared and never have been and also factored into the purchases of high revenue teams.
My thoughts are the implementation of a salary floor of around $150 mill per team. If not obtainable sell or move that team. Likewise the penalty for the third tier cap must be raised to say 150%.
This is a very long article when the answer is very short.
No.
Then why are you commenting?
Being proud and or boastful of one’s ignorance is all the rage nowadays.
Shutt up Beavis
Hey it took a long time to learn how ignorant I am.
just for a little chuckle. little gigglipoo. you don’t like a little giglipoo?
Super League coming 2029 after the 2027 and 2028 seasons are canceled.
The players will love it because there will be no salary cap.
Bucket. Glad to see your comment as I thought about this possibility some years ago.
My feeling was/is that the big payroll teams will eventually tire of supporting the bottom-feeders.
Does LA, NYY, NYM, PHIL, BSOX, etc. really need the Twins/A’s/Marlins? Do they gain any financial benefit by playing to small crowds in small markets?
Would they ever cut them loose and form a super league?
Me, I never say never
Patt – Why bother commenting then?
There are people here who actually appreciate Tim’s articles a great deal and enjoy getting into deep discussions about them. And this was one hell of a great article, extremely well written and thorough and informative as usual. He no doubt put a huge amount of time and effort into it, and everyone was able to read it for free instead of it being subscriber-only. If anyone doesn’t appreciate it, out of respect can they at least not disparage it?
Tim if you’re still checking out the comments, I’d be curious to hear your expanded thoughts on certain low-payroll low-revenue baseball markets.
You mentioned Miami (“I don’t think forcing the Marlins to spend another $25MM on players this winter would solve the inherent unfairness of a competitor having triple their revenue’) ….. I believe that is a market which could absolutely generate at least twice their current revenue if they put a quality product on the field for a sustained period of time.
South Florida is among the wealthiest regions in the country. While it’s true that many of it’s residents and visitors tend to migrate north during the summer months, enough of them do live in the area year-round and would enjoy taking in games in a beautiful climate-controlled stadium.
South Florida is also heavily populated by Cubans, Venezuelans and Dominicans all of which baseball is a huge part of their culture.
At one point the Marlins drew over 3 million fans in a season despite playing in an open-air football stadium during the hot South Florida summer.
MLB approved expansion in Miami for a reason, it’s a shame they have allowed Marlins ownership to turn the team into a perennial doormat playing in front of virtually non-existent home crowds.
I agree with the sentiment here about Miami. It is by no means a small market. I would like to think a sustained winner in Miami could generate solid attendance.
That gets to something that could be a problem in trying to solve competitive balance with revenue sharing: a team could have lower revenue for reasons other than market size. It would be hard to say “this team is bad because they made bad decisions or aren’t trying, but since their revenue is low let’s send them a bunch of money.”
Thanks for your insight w/this article Tim.
Yeah, the owners once again need a barricade to protect them from their own mismanagement. Pittsburgh may not be able to sustain a payroll of $400M/season, but that’s conjecture and certainly would not prevent them from signing Skenes to a $500M extension; but their owner could and probably would not choose to do so.
Miami is the #18 market by quick check. But it does have one of the smallest footprints. Winning there is probably the only sustainable model for growth. They have nasty traffic, snow birds leaving in summer as well as retirees having kept their former team – type issues.
Heavy duty Cuban and latin community, so you’d think they could tap that market a bit more. But its in a very competitive leisure market and theres a very strong football presence with both college and NFL teams around.
Marlins just have such a past issue of bad publicity.
That’s also kind of due to the way that media market splits; you also have the West Palm (#39), Orlando/Daytona (#15) and even Tampa/St Pete/Sarasota (#12) all nipping on the edges of the Miami market Certainly there are enough people in South and Central Florida to support Miami, if they actually trusted the team and ownership.
PoisonedPen – yeah. They remind me a little of the Diamondbacks in some marketing ways. And it’s similar to the Tampa Bay region too.
Fever…
I didn’t read all of this either.
strange that you feel the need to announce that
We need a synopsis of the summary of the book report on the readers guide
Only Florida MLB team to win a World series. Twice
Then I suggest you read it.
@Tim Dierkes – thank you for putting in the effort to summarize you mental musings for us.
I think a lot of us have engaged in some of these same mental gymnastics simply for the fun of it, I know I have.
Tim, I know you said you weren’t as familiar with the ins, out, histories of other sports Salary Cap forays. But, anyone beyond a certain age recalls the 49ers dynasty era of the 80s into the 90s, which, was indirectly dismantled because of the NFL adoption of the salary cap. They used the other rules regarding contract values and guaranteed vs non money, backloading to get around limitations a couple years till it came time to pay the piper…. but it served its purpose in the end. These days you see a low more variance, with the exception of just the rare exceptional player/coach pairing (mahomes/reid; brady/bellichek) allowing dominant stretches.
MLB will be a tough nut to crack, but, I do think with the competition these days for entertainment dollars, the sport is in trouble of continued decline at its core if they don’t do something about the competitive balance issues. Personally, I think that the relaxing of compensation related to free agent losses has made the problem much worse. I miss the old A/B free agent days, there, I said it! What in theory makes it less costly to sign a free agent in terms of penalties has instead hurt compensation levels to the teams losing those players, who, arent attracting them anyways.
The teams shouldn’t be getting any compensation for players that make it to free agency.
Agreed that works against the market. Do away with that and institute a floor. The bottom dwellers can still get competitive balance from the big spenders and those penalties should be stiffer. The players union should agree to that because the floor will make historically cheap teams step to the table and the money will still be there if the big spenders cut back.
GaSox – Great post, but I don’t think the NFL is a good comparison because it’s a quarterback-driven sport.
SF was dominant all those years because of Montana and Young.
Oh they had an all-star cast up and down that roster.
The answer to the question is yes since mlb currently has better parity than every other sport.
This is a big problem with the ‘MLB needs a cap to make things fair’ crowd. They don’t read about things like how caps take money from players, how much teams get now from revenue sharing and the national TV contracts, the fact that the highest salaried teams don’t always make playoffs, and that MLB has more parity by far than leagues with caps.
Loser
So the Marlins receive $70m as part of revenue sharing but are only projected to have a payroll of $80m? Just does not seem right.
It is truly sad to read through these comments and see the complaints about how long this article, all I see is rampant disrespect from so many of you when you comment.
It took days for this writer to work on this article and research and quite frankly, a love for baseball too.
This is the time of year where speculation is just as exciting as the game itself, guys! Come on… this is a fantastic article showcasing the inner workings and the potentials and pitfalls of a salary cap in the MLB.
If you just want to read headlines your brain is showcasing similar traits to that of a citizen of the general worldly population in the 2000’something movie “ idiocracy”.
If you don’t want to read all these big and annoying words arranged together in an educational and pro baseball opinionated article, then don’t read it. But to comment “ I don’t need all that, or too long an article” and etc is the most moronic thing you can do.
Do you realize that headlines are nothing more most of the time, than deception based line and hook catchphrases designed to get you to read or watch something? When you have all the information in front of you, rather than read it, you’d rather what? Be told what to think and feel on the salary cap matter?
Read, research, form your own opinions. Don’t be a Fox News or msnbc zombie drone that just agrees with what you’re being told. Most of what is reported are lies, or biased nonsense anyway.
But not on this site. On this site we have the privilege to learn about the offseason from talented staff writers and update features.
Please appreciate this tool and entertainment, don’t take it for granted. Headlines are great, but I’m of the mindset that knowledge is power and understanding. It’s not just another device in which I’m logging my attention. I digress.
Rays – Well said!
Social media definitely plays a part in it, people are conditioned to shortness due to social media posting length limits that have been clinically proven to reduce attention spans.
Ironically it’s the same situation as baseball games being shortened to conform to shorter attention spans and lack of patience.
Think about it …. if something is good, as this article definitely is, why wouldn’t you want MORE of it? Why would you prefer LESS of it? It’s truly sad how some people don’t appreciate how great this site really is.
Thank you for saying what needed to be said!
MLBTR Staff- hope you know the majority of us do appreciate your hard work!
Thanks for taking the time to chastise the lazy minds.
Unfortunately, it’s a direct reflection of society as a whole. We willingly consume so much trash content out there and when we finally get content of actual substance and worth, we complain. Well, then stopping complaining that everything is trash or bait-worthy when you can’t or won’t acknowledge what little good content is out there.
And, make no mistake, these misplaced priorities and values extend to virtually all aspects of life. Just look at the type of people we vote into power these days. It’s not by accident that we’re generally electing the worst of the worst with personal and professional traits that should inspire zero confidence to any sane and rational individual.
Did I read the entire article myself? No (although I have bookmarked it for future reading). But I certainly appreciate the thought and effort that went into it regardless, especially in this day and age when a significant number of folks would just get ChatGPT to do their work for them. Posts like this are a dead artform.
It’s not even failing to read the content that I take issue with. It’s the people so proud of their ignorance, so insecure in their standing, and immature in their being that they felt the need to make or upvote such a comment. Downright embarrassing, and the type of stuff you’d expect to see from edgy terminally online teenagers, not (presumably) grown adults.
I read the whole thing.
I agree with the idea of the players going along with a limit on deferrals solely for PR purposes. Deferrals are not part of the problem but they also are not critical in any way.
I like a rule that a team spends over $400 million or under $100 million as calculated toward luxury tax loses its first round draft pick the next year.
I also think that international signees over a certain age should be part of the draft but it is not a huge issue for me.
MLB – I’ve been advocating an international draft for decades, but it will never happen. When you have Japanese stars old enough to have no salary restrictions, of course they want the huge contract with a contending team of their choice. Would Yamamoto have come to MLB if he was forced to play 6 years for the Rockies and get paid as little as Roki? Not likely.
It can be done without a cap, but not without a floor.
Have to have a floor!
Gotta have the floor, Jerry! Gotta have the floor.
A increased floor creates a cap. Richer teams will have to give more of their $ away so the poorer teams can spend more. Richer teams won’t have as much to spend.
Doesn’t matter what you call it or how yoi do it. Just all the teams need to be spending a similar amount. Within say 100m max. 100m is a major psychological number. Dodgers Mets spending 40 70 million more than teams is easier for people to accept than hundreds of millions. Still an advantage but not hundreds of millions advantage. Little unreasonable to ask them to give away all of their $. If they are funding the league they should have some advantage and make more $.
That would be a huge help but they will never have what the NFL has because it’s the game’s more popular than MLB. If the Reds and the A’s played in the WS it would really hurt MLB’s bottom line. But the NFL could have the two smallest market teams in the SB and still make a killing. That said, I hope they do have a cap and I’m a Phillies fan. But I’m even more of an MLB fan and would like to see a level playing field for all fans.
You know what else is a big difference Joe?
In the NFL, excluding a single lowly wildcard game, ALL of the playoffs are available via broadcast TV. Free. Everyone can watch.
In the MLB, its ultra fragmented. Wild card series of games? Nope, thats some streaming only. Are you a national league fan? Outta luck, go buy another subscription on another platform. Only the ALDS/ALCS ans WS are linked to fox, but with the worrying qualifier FS1 next to it… so, you may not even get all of those games over regular Fox, requiring the paid FS1 to see at least some.
Thats how you kill your game. Plenty of families with kids dont pay for 20 different streaming platforms. And when you cant watch the games, you find something else to do instead and lose interest.
Fragmentation of viewing hurts baseball twice over- it hurts viewership driving away future fans, and, leads to ever more revenue imbalance which is how you get Kyle Tucker costing over $100m/yr with penalties in LA. Id argue there too much money in mlb right now, and the more they add the worse the imbalance gets.
There already is a floor, i.e, the MLB minimum salary per player multiplied by the number of players on the team.
That’s not a good enough floor.
Teams should be allowed to spend however much they want without restraint, but a minimum threshold of spending is obviously needed or else owners won’t do it. They’ve shown us that. The issue isn’t that teams like the Dodgers and Mets are obsessed with trying to win, the issue is that too many owners like Fisher, Nutting, and Pohlad are content to let the league and their local taxpayers subsidize their existence without ever making a serious effort to field a winning baseball team.
Dirty – And then there are also teams like the Red Sox and Cubs who are happy to milk their park and spend just enough to get into the postseason.
Remember when the Sox had 794 consecutive regular season sellouts? And they didn’t need to resort to BS tactics like ticket giveaways and heavily discounted ticket packages. Spend the money and spend it wisely, and the corresponding revenue will be there.
I agree. Just take a look at some of the off seasons of some of these teams. It doesn’t even seem like they care. And some teams make moves every single day. Give the Mets some credit they don’t stop.
c’mon, not you, too with the “our owners are so cheap” antics…the Sox spent over half a billion dollars extending young players last year. Cheap or milking that is not. Ticket giveaways and packages are a reaction to the general economic conditions affecting ticket demand, not on=field performance. I’d go to more Sox games if it wasn’t such an insanely expensive endeavor..
Poison- Over half a billion? On who? $360M on Roman, KC and Crochet … nobody else that I’m aware of.
Cheap in proportion to revenue. I would never expect the #4 revenue team to be Top 2 in CBT payroll, but I do expect them to sign free agents they need. Their final offers to Bregman, Alonso etc were embarrassing. They should be a Top 5 payroll team. They were a Top 4 payroll team for each of their 4 recent championships.
As a percentage of revenue, the Sox’ level of spending is pathetic. Now yes, I do have friends who are ride or die fans for much more miserable teams to be a fan of like the White Sox, Twins, and Marlins so I hold my tongue around those guys knowing how much worse it could be. But Henry and FSG deserve every bit of flak they get from Red Sox Nation.
“I’d go to more Sox games if it wasn’t such an insanely expensive endeavor”
-> Now you understand why so many of us get upset when they lowball a free agent they desperately need.. If you’re going to run the highest ticket prices in the league every single year you don’t get to act surprised to find out that fans are going to expect to see a great team take the field.
Dirty – Exactly! The Red Sox record-setting sellout streak wasn’t just about the championships, it was about superstars like Pedro and Manny whom the Red Sox paid top dollar to acquire. When you charge top dollar for tickets and broadcasts, you should be at least occasionally paying top dollar for players. The Yankees and Dodgers get it, that’s why they are in the postseason nearly every year. The Red Sox and Cubs don’t get it …. or more likely, they are too damn cheap/greedy.
They’ve got smart enough people in the building that they should get it, which tells me they just don’t care and prefer to be greedy.
They are currently projected at #6 in payroll. I came up with $510M on the extensions to the three mentioned, plus Bello and Raffaela in 2024. Possibly throw Chapman in there, too, though he is a different circumstance.
I don’t think you can hang Bregman on anyone but Boros squeezing out every last penny; the cumulative money offered to Bregman if last year’s overpriced season is added to the mix was a higher AAV than Chicago. And that contract is going to age poorly; he’s going to be .255/12/72 sooner than later and no on field rah=rah guy is worth $40M/season in the wind-down years of his career.
Pois – Yes but that ranking could easily change as the Padres are only $3M back and Atlanta is only $7M back. This temporary spike in Sox payroll is due to the number of SP’s on the team. And if they trade Duran and Bello, that’s $17M of payroll that would be going away.
Three of the Top 4 Sox CBT salaries this year are pitchers. Gray and his $21M will definitely be gone after this season, and Sandoval’s $9M probably will also.
Okay that’s fine about Rafaela and Bello, but you did say “last year” …. not “last two years” ;O)
It’s a fact the NPV of the Sox offer to Breggy was far below other teams, and their insistence of not allowing a NTC is because they like to get rid of big contracts by trading the player.
I do agree Breggy isn’t worth what he got.
Well it also depends how you value the contracts, too… Crochet ($45M) , Campbell ($40M) and Anthony ($30M) have extra money available on the base contracts that are tied to player/team options. That’s another $115M on just those three if all goes according to plan.
That’s not enough. That’s how you get the athletics and pirates etc
There a dunce cap, but a dance floor. One vowel difference
As Tim said they have a floor now. A soft floor like a wrestling mat. The problem is they need stronger language in that clause with definite penalties and timely grievance hearings. Do that and a ‘Dodger tax’ above the Cohen tax and we have positive movement towards parity.
Yes, floor is a must. Then increase the luxury tax penalties A LOT. Perhaps even distribute a larger portion of the luxury tax revenue to your own division. The Dodgers may not care their tax money is going to the Marlins, but they may care more if a chunk goes to the Padres.
There are options to be had that are doable and much less scary that the dreaded words “salary cap”.
The last 15 years the AFC championship has featured either the patriots or the chiefs. What great parity the cap gives them in the NFL lol. This whole argument that a cap will give every team a fighting chance is a complete joke. Spending on players doesn’t automatically lead to World Series championships. Ask the Mets, padres, and the 2010s Dodgers about that
Patriots 8 straight years from 2011-2018. Chiefs 7 straight years from 2018-2024. QB driven league and they had the best QB’s in those years. Good team building decisions matter more when there’s a level financial playing field but there’s a lot of luck in both baseball and football in drafting, development, and personnel decisions. 19 different teams in the Super Bowl in the last 15 years, 26 since 2000. 26 different teams in the World Series since 2000.
Agreed. Money doesn’t win championships. It does often make for a good team but there are always large gaps. During the 2004–2010 period, the New York Yankees had the highest payroll in Major League Baseball for all seven seasons, routinely outspending the league average by a factor of 2.3 to 2.8 times. They didn’t win at all, nor since then.
But what is unacceptable is the number of teams that need to be sold due to cheap ownership, relocate due to lack of interest or fold because they can’t afford it.
If you can’t sustain a $150M+ payroll you should not be a team.
Fenway….sorry my friend, but, with regards to your Yankees 2004-2010 spending sratement…
The yankees did, indeed, win the WS in 2009 with their hefty payroll getting them over the hump.
Haha you’re right. They did win 1. Very forgettable one. But the point is it can help you get there but it doesn’t make you win.
No.
Why or why not: 20k words or less
Union.
Dodgers were two outs from losing game 7. Barely won game 6. If the Blue Jays win I don’t think everyone is so sure that we need a cap. Dodgers win and it’s no fair and everyone stomps their feet. This is mostly Dodgers hate and nothing else.
I have always hated the Dodgers, having cut my teeth as a SF Giants fan. Hated the Yankees dynasty more, but now the Dodgers just seem so flagrant and excessive throwing wads of money at an all-star team, because they can.
Reminiscent of Wayne Hizenga buying a world series for the Marlins, getting the ring, then torpedoing the team. Disrespectful.
The Dodgers have immense respect for their fans, but many more fans feel disenfranchised by what is truly an unfair playing field.
Go ahead, MLB, do a 1 or 2 year work stoppage at the end of the CBA to bring some level of competitive parity and fairness to the other 20+ teams and their fans.
MLB is a monopoly, and laws can be made to ensure the special treatment MLB gets by law is more fair, achieves some parity, and competitive balance emerges.
So they should stop trying to win because you hate them. Got it.
Do the math. The Dodgers ownership and management obviously feel it is worth $400-500M in players salaries from $1B++ in incoming revenue per season to get to and win the World Series. Other teams have not made that mathematical conclusion yet (or can’t do so knowing how much the ownership wants to put in to their own pockets); until SF or the Yankees or insert team’s name here do so, the Dodgers will not have much spending competition and yet will still have continually rising gross and net revenue.
If you want to dig deeper, MLB is the only sport in which the players are not contractually guaranteed ~50% of the revenue pie. Until that number is brought into alignment, you can’t really punish one team for committing excess revenue to players’ salaries.
Nope. That’s just deflection. There’s a big problem.
True to that post Enrico. I still can’t believe the Blue Jays lost that series. What a tough pill to swallow for their team, and for their fans..This is a good article for sure though. Thanks Tim.
There WAS parity back in the 80s when the Dodgers were good, occasionally great, because they drafted and developed talent. But since the Guggenheim Group took over, it’s simply not competitive anymore. Doesn’t winning, because you have such an unfair advantage seem hollow?
@GenoSelig… So you’re claiming the Dodgers dont draft and develop anyone? Do you mean besides Kershaw? Gonsolin? Buehler? Urias? Bellinger? Lux? Smith? Seager? Ruiz? Pages? Peterson? Among others who became stars on other teams after the Dodgers traded them away so they would continue being consistent contenders?
Yep. These cap people forget about the fact that Detroit won a playoff series last year and the Mets have had the one of the top three highest payrolls in baseball the last few years and nothing to show for it.
And also the World Series itself was one of the best in years and the winner was not a foregone conclusion.
“This is mostly Dodgers hate and nothing else.”
I couldn’t disagree more. I admire the way the Dodgers are run, but I hate what they’re doing to the sport. Are they doing it illegally or unethically? No, but that doesn’t change the end result.
Fans continually rip on owners who don’t spend more, without looking at the global picture. If you make $250,000 per year and I make $50,000 per year, you’re always going to be able to spend more on, say, a car. Could I skimp and buy a more expensive car than I current drive? Sure, but YOU”LL ALWAYS BE ABLE TO SPEND MORE. That’s what fans don’t seem to get. They think that if Nutting or DeWitt or whomever just spend a little more, the end result will change. It won’t. If the Marlins raise their payroll to their maximum (let’s say for argument’s sake, $200 million), the Dodgers can and most likely will just raise theirs to $600 million or more….and they’ll still be profitable. Sure, players will be making more money, but the inequities in the game will be the same.
Thank you so much for writing this, Tim!
Haven’t like 23 of the 30 teams made the playoffs in the last three seasons?
The Dodgers have made the playoffs in 13 consecutive seasons, while others rebuild for half a decade before they get in the playoffs once. Then they have to start over with another rebuild because their players left in free agency. Meanwhile, the Dodgers just spend their way there. It’s the lamest thing in sports.
Couldn’t agree more, Chester.
@chester: I’ll raise you. NYY haven’t been under .500 since the early 90s. Of course they want status quo b/c with a level league that has tight salary floor & cap they could resemble the Jets or current version of Giants.
Should be like a Texas hold’em tourney-you get the chips and up to skills to strategize/play your cards right.
As a Giants fan, they went 4-13 but a new coach and better health can make them a playoff team next year. Not 5 or 6 years from now after a long rebuild hoping every young prospect they drafted is healthy through the system and blossoms into a star before they have to be paid.
I can’t speak for the Jets. Players leave there and instantly perform elsewhere.
Thornton Mellon… great screen name.
So? Then blame those teams’ owners for not buying a team in LA. Make more money!
Chester- named after all time great White Sock-Tigger legend Chet Lemon by chance? My next door neighbor in Michigan had a free range cat. When he disappeared we’d hear her calling…”Ches—ter, Ches-ter”. The cat would sit on our porch pretending he was invisible.
Theo: Chester Copperpot was a character in the 1985 movie The Goonies. “A reclusive scavenger hunter from Astoria, Oregon who went missing in the 1930’s while looking for One-Eyed Willy’s treasure.” The role was played by Keenan Wynn.
Those players leave in free agency because they know the owner of the team they’re playing on won’t try to keep them. Won’t seriously match or exceed their market price. Case in point, Tigers & Skubal. Elly De La Cruz already seeing the hand writing on the wall. I don’t blame either side. It’s a free market!
The Dodgers could offer their top three prospects for Skubal, get the Tigers to accept, and then offer Skubal the chance to rip up his $32M arbitration bid and sign the same contract Tucker has. So $28M more in 2026, and three more years at $57.5M.
There’s no rational way that Skubal says no.
How much does the Dodgers’ revenue go up with a three-peat?
Yet the guy who won the World Series for the Dodgers was a 36-year old journeyman with 57 home runs and a career average of .260. Go figure.
Only because the playoffs keep expanding. When 40% of the league makes the playoffs every year, it makes 23/30 loo far less impressive.
Other leagues have had an even higher % of playoff seeds.
Mr – When MLB expands, it will be 16 out of 32 …. 50% qualifying for the postseason is coming.
I doubt it, but even if that happens it’s not an argument that stands TODAY.
mrk – Why do you doubt it?
FACT: During the last CBA negotiations, MLB proposed expanding the postseason to a 14-team format.
FACT: MLB already has had a 16-team postseason format for one season.
Yes they proposed it and it got shot down.
And again, it still doesn’t matter if 50% make it in the future. We are talking about today and near past. MLB has had less teams as a % in comparison to other leagues and a higher # of teams have made the playoffs – hence MLB has more parity even without a cap!
mrk – Why do you doubt it?
FACT: During the last CBA negotiations, MLB already proposed a 14-team postseason format.
FACT: MLB has already had a 16-team postseason format for one season.
FACT: MLB has already discussed shortening the regular season, which would help accommodate a larger postseason field.
FACT: Expanded postseason is a concession the players union would prefer to give rather than a salary cap, etc.
I don’t follow other sports, so I honestly don’t care about their playoff systems. Baseball is different from other sports because the 162 game season is supposed to define who is the best. But when you have the #1 seed finish 15 games better than a #6 seed, that team shouldn’t have to beat them in a 5 game series. If I were in charge, the better seed would have to win 3 games to win a series. The lesser seed should have to win 3 games plus however many games they finished behind If a 6 seed finishes 10 games behind a 1 seed, they should have to win 13 out of 16 to move on.
Obviously that wouldn’t work in practical terms, but the point is that the 162 game record should matter far more than the results of a 5 game series. One shows how good a team is, the other shows how well the team was playing that week.
mrk – It was tabled, it’s not something the player’s union refuses to consider like a salary cap.
Why would players be strongly against it? They do get paid extra for playing in the postseason, and for players who are not established it’s a great way to build their value.
mrk – Postseason expansion is coming though, just like the addition of two more MLB teams is coming. And sooner than you think, with the CBA about to expire in about 10 months.
hiflew – I’m totally with you. If I was in charge, I’d shrink down the number of divisions back to four and have just two Wild Cards.
Only six teams in the postseason, and the team with the most wins in each league gets a first round bye. That would guarantee only the really good teams make the postseason, as it should be.
But it will never happen because MLB loves their postseason money.
2 new teams aren’t coming until TB and OAK are in new stadiums.
I still don’t understand why we are even discussing a hypothetical playoff expansion? That just proves my initial point even more so, odds will increase for every team to make the playoffs and make MLB even more so on a parity level in comp to the other leagues.
mrk – Manfred has repeatedly stated he wants expansion to happen by the time he retires, TB and the A’s should be resolved by then.
BTW – I just noticed my earlier post was duplicated, not intentional.
mrk – It’s the opposite.
The easier it is to make the postseason, the less talent is required therefore the less resources need to be spent to be a postseason competitor.
It’s the reason why my team spends a lot less than they used to, because they are satisfied to spend just enough to get a WC.
what is the opposite? More teams making the playoffs decreases league parity? Once you make the playoffs – it’s all but a crapshoot – on any given day a .500 club can beat a .600 club. You lost me, like 10 miles back.
mrk – If it was a crapshoot the Dodgers wouldn’t have made the World Series FIVE TIMES in the past 9 years!!!
Mediocre teams with mediocre regular season records who squeak into the postseason don’t usually get very far, that’s an obvious fact.
If you’re thinking postseason expansion will lead to a fifth round in the postseason, think again …. not gonna happen.
The Dodgers nearly lost the World Series…multiple times! And, I said nothing about adding rounds to the playoffs.
mrk – Haha ….. okay you made me laugh anyway, cheers!
And destroying the value of a 162-game season.
Expanding like your waistline fo sho
16/30 teams have won a World Series in the past 25 years. 13/32 NFL teams have won a Super Bowl, 12/30 NBA teams have won a title and 14/32 NHL teams have won Stanley Cup in the same span of time. How is it that baseball has a greater number of franchises winning than leagues with a salary cap?
No, it can’t. Therefore, the work stoppage next year.
It’s not going to be a “work stoppage” it will be a lockout, because the unsuccessful owners want to punish the successful ones.
Sure, just do something about the Dodgers. I don’t think there’s anything really all that problematic about the spending of the other teams, IMO. A cap somewhere between where they’re spending and everyone else is would be nice, but TECHNICALLY you could just tax their overage at like 1000% or something stupid instead.
The problem with a cap is when you have teams like the Dodgers, Mets, and Yankees that already have hundreds of millions already spent for the next several seasons and a commissioner in the tank (especially for the Dodgers) any cap is going to have to be set at a level to accommodate what they’ve already spent, while still allowing them to add where needed. The same problem will persist if you have a salary cap set for say, $350 million and three quarters of the league aren’t coming anywhere close to that
You could just gradually get to the cap instead of a drastic jump right to it. Probably what they would do. Probably won’t be called a cap. Player’s don’t like want cap. So you call it a tax which they did but now need to tinker with that. Or changes to revenue sharing. Caps already in place it’s just too huge of a gap. Need to close gap. And it is a need. Fans have put up with it but more and more are realizing it isn’t fair or no point in being fan of smaller markets.
They could call it a salary hat or salary chapeau instead.
So do the Red Sox. They signed $500M+ in extensions last season alone between Crochet, Anthony, Campbell and Bello.
Do something about the Pohlad family. Their constant metaphorical middle fingers to Minnesota fans have done far more damage to the game than anything the Dodgers are doing.
Yea and maybe implement a system where if they spend over the soft cap then most of that money goes to the smallest market teams to help them compete. Oh what’s that? That’s the current system already? And the “poor” owners still refuse to try to give out large contracts? Oh interesting
C’mon, Nutting won the $29M bidding war for Ryan O’Hearn!!!
What’s the point of rooting for a major league team that has almost no chance of keeping its best players and at best has small windows of contending, or even just being competitive, over decades? The only players they do have a chance of signing/keeping are the ones real major league teams didn’t want
I’ve been a Reds fan all my life, I don’t know how to answer this question. But, I do know capping employee wages is unAmerican – even if 10% of them are mega millionaires.
Capping wages in unions for the greater bargaining power of the group is definitely very American too. Plenty of those guys who built your teams stadium.
Meh…perhaps, when you are talking about unions that represent manual labor – and not SKILLED pros. The difference in performances between the best stock boy (been there 20 years) and a newb isn’t nearly as great as an Ohtani vs. Joe Schmo. So your union might be willing to cap a job’s rate at 20$ an hour so that you can get more rooks in, but MLB has a finite # of positions. Agreeing to cap wages in MLB isn’t going to increase the bargaining power for the other 1,500 (best of the best in the world).
If the answer is a cap/floor I have no idea. I do know many teams fans have almost nothing to root for year after year. They know they aren’t getting a top free agent. They know they will have the mandatory one all star, who’s definitely not a starter and might not even see the field. They know they won’t be in the playoffs. They know their favorite guys will be traded for lottery tickets. Even if they do happen to squeak into a postseason they likely won’t get a home game before they’re run off
AAAA fans
Well said. oh yea. If baseball doesn’t seriously address the parity issue, at some point a significant % of the fans of many MLB teams will abandon them. Eventually, MLB could shrink. Surely the MLBPA must realize that fewer players having jobs won’t be a good situation.
No cap hasn’t been a problem until now or near future. More fans are waking up.
It’s a new thing. When players were making thousands tens of hundreds of thousands even millions it wasn’t as big of a problem. Tens and hundreds of millions it is. 100 million vs 400 million payroll isn’t fair and too large of a gap for fans to ignore.
I have always been anti-cap. But the pedestrian Tucker seems to have broken the system. A run-of-the-mill all-star who has never finished in the top 10 MVP, hit more than 30HRs, batted over .300, etc suddenly commands the most salary?
When theres no baseball next year, i’m blaming this specific contract. Its not some puffed-up, deferred garbage, its a legit $57.5M/yr. Its more yearly than Steph Curry and Lebron James, who have max deals and play on small rosters, and in Curry’s case, have revolutionized the game.
UnAmerican? Literally every other sport does it.
Using your unmatched resources to make a market no longer competitive is typically called a monopoly. In baseball they’re called the Dodgers.
I can tell you as an AZ Cardinals fan that a cap won’t solve this.
The Pirates have the capability and finances to extend Skenes or any other player on their roster. They just choose not to…
Born in 85 in Montreal, I knew our Expos were a small market team and didn’t have the history of our hockey team so expectations were low but still loved baseball for what it gave us, a summer pasttime. Kinda like the nowadays Pirates. You appreciate the small windows you are in but have no yearly championship expectations, maybe once or twice in a lifetime and celebrate 2-3 wins a week. A fanbase that just loves baseball, enjoying living in the shadow and is not a pain to be around like some big market fanbases that expect to be 162-0 every year. Our team had the wind in its sails in ’94, only for the strike to occur and then the ensuing downfall.
It needs a cap, suspenders, and a bolo tie
Add plaid pants, and I’m in.
Yes. Baseball has more parity than basically any other sport and has done so without a salary cap.
Are the same group of teams often considered the “winners of the offseason”? Yes. Does that typically translate into playoff success? No.
A salary cap benefits the owners and will result in a less competitive environment. And this is coming from a very small market fan.
We have different definitions of parity
What does parity mean to you? Does it mean different WS winners each year? If so, that was the case until this year. 22 of the 30 teams have made the playoffs in the last three years.
I’d much rather have this than the NFL or NBA where the same teams constantly make the championship
Specious argument.
22 of 30 teams have made the MLB playoffs the last 3 years.
24 of 32 NFL teams have made the playoffs the last 3 years.
22 of 32 NHL teams have made the playoffs the last 3 seasons.
So the same team wasn’t always making the World Series in the past with the Yankees? The Braves made the postseason what, 14 straight years?
The main difference is a baseball team cannot easily flip a 3-14 record into 10-7 like you can in the NFL one year to the next with maybe a new QB or a coach who turns all those close losses into wins. The only recognized way to get AND STAY on top of MLB is to spend, spend, spend. Otherwise you have a fire sale and rebuild.
That’s why the Dodgers have made the playoffs 13 straight years and the Yankees have been above .500 every year since the early 90s.
Thank you Thornton
You just never played sports. QB is huge. Have the best or one of the best QB you will have great success. Basketball has only 5 players on the court. 1 guy makes a huge difference. They guy you win. Put a elite guy with the guy and you dominate. Baseball you pitch and have to wait around almost a week to pitch again. Pitch what 32 games of 162 if very lucky with health. Hit and have to wait for 8 other guys to hit before you go again. Brady can throw anytime he wants. Jordan can ignore the other 4 guys while being double triple teamed and take the shot whenever he wants.
70% of the NBA’s championships in its 75-year history have been won by just 5 franchises.
55% of the 109 Stanley Cups have been won by the top 5 NHL franchises.
53% of baseball’s 121 World Series trophies have been won by the top 5 franchises.
The only sport with better parity in terms of dispersion of its championships is the NFL, where 47% of Super Bowls since the AFL/NFL merger have been won by the top 5.
Baseball is doing just fine by this measure of parity. And it will never have a chance to catch football because baseball is a game of long-term development and planning. Football by design has hyper-frequent turnover of rosters, coaching staffs, etc. that make it more competitive. Those things work in football but could not in baseball.
Parity I can agree with, from the article
The purported goal of ownership is not to get a salary cap, though. It’s said to be parity, or competitive balance. That doesn’t mean every team has an equal chance to win each year or dynasties are impossible. It does mean that all 30 teams have roughly the same ability to sign top free agents and retain their own stars. I think fans want a small market team like the Pirates to have about the same chance as the Dodgers to sign Kyle Tucker, to be able to keep Paul Skenes. Perhaps they want a world where teams can differentiate from each other based on drafting ability, player development, shrewd trades, and the intelligence of their allotted free agent signings, but not so much on payroll.
You’ve artificially skewed your argument by restricting the NFL time line to the Super Bowl era while ignoring a like timeline for the other professional team sports.
If you included the NFL to its entire history your numbers would be different, in part because of the dominance of a team like the Chicago Bears.
It’s also a fact that fewer teams were involved in the early histories of each sport. The NHL had just 6 teams until its first expansion in 1967. The league now has 32 teams. That number change alone skews your historical percentage, especially tilting it in favor of the dominant original 6 Montreal Canadians team.
A similar argument can also be made for the NBA and the Boston Celtics and MLB with the New York Yankees.
Other important factors are being ignored aside from the sheer number of teams past and present. That would include expanded playoff formats. They were limited throughout the early histories of each sport, especially in MLB where from 1903 until 1968 only two teams made the postseason, the AL and NL champs with the winner taking the World Series title.
ohyeah, yet the owners turned down a call from the union for them to share revenue more equitably. How do you know Manfred is lying? He is talking.
I removed 4 super bowls to represent the period of time that the NFL became a unified league instead of the AFL and NFL operating separately. Also didn’t think there was any point in factoring in the extended history and accounting for a bunch of franchises that folded in the 1920’s and 30’s. Anyways, I calculated both numbers for the full Super Bowl era and the post-merger era and they were hardly different. 47% vs. 44%. Huge difference those 4 games made.
The dominance of a team like the Chicago Bears gave me a good chuckle, that’s a phrase you don’t hear every day. But sure, let’s take a look at the full history of football going back to 1920. Still 40%! Not all that different insofar as the point I’m making.
You want to narrow it down to just the year 2000 and later? Be my guest.
The 5 winningest teams have accounted for:
19 of the 24 NBA titles (79%)
15 of the 24 Super Bowls (63%)
13 of the 24 Stanley Cups (54%)
and 13 of the 24 World Series (54%).
The NBA has had 10 different teams win a championship since 2000. The NFL has had 12. The NHL has had 13. MLB has had 16.
There is zero evidence baseball has any less parity than the other 3 sports.
There are clear differences between sports that you continue to miss.
The Dodgers have made 13 playoffs in a row because of the way they spend, which is mostly to outspend other teams for the top players. The Yankees were known pretty much for the same thing and haven’t been below .500 since I was in high school. You still have to spend WISELY, that’s the Mets asterisk.
All the other teams are forced to either not participate at all and suck up the revenue sharing dollars to continue. Or make one run, have a fire sale, and a painful rebuild. Not all teams can do what the Yankees and Dodgers can, therefore, parity does not exist.
The NHL allows small market teams like Ottawa, Carolina, and Nashville to make sustained runs at being competitive. Its not just Toronto, NYR, and LA year after year….in Toronto and NYR case they are poorly run and it shows up as lack of Cups, they can’t just buy their way in. Teams like Pittsburgh would not even exist without the capped model.
You will tell me “but Tampa was in the World Series”. Yes they bubbled up. They were morbid before these runs, they have been primarily on the fringe otherwise.
There needs to be a cap and a floor. There needs to be full, unequivocal opening of the teams’ books so that these figures can be tied to % revenue shared to players. The actual figures are so big the caps wouldn’t even be restrictive, otherwise there wouldn’t be old rich guys salivating at getting a team every time one is on the market. The owners won’t do that, the players won’t accept a cap, and there will be no 2027 season.
No, the other teams are not “forced” to “not participate at all”, they CHOOSE to because it is more lucrative.
Look at the Minnesota Twins. Used to be a model mid-market franchise, back when they were trying. They won a pair of titles in the late 80’s and early 90’s, then after a down period in the late 90’s came back with a well-assembled team that ripped off a 10-year run where they made the playoffs 6 times and only failed to win less than 85 games two times (and even those years they won 83 and 79 games, not completely awful).
They cried and whined about how they financially couldn’t compete and needed a new ballpark to level up and they finally got their wish with a beautiful, brand new ballpark bought for them by Hennepin County taxpayers, and how have they returned the favor for their fans? They have been cheap, feckless, and content with mediocrity to the point attendance has dwindled to a lower level than it ever was in the last decade of the Metrodome.
When public funding was committed to the new stadium, the Pohlad family committed that they would target 50 to 52% of their revenue to be spent on payroll. The team’s revenue is reportedly around $350 million, yet they have an estimated 2026 payroll of just $109 million. Where’s the other $66 million going? You really gonna sit here and try to act like they couldn’t get actual, needle-moving talent with that much money to spend?
This is a team that receives hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue sharing, by the way. Why should anyone allow this? They are nakedly underspending on baseball players so they can pocket the difference. That’s bad for players, bad for fans, bad for the teams being forced to subsidize this, and bad for the game. If you want to fix baseball, you need to address this crap, not the people who want to win. If you want to re-grow the game of baseball you’re never going to do it when you’ve got close to a dozen owners who are more interested in being welfare queens than trying to win baseball games.
I don’t fully disagree with you.
The Pohlads are a problem. Same in Pittsburgh and Colorado. Baltimore definitely had the same issue with Angelos. I am 100% for wide open books and a percentage share of revenue. Since the owners have never nor will ever do so, I’m sure if they did we’d find a cap and a floor WAY above current levels.
Why else would there be a line of old men panting at the door every time a team is up for sale? They make money. All of them. Including the Pohlads. The difference is philosophy on how much profit is “enough.”.
But…I believe tax dollars also support the wealthy teams’ stadiums. I think nearly every one. The only one I’ve heard of recently that is not is the Waltons paying for the Broncos new stadium even though they just opened one 20 years ago (though they got a floor $ for the land).
I live in the Denver area. Coors Field is beautiful. There is no MLB competition for hundreds of miles. 3 million fans a year sit in May snow, hailstorms, and 100 degree August days to watch this poverty model team win 50 games. I only go when the Orioles are in town and pay 10-15 for a ticket (my employer has perks for heavily discounted tix) and bring in my own food.
Miserly owners are part of – but not fully – the problem.
The increased ownership share is also why I am vehemently against a cap. It’s also going to penalize veterans and disincentivize long contracts.
Imho, the biggest problem is that the owners themselves don’t want true competetive parity. They want profit in most instances. They simply don’t care about winning and won’t spend to do so in most cases, even with a cap and floor. They will just spend over the bare minimum to meet the floor amount while pocketing the rest.
Honestly, the small markets would prefer to get the free money from revenue sharing without a true floor. They would just prefer to increase the amount of money they are receiving.
Nonetheless, I believe that a floor/cap could work, but only if the regulate the sharing in a scale to account for those cities wherein the taxes are outrageously more than other cities. It’s would implement additional limits on teams like NY, BOS, LA, CAN etc, if they just had on cap number because their offer to players would necessarily have to be more to account for the taxes on a particular player they desire to acquire. It would handicap these cities.
Clipper – exactly on the first two paragraphs. The rich owners have manipulated the system for many, many years. That’s why franchises relocated in the 50s, there was expansion in the 60s and 70s, and why there was collusion in the 80s.
The third paragraph – the issues between cities can be minimized with a balanced schedule. The ones who don’t play home games in those cities get taxed when they do play there. But you can’t fully eliminate that without changing the # of home and away games each teams plays to even out the dollars fully. Good point.
Waldo, that is only true if you are including all post expansion years. If you are only including the RSN years of baseball from 2010 to 2025 when teams like the Dodgers, Yankees, and Red Sox started earning 3 times the revenue of the lowest revenue teams the parity disappears, 11 of the 16 World Series were won by teams in the top 5 in revenue. Only one team was not in the top 5 in spending the season they won the WS.
I agree that a salary cap is not the answer. 100% revenue sharing and a salary floor is the answer.
Yep.
Personally I dont think so. I think there should be a hard cap at around 275M or so. Doubt that will ever happen for a variety of reasons.
The problem with that $275 ceiling? Only 3-4 teams will spend that much per season. Heck, after the Luis Robert trade yesterday, the White Sox payroll is down to $67 million this season. And we won’t be hearing about Jerry Reinsdorf shopping for any of the remaining FA players.
$275 budget? That sounds about right for the cost of attendance for a family of 4. Tickets, hot dog chips, soft drinks, program, parking, inflatables. Say hello to the average fan’s annual trip to the ballyard
You know I meant Million and yet you still made a ridiculous response.
You don’t really believe that Ricketts would lower ticket and food prices even if the players played for free?
Small market teams treat revenue sharing as a profit padding scheme. There needs to be actual penalties for being too cheap. My opinion is a cap has to have an accompanying floor. If they want to keep participating in revenue sharing, should be required to field some minimum payroll.
Or small market teams are spending that $. Maybe not. I have no idea why the union and richer owners would just allow teams to pocket $. The $ is intended to promote grow the mlb product.
LIV Baseball is what will happen with a salary cap!
Right. Six-inning games, 120-game seasons. Sure. It’ll happen.
Funded by filthy petrodollar greenwashed lucre. Perfect
Hit the nail on the head when you wrote we know everything about how much the players get paid, but we know absolutely nothing about team revenue, team profitability, and the distribution of luxury tax proceeds to teams, especially revenue sharing
I feel that total broadcast revenue sharing is required with a salary floor and rewards for extending homegrown talent.
Teams need to have baseball generated money parity.
A floor/cap really will just take money out of players hands. Don’t want that but I also don’t want two players making more than near half the league.
Money spent doesn’t equal greatness but it gives a lot more chances if spent right
Depends on the structure.
Each team already gets about $200 million per year in revenue sharing and the national TV contracts. The ‘poor’ teams are not spending this money now and a cap won’t solve this.
You would think the spending owners and union would do something about this? Or maybe they are spending it on things other than payroll?
Kyle Tucker post luxury tax costs more than 12 teams’ entire payrolls. It’s just unacceptable.
Hey Bob- Sign Skenes to a lifetime contract comparable to Yoshimoto’s contract. Then surround him with a competitive team not just a bunch of washouts. If it doesn’t work then sell the team to Mark Cuban or some other billionaire that cares about winning.
I wish I was actually Bob in this one aspect. I would extend Skenes for sure because I’m not a short sighted penny pinching loser.
And about a third of owners in MLB are just fine pocketing this luxury tax money and not spending it on players. I don’t know why people think that all of a sudden there’s a cap that teams like the White Sox will start going out and signing starts.
Even wealthy teams need teams to play against. If those teams have no chance at signing or keeping players, I don’t see much point to MLB existing. Figure it out.
Eventually they will need more revenue sharing close the payroll gap or get rid of teams who can’t spend enough to be close.
Much harsher draft and international signing penalties for going over the luxury tax. If you take away player development completely, the Dodgers won’t be able to keep up a championship level team continuously. Eventually they will have to reset and rebuild. No cap, no lost season, and it will start to even things out more.
Need to have a Rule 5 style draft to raid the MiLB rosters of the luxury tax offenders, imo. Over one season? You can protect 3 players on your MiLB rosters and one can be selected. Over two in a row? 2 players protected and 2 selected. Over 3 in a row? 1 protected and 3 selected. 4+? No protection and as many selected as years in a row you’ve been over.
Along those lines, the QO penalties for signing someone are not enough. Giving up a 3rd and a 6th for Tucker (since they already gave up a 2nd and a 5th for Diaz) is basically nothing.
Make it be something along the lines of “any prospect with no MLB service time under the age of 25, except the signing team can protect five” and now the Mets and Cubs would be getting value back for Diaz and Tucker.
This is where the owners could pivot, and should. BobN and Brick House responses are viable too. Draft picks, International 4, Rule 5…this doesn’t have to be entirely about a salary cap. The penalties however need to be severe enough to effect change.
This is not an easy process to say the least, You certainly need both a cap and a floor.
Surprisingly enough, but the lower spending teams are generally going to oppose this much more than the higher revenue teams. The teams will need to open up their books, revenue for all teams will be verified, the Players Union will negotiate a percent of the total revenue, likely slightly higher than 50 percent, like 52%.
They will then need to establish a floor and ceiling to ensure that teams will spend at least 52 percent of revenue on players salaries. So, the salary floor/ceiling range might be $200 million floor and $300 million ceiling, or $250 million and $350 million. It all depends on the verified total. Then the salary cap adjusts each season based on increased revenues…
The players don’t get nearly 50% of revenue now – you think the owners are just gonna say oh, ok?
Players in the other sports get a guaranteed 48-52% of the sports total revenue. Even with huge gains in the current CBA the players are still <42%.
How much do the owners lose if there is no 2027 season? $13 billion in revenue plus whatever they have to spend without getting any income. Lets round it off at “around” $16 billion they will lose.
Lower spending teams won’t have any problem. Rich teams will be giving away more of their $ will have the problem. Teams spending 100m and forced to spend 200m won’t care because that extra 100m is just given to them from richer teams. Unless you think owners and union are just letting these teams pocket the revenue sharing. Possible but would be insane to let them do that with your $.
The median revenue is now $440+ million per team, so 100% revenue sharing and 52% of revenue to the players would put the floor at $228+ million. I think the CBT threshold was right around there in 2022.
Since MLB is different than the other sports in that there are 5 levels of minor leagues, I think that you would have to include at least the 40 man roster in that minimum spending.
Dodgers have a higher payroll than the bottom 5 payroll teams? There should be a salary cap or do away with MLB Allstar game, just let the Dodgers play the American League
Or make the bottom 5 teams spend some money and compete
The Dodgers CBT fine is more than the total REVENUE for 3 teams. They are spending more on just CBT fines than 3 teams make in total.
Those teams have no way to spend more to compete with what the Dodgers are able to do. The Marlins or Rays can’t sign a Tucker because he would take up 40% of their maximum 40 man roster payroll. By signing him or Soto or even Bellinger they are guaranteeing they cannot field a competitive team. They simply do not have the money to spend.
So, you’re saying the Dodgers spending is the reason for those 5 ownership groups not spending?
If those bottom teams aren’t spending the revenue sharing then make them spend it. Maybe they are. I mean I wouldn’t give away my $ meant for mlb greater good to only have owners keep it for themselves. That would be stupid. So if this is happening stop being stupid.
Thank you. I try to explain this to people constantly but they’re too short sighted. They also complain about player salaries so that explains a lot….
The Dodgers’ window didn’t begin with being a super team. It began with drafting and developing a first ballot hall of fame pitcher, and during the end of his peak, an array of shrewd moves to acquire talent that every team had a shot at – Justin Turner, Max Muncy, Chris Taylor, et all. The current wave has been made possible by a highly productive farm system that never seems to run out of powder. Sure, there are now MVP candidates all over the field instead of among the best waiver claims of the 2010s. They’re also one of the few teams getting elite two-way production out of its catcher position – draft/develop – and from pre-injury Buehler to trade ammunition for Mookie, 1.5 seasons of Trea Turner, idk, this franchise with a mediocre farm system and development structure would still be high end, but sometimes spending tons of money just gets you the recent Mets or Padres.
One thing nobody talks about is how teams tear their prospect pools apart to try to improve through trades. The Dodgers and other high revenue teams don’t have to, they just spend the money.
The Dodgers have been a bottom 10 farm system (Baseball America) in exactly four years in this century: 2001, 2009, 2010, 2012. They have ranked as a top 10 system 17 times between 2001-2025.
The Rays are generally praised as the best development and trade finding team. Why aren’t they as successful as the dodgers or Yankees or Red Sox or Phillies?
True but the Red Sox have sent quite a prospect haul to STL this off season.
The Dodgers window coincided with their local TV contract being signed. Their payroll immediately went up $100 million, nearly 100% increase. Their hiring for their player development staff quadrupled over the next 2 years. Their investment in technology and facilities for player development was more than the total payroll for the Rays or Marlins.
At several commenters: I don’t disagree with you guys and I don’t want to stake out an anti players or anti competitive balance position. All I wanted to add here was that the Dodgers are the class of the league in all sorts of different ways. The degree of market size and revenue potential is something not available to most other organizations. I just think one way to avoid creating new problems or unintended consequences is to keep in mind that this organization is doing a *lot* of things extremely well, beyond signing free agents to big money. There are other cases where spending big money resulted in a good not great organizational path.
The Dodgers and big market teams get the luxury of buying much more margin for error than some organizations get. Big markets can swing and miss a couple times and still be competitive. A small market swinging and missing on a big contract will haunt them for years.
The best take I have read on this subject.
In a word…………..NO! Greedy owners care more about the bottom dollar and not enough about the fan base. As a Chicago White Sox fan and Chicago resident, I can honestly say that the White Sox would have been more competitive if Jerry Reinsdorf would sell the team. He also owns the Chicago Bulls and got lucky with Michael Jordan being a Bull during his ownership. But since the last Bulls Championship in 1998 and the last White Sox championship in 2005, he’s done nothing at all to improve either team. He’s just sitting on a gold mine and lying to the fans.
With all that being said, as a White Sox fan, the past 2-3 years their scouting team and the GM (Chris Getz) has done a great job putting together a young squad that looks for the most part well rounded. The problem with that is, if Jerry Reinsdorf sticks around, they will become the AL version of the Florida Marlins. Which is basically an annual farm system for the other teams that spend money..
Not quite the Marlins. They do spend when the planets align. Actually refreshing for them to bottom out with the deep rebuild a la Tampa, Cubs, Orioles of recent yore. Much worse for them to be chasing above average mediocrity a la Kenny Williams: mid market club a la the Angels. The other team you cite: the Bulls- are an example of a pro team mired in mediocrity mid- market, stuck in play in hell. Unless youre the Dodgers, Yankees, Mets perenially in luxury tax territory better to tank, tank, tank and then spend in that fourth year when your window reopens. Sox spent in ’21-22: just not wisely.
Agreed on Kenny Williams, the guy was just not ready for the big leagues, even as a player.
Both the Jays & Padres had real shots at eliminating the Dodgers the last couple seasons. The 2025 Series was an all-time classic. It’s good to have a Goliath to take-down.
End MLB’s antitrust exemption. Let new owners add franchises or move existing ones and divide the talent. Would that reduce the overall quality of the product? Probably. But it would also make it harder for owners that refuse to compete to stick around.
This. I’d rather have 14 NY teams eating each others lunches than a disinterested Miami, Oakland, or Las Vegas franchise.
Yeah it’s possible without a cap. How about heavily punishing blows to the drafting. Miss a whole round (including QO picks) per certain amount spent. Dodgers under this system wouldn’t hypothetically pick until like the 5th round. You can also make them pay more revenue sharing. Really make it hurt. Teams that receive this sharing should be forced to spend all of it as it’s basically free money to them they shouldn’t pocket it. 2 birds 1 stone. Something has to be done that’s not up for debate.
So how do the big market owners get compensated for lost franchise value all of these schemes will cause? They too should just say oh, ok, devalue my asset? Some kind of consensus needs be found at a time when 8 or 9 teams will exceed the luxury tax levels – admittedly at wildly varying amounts – since there’s a voting group larger than the 7 dissenters the current consensus approach allows.
I doubt further revenue sharing will be agreed on without some floor structure for recipients, which Tim pointed out exists but isn’t enforced.
Huh? Compensation? How should we compensate Jeff Bezos when the transmission on his car blows out? The matter at hand is the massive gap. That might fly in a capitalist free market but not in a sport. The purpose of sport is to entertain. The Dodgers being allowed to bully the league with their abundance is not entertaining. Any non salary cap solution would have to heavily penalize the liberal use of their abundance. Compensation… Don’t make me laugh.
All that does is make the poor teams more reliant on prospects. Teams should be able to keep their productive star players
That is a cap.
The Dodgers barely won with all the money they spent. If there is a strike because of having or not having a cap the owners only have themselves to blame. A strike just means the owners want an excuse not to spend money. Hey I’m ready for A.I. baseball, or A.I. movies as I thought rocket raccoon or grote could carry the whole G.oG. movie franchise. Don’t play, its not going to hurt the fans, let the greed take you where it goes.
The Dodgers have been in the playoffs 13 straight seasons and won the WS in 3 of the last 6. They have outspent the second highest spending team by $1.2 billion over that time frame.
It would not be a strike, it would be a lockout.
The Dodgers in 2020 had more home grown palyers on their roster than any team this century (other than the cheating 2017 Astros).
The answer is yes, if you put in a salary floor that forces the welfare recipient owners to spend and penalize losing. It’s an embarrassment to the game that two teams have lost at least 119 games in each of the past two seasons. In a tournament style playoff system there is no reason why mid-to-small market teams can’t be successful
Without a cap the wealthy teams will always be able to pay more for the players. Leaving the poor franchises having to pay lesser players high salaries simply to meet the floor
The only people that don’t want a salary cap are the big market fans who get to enjoy each MLB Offseason like it’s Christmas.
Not true. I’m a Reds fan, just like you – limiting employees wages – allowing billionaire owners to pocket more – is not a good thing!
That’s not true. In 2025, the total of all MLB salaries was roughly $5.09B (or about $169m/team). If they had a floor of $180M and a cap of $200M, then the players would have earned more overall. These are examples. They should add up all the revenue as a league and divide it amongst the 30 teams with the cap representing a percentage of all revenue (49% or so). The cap (and what the owners make) would be dictated by the health of the sport.
What’s not true? In what fantasy world do you live in where you think owners are going to actually okay a system where players are making a higher % of total revenues than they do now? And why would large market teams vote for that? It makes it even harder for them to win. Good luck getting Big Bob to spend 180 M$.
Those numbers were examples. MLB/MLBPA decide on a percentage of revenue that goes to players. There is complete revenue sharing. What Bob Castellini wants to spend is irrelevant because he would actually have the money (and is required) to spend it.
How would he have the money. Remember in a cap/floor scenario Castellini would be foregoing all of the overages he’s now getting paid by the Dodgers and the like. I’ll bet Bob would be against this scenario. Why would the Dodgers owners want 50/50 sharing with these teams who didn’t have to spend as much on their clubs as they did to purchase?
Bob would get more than he currently gets. It would be more than enough to meet the floor and near the cap. All the owners will want it because it will grow the game. NFL fans know the Chiefs and their star players. Most MLB fans can’t name 3 players on the Marlins. It makes MLB more of a national sport instead of regional.
How does Bob get more than he does now? And why would say LA or NY want Bob to get more – for doing nothing? The sport made 13B$ in revenues – it’s doing just fine.
Just about half the revenue of the NFL…
What kind of small market fan are you? I guess you like living he H-E-double hockey sticks? I’m old and want to see my favorite team have a chance to compete before I’m dead. You’re crazy if you think Bob Castellini has the money to compete with the Dodgers. He’s not even a billionaire.
I’m the kind of small market fan who wants my pathetic billionaire owner to open his pocket books.
It’s a business, not a hobby. Small market teams do not have the revenue to do that the way the big market teams do. That’s the problem…
Half his yearly payroll is paid by other clubs’ owners. If he can’t afford to own what is essentially a monopoly that is appraised at over a billion dollars then he should have never purchased the club to begin with and he should immediately sell.
And he doesn’t need to spend like the Dodgers…they won 82 with a bottom 10 payroll. Another 60M$ could win a playoff round or two if things fall just right (which they nearly did for TOR).
I agree with this, unless the 49% gets chipped away at. I believe this has happened in one of the other sports, I forget which. Plus you’ve got seven franchises that are $50MM or more below $180 mil, so you’re asking all of them to spend way more than they have.
The Reds did not receive $72.5 million in revenue sharing. No team did. As Tim said in the article the top collector of revenue sharing was the Marlins at $70 million.
The Blue Jays had a top 5 payroll.
Bob Castellini, the majority owner of the Reds, is not a billionaire. He has a net worth of $400 million.
The Reds won 83 games.
Another $60 million and they are spending an unsustainable 63% of their revenue on player payroll.
Do you stop and think or look up the facts before you comment or just type whatever comes into your mind no matter how wrong it is?
You’re out of your mind if you think a third of MLB owners are going to agree to a floor that high.
A cap of the Dodgers doesn’t require Castellini spending more.
Adjusted for inflation, the Reds are spending less today than they were 10 years ago. That’s not the Yankees and Dodgers fault. It’s the Reds’ owners fault.
I will reiterate the long-standing argument … any person on this site arguing for a salary cap must be willing to accept a cap on their wages in their present employment. Obviously, if they aren’t happy with their wages presently, they can resign and attempt to get another job at a higher salary at some other firm. But, in baseball, we deal with an oligopoly in which there are only 30 MLB teams on which one can play (assume for the sake of this argument that Japan, Taiwan, Korea, or Mexico, are non-viable).
So, players have restricted market opportunities. The only way to constrain a team such as the Dodgers from buying a team of All-Stars is to impose a confiscatory taxation system, such as $1Billion for each and every penny over a limit, say $225 million in combined annual salaries. Eliminate deferrals and structured deals, or accelerate any deferrals to the present year for calculation purposes.
At the same time, impose a floor on each team, say $150 million, and a regressive tax rate on any team’s combined salary below that level. That penalty is assessed against the owner(s) personally; they want to play, they have to pay. For each team that falls below some artificially-created and imposed income amount (such as the Athletics), the tax revenues created are distributed to them, and an independent arbitration committee monitors the spending of the taxes to ensure that they are used to subsidize the salaries to achieve the floor.
If I make that much money and the difference is either I make a little less ridiculous amount or nothing at all because the economics of the sport have collapsed upon itself, I take option 1.
Tell the owners that. The players are still not making an amount that would cause the owners as a whole to lose one penny.
Yes. There should be a cap and floor, but we need to see real numbers from fully open books. My guess is those numbers would be set way higher.
William
You should check out unions and their pay scales
There are several teams for which a $150 million player payroll would be unsustainable. They don’t have the revenue to do so even after receiving revenue sharing. That is why the playing floor needs to be leveled with a 100% revenue sharing system. Then institute a heavy floor. Say $200 million with no cap. If some owner wants to lose money, let them do it. They won’t be able to do it for long so the system will self balance.
Sports salaries are increasingly resembling the “K economy.” You have top tier players making a lot, and many making the minimum/close to it. The players with mid-level salaries are disappearing. I think this impacts a team’s ability to field strong players at multiple positions, supported by a deeper bench needed for a 162+ season that is 7 months long.
100% – More playoff teams, so more teams that do at least a half assed job of trying to hang around for a wild card berth. And more pre-arb extensions from small and mid markets that used to sell those types once the pre arb years were done. Not to mention an aging curve skewing younger, leaving more early to mid 30s guys out of work. It’ll be interesting to see if the union prefers continuing to push top end salary, hoping for trickle down to the rest of its members. Or if in addition to battling the owners for more of the overall sport’s pie, it also places more emphasis on the non star players getting a bigger piece, even if it means top end growth decelerates.
David, in the current CBA the players that saw the largest increases in earnings percentage wise were the young players that are making the minimum or close to it.
Percentage wise but not in real dollars.
Translating that to the real life economy, a guy going from $10 to $12 per hour is getting a 20% raise, but in terms of real dollars its $4160 for 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year.
Let’s say a doctor or executive gets a 1% bonus on a $500,000 salary. That is still $5,000 which is more of a bump in dollars than the guy above who got a 20% raise.
Then they live in a place where their gas and electric bills get jacked up $200 a month. More than half of the hourly wage guy’s bump above is gone and could be the critical margin. The doc or executive doesn’t even notice.
The young players still advanced less than the stars.
What are you talking about? Pre-arb players got the largest gain in percentage of increase in the current CBA. If you want to compare it to hourly workers, we are talking about a guy going from $12/hr to $21 per hour. FA players, the top paid players in baseball, got less than a 10% increase over the past 4 seasons, arbitration eligible players got a negligible increase, while pre-arb players have had nearly a 100% increase in earnings. Sometimes people argue stuff they have literally no idea what they are talking about. Please, leave the conversation to people who at least have a basic idea of what is going on.
Real dollars. Not percentages. That’s the conversation.
Fantastic post Tim- extremely informative and thorough. As a Dodger fan, I wouldn’t necessarily be opposed to a cap, but the circumstances would need to make sense. What would the hypothetical $ threshold be? $250MM? $300MM? $350MM? And what would the floor/cap ratio be? Is the floor to be 50% of the cap? 60%? 75%? I’m willing to admit that my team does have an advantage, but I also firmly believe that other teams’ biggest disadvantage isn’t simply that they can’t match the big spenders dollar for dollar… rather, it’s none other than their owner, and it trickles down from there- cutting corners and/or making poor decisions with personnel, facilities, technology, etc. The Angels (who I’m also a fan of) are a perfect example of this. Moreno has consistently trotted out top 10 payrolls, with hardly anything to show for it because he has historically skimped on all of the afore-mentioned elements.Teams like the Brewers, Rays, and Indians have created sustained success while sporting bottom 10 (and in some cases bottom 5) payrolls. Heck, the Rays were one awful managerial decision away from taking the Dodgers to 7 games and possibly winning the WS.
Agreed! Thank you, Tim.
Both the Mets and Angels are prime examples of poorly run franchises who spend a lot in free agency. Similarly, no amount of caps, floors, revenue sharing, etc will help teams like the Reds. The Dodgers are a Dynasty because they both have a lot of money, but also are great at drafting, player development, and trading. I think work can be done to continue to increase parity, but MLB must figure out how to get rid of ownership groups who run their franchise poorly and/or are unwilling to spend on payroll.
Salary cap
Salary floor
Raise the minimum so that 2nd and 3rd year players make money that’s in the same universe as FAs
Pay minor leaguers better.
Economic parity works in the NBA and NFL. There is zero reason for the insane payroll disparity in the current MLB. We don’t have to accept it. We shouldn’t accept it. Its bad and unfair.
It feels like the MLBPA is disproportionately led by wealthy veteran players. They’re not really invested in representing the journeymen and fringe players that make up much of their membership.
It’s because of the vets that the league minimum will nearly double in 8 years and now there are prearb pools, better meals/housing, etc…
MLB has more parity than those leagues.
panacea? Really
A hard cap floor, with a soft cap, taxed at 200% and redistributed to the bottom teams from lowest to highest.
Only if the bottom teams actually try to win games. A Rockies team that goes 52-110 for example should be given nothing in a redistribution. Give that particular money to the MLBPA to distribute to all the minor leaguers across the 30 teams, they deserve more than Dick Monfort in that scenario.
I mean as long as they’re spending what more can you ask?
Salary caps suck! Free enterprise! Pay the players!!
Might as well retract half the league then.
The players are getting paid just fine. But the crazier contracts get the more the sport will slowly become undesirable to watch….like the NBA
I don’t think we need a cap.
A lot of teams spend beneath the luxury tax. Raising it would raise the team’s willing spending. You can make a similar luxury tax threshold but with a luxury tax floor or whatever. Teams with higher payrolls have to pay a more and also compensate the lower teams. The picks should be recycled too. MLB can also make a tournament for the non-posteason teams while the postseason is happening. Another solution is limiting spending for an Offseason. However, for generational, superstar players, you can go to MLBPA and MLB to ask for an exception, if both approve, then BOOM!
Revenue sharing in my opinion is a bit much, 40% percent instead. However, teams that exceed luxury tax thresholds will pay a certain amount to each team, and the team must spend ALL of it. In addition, reduce MLB service years to 5 before they are a free agent. Competitive balance is what matters, so high spending teams will forfeit a good amount of draft and international bonus pool. They should limit the amount of minor league Rule 5 picks that high spending teams take too.
That’s just what I think.
MLB parity, maybe so maybe no. MLB parody? Why yes.
MLB parity is near impossible without a cap. Dodgers payroll is higher than some team’s revenue. Just too much revenue disparity. But putting together a workable cap would be difficult and that is before factoring in the fact the MLBPA is adamantly opposed to it. If the owners are determined to push for a cap, games will be lost in 2027.
MLB already has more parity than leagues with caps.
You keep saying that and you are wrong every time. Since the big contracts for local TV started, MLB has the least parity of any of those leagues.
You have outdone yourself, Tim, and please ignore the folks that say that the article is too long. Realistically, you were rather concise in your approach given the nature of the topic.
Clearly you have given considerable thought to the topic over the years, and outlined its rather thorny nature. I am glad that you read all about Marvin Miller – a veritable legend that is forgotten by the younger generations of fans.
The best thing that you did is to outline the issues, discuss some of the pros and cons as to potential solutions, and yet for the most part you realize that there are no easy answers and very few definitive solutions…just, we hope, a path to follow that will occur in fits and starts as in almost all labor relations situations. You are a patient and thoughtful observer of the process.
Thanks for the article – possibly the best one written on here in the history of the site.
That’s really kind, thank you.
Answer to the question…not in the least.
Tucker’s contract seemed to be the last straw with almost all the owners.
It is either that or have only a dozen teams in major league baseball. It is virtually dead in flyover country already with the young generation.
Thank you for a very thorough article this was a great read
No, it’s not. There you go. Could’ve saved tim all that trouble.
Giving creedance to fans that dont understand time value of money is absurd. Just because fans lack basic understanding does not make their complaints valid.
Yes to salary caps on the team. No cap on a player’s contract. Very simple. The team can spend what it wants on any player, they just can’t have a team payroll over whatever the cap amount is. Maybe have a high floor cap as well. This will lead to better drafting and attention to player development.
Tim – a question for you. We don’t see a cap with European football clubs. They have a financial fair play system, but no cap. Setting aside the aspects of relegation & promotion for a moment, might this be something for MLB to consider?
Im fine with no salary cap. Deferred pay should accure interest and that interest has to be spread out to all the teams across the league…deferred payments need to come with some higher risk. I haven’t thought it out all the way. Feel free to comment.
No.
What if they kept the basic framework for CBT taxing and revenue sharing, but instead of the revenue sharing going to the owners, it goes directly to the players on those teams? Maybe proportional to their salaries. That would both make lower spending teams more attractive to free agents, and probably discourage team owners that see the revenue sharing as profit from limiting payroll as much as possible. I would think that it would also be acceptable to most players and most owners.
I haven’t heard anyone else suggest anything like this, but I wonder if something along these lines should be considered.
We have more parity in baseball than any other sport.
20 of the 30 teams have made at least one World Series in the past 25 years, and 16 of 30 teams have won at least one World Series in that time.
Every other league has had multiple repeat champs in that 25 year span in which MLB had no back-to-back title winners.
Baseball has had 16 different champions since 2000, compared to 14 in the
NHL, 13 in the NFL and 12 in the NBA. In a more recent timeframe, since January
2012, 18 different MLB teams have played in the World Series, compared to 17 in the
Stanley Cup Finals, 13 in the Super Bowl and 13 in the NBA Finals.
# of MLB teams that finish with a .400 to .600 W%
now do the # in the other leagues.
The NFL model (or floor/cap) does not mean that the Reds will have a better chance of competing if enacted.
—> Just last year 11 of the 32 nfl teams finished the season with a sub .400 record (6 or fewer wins). Only 2 of the 30 MLB clubs performed that badly this season. 9 NFL teams had a plus .600 record (11 or more wins). Not a single MLB club finished with a .600 plus W% this year.
There are 162 games in a baseball season. Regression to the mean in higher number sets will automatically put more teams between .400 and .600.
In a season of 1 game, ZERO teams finish between .400 and .600.
If you go back and aggregate say 25 seasons, probably every team is between .400 and .600.
Yep.
If kettle, then pot.
You get perpetual likes for screenname
Can’t ask players to accept a cap without requiring all 30 owners opening their books.
Which will never happen.
I had an idea where the luxury tax payments from teams like the dodgers and Mets would be split among the 3 teams in each league closest to making the playoffs each year. The first three out. Those teams would be required to be under the luxury cap for the previous 3 years in order to get the funds, otherwise the money would go to the next team down the rankings in their league. The money would be required to be spent on new free agents in the off season they receive the funds, otherwise the money goes into the player retirement fund. Teams would be incentivized to sign shorter term deals with that money, which raises the money available to the “good but not great” players, and helps teams fill out their roster holes if they missed the playoffs.
Obviously not a perfect solution, but one that I think could help teams that are at least TRYING to make the playoffs.
Great article, Tim. You explained things in ways that I hadn’t seen before. Having been a member of both management and union in the several jobs I have had over my lifetime, I can tell you that no one gets serious in negotiations until the key people go off by themselves.
In my case, it was the union president and the CEO. For baseball, it will be those private meeetings between Manfred and Tony Clark—and maybe a National Labor Relations Board mediator if Trump doesn’t illegally abolish the agency.
The obsession with parity is just weird.
Especially when it’s not even a problem.
You’ve made many of these comments and managed to be wrong every time
Hey I really liked this style of article
All non US players are drafted or can’t play here. Lottery draft for Japan, Korea, DR, wherever. No more buying rights to players. US players are drafted or no more US drafts. All players must be 17.5 yrs of age at draft. 7 yrs control period or signed longer.
Twenty-two teams have been in the World Series this century with 16 different winners. That feels like parity to me. The problem is the teams that don’t try, not the teams that do.
I would only support a salary cap if contracts (including extensions) for home-grown/drafted talent was excluded from the cap.
Answer to this question is NO.
It already has parity without a cap.
Current penalties aren’t bad enough to stop a few owners – easy fix – make the penalties worse! But only in conjunction with real penalties for owners who refuse to spend.
Here’s all you need to know: the Pirates and Marlins have little chance to win it all in MLB.
Their neighbors the Steelers and Dolphins are among the NFL’s perennial contenders.
The NFL’s hard cap and floor plan works.
Time for baseball to catch up.
LOL, no. First of all you’ve just described a league where if you have a great QB – you have a chance. There is no singular position on an MLB club that even compares. Secondly, there’s nothing stopping the owners of the Pirates and Marlins from spending more and thus increasing their odds of competing.
The Marlins have won two championships since the Dolphins last did.
The sports simply aren’t the same. Players just drafted don’t typically reach the majors for a number of years. NFL players do immediately.
Perhaps we no longer allow baseball players to be drafted or signed until they’re 21?
Kinda screws the kids in the International market though. And destroys the minors – which MLB seems increasingly ok with.
MLB has more parity than the NFL.
You keep saying it and are wrong every time.
There is no parity in the Pro Leagues that have a Salary Cap so what makes anyone think that a Salary Cap in MLB would change anything
Cap and floor tied to percentage of revenue. Floor can be (for example) 60% or 2/3 of the ceiling. No workarounds.
The only reason its gone this far is because the public has funded so much of baseball, with stadiums, attendance, concession, buying licensed products.
This will not happen. Neither will baseball in 2027, but no baseball in 2027 and actually fixing it might mean we still have baseball in 2040.
One word—–> NO
The Dodgers are not the villain. As someone else said, the Dodgers haven’t been a “super team” this entire time. They had a HOFer in CK, acquired a bunch player anyone could have had (Muncy, Taylor, etc) and developed a ton of great players (Seager, Bellinger, etc). This current version has some huge STARS, but I’d like to point out how each one literally fell into their laps because another big market team was too cheap/scared/dumb to retain them. Boston doesn’t want to pay Mookie, Atlanta gets better “value” than Freddie, LAA is too incompetent to have a chance to retain Shohei, and then both Houston and CHC are both too sacred to swim in the Tucker waters. All of these decisions are dumb + not good for baseball and all of these franchises should be chastised at every opportunity for handing over their star to LAD. We could throw the Mets into the mix with Diaz too. My only point is that LAD is not the villain. These teams willingly allowed them to collect stars via their own mismanagement.
Two words—-> money, power drunk
They are the current villain because they haven’t started spending like this since the current century.
The Yankees did pretty well in the 90s and 00s outspending everyone else as the past villain.
Spending big bucks allows you to be consistently good to very good EVERY YEAR with the opportunity to be excellent. Otherwise you are forced to align the stars and make a run then have a fire sale, or just sit out.
Tim,
Thanks so much for this piece. It is a comprehensive, intelligent, thoughtful and well written assessment of where the financial elements of our game stand today. It is gratifying to read an objective summary of the state of the business of the game.
As a life-long Dodger fan I admit the past decade– and especially the most recent few years– have been a euphoric ride. But I understand the frustration, even the anger of those fans who feel their clubs are at a hopeless disadvantage trying to compete with the richest in the game: the Dodgers, Mets, Yanks, Jays, etc.
The answer to this problem should not be stopping the game we love. Taking the game off the field hurts all of us. Only the most cynical and nihilistic would choose that solution. Baseball fans want baseball. What could be more obvious?
I have been advocating increased financial restrictions for the richest teams in the form of higher penalties (call it the luxury tax model) for exceeding some agreed upon formula of payroll excess, and I can see the sense in increasing the amounts the wealthiest teams contribute in the form of revenue sharing.
These modifications would necessitate a requirement for the teams receiving the largess to spend the money on the field (as it does now though as you point out it doesn’t seem to be enforced meaningfully).
The richer teams should continue to support the poorer teams in the interest of competition. That would make for better baseball all the way around.
To institutionalize–to enshrine–a formal salary cap I think is a mistake. It helps no one but the owners, increasing their potential profits at the expense of the players.
Thanks again for your analysis and thanks for this site. Without MLBTR the winter would seem MUCH longer.
You forgot a question: Define success?
Examples of potential answers:
– More teams spending within 15% of the median spend
– Team sale and expansion prices going up continuously
– Total player compensation exceeding inflation
– More teams with an elimination number of 3+ going into the last week of the regular season
– Every team making the playoffs at least once every five years
– No Rockies/White Sox situations, every team always wins at least 63 games.
If the owners amongst themselves cannot agree, and the rich vs DFA-carousel players cannot agree, and the players and the owners cannot then agree, what exactly are we doing here?
A salary cap is an almost futile gesture without revenue sharing of media money. and a minimum salary if a team is to receive “competitive balance” or other equalization payments.
What’s stopping Pittsburgh from offering bellinger 1 year and 45 million
Everentually dodgers will do the same thing the Yankees and angels did and spend themselves into oblivion.
5 years from now this will fix itself
The other owners are just cheap and the dodgers are exploiting it.
If they spend the dodgers will have to stop
If they don’t spend, the dodgers will keep winning titles until they overspend and implode like the Yankees….and angels did
What’s stopping pirates from offering Bellinger 1 year 45 mill?
Bellinger is stopping Bellinger from accepting that offer from the pirates.
You do realize it takes two to agree to a contract and highest aav isn’t always the most desirable contract. Players actually want years over money.
1 year deals are nice for boys trying to rebuild value or multiple years with opt out after first year for guys who aren’t seeing a market they want
But many high profile free agents wouldn’t accept 1 year deals outright anywhere
You seriously think Pirates Athletics Guardians Rays Orioles Dbacks Royals could defer 2.2 billion dollars? Lmao no
Some years the Dodgers deferred over 100+ mill.
In 2026 there’s 17 teams SEVENTEEN where that 100+ mill represents somewhere between 50%-100% of their payroll obligations.
Dodgers aren’t exploiting owners being cheap. Dodgers are exploiting tax loopholes that lower aav hits by deferring money and allow them to spend it on other players.
Ohtani making 70 aav but only being taxed at 46 is the most egregious.
The markets been backwards for years
One war was worth 9 million on the open market prior to Covid.
I believe bellinger put up 4.9 war last year.
1 year 45 – 50
That’s what the second tier teams should be doing to combat the dodgers
Instead they cry broke and wait for the dodgers to eventually overspend.
It’s collusion on the part of the mid tier teams AGAIN
When did the Angels win consistently?
Exactly! They just spent consistently
The owners reversed uno’ed the hitter.
The hitters should always have been pushing for 2 – 3 year contracts.
Ohtani is literally underpaid which is insane in itself.
If I’m belli and have personal belief I’m pushing for 2 years 95 million.
Yeah just get rid of deferrals
With it reading all that the answer is Yes
Next question
Cap + floor or relegation forced sale
Awesome read Tim . Thanks for writing this , but I’m still a fan of a hard cap even if we lose some or all of 2027 season . It will only save the game .
How would current teams (Dodgers/Mets/etc) be immediately affected by a cap that is below where they’re spending currently?
NBA did an amnesty provision where teams could cut players and stretch their contracts out over think 5 years when they redid their cap rules way back when. Kobe was still playing. That helped teams get rid of bloated contracts and get into compliance
Thank you for this post, Tim Dierkes! One of the best articles in MLBTR history. Very in-depth analysis. I hope MLB can figure this all out without losing the 2027 season. Crazy how good of an article this was. Thanks again, Tim for your hard work in writing this.😁
As much as I love the ideas of a floor and cap, the local tv/media issue for many teams needs a long term solution.
Very interesting article. I would say 1st that I think a lock out is likely. I doubt a cancelled season.
As for the Revenue sharing and tax $. I could see those two being a way to create an unsaid salary floor. It would require some transparency by the teams that receive either. Perhaps at a 1.75 to 1 ratio. With a penalty for any team receiving money and not matching that ratio.. Say something like a 50% reduction in funds the following season. I would think raising the number of teams (say to 18 lowest revenue teams) receiving these funds would help increase overall payroll. To pay for all this I would think raising the tax rates could do a portion of it and perhaps a 60/40 split on tax money collected.
Also, just a random thought maybe MLB could have some sort of partnership with revenue sharing recipient teams to resign their home-grown stars. Say for the sake of augment 10% of their free-agent contract if they resign with their team. That money coming from the same place.
As for deferred money. It feels like it’s becoming too common. Maybe there’s a way to so that it counts at a different % to the team’s current tax number. So that it’s still a tool for teams but not abused.
I don’t see how the economics can change in a meaningful way that ends up looking like parity like in other sports until all regional TV deals end and revenue sharing is equal amongst teams. Which I don’t seeing ever happening in my lifetime without some existential threat facing the league or its teams.
I think that comes before a salary cap/floor. Cap/floor just won’t work to make any meaningful change as long as the revenues available to spend look similar to today.
The root cause is the disparity in revenue streams. I grew up in Pittsburgh, so I won with the Steelers and Penguins and lost when I became a Pirate fan. The Bucs have been bad for most of the last 35 years, and thus don’t have the kind of revenue they should be pulling in. The Dodgers have done everything right and have built their revenue stream, helped by a loophole that excluded about a billion dollars of their TV contract from revenue sharing. How can those two teams possibly compete on the same level. Boras says Ohtani has been worth $250M to the Dodgers. What small fraction of that would he have made in Pittsburgh?
On one hand, this seems fair. Years of incompetence and poor business management should result in less earnings. Good management should make them more money. The problem comes when you put these two teams in direct competition. The Pirates legitimately can’t have a $200M payroll on their revenue. Owners aren’t allowed to deficit spend beyond a certain point, contrary to the “but they’re billionaires” crowd. And if you can’t afford to get to half, why bother going to the 120 or 150 that they could potentially pay when that won’t allow them to be competitive? Could the Pirates have fixed their offense with $50M of free agents last year? Not at these prices.
Increased revenue sharing + salary floor. Honestly, soft cap seems fine. But they have to even out the revenues for this to work.
I, too, was born and raised in the Pittsburgh area and am a Pirates fan. Back in the 60’s and 70’s, then briefly in the early 90’s and 2010’s, the Pirates were one of the better teams. As player salaries grew exponentially they became more and more irrelevant. The brief windows of opportunity since the 70’s are due to fortuitous player development (Bonds, McCutchen) coupled with some good trades / signings and good fortune in players avoiding major setbacks. Perhaps another window is looming with Skenes & Griffin if they can assemble a decent team behind them, but it will be a brief window only.
They cannot take the other path to developing a winning team – spending gobs of money on the best players. Their only chance at relevance is to be the best at drafting and developing young players so they can win cheaply, and so far they have been mostly poor at it. Even the Rays, arguably the best at this, are being slowly priced out of regular contention.
To have equal opportunity to compete annually with the rich teams, payroll and revenue must be more equitable than they are now. I can’t see a good solution to this – owners and players must be willing to give up something for the good of the game and I don’t see it happening. Some kind of salary cap / floor is necessary, and some better form of revenue sharing is also necessary. Hope they can work something out, because if they don’t MLB will be reduced to about 10 total teams and many of us in smaller markets will lose interest.
Fair and honest article. You covered it really well.
Here’s my take:
I see comments about the players needfor more money and the owners making so much money, yet not disclosing it, and the owners needing to be fair with the players, etc..
Frankly, I don’t have sympathy for either. An owner doesn’t need to horde all of the profits and a player certainly doesn’t need to make 20 mil a year. But it’s just that, the attitude that more is never enough. Why not try dropping the prices of a hot dog, peanuts or the cost of admission and cater to the fan base a little bit. While you’re at it, why not add a salary floor and cap, and invest more in the minor league system and their rate of pay. Make games more affordable, improve the competition, make it anyone’s game when well drafted, coached and executed. Let every fan know that their team is playing on a level playing field so there’s reason for optimism every year.
All things that won’t happen due to greed.
I stopped going to games a few years back. My attitude has worsened during that time and it didn’t improve while watching the Dodger’s exploit a rule that wasn’t intended to be exploited the way that it was but was instead intended to give a smaller market team a shot at retaining talent, just feels like adding salt to an open wound.
At the end of the day there’s just more greed than there is focus on the client, the fan base. It’s greed that will drive the lock out and that’s fine with me because I’ve already stopped going to games, watch fewer games and from the look of it will be watching even fewer games this upcoming season.
Tim, you missed something very significant in your analysis. Deferred salary explicitly CANNOT be used for any purpose other than funding the deferral. Article XVI of the Basic Agreement states:
“….Club may fund deferred compensation obligations in such manner as it elects, provided that: (a) the funding method used by the Club must be such that the amount(s) funded are exclusively for the uses and purposes of satisfying the deferred compensation obligation(s) being funded…”
Exclusively. And there it is, clearly, in black-and-white.
And just because I find it rhetorically irritating, unicorns are mythical beasts — and last I checked, Ohtani actually exists. He is rare, and maybe once in a lifetime. But he is real.
You’re right. The Dodgers aren’t literally taking the $68 mil that is deferred on Ohtani and spending it on Kyle Tucker. But they are investing that 68 mil knowing it will grow beyond what they need to eventually pay Ohtani, so I imagine they feel fine taking the “savings” of a sort and spending it in the present.
Yes, this is the mostly overlooked point. I ran the numbers back when the Dodgers signed this contract and found that if they make only the average historical return on the S&P 500 with the deferred salary over ten years that the net cost of signing Ohtani will be approximately zero dollars. Always felt that this should have been the headline for this story.
And for complete accuracy, the deferred amount is around $460M over ten years.
I believe we might see a player owned league develope over the next few decades given their financial clout…if they could somehow financially unify. They’re making around 50% of revenue currently
The problem is that the solution requires rich teams to give/share their money with poor teams who paid less for them. This would have to be solved with a very complex formula where the small teams owe a % of equity when they sell, blah, blah blah. Set the rich guy problems aside for now.
If, by magic or fiat, MLB had the NHL cap and floor system…what would be the problem?
Hard cap. Hard floor. No (few) gimmicks. An 8 year deal for $80 million counts as $10 M a year against the cap, regardless of how it actually pays out.
There is an individual cap. No player can make more 20% of the team’s cap. Set the rich guy problems aside for now
The gap between the highest spending and lowest spending teams is $24 million…not $200-300 million.
The best current player in hockey has signed 3 contracts to play in Edmonton, one of the smallest markets. The best player of the past 20 years has spent his entire career in Pittsburgh.
Hockey players get half the money.
What is the problem? Why would this not work for MLB (aside from the obvious…the big market teams, league itself and TV partners all want the big market teams to succeed)?
Agree with this, except that the best NHL player of the past 20 years has played in Washington. The guy in Pittsburgh had a ton of help.
5 tool player with 3 Cups vs. 2 tool player with 1 Cup.
Not even close.
Ovie is great, though.
I figured I’d hear back.
Crosby had Malkin his whole career, Letang for all but 1 year, Fleury for most of it including all 3 cups. Plus a constant rotation of strong supporting cast such as Kessel.
Ovie had Backstrom for a good bit of time, Carlson for a time, a couple good years of Holtby and the odd year or two of Kuznetsov, Semin, Green.
That’s why Crosby’s team (not Crosby) has 3 cups, and Ovie’s team has 1. Ovie had to do a lot more heavy lifting and even then, the Caps were the 2010s’ winningest team.
McDavid is a Crosby-type of player who is even better. Gretzky was as well. We have not seen another player like Ovie who can score AND hit/dominate physically. Lindros was supposed to do that. Maybe Howe did, I’m not that old.
But…we’ve all been treated to having these two dominate the NHL for the past 21 seasons, surely we agree!
If all the billionaires tried to win and didn’t consider their team a line item or a source of passive income there wouldn’t be as much parity.
There should be some notion that the fans who ultimately pay for all of this should be considered. There are fewer and fewer people who can easily enjoy a night at a MLB game much less consider buying season tickets as I had done at one point.
There are crappy owners that treat the tax as a cap and do not spend to either keep their stars or get the best available players, Red Sox for example. If I were the MLBPA, I would trade a cap for free agency in 4 years instead of 6, minimum salary of $2mm, 1 Pre-Arb year and 3 arbitration eligible. I would also push to have 1 unified draft with 3 extra rounds and a universal $10mm cap to sign undrafted talent. fixed minor league salary of $100,000 no bonus pools. Have something like the Bird rule where 3 homegrown players dont count against the cap but count towards the floor.
The article was very informative. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Tim.
If a salary cap is to be implemented, I imagine the PA would seek to reduce the number of years of control a team has on a player (from six to five) as well as lowering the number of games / innings for a qualified season.
In the absence of a salary cap, could one option be to create maximum contracts, both in term and salary as the NHL does? This doesn’t prevent the Dodgers from signing every major FA, but it does level the playing field quite a bit. This also might help teams retain their “homegrown” talents. This also solves the “deferred money” issue since this tool would be irrelevant under this option.
There could be exceptions to this option, using the NBA and, to a lesser extent, the NHL as examples. Specifically, the team last holding a player’s rights can offer one or two more years in term plus go 10% over the max salary. These numbers can vary, but the idea is to give the team a greater chance to keep their own players.
Anyway, just some ideas to consider as MLB and MLBPA face a likely very contentious negotiation.
MLB is making a lot of money. Players are making a lot of money. 22 of the 30 teams have made the playoffs the last 3 years (using the quote above). 7 different WS winners in last 10 years Attendance keeps growing for teams that choose to spend and draw interest around their team.
.Cheap owners continue to pocket money and not spend and passionate owners or even some smart owners (Rogers Communications) can see that spending money draws interest around your team which in turn results in more income that usually results in more profits. As a Blue Jays fan for 40+ years I have seen all phases of this (the good the bad, the stupid, the ugly and the smart) Smart investment always means more profit.
So what is the problem? If it ain’t broke don’t fix it. No cap or floor is going to fix cheap/greedy owners.
One more factor to consider is, do you actually think those cheap greedy owners that are putting those millions of dollars of revenue sharing into their pockets are going to give that up (no revenue sharing in favor of a cap) or be told they HAVE to spend a certain amount (cap floor)? AIN’T HAPPENING !!!!
Simple answer…
A cap isn’t the only thing needed. It needs to be a Cap&Floor system with a top and a bottom that the players and owners can agree on. If the floor makes it impossible for certain owners to handle, then they need to sell their teams or partner up with other investors. For example, if Bruce Sherman can’t afford to handle an established floor, sell the team or put the pride down and give Jorge Mas or other investors a call.
The issue is with all 30 ownerships because they all have allowed for this to reach this point. And the MLBPA isn’t innocent either because the leaders have been more about themselves lining up their pockets than they have been about preserving a future for the game that continues to take care of the players.
And let me point out, this is just a start because this mess has led to other issues. The owners need to realize that this is a league, which means they shouldn’t be trying to blow other owners out of the water because their real competitors are the other sports leagues for consumer dollars. The players and MLBPA need to realize that if the product is disatisfying to consumers, those consumers will go elsewhere for entertainment, which leaves less money to be fighting over, thus less money for the players to be paid.
For anyone that wants to overgeneralize this as only needing a cap to stop big market teams or only needing to put something in place to make small market team owners spend more, keep in mind that one system won’t work, and we’ve reached the point where fans in about 20 markets are not accepting a dog-and-pony show where both parties pretend they tried. If both parties think it bad now with certain deals being lost and certain markets suffering, it will get worse if the same garbage continues after the next CBA is agreed upon, and there is no CAp&Floor in place that fans of those 20 or so markets can feel comfortable with.
For big market fans of certain teams, clearly MLB can’t survive if only fans in the big markets are tuned in while fans in 20 markets tune out. You need opponents to play against, and pitting Super Teams against struggling teams are not going to work. After all, how many people will tune in for a fight between Superman bulked up on Incredible Hulk radiation going against a scrawny little, regular 5-year old child with impairments in vision, strength, movement, etc.? No one that thinks there should be a fair fight will. That’s most of society.
I think you’d be surprised by how many tune in to watch David vs. Goliath. The Reds tv viewership is a good indicator.
I didn’t realize that the Reds are 20 teams.
I don’t think Reds fans are any different than Brewers fans, or Cards fans, or etc…. The only difference might be the Florida fanbases which are made up of shipped off retirees.
Thank you for confirming that you know nothing about Florida – especially the Miami and Tampa/St. Pete areas.
Yeah, plenty of retirees in Miami and Tampa. Maybe you should come down some time so you can say, “Oops!”
My gosh! You really think there are more retiress in Miami than in Milwaukee, St. Louis, and Cincinatti? lol!
Miami-Ft. Lauderdale-West Palm Beach 1,037,790 people 65+. Ranks 4th highest total by metro area in nation…..far more than Milwaukee, St. Louis, Cincinnati areas.
Have you ever been to Miami? Why did you include West Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale? Stop trying to inflate numbers that have nothing to do with Miami. The Marlins play in Miami. So, you think that Miami has more retirees than Milwaukee, St. Louis, and Cincinnati?
Clearly you haven’t been here. Maybe you should come here sometime to see the place before you speak blindly and get it so ridiculousluy wrong like you did. Same thing with Tampa/St. Pete.
I went to the US census and looked up metro areas. Don’t yell at me about how they define Miami’s metro area.
Ft. Lauderdale is about an hour north of Miami. West Palm Beach is 1 1/2 to 2 hours north of Miami…and that’s with no traffic!
Don’t tell me about what I know about where I live. I live here.
Again, come down here sometime so you don’t blindly make ridiculous comments that show you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Heck, the Florida Panthers don’t even play in Ft. Lauderdale, and they’re in that same county, but found more comfort in Sunrise when they couldn’t compete with the Heat and Dolphins in Miami.
Stop trying to inflate the numbers
And an FYI, Ft. Lauderdale is in the next county – not even in the same county as Miami. And West Palm Beach is two counties over.
JC calm down dude. I told you where the number came from – it’s like including Dayton Ohio and NKY with Cincinnati – it’s the same market. There is nothing factually wrong about me pointing out that Florida has a lot of retirees – many of whom are transplants. If you disagree – just put me on ignore.
It isn’t about disagreeing. It’s about facts. Use some common sense here. Miami is well-known as a tropical fast-paced city…but you try to argue that it’s a place for retirees. People from the cities you mention like Cincinnati, Milwaukee, and St. Louis come here to enjoy a faster pace for fun, but you call it a place for retirees? College students from those cities you mention come to Miami as one of its Spring Break spots, but you say it’s for retirees. You see Miami in film, everything, but you say it’s for retirees. Come on, don’t try to slip out of something that I’m pretty sure you realize was incorrect. Own up to when you screw something up.
And with the mention of Ft. Lauderdale and West Palm Beach…come on, there’s a bit of technology that’s been around for a little bit called a map. It doesn’t take long to see the distance those other cities are from Miami.
And I’m not likely to mute you because I enjoy when people shamelessly show how wrong they are on blogsites. You’re doing that here with your asserttion about Miami and retirees.
You’ve read ridiculously more into what I wrote than what I actually wrote.
“The only difference might be the Florida fanbases which are made up of shipped off retirees.”
This is what you wrote.
Problem with your statement: The Marlins play in Miami. The Rays play in Tampa. Miami is not a place for retirees. Tampa/St. Pete is not a place for retirees. Both are more metropolitan than the cities you mention. In fact, there was a sports analyst that pointed out on one of the baseball shows covering the issues leading to the almost certain lockout, who stated that “Only in MLB is Miami considered a small market.”
Yes Take the money out of the workers pockets and make the billionaires richer…. Think about it… put a salary cap on you place of work… no matter what you do… you’ll never get paid anything near your value to the company if they have a salary cap… but the owners will get richer… So the obvious answer is not to tax spending… but Runaway Owners incomes… their books must be made public if they get public subsidy in any form….. Set a percentage of Gross income that must go to the equality Pool.. If you make a Trillion and I make a Billion… you should be paying more of the cost of building the league
Dodgers do everything better than the much of the completion. Scouting, drafting, player development, investment in the DR, Venezuela, Africa, Korea, Japan. They only recently went crazy with spending. There is still parity they were 2 inches from losing to the Jay’s. Tired narrative
This was a remarkable and concise article. It’s too bad most of these commenters didn’t actually read it. Not very well-educated, these readers.
One answer lies with the highly profitable NFL, where there is full revenue sharing, no local contracts, and equivalent spending on players by team. The word “cap” is used, but because all the teams spend the max, there is no need for a cap or floor.
If MLB did that, all games would have to be run by MLB and bid out among national broadcast and streaming services, just like the NFL. Local radio revenue would also probably have to be shared.
Some of the MLB owners would be taking a more severe haircut than they are now, which might make it a nonstarter.
The best step toward an agreement with the union, at least in my view, is the elimination of the antitrust exemption by Congress. That should have happened years ago. It changes the nature of the relationship (for the fairer) when the owners can’t legally collude as much as they can now.
Sadly, the cancellation of a season will have no bearing on parity, even if and when a settlement is achieved.
Baseball has had 16 different champions since 2000, compared to 14 in the
NHL, 13 in the NFL and 12 in the NBA. In a more recent timeframe, since January
2012, 18 different MLB teams have played in the World Series, compared to 17 in the
Stanley Cup Finals, 13 in the Super Bowl and 13 in the NBA Finals.
@Mr Rickey
Baseball having different champions is a product of the game itself being the hardest to be able to sustain successful postseason performance – not because of it’s system. NFL, NHL, and NBA are sports that are different.
Now, let’s compare the undeniable part – how many different teams have multiple winning seasons, division championships, playoff appearances, etc. that does show MLB’s problem.
Mr Rickey the obvious shill account for MLB owners,
Bad argument. In the NBA and NHL one player can carry a team and two superstars can almost guarantee a playoff appearance. In the NFL teams have changed only the QB among starters and went from a losing team to the playoffs in a single season. In MLB one guy makes a small dent, but it takes 40 to win a championship and usually more than that. Think about it, if the Pirates added Tucker, would that made them a playoff team? The answer is an obvious no. With one player making $60 million of a maximum $140-150 million 40 man payroll could they even field a competitive team? The answer is an equally obvious no.
Also, going back 25 years is disingenuous when the majority of the big local TV deals were signed in the past 14-15 years. The Dodgers signed their TV deal in 2013 and their payroll immediately went up over $100 million. Their baseball operations non-player employment level has quadrupled or more.
Since 2013 the Dodgers (#1 in revenue) have won the WS 3 times, the Red Sox (#3 in revenue) have won twice. That is 5 of 13 or 38% by 2 teams. The only team not in the top 5 in payroll for the year the year they won the WS was the Royals in 2015. .Since then they have a .439 win percentage and one playoff appearance.
Then you have to take into account the revenue of the teams and then compare that to home playoff games played. In the other major sports, all teams share equally in that money. In MLB a home team can make as much as $15 million per home game and nothing per road game. Revenue that does not have to be spent on player payroll, but can be spent on player development as well.
The Dodgers have more people in their data and analytics department than the Pirates have in player development as a whole including minor league coaches and scouts. Why? The Dodgers have 3 times the revenue before they play a single playoff game and those home playoff games add a tremendous amount of money to the kitty and to the financial disparity between the two teams.
Nutting is not spending for two reasons. One is that the system does not require it so he can pocket as much as he wants and two the disparity is so great that if he spent up to his limit or about $140-150 million on 40 man roster payroll, he still would not be able to compete with a team that can afford to spend more than that on CBT fines alone.
So much more to say on that, but suffice to say your argument is deceptive at best.
What argument? I listed some facts.
If you want an actual statement of my opinions see my response to Tim Dierkes lower down the thread.
And have some respect. Calling me a shill for anyone reflects on you. You don’t know me. so don’t make assumptions about me.
@Skip’s Fungo
My gosh, we agree on something! Well said!
BTW, to add to your statement about NBA and impact of stars, we can add about what generational talents do to a team…such as one generational talent can turn a lottery team into a playoff caliber team in just year 1 or 2. Examples would be Shaq in Orlando and LeBron in Cleveland.
you attempted to present an argument. Do you not understand what the term means? I think that is why your argument held no value.
It’s odd to call someone else a shill for the owners when the same people cry for a cap.
Thanks bears. Some people can’t comment without including an insult or two.
OK, his shot at you being a shill was obviously unwarranted, but his logic about the items he pointed out are valid whether you agree or not.
bears, the owners are the ones calling for a cap.
I’m actually unclear about what bears was trying to state.
Sure. I don’t disagree with a lot of that. I have been advocating for increased penalties (like the luxury cap tax) and increased revenue sharing. I don’t think a cap & floor system will solve the disparity problem. Or rather, I don’t think it is the best way to achieve something closer to financial parity. What we don’t want to do is put more money in the owners pockets at the expense of the players or at the expense of the fans. And I think a salary cap will do that–even with a companion floor.
@Mr Rickey
Reality is that the owners are always going to gain more money at the expense of us fans. They are not going to pay the tab for rising player salaries, the fans do. And that’s fine because we pay for the product. the problem is that the product is becoming more and more garbage because we now have a system that allows for Super Teams going against teams that either struggle or have no system that get those other teams to pay to keep even one star of their own. As a result, 20 fanbases are checking out. We’ve seen about 20 markets having many empty seats by midseason – some of which when they’re still in playoff hunts. MLB can’t survive just on the big markets. Those teams need opponents that are actually capable of beating them out for playoff spots and baseball is more stable when they can keep interest in fans even in years when there are no big market teams in the postseason. When you have a product that can only sell when you’re biggest market is open, you’re not on stable ground. That is business 101.
For baseball to gain this, parity is needed. The most effective way that has been implemented in the otrher sports is some sort of system that functions like a Cap&Floor system. That prevents owners from doing what the Dodgers and Mets can do. That prevents the small market owners from doing what they do. It also forces MLB to bring in quality owners for all of their teams instead of the controversial activities that have gone on around certain team sales or ownership changes that didn’t pass the sniff test – see the last two Marlins ownership changes/sales (Loria brought in while Gustavo Cisneros kept out in early 2000s; and the phantom deadline Loria and MLB created that prevented Jorge Mas from outbidding Bruce Sherman for the millionth time). The Floor makes it clear what an owner must be able to spend on payroll, and if he can’t, he must either sell the team to someone who can or bring in other investors. Again, situation like Bruce Sherman in Miami very likely to sell the team or bringing in other investors. And in future sales, bring in the most qualified owner – not the preferred owner…such as a guy like Jorge Mas being the owner over Sherman or in the past, Cisneros over Loria.
Also, the Cap&Floor does take care of the players. It would have to be agreed upon about both parties. MLBPA would need to get the levels to where players are getting a bigger piece of the pie to agree. Essentially, where players may not only need to go to the big markets for the big pay day, the smaller markets would need to pay for those players to be above the floor. Players will indeed get paid their money without a loss. The only difference, they’ll be getting paid by the Rays, Marlins, Royals, Pirates instead of the Yankees, Mets, Dodgers, Red Sox, Cubs. Money won’t be the only factor in decisions. Players can consider location, or quality of the team going forward in any market.
I’m a Marlins fan. I want my team’s owner to spend to add or keep our players. But the reality is that he’s not going to unless he’s forced to. And the facts are, a floor would’ve kept him out of the owners box in the first place and would’ve kept Jeffery Loria out years ago too. Those guys revenue streams make them MiLB owners, not MLB owners. Locally in Miami, the Marlins should be owned by the likes of Jorge Mas, Micky Arison, Stephen Ross, Cisneros’ kids, and several others more capable. Same thing in the markets in Pittsburgh and the other markets with ownerships that refuse to spend. And even if those owners want to, they still can’t compete with the Dodgers or Mets because the guy with the biggest wallet will win battles all day long. That brings in the cap part.
Oh, and an extra bit to assure the players of getting their money, the Cap&Floor should include something similar to the NBA’s Larry Bird Exemption where a team can go over the Cap if they’re re-signing their own player – which gets the player his money. It also encourages players to stay with their team, and to only move if there are other factors beyond money, but they can work out a sign&trade at that moment to appease all parties.
This is all complicated stuff though because there are far more wheels and cogs to all of this than can be discussed in forums such as this.
A giant article that can be summed up with “no”.
All interesting, if a bit daunting. As with basically all other professional sports (which nowadays includes NCAA schools), the issue always devolves to owners. These are people who are extremely wealthy and think this equates with them also being extremely intelligent (and unfortunately, too many of we “hoi polloi” seem only to willing to believe as well); what they generally are is extremely greedy, which in fact is often how they got wealthy….until we can dial down human greed and hubris, we’ll continue to struggle with such issues.
NCAA is the same way….SEC schools who bring in viewers don’t want to give more chances to the Tulanes of the world.
This whole discussion almost seems like a microcosm of life in modern America.
And it’s not a new discussion either.
The question is will fans buy the Dog&Pony show that owners and the MLBPA have been doing for years of these CBA discussions. It feels like this time, many fans will not buy into the ‘we tried’ excuse this time if the status quo remains the same.
Sure they will, because as Phil Castellini likes to say, “where else are you going to go”?
It’s going to get ugly and there’s no stopping it now. The Dodgers aren’t doing anyone (including themselves long term) any favors by flexing on the rest of the league.
Increase tax rate 2x for every bracket and add another bracket above the cohen tax. To get the players to agree, add a 27th player to each roster, increase salaries for minor league and pre-arbitration players. This satisfies the union which now represents a huge amount of minor leaguers and teams who want more revenue sharing.
I’d argue that MLB has as much parity as any other league with a salary cap
How bad must things be if someone can’t beat Rob Manfred in a PR battle
20 fan bases not accepting the BS anymore is pretty bad.
Thank you for the in depth article! I do believe an increased luxury tax (200%) and revenue sharing required spending is the way to go. For example the Marlins would have to spend that 70 million in some fashion over 5 years whether that be on player development, payroll, or international facilities. At current pace I believe fans of smaller market teams will continue to be more checked out and ultimately their revenue issue will grow.
Thank you for this excellent piece. Might not have the level of interior knowledge that a Rosenthal has, but I read the Dodgers D-ridin petty nonsense he posted on the Athletic, and it lacked feeling, emotion, and acknowledgement of fan sentiment. Top notch journalism. Thank you for digging deep and writing with your heart, it shows
MLB could create instant parity by dividing the revenue from the sport equally 30 ways. They could then reward teams that use their shares to win baseball games with more revenues and higher draft picks. This is entirely within their power to do. I wonder, why don’t they?
Could it be that MLB is more interested in profitability than parity? Nah, that’s just crazy talk.
Why would MLB do that, and how is that fair to an owner that paid say 1.5 B$ to buy his club in comparison to one who paid 1/10th that?
TV revenues is one thing, all revenues is another. The Reds don’t deserve a penny of Ohtani jersey sales in Japan.
MLB is one business with 30 owners. They can slice and dice their business revenue any way they wish. MLB would do this if they really cared about competitive parity. The fact that they don’t tells us this isn’t a priority for them, and the effort to impose a salary cap is simply about making more money for them. Don’t buy the lie.
MLB had more different teams in the World Series, and more different winners, in the past decade than the NFL or the NBA had championship teams. Competitive parity is not achieved with a salary cap.
The revenue sharing system has created perverse incentives for small market teams: sharing shouldn’t be tied to teams that overspend. It should be tied to some function of market size and ratings, and also tied to spending on the roster.
I’ll trade reading the whole article for cash considerations, capped.
Thank you, Tim! And I agree, I’m hoping for a full 2027 season, any loss of games would be the worst outcome. Hopefully the two sides can continue to make progress without all the vitriol.
There should be a limit for everything, even for the Dodgers.
Until this happens smaller markets will lose generations of fans because they can’t have a consistent winner and will never be able to keep their star players that kids look up to. Must be nice to be able to buy championships. Most teams wouldn’t know. Take a look at New York City sports. Baseball they are generally dominant. Every other sport they are a laughing stock.
So you’re saying other teams lost fans during past dynasties? People stopped rooting for the Cubs in the 70’s because of the Reds?
No I’m saying when teams can’t retain their star players year after year because only big markets can afford them, fans lose interest. And those dynasty’s were generated by a front office constructing a great team, not buying one. You are completely missing my point. Great players end up in huge markets. Period. Tell me they don’t.
Well,bi suppose the owners could try that old reserve clause scam again. That ended in the ’70s. Over the first hundred years of pro ball, (and except for the St Louis Browns and the Kansas City Athletics), that seemed to bring more parity. Of course it was deemed illegal, so there’s that.
I support a national television package that’s equally distributed revenues across all 30 mlb teams
It’s really simple. You don’t need a salary cap, you need a cap on the % of a contract that can be deferred. The deferred money, particularly Ohtani’s, is what is enabling all this.
Allow teams to defer as much as they want, just apply the AAV for the entire amount over the years of the contract. 10/700 = $70 million AAV for CBT callculations.
No cap (I hate what it’s done to NHL…a winning team always gets torn down the following year….no dynasties)
No deferred payments. Pay the players when they play.
Restructure playoffs, placement seed should be on season’s record…regardless of finish in division…. Some divisions may not have a playoff team…some divisions may place all their teams.
The Florida Panthers have been in the Cup finals 3 consecutive years and just won back to back
Yeah…last years win was lucky…late season surge, plus some choking by leafs and oilers…
But…even the panthers lost key players….and gained some at the trade deadline.
If the panthers could have kept players…and replaced some of the weak spots…?
Tim, of course it is. it exists today in MLB. By “today” I mean that over a range of time because obviously the Dodgers are in the midst of a dynastic run. But remember, the Yankees did something similar some two decades+ ago. In between, teams didn’t repeat and while playoffs skewed toward bigger spending clubs, the teams spending the most oftentimes didn’t win. But what’s potentially most concerning about this particular case is the way that LA is cornering the market on Japanese players. They own a significant geographic advantage being on the left coast. They’re not the only MLB club to play there but they also have the greatest ballplayer in the world. But enough about Miguel Rojas. And a salary cap won’t change that, nor will it alter their huge TV revenue.
Recognizing that, I don’t want a cap but I do want a floor. I dislike the teams that refuse to spend more than the ones that spend the most. Having a cap just puts more money into the accounts of billionaires, so why would anyone want that? Especially given that the cost will be a lost season. Sorry, not interested. Quit trying to fix the game, it is fine as is.
There will not be a cap…period. It’s a player’s union deal breaker.
I’d love the solution to be one where the owners take the brunt of the financial burden, but we all know that isn’t going to happen.
I’m a diehard sports fan, Brewers in particular, if you told me the Brewers would win the WS next year but the Packers and Bucks never will again in my lifetime, I’d take it in a heartbeat.
But that won’t happen. 2025 to me proved the system is beyond repair. We aren’t a poorly run small market team that refuses to spend. In fact most opinions talk about the Brewers being one of the best run in the game. We set a franchise record for wins and still there is a canyon between us and the Dodgers, who are doing everything right. This is nothing against them, they are doing everything they should be.
The one thing that caught me off guard in this piece was the amazement that fans would be willing to lose a season. 1 season lost vs me spending the next 50 wasting my time on a team? Yeah, I think I sign up for that. Because we aren’t losing because we are inept, we are losing because the system says we aren’t important enough to win.
The owners already assune the risk. The risk of injury, poor performance. Contracts are guaranteed. Players sign a 5 year deal and suck for the first four and then have a terrific final season and there they go getting another guaranteed contract, only this time for even more money.
I read whole article.
No money, just draft picks.
11 to 20% above OR below league average, lose a 4th round pick
21 to 30% above OR below league average, lose a 3rd round pick
31 to 40% above OR below league average, lose a 2nd round pick
41%+ above OR below league average, lose a first round pick.
There should be a cap floor
The owners want a salary cap and they use the media to push the narrative that it’s the only solution to this “problem”. They do this with every new issue they want “fixed”. The media couldn’t stop talking about how the national league needs a DH. Baseball is broken becauae pitching is too good so we need the DH. The owners have to be thrilled by the Kyle Tucker signing. It’s great to get the public worked up over it and scream for a salary cap, then be against the players when a strike comes.
The applied tax has actually made it worse. Only two teams are truly immune to it, while others that have been competitive have found their limit. The Yankees, once the biggest spenders are no longer as new owners have superseded them with deeper pockets. Tucker is a solid player, but ~$55M per is a bit extreme considering organizations struggle with a payroll in that range – in total. Salaries have escalated where $20M is the norm for basic services.
In the long run fans are the ones that suffer. Their teams in most cases won’t or can’t compete (and a bad draft can make it worse and set teams back), visits to the stadium are ‘special occasions’ as opposed to catching a game, and TV will ultimately be driven by subscriptions. Yes, attendance has been great, but sustainability is questionable. Ultimately teams with low attendance and spending will be questioned whether they should even exist any longer. Pittsburgh, Miami…do they survive?
I’m all about capitalism, but not to the point of squeezing out the fan. Not suggesting handouts, but looking to keep it competitive.
One example/idea: bottom 5 teams get two first rounders, playoff teams get none. If we’re not going to budge on taxes or not acquire caps, load bottom teams with more opportunities in the draft. Worst team could get the top pick and that player could be a bust or have a career injury – setting that team back even further. Let’s increase their odds of success in an area that doesn’t cost much vs the one teams with money use over and over. Evens things out a little, especially if those bottom teams can retain players for several years. That money they have can be used to retain if they can.
You’ve just incentivized not spending even more so – the last paragraph. Some owners don’t care about winning.
They won’t have a choice. That many prospects, unless their staff is that poor in scouting, will surface them into contention.
What needs to done about MLB is to break up the ILLEGAL monopoly, End the special treatment clause that allows MLB to shut out any competition. If the product is lame let the consumers decide if the 30 teams are needed
. MORE COLLECTIVISM is NOT the solution.
Very rhoughtful article…and who would have thunk it, shared sacrifice from ayers and ownerd could make for a better product! Though I do wonder about the ability for (an admittedly rich, but not overly rich, person) to be able to own a team and be a fan. Maybe that’s not relevent for new owners, but true for longer term owners. The franchise may be worth billions, but that’s not actual money. My house may be worth $400,000, but ghat doesn’t mean I have it to spend. Don’t get me wrong, I’m shedding no tears for ownership. Though I’m not interested in angel owners who reach into their own pocket to sign players. Either the business can support itself or it can’t. Thus the shared sacrifice. I will say this, I will not sacrifice the 2027 season and come back. If they don’t play they’ll never see me again
All these people complaining about the Dodgers is sickening. People need to stop complaining and do a deep dive into the Blue Jays 2024 and 2025 and look at the roster turn over and who stuck around to see how they got to where they were. Then look at the ACTUAL player roster and their salaries that played the Dodgers in the WS.
Every single team in the league can afford that same roster!!!!!!
I say salary cap & floor, but with a minimum of 3-5 years prior to implementation, and modest caps (yet hard floors) that can be toughened up in time.
Obviously not. Take the league average payroll and use that as the salary floor. Add 20% for the salary ceiling. Middle 20 teams will be fine, bottom 5 spenders, and top 5, will be scrambling.
No salary cap but harsher penalties but a cap floor
The easiest way to solve the cheap club issue is to up the minimum salary. A $1 mil minimum = $26 mil minimum payroll. $4 mil minimum = $104 mil minimum payroll. Now, older players might not be happy to be making the minimum or barely over it, but rookies and AAAA guys would be super-excited. This would be an easy way to get most players on board.
As to a cap – screw that. Go with a tougher luxury tax/penalty – ie: at $400 mil it goes to 200% and loss of a draft pick and $1 mil of IFA cap space.
that structure really does nothing to solve the issue that the dodgers have 2-4x the payroll of other teams.
Making it so they lose prospects and cash when going over would slow them. Could reduce how many players they can protect in the rule 5 draft too. Basically make it tougher to compete if you go to crazy levels like they have.
Great article
Thanks!
nhl cap floor and top can’t go under or over the cap All teams have only so much space for stars need to decide who is worth keeping and who isn’t and stop long term deals max them out like 8 years and stop deferring money or front loading cause poor teams can’t do that
Shared TV Revenue, Salary Cap/Floor
this is the solution
“If deferred money had been
outlawed, the Dodgers would have had to pay
Ohtani a straight $46MM or so per vear. That
they’re instead paying him $2MM per year right
now means they have $44MM extra to spend
because of Ohtani’s choice”
This is not quite how deferrals work. The Dodgers are still paying the $44MM each year, they’re just not paying it directly to Ohtani.
Simple. Lock out the players and use players that were not good enough…. they would likely agree to a cap… talent might suck for a few years.. but itll eventually catch up.
Down with Oligarchy.
Sic semper tyrannis!
Wow, solving this problem was a lot easier than I expected!
I find a cap being instilled hard to believe as well. Like what will it be? And if it’s, say $300 mil, what are Dodgers and Mets supposed to do? Do they have to trade or release players to get below it? It surely at least wouldn’t start until like 2030 or later even maybe. I think the ticket is a soft cap / floor. The floor needs to state clearly that revenue sharing is public data and that if a team doesn’t reinvest 90% of it into on field performance they are only eligible for a smaller percent the following year. If they do it three times in a five year period they are suspended from receiving revenue sharing for some period of time.
Flip side I think that the luxury thresholds come down significantly and the penalties go up enormously. I think if the Dodgers had to pay a 100% tax on every dollar spent over 300 mil they would not sign Tucker. He isn’t worth $60 a year let alone $120.
No I don’t think parity is ever possible. The gap will always be too large for MLB teams as far as revenues go. Even if you eliminate money there will still not be parity as some cities are more attractive than others for any number of reasons, that doesn’t mean there aren’t some players who will prefer every single place, but the number is always going to be higher for some, same for where spring training is.
100% against a cap as it’s wage suppression. You can say the players could earn more, but that is a tough thing to say for sure or even with any remote assurance. Revenues can be hidden, tax breaks for various things or start up embezzlement. While even min salary players earn far more than I do, They’re still closer to me then a billionaire owner. I want to see players paid fairly and will give up a season to see no cap.
Almost every change has been done to bring down player wages outside of MLB rosters, as far as international postings, how much can be spent on draft picks, even expanded playoffs second priority after more playoff revenue is to devalue spend more for great teams when very good or even just good teams can now beat any team in a short series.
I am a baseball purist/traditionalist & I hate what the game has turned into in the last 7+ years. And not only just because of the ridiculous player salaries (although that certainly is a part of it). So currently I don’t have an interest in MLB because of what the game has turned into, it has ruined it for a purist like me. If a lockout happened & we gained a salary cap & a salary floor & if we got rid of all of the speed it up, pace of play crud, heck MLB might get me back
Parity is another word for mediocrity. The Dodgers are good for mlb.
A salary cap will shorten player’s careers. The 30 year old bench guy who makes 3 mil will be replaced with league min.young guy
Just like in the other unions with caps – you see the older guys pushed out.
Tim, great article. Let me touch on the 1st point. I think that its the wrong question. The question should be should MLB have FINANCIAL parity between the teams. Without that, a salary cap will only punish the players and enrich the highest revenue teams.
During the negotiations that led to the current CBA the MLBPA said that they were willing to discuss a hard salary cap but only if the owners were willing to implement financial parity and transparency and guarantee the players a percentage of revenue. The owners totally shot down that idea even though all other major sports in the US have all of those things.
When we see the Dodgers spending more on CBT fines than the total revenue of 3 teams and the CBT payroll of all but 5 or 6 teams, something has to be done about the financial disparity between the teams.
THAT is where the focus has to be, not on a salary cap. Once that issue is solved, the issue of parity in the game becomes a moot point because all teams will be able to spend enough to compete and no team will have the advantage the Dodgers have today.
Once there is financial parity the good teams will put together good teams and the bad teams will not. But the disparity will be caused by competency, not the revenue streams of the individual teams. That is called a meritocracy and that is what all sports should be based on.
True enough, but MLB could create financial parity if they wanted it. They don’t want it. Though I’d add financial parity without rewarding teams that spend their resources well would be pretty meaningless.
The reward for teams that spend their resources wisely is playoff appearances and titles. There will always be competent and incompetent owners and organizations. What there should be is an even financial playing field for those organizations and a penalty for refusing to spend money.
I don’t see a need to impose a penalty for not spending if the rewards for success are sufficient. Postseason revenue is already a plus. To this I’d add higher draft picks for the teams that succeed, instead of for ones who fail. A system gets the results it incentivizes.
Without a penalty for not spending, some owners will simply pocket the additional revenue they receive like they are doing now with the revenue sharing checks. There has to be a penalty for not trying to win.
You seem to have missed the part about rewarding success.
Until fans realize that they pay the players’ salaries and that the owners are the middle-man, none of this will make sense.
They want to watch baseball yet don’t seem to want the money to go to the people that play baseball. I’ll never understand it.
I want the players to get the money. They’re the ones who entertain me. Any money that’s left on the table goes to someone else. Capping salary isn’t going to lower costs at the ballpark. Reducing or limiting what the players make will only mean the owners pocket more of the revenue. Every big salary now is paid out willingly by ownership. Not because they simply can afford it as rich folks, but because the game creates more revenue than the players receive in pay.
Silly me, I want the players who are responsible for the great play on the field to get as much of the revenue as they can.
“they’d never agree to it. Approval would be needed from 23 of the 30 ownership groups. ”
I look at this and simply say “why the hell not?”
I get that the Dodgers, Yankees, and Mets wouldn’t want it. You could probably also add the Phillies, Giants, Cubs, and Angels? But for every single other team… why the hell not? Why are you content to let bigger market teams treat you like minor league outfits just because they have a larger MSA and therefor a larger RSN contract?
Why are the Nationals so okay with having to dismantle their 2019 team?
Why are the Pirates okay with losing Skenes?
Why are the Guardians okay with having to trade Lindor?
Why are the Blue Jays okay with losing Bo?
Why are the Red Sox okay with being forced to trade Mookie Betts?
Why are the Astros okay with losing Springer, Suarez, Correa, Bergman, and more?
Why are the Cubs okay with losing all the pieces of their 2016 title team so shortly after they won it?
Why are the Rays so accepting of their lot in life?
Why do all of these teams take this?
Teams get revenue sharing, they make tons of money and dont have to field a competitive team. The owners are happy with this. Miami is making lots of money, they dont care.
Are you seriously calling the Blue Jays, Red Sox, and Cubs small market teams? The BJs just signed Cease (7/$210MM) and offered Tucker a huge long-term contract. They CHOSE to let Bo walk. The Red Sox CHOSE not to pay Mookie.. to insinuate that they were forced to trade him demonstrates a complete lack of awareness. The Cubs could have kept that core together if they wanted to, except doing so would not have been wise. Bryant fell off a cliff shortly after that title; same with Arietta. The only member of that championship team who was still heavily producing 4 years later is Schwarber. What a strange take…
not possible – especially when LA is allowed to defer payroll and avoid luxury tax.
It’s possible without a cap but there has to be complete sharing of broadcast revenue.
Owners need to revenue share among each other as the NFL does. I realize this may never happen, but making the players a part of the discussion ignores the problem.
There’s plenty of money to go around for all parties.
Share 50% of revenue with players. Currently MLB salaries are at 42% of overall revenue, lower than the other major sports.
Hard floor with a soft cap.
The tax penalty for spending too much money does not deter the rich teams since they have plenty. Would losing their first few draft picks work better?
The point of the tax penalties isn’t to deter spending, it’s to offset that spending by paying towards smaller market teams. It’s designed to pay for its own parity, hence “competitive balance” tax. The receiving teams should be required to spend that amount towards player salaries.
If a team elects to receive competitive balance dollars, then they need to operate at a near zero profit. If they choose to forego that money, they can operate however they want until their fanbase erupts and drags them through the streets to the stockades.
Great writing as usual Mr. Dierks. I have no answers.
Well, maybe the owners could share local revenue better but that’s never happening…..
I don’t really understand why we think a small market team with 1/28th the population of a large market team should have the same capability.
NY has 28x the population of Pittsburgh and 20x that of Tampa.
Forcing Pittsburgh to be good does not grow the sport if it comes at the expense of a larger market team.
I know this is probably an unpopular opinion but it’s reality.
Do we expect Northwestern to compete with Michigan or Ohio State in CFB? Resources are a reality.
Too long to read but baseball had great parity from 2001-2024 then the dodgers screwed everything up. It’s definitely possible. Deferrals need to go away though
Mets were the ones who blew past the threshold. Dodgers are the ones who get the credit but it was Steve Cohen who started this.
Is there parity in the NFL? No. Look at the teams in the AFC Championships. Haven’t really changed much in 15 years. Is there parity in the NBA? Not really. Poorly ran teams will not be good. If MLB had a salary cap, teams like the Pirates, Rockies, Marlins, etc would have to pony up $180-200 million dollar payrolls, do you really think they’re going to do that? What those teams want is it to be like before 1978, when the owners made all the money and the player salaries were suppressed.
Think of areas that the NFL has had success, though: Buffalo, Kansas City, Miami, Pittsburgh, Jacksonville (!!).
In the NFL, the deciding factor REALLY IS scouting, drafting, and developing.
MLB only gives that lip service. Teams that draft and develop will have their occasional day in the sun, but they are short lived and very very cyclical.
In the NFL, the reason the Rams have done well is NOT because they have blown other teams out of the water with spending (22nd in the NFL), but because they have done an amazing job at drafting and developing. The Rams would have the exact same on-field success if they were located in Des Moines.
On the other hand, the Dodgers would not have the same success if THEY were located in Des Moines.
Not sure that’s true. Dodgers are well run. Draft well. Develop well. Good international signings. Imagine they still had seager, bellinger, Michael Busch instead of Betts, Freeman, ohtani. They would be pretty damn good.
I’m not advocating that teams keep all their guys and there is no free agency. No team would keep all their guys as you listed.
The Dodgers made a conscious decision to let Seager and Bellinger go for nothing. Bellinger was doing very poorly at the end of his Dodgers tenure, so they were happy to let him leave.
You can’t include them as if they would still be around.
Furthermore, the Dodgers pitching right now, with their injury history, would likely be very poor right now.
Who knows – maybe with an equal budget they would still be dominating the NL West. I have my doubts.
The Dodgers spend more money on player development, facilities, analytics, technology, and scouting than any other team. They have nearly twice as many employees in that area as any other team. Again, its about money. When you have 8 guys with doctorates in data science on your analytics staff and some teams have one and until recently 3 had none, there is a reason and that reason is having more money.
The number of people who pick an owner or player side and are fully committed to dying on that hill is weird.
The sport needs tightening up. The talent gap between the top and the bottom is unbelievably large and only getting larger. Bad road to be on. They got to change it. Both owners and players need to drop the ridiculously childish us v them BS and come up with an alternative path. Yes. That might involve a small personal sacrifice for the greater good. Life’s like that. Not holding my breath though. I imagine “me,me,me” will remain the dominant thought on both sides.
How can a floor work if a player does not want to sign with a club? You can’t force Kyle Tucker or anyone else to sign with the Marlins.
To get a cap/floor, the owners are going to need to make some concessions.
The cap/floor needs to be tied to a percentage of revenue, and for that to happen teams need to be more transparent with their revenues.
Also, they need to provide an earlier path to free agency. Rookie contracts should be 5 years and from their draft year, not debut. After 5 years restricted free agent, unrestricted free agent after 7. This eliminates any service time manipulation and gets rid of arbitration.
Eliminate deferred contracts, and tie the implementation into the new cap/floor to expansion. Those 2 new teams can help the big spenders get under the cap, and get the two new teams to the floor.
5 years from the draft is insane. Lots of guys take 3-5 years in the minors just to reach the bigs, let alone the extra time it takes to become a starter.
Remove the word “Is” and add “Im” before Possible and you have an accurate Headline!
Hard no on a cap.
I love that there’s already a Bart Harley Jarvis, and also a Roy Donk. Don’t know how long you’ve been using this name but it makes me happy.
Hahaha, thanks friend. Be sure to catch me next week on the Colgate Comedy Hour!
I never miss the show when they have on the King of the Tuk-Tuk Sound!
First up, excellent article, Tim. My thoughts on the topic might be five times the length of your article, so I’ll spare the world that painful read, even though this will not be short as is. I also suspect I will have a lot of time to give my full thoughts between this November and March of 2027 during the lockout.
I don’t think you’ll see MLB adopt a true salary cap/floor during your lifetime. There are so many obstacles for it to happen, and that usually requires a crisis for leagues to make such radical changes by shutting the game down for a year or more. MLB is not in a crisis. Just the opposite. Increasing attendance and TV ratings last year. All teams are profitable. The sport just came off an exciting World Series. They’re looking to expand. They’re looking for a new national TV contract. They will not torpedo all that by shutting the game down for a year or more. Nope. Not happening.
How do we know we won’t get a salary cap? Because the owners are making that their opening position and they’re doing that because they know the players won’t agree to it. Yes, it’s that simple. The deal will ultimately not be built around a salary cap, but something else the owners want. I suspect that likely revolves around an increasing distribution of local media revenue and greater control of local media rights so MLB can negotiate a national TV deal and eliminate blackouts. They’d also want an international draft, figuring both these items will lead to improved competition.
If you want to eventually see a true salary cap, owners should relent and push for an initial salary soft floor with escalating penalties. That’s the only thing that will force owners at the bottom to spend. Once a corresponding soft floor is in place matching the soft ceiling, MLB over subsequent CBA’s can begin to maneuver the sport toward a hard cap and floor. It hasn’t happened because ALL sides are against it. The teams at the bottom don’t want to be forced to spend. The teams at the top are against it because they’d have to redistribute more money to fund the teams at the bottom. The players are against it because they’ll fear it’s a step closer toward a hard cap and floor.
I’m already not looking forward to the ’26/’27 offseason while the CBA is negotiated.
LordD99, that was a great rundown on the situation.
Where would the push-back come from on this:
What would happen if the future cash owed on deferred salaries counted $ for $ against a team’s Luxury Tax total in the year paid? As long as they make, and maintain, the present-value deposits, there is zero down-the-road cost for teams who defer player salaries. Until that money is treated like Retained Salary, in the sense that Deferred Salary has Luxury Tax, or Competitive Balance, implications, there is no reason for teams that do it to adjust their approach. The team gets a short-term benefit via present-value calculation but creates added limitations on future roster-building through quicker entry into the tax zone. No real change, otherwise, to the current situation other than some teams having significantly reduced “tax-free” dollars available.
How would that affect a team’s desire to move the money down the road? Would it become self-regulating by controlling that future payroll in ways that are fairer to all teams?
It would likely need a Competitive Balance change, too. The League probably has to enforce minimum salary outlays as defined at least. There are no secrets, among the owners if not publicly, about payments in and out of that system. That said, teams that meet their obligations will be known when year-end (or some other distinct measuring point) salary totals are known. Teams that under-spend their minimum obligation would have to repay, or not have that portion distributed in the first place.
I don’t, obviously, entirely understand the process and realize it can’t possibly be as simple a change as I have suggested but I wonder if making the deferral option less appealing will help balance things.
I don’t expect you’ll have time to answer here so I plan to reiterate this as a mailbag submission in the hope that you, or commenters, will be able to expose the flaws in my thinking.
Thanks for your great work on the subject, Tim.
Great article Tim. Thank you for the thought provoking attention to details. IMO this all started with the BS ohtani tax evasion deferral deal. I understand deferrals have been around for decades but that particular deal is so egregiously wrong that it has skewed the entire system.
I don’t see a salary cap/floor happening anytime soon. What needs to happen is some sort of restrictions on the % of money allowed to be deferred on a contract, and most importantly that deferred money has to count towards the teams luxury tax amount in the years it was deferred to. So the $68 million a yea that ohtani will get in the future should still count against their luxury tax amount in those years. This will stop the huge amounts deferred. The Cubs shockingly deferred $70 million of Bregman’s deal so they should have that $70 million eventually count against their lux tax total in the future.
This comment will get buried, but I would love to see a comparison and contrast article from smart people that can justify why the current world global Soccer association has decided that teams can spend as much money as they make, and the entire globe is OK with this, but in America, we need to have salary caps.
Fans that cry foul when a team tries their best to improve their product aren’t smart people. They are jealous, small minded people. If you ran a performing arts theater and the competition signs the St Peeterburg ballet to perform and you pay the local high school choir to play you probably shouldn’t wonder why they charge more, make more money or get more articles covering their shows. You wouldn’t expect them to share their profits… The team owners banking the revenue sharing money are the problem
I just knew that if I read down far enough through the hundreds of posts that eventually I’d get to the one with a HS choir (out-of-tune Marlins) vs. elite ballet (trolley Dodgers) analogy. Good on ya mate.
A few things I think would help.
No team caps, but cap position player contracts to 8 years, and pitcher contracts to 7 in free agency.
Teams who drafted or called up players who reach free agency can add 1 year. This will allow smaller markets a better chance to keep their elite players.
Introduce a salary floor, has to be salaries on field so teams don’t just trade injured players with contract insurance.
Increase penalties for big spenders going over luxury tax, take away more draft picks, limit spending pools for following drafts.
Double minor league and minimum salaries for players.
Add 2 new teams, abolish divisions, top 6 make it regardless of division
You still want good and great teams, you just don’t want them for too long, you need to shorten the rebuild window for the smaller market teams, force their owners to spend and create more year to year competitiveness
Ah, the CBA wars! In which we get to contemplate just how unlikely it is for all the “good” owners, who “want to win”, to end up in big markets, while all the “bad” owners, who are “cheap” and don’t “want to win,” end up in small markets. Just by sheer coincidence! What are the odds!
Floor.
Cap or severely increase tax penalties for levels of spending.
No deferrals.
Revenue sharing…maybe. A city can’t choose how large they are.
I would like to know how much you, or people in the know about such things (Manfred?) think about the dodgers not having to pay their share of revenues due to past poor ownership 20 years ago. That certainly has some part to play in them being able to spend significantly more than the next highest payroll team. Again, this is a “unicorn” situation that only hopefully happens once, but of course it also greatly benefits the Dodgers.
The NHL has a hard cap because they locked out the players for a whole season and credibly claimed they would never re-start because disbanding the league was more profitable than continuing without a cap. Was that true? Who knows, but it was certainly credible to the union, which caved.
Can the MLB owners credibly threaten to permanently shut down the league? I doubt the MLBPA would buy that, certainly not in less than a whole season, and probably more.
Tim, using the Lahman database, for players that retired between 2000 and 2025 the median length of career is 3.3 years of service time. It differs between pitchers (2.7 years) and position players (3.9 years). The current methodology of roster churn by most teams is shortening service time accrued. The mean is 4.2 years. Again with there being a large difference between pitchers and position players.
The Witnauer study you mentioned used a data set that included the entire 20th century up to that point and the game has changed tremendously over the years. .
If you like I can provide you with the python script I used to gather and process the data from the Lahman database.
Using only opening day 40 man rosters – mean service is just shy of 3 years for virtually every season since MLB expanded to 30 teams in 1998. That’s approximately 1,300 players (including 60-Day IL) every season. The service # goes up slightly as a season progresses when factoring in guys with previous service getting their contracts purchased (even with the addition of rookies being purchased as well).
The Lahman database will give you all the data. I can give you the python script I used to parse it. The numbers I gave are exact for that time frame I searched.
I’ll take your word for it! Good stuff and further supports the point.
– No firm cap
– Yes a medium height floor
– Significant increase of luxury tax penalty over a number that rises each year, with players association receiving a set amount, not a set 50%, but an amount based on last 3 years amounts before the new CBA and escalating or changing each year based on increase in player payroll % change, and the rest as revenue sharing for increased floor payrolls. This results in a soft cap.
-Additional penalties, monetary and loss of draft choices, for failure to achieve floor, and exorbitant payroll above the luxury tax threshold, increasing penalties for every successive year above the luxury tax threshold.
– common sharing of baseball media incomes
– no deferrals, or severe penalties for deferrals.
Well said.
My pocket radical idea is to have all non gate/concession/parking revenue pooled and have MLB pay salaries, with a hard cap and hard floor that indexes to a three year revenue window average. Once the season is over, the remaining money goes back to the teams at an 85/15 split – 85 being static and split equally and 15 being handed out based on postseason success and win percentage (to reward winning)
Teams that exceed the cap or go under the floor would lose dollars 1 for 1 from the 85 percent part of the pool left over at the end of the season, and if a team exceeded or went under the floor 3 years in a row, they’d lose their piece of the 85 percent due at the end of the season to teams.
This kind of treats MLB teams like a big mutual fund. It would never happen, though. Teams with huge valuations like the Dodgers or Yankees would lose a significant portion of their paper value overnight, since profits are capped. Also, many large market teams own parts of or their entire RSN, which adds significant value to their franchises.
Last season zero teams were more than 10% above the mean in wins and losses. Only two teams were below; the historically bad and dysfunctional Rockies and White Sox.
This isn’t exactly parity but it also isn’t as broken as people are making it out to be.
Now we have teams that will spend whatever it takes to take them deep in the play offs and we have teams that sign players to 1 year contracts just to get their payroll up and hope for a decent trade at the deadline. Its pretty obvious that it isn’t working for anyone other than dodger fans.
Hard Cap, Hard Floor. FA Max salary at 25% of cap FA Minimum Salary at 4% or floor. Add static performance bonus for around the league. that caps at 25% FA Max Salary.
Rookie contracts have a static base amount, but also receive bonuses. their base salary also increases by 50% of the previous years bonus. Ex: I have a 2m base salary, I got 5m in additional bonus last year. my new base salary is 4.5m. Remove arbitration.
Remove super 2 and set it to static 7 years of the year they are first on the MLB roster OR age 29 season (not counting September type callups). Players 21 and under who place in the ROY voting give the team a COMP pick or something. This would help stop the holding back of players while still giving them flexibility to get out before their prime passes.
just spitballing somethings. take away, have a cap and floor Elites still get paid while still allowing the non-elites and rookies to get a fair payday.
The whole reason why all major sports leagues have ametuer drafts is so that a team like the dodgers can’t just outbid everybody else and sign every prospect. Every league also has a certain number of years of team control of a player on a lower salary for the same purpose. That system essentially is a salary cap on the players first however many years in the league. Only one team drafts you and there’s a cap on how much they can sign for for and once you make the pros there’s a limit to how much you can make in your years of team control. Even the mlbpa has compromised to this partial form of a salary cap. But they feel very strongly that a successful player eventually should be able to reach the open market and sign with the highest bidder just like in any other proffesion.
This system works. If you look at all mlb teams pre free agency players the talent is very evenly distributed. The issue is that once players hit free agency a disproportionate amount of the best players sign with the larger market teams. (But it’s not as bad as it sounds because even under the current structure of 6 yrs of team control, usually the majority of a players prime years are within those first 6. ex. Harper, betts, machado, rendon, bregman, pujols).
But the players also don’t want a luxury tax or draft penalties because then you are disincentivizing teams from spending their money. And don’t we want the owners of the dodgers and Yankees to spend their revenue earnings and not pocket it?
To just have the teams split all the revenue equally won’t work either because we want each team trying its hardest to put a great product on the field. But why would they do that if it doesn’t make them any more money?
So I think the best way to compromise and not make a full salary cap is to improve the draft and team control system we already have. Give the smaller market team an edge in the draft and team control years that is equal to the advantage the bigger market teams have in the post free agency years. Here are a few suggestions:
1. Draft order should be entirely based on team revenue lowest to highest. Not based on performance or free agent penalties. Maybe don’t let the highest market teams pick until the second round even. Or just give the lower revenue teams more picks.
2. Do the same thing with international amateurs.
3.Make the age definition for an international ametuer to be like 29 instead of 25 so the dodgers can’t sign the next Yamamoto.
3.Team control can be extended to 7 yrs. Or make a rule that if a player is promoted to mlb before his 23rd birthday you get a 7th yr of team control. Or that all players become free agents at age 29.
4.Maybe make a rule that any revenue that a team earns above 300 million dollars is split. Half or a third goes to that team and the rest is split among the rest of mlb. This way there is an incentive for teams to put a better product on the field but the dodgers won’t be as far above everyone else.
How on earth are you going to convince the union to agree to any of that? That’s the problem with all of these great ideas folks have on this thread. There’s nowhere near enough for the players to move on from what they have now.
Why would the players care if we change the draft order to be based on team revenue? It doesn’t affect them at all. And I think they’d agree to an international draft also with the same structure. There’s no way they’d be opposed to more revenue sharing either. The only 2 suggestions I made that the players would fight is changing the age for international ametuer and adding a seventh yr of team control. Those would have to be bargained. Although, the international rule affects such a small percentage of players that I don’t think owners would have to give up much to get the players to agree to it. The seventh year of team control is the one thing that I’m suggesting, that the players would put up a huge fight against. But it’s still not nearly as bad for them as a salary cap on their entire careers. So the owners can push hard for a real salary cap and then maybe this will end up being the compromise. Maybe in order to win over the players to this new rule the owners will offer to raise the salaries players receive pre arbitration. There are many things they can offer.
They can also open a third team in the LA suburbs which will (eventually) take a few hundred million dollars of revenue from the dodgers. And open a team in northern New Jersey to take revenue away from the Mets and Yankees. Montreal to solve the blue jays. Somewhere else in New England for the Red Sox etc. We need more teams in the biggest markets.
The player’s union wouldn’t go for a set age for free agency even though it is a good way to allow smaller markets to retain talent and would end manipulation of service time.
1, 2, 3… draft by team revenue is way out there. Teams already get balance picks. which really doesn’t solve any problems either. The international rules seem silly to begin with, some of the rules are not MLB rules I don’t think.
the second number three 🙂 yeah rookie contracts, super2 and arbitration are a problem. I posted something similar earlier. flat seven years or age 29 from the first day on the roster. I’m happy i’m not the only one on a similar train on this. Teams can screw over prospects easily, some of it maybe (probably is) on purpose. Most of the time it is just the way it is.
4. Just no. maybe you were thinking profits instead of revenue but even that is still a huge no. There are so many ways to explain why it is a huge no. I’m not a fan of penalizing businesses for doing well. If you are a small market team making 100m profit, team is doing poorly and having a 25m team salary over multiple years… there is a grievance process for that and fair chance it is a valid case worth exploring.
Boras hit the nail on the head. The truth is that, before the Ohtani signing (the contract literally has a competitive clause, BTW), nobody had complained about the Dodgers’ spending. Actually, they were pretty cautious in handing out big deals for a big market team.
The Dodgers had a World Series and three pennants before Ohtani. Plenty of people were complaining and yelling unfair back in the 2021-2022 range.
A very good piece. There are a lot of variables to this, but I believe that the quest for parity seems more like one for Fools Gold. You are never getting the deliberate non-spenders to really invest in their clubs when there’s profitability in in being frugal. It’s also unfair to put this all on the players–they must accept what a low revenue team would be willing to play, regardless of who they sign with–which a hard cap makes much more likely.
There are other means of giving low revenue teams a shot at retaining their younger players, including creating a pool that they can draw on to subsidize larger contracts for home-grown players, but they have to be willing to spend in the first place.
But, and I think the large number of fans who want a cap to bring down salaries are partially motivated by cost, how many owners would be willing to drop ticket prices, take smaller media revenues to match player’s sacrifice? Not many.
Last year, there were 31 players who got $25M or more—it will be a greater number this one. If you could depress that $25M+ contract by $5M, you could increase MLB minimums by $100K and still leave the team with an extra $2.5 in profit….and there’s no way Owners would agree to it.
The urge for maximum profitability is no different than the urge for a higher salary. Neither the owners nor the players have any moral obligation to be the guys who step up to the plate so we fans can a better esthetic experience, or at least a lower cost one.
MLB is a Congress-approved monopoly.
If it is thought to be unfair, either in labor relations or in equal opportunity competitive balance, the special exemption can be removed or altered.
If MLB and the MLPA can’t fix what is perceived by many to be wrong and unfair, perhaps it is time to remove the monopoly, and open up competition through a new league with parity in mind.
Heck, even the 6 teams in Bananaball have parity, and are becoming more entertaining than watching the LA Dodgers-Harlem Globetrotters constantly beat up the Colorado Rockies-Washington Generals.
The answer is no. Money has ruined the game of baseball. The players are greedy the owners are greedy. The networks have stolen the game for money (kids can’t see the end of games because how late the games start). Fans should strike the game, that might…might wake the owners and players. It was supposed to be a game of fun and now it’s all about money.
How has the salary cap/floor worked for NFL?
MLB is stuck with a horse and buggy economic system, meanwhile the NFL is running laps around them in a Formula 1 race car economic system.
Does the NFL have more parity?
Yes. What is needed 1st is revenue parity between the teams. Then open the books and pay the players from A ball to the majors, 52% of total revenue. Last, but not least, is set a floor for spending.
You can ONLY spend revenue sharing dollars on current MLB free agents. That’s the problem.
If you could spend it on non 40 man players from other teams, add it to your draft or international pool etc it’d be more effective. Free agency isnt team building.
“Free agency isnt team building.”
Tell that to the Dodgers.
I would guess that was an MLBPA stipulation. I think the big problem is the teams don’t spend the money and there are rarely any consequences.
Plenty of parity in the MLB. Dodgers are just operating better than anyone else right now. Are people crying to change the rules in the NFL just because 2 teams(KC, NE) have dominated their conference for the past 15+ years? What about when the Lakers hit the 3 peat? Other teams need to commit to winning more instead of crying.
Put a cap on team revenues. Clubs like the Dodgers would have to keep dropping ticket and concession prices until they fit under the cap.
Just wanted to take a moment to thank Tim for writing this and sharing it with everyone.
While I don’t believe a salary cap is strictly necessary for parity in MLB, it’s the simplest way to achieve that. It also has one benefit that I haven’t heard listed: better alignment of economic interests. If each side is entitled to a set percentage of revenue, they both have an incentive to increase fan interest.
The MLBPA has pushed back against every recent fan friendly policy change. Recent introductions, like the pitch clock, made the game better. The MLBPA was entirely against it. Their players wouldn’t make an extra dime for it, so why care? Give them a reason to make the game better for the people who ultimately pay their salaries.
MLB needs to fix their national tv contract situation with their next deal to try to get it as lucrative as the NBAs. Then it’ll be much easier to spread the wealth around.
Amen to that Fred…
A well thought out article Tim. But due to the trust issues ( and rightly so ) the players have with the owners I can’t ever see a real floor or cap. That would mean honestly opening the books by the owners, Then figuring out the real numbers. That’s like the nuclear codes. It’s already kind of a socialist set up with redistribution of money etc.. Something radical might work . How about no arbitration at all. When a player qualifies for arbitration they all become free agents.Thats an awful lot of players every year. You could restrict teams over the tax. You get more competitive balance . It shouldn’t restrict salaries. It would give smaller markets a shot….
Smaller markets rely on arbitration. They would have to trade people even earlier.
I read all of this and it seems like a no-win solution. Haves won’t give in and have nots want to keep all revenue sharing. They should run MLB as 1 company, not 30 individual companies. Low revenue team like the Rays can be competitive with shrewd trades, but aren’t able to keep a face of the franchise once they get too expensive.
BTW, good article to read and thanks for posting.
Great article, Tim, thank you. Two quick points:
1. The NFL and the NBA bring in more revenue than MLB. Their revenue is also growing faster than MLB’s and has been for several years. I will argue that this is a result of having a cap/floor/revenue-sharing model that aligns owner and player interests with growing revenue. Given that player salaries are tied to a faster-growing revenue stream, I’m challenging your assertion that a cap-based system results in MLB players doing worse than they are under the current system. We should be able to validate or invalidate your claim by exploring how MLB players’ earnings compare with those of players in the NFL and NBA.
2. I believe you inaccurately reported why the Owners took a hardline stance on changes to revenue sharing in the last CBA negotiation. The link to Drellich’s article doesn’t explain the underlying issue, but this article does provide background:
nytimes.com/athletic/2832319/2021/09/23/how-we-got…
In short, MLBPA was fighting to reduce revenue-sharing because they don’t believe some teams were using these dollars to add to payroll. This seemed silly to me at the time as the CBA stipulates how net revenue-sharing money must be used. Again, in the NBA, a few years back, their owners agreed to give the league more authority on distributing games via league-wide TV contracts. Their current contracts that kicked in this season are almost triple their prior contracts. This shifted a large portion of their revenue from local to league-wide revenue and helped raise the spending capacity of all teams and significantly raised profitability/franchise values–a win/win situation. 29 or 30 owners supported the change, with the NY Knicks as the only holdout. Your NBA colleagues should be able to verify this.
Nice comment with lots of great insights thank you.
With such a drastically different amount of games played in each league, and different roster sizes, it’s pretty tough to use total revenue as support that a cap will benefit players.
Plus, MLB players have guaranteed contracts. They would be giving that up under a cap system. They’d probably eventually have to accept an escrow system where players sometimes have to give back a portion of their salary, because, for example, too many small market teams made the playoffs one year:
sports.yahoo.com/article/nba-escrow-system-slashes…
You make a good point about revenue sharing. There was a point where MLB was giving rev sharing money to teams that stayed under the CBT, and they’ve done away with that. I think the MLBPA should push for as much revenue sharing as possible and create better rules about how it’s spent. MLB is legally required to bargain on rev sharing, so the discussions can at least be had.
There is a lack of competitive balance because some of the owners won’t spend money, and the solution is to cap the players earnings? Ok… What baseball needs first is revenue sharing. If a team wants to keep all of the money from ticket sales and broadcast rights for their home games, then they can play themselves and see how much money it generates. The current territorialism is a ludicrous setup and it needs to end.
The away team gets a portion of the ticket sale as it stands. Tickets to see the Eagles play at the Sphere cost more than seeing battle of the bands at the local bar. Sorry your team and or owner dont want to put the investment into their entertainment product. There is revenue sharing already and a soft cap. Not a perfect system but be realistic. The Dodgers, Yankees Mets blue jays Phillies Braves didnt make the pirates bad stewards of their investment. They give money to them each season in revenue sharing
Your discussion ignores the fact that owners have historically viewed the players as “the hired help” rather than as “partners”.. The players don’t trust the owners and for good reason – decades of the owners taking advantage of them.
No open books – no effective/fair revenue sharing.
Players would be crazy to agree to anything that further limits their ability to make money at their chosen profession. Thank God for Marvin Miller and the sacrifices made by Curt Flood and others in the past.
Wrote a lot, didn’t say much , sorry for the criticism . This article needs to be updated with investigative journalism and hard numbers. Which team is profitable and which isn’t ? How much CBT dollars do the pirates and marlins get ?
Most things I have seen says about $110 million per team in revenue sharing before they sell one hot dog. Anybody that does not want to own a team can sell it. There is no shortage of people wanting to buy one. Teams keep selling for more money than they were bought for and there are multiple bidders for every team up for sale.
Thanks, Tim. Definitely worth the read, it’s stuff like this that make this site imo.
Obviously if their is a cap it will come with a floor. You aren’t giving away your $ so other owners can just pocket it.
I think a better solution would be to pool the local TV revenues and distribute them equally, requiring the cheap owners to use that money on payroll above what theY currently pay.
What would a salary cap be? Only 9 teams spent $200 million or more last season. The other owners are suddenly going to spend more? Doubtful.
Dodgers will still be much more profitable and able to use that money on player development, scouting and other factors to attract superstars. And since they can’t overpay the players, they can overpay the top executives and lure them away from the other teams. Regardless, you can bet that lowering ownership expenses won’t translate to lower ticket, concession and parking prices for fans.
I grew up a Dodger fan but have a lot of respect for the Brewers. They lost their GM, manager, Burnes, Williams, Woodruff to injury, and they post the best record in MLB. Had they played postseason baseball the way they played in the regular season, they could have won.
My suggestion is to switch to a taxation based on wins and losses rather simply taxing rich teams more money which they can easily absorb……for example set an upper tax level and then for every 10 mil a team exceeds that limit, subtract 1 win from their season ending total to a max of 20 wins subtracted……bc mlb uses the GB model to determine place in the standings, this will still give teams who exceed the threshold a chance to make the playoffs, but make it extremely difficult for teams that push their payroll to untenable levels
A few things to consider.
Before the end of the reserve clause and free agency, the Yankees dominated and racked up WS titles through the 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s. They haven’t nearly done so in free agency. Explain this. (Part of it was having so many minor league teams and locking up players).
True parity would mean there would be a new WS champion every year. That means if your team won the WS, your next title would be 30 years.
Parity would also mean big market teams would sit out the playoffs. Unfortunately baseball needs big market teams to be in the mix for a national audience to tune in. This is not like football that draws audiences no matter who plays in the Super Bowl. BTW, it took 44 years before we saw a Dodgers-Yankee World Series.
To be a dynasty, a team needs to win trophies consecutively. The Dodgers are the fist to win back-to-back since the 1999-2000 Yankees, 25 years ago
A cap has not necessarily help create complete parity in the NFL. Cleveland, Cards, Jets, Vikings, etc haven’t been to a SB or haven’t won a SB. Cowboys haven’t been to a SB for 30 years
There will be catastrophic damage if a season is
lost. We saw it in 1994. Baseball isn’t as popular like the NFL to survive without deep and lasting damage, perhaps irreversible. Each side will vilify the other, only adding to bitter fan reaction. It just isn’t worth it.
All this fascination with parity is nuts. There’s no parity even in the NFL. Think I’m crazy? First year of his 8 year career that Patrick Mahomes didn’t make at least the AFC Championship game. Tom Brady was in the Super Bowl in 10 of his 20 years of playing. In the NBA LeBron James made the finals in 10 of his 23 seasons. Here’s the facts New York City and LA or not Kansas City or Pittsburgh. Im not even talking money, Im talking the city’s appeal all other things being equal. Most of the baseball fans in the US seriously are up in the Northeast. There is nothing like playing in Fenway or Yankee Stadium during the playoffs. Here’s the reality you can get rid of half the teams in the league and no one would care, they wouldn’t really be missed except by a few die hards. Tampa has a competitive team every year, where the fans at? Not all franchises are equal and not all outcomes have the same impact. Nobody watching a Rockies vs Rays World Series. It’d have the worst ratings ever…..Toronto vs LA was great because it was huge markets with passionate fans and top 5 payrolls matching up. Baseball needs a floor much more than it needs a cap, in fact it may need to get rid of half the league’s owners who never spend a dime they didn’t have to.
Like any business the customer will determine their fate. It’s been a nice run but I don’t see how having teams spending 80m and teams spending 380m is sustainable. I see people realizing this isn’t fair or feeling hopeless about their team more and more. Call it a cap or whatever you want but the gap needs to close big time. There will always be customers but losing customers over something like this doesn’t seem like a good plan. You want fans blaming the qb or coach or gm not the economic structure of the sport. You don’t want hopeless fans.
I can see a 50/50 revenue split between players and owners but the only way the players agree to a cap is if they put in a floor. Even still, there’s teams that only survive because of revenue sharing money, those teams need to go or those owners that can’t afford a competitive payroll need to be forced to sell. The Dodgers keep the Rays operating with CBT fees. The Rays aren’t the only team either.
Players probably wouldn’t agree to a cap even with floor. Players are irrelevant so doesn’t matter. The owners are the ones running a business. They have to do whatever it takes to thrive survive even if employees don’t like it. Players employees should be concerned with the health of the business they are employed by but most people are just focused on themselves. Employees have made lots businesses fail and manybof those employees had to take much less paying jobs because of it. Owners would be the one’s demanding the floor. Would be stupid to trust all your partners to spend the $ you are giving them to benefit the business so a floor is pretty much a given.
MLB wants all those teams. Must be making them enough $ to justify the revenue sharing right? Or they just wasting $? I think the idea is to have as many potential customers as possible. Having an entire country is maybe better than just NY LA CHI. Yeah some people would find new teams but many will just watch something else.
Open the books or stop whining. Keep it simple.
Salary caps do not promote parity because they’re still easily manipulated. Look at Ohtani’s contract as a perfect example. He took a 2 million dollar current day salary because he’s getting 50 million in endorsements by playing for huge market Los Angeles. He would do that exact same thing with less deferred to continue to rake in the astronomical endorsement money, and get others to come there also for less to win championships. That’s not conjecture, it’s happened in nba and nfl. And Ohtani wouldn’t go to the Twins for that deal because endorsement money wouldn’t be as good so it doesn’t help small market teams. We’d have the same terrible parity as the AFC
Tim, I really, really appreciate that you’ve assembled your thoughts on this topic in such a broad and thoughtful way. I read every word, with great interest.
With regard to this part – “I won’t speak to the competitive balance of other sports because it’s not my area. But when people ask me whether I think an MLB salary cap would have the desired effect of competitive balance, my answer is yes.” – why not consult with someone who’s an expert, who IS knowledgeable and conversant in that area? (I assume such people exist.) Then write another piece, if you will, composed of any new insights or conclusions (if any seem applicable) from that conversation. Maybe you could even present that in the form of thoroughgoing roundtable for one of MLBTR’s podcasts.
Again, very much appreciate your thoughts on this hugely consequential issue.
Goob.
The “experts” don’t agree. And the owners won’t open their books, so it’s a moot point.
How much parity do the other sports have? Last time I followed basketball the Warriors were winning every year. Patriots in the NFL. I think dynasties can be good. Look at how much bigger the world series was this year.
Don’t worry. If they do everything they can to nerf the Dodgers and other big spending teams, they’ll complain about the Milwaukee dynasty.
Although the Dodgers are set up to win or be extremely competitive in pretty much any scenario at this point.
Good call, and that is a work in progress! First step is reading a bunch of books about the labor history of the NBA, NFL, and NHL. But even just some online research is starting to shed light on why those sports got caps.
Tim, those teams were willing to open their books, where MLB owners have been staunchly opposed to the idea historically.
The best information regarding team finances comes from Forbes making “educated guesses” based on many, but not all sources. And they want to negotiate using those perceived numbers?
There can be many reasons for that. But until they are willing to be fully transparent financially, why should the players accept a percentage of incomplete accounting? It would be irresponsible at best.
Thanks Tim, so glad to hear that’s in progress.
@Tim another great piece. I love your erudite analysis.
The long and short answer is that baseball ABSOLUTELY MUST implement a floor and ceiling or will the long-term value and interest in the sport.
However, there is a solution that does not require a floor or ceiling and teams could still spend freely. All MLB would have to do is require that at any time in a game, 5 out of the players for every team must have been drafted and developed by that team. And, at all times, 13 players on the active roster MUST BE homegrown players. Any team that drops below 5 homegrown players actively playing in the game automatically forfeits the game and any team that drops below 13 active roster players loses ALL draft picks and ALL international money. A player acquired in a trade as a minor leaguers would be considered “homegrown” after one year in the new team’s minor league system.
There are many advantages that this would bring, but teams would find it too complicated to implement so they wouldn’t go for it.
First it would make it impossible for a team to buy an all-star, like the Dodgers, Mets, and Yankees do presently. The Dodgers could pay whatever they wanted for Ohtani, Yamamoto, Freeman, Tucker, and Betts, but they couldn’t buy more than that. That would spread stars throughout the league.
Second, it would drive way more interest in the minor leagues, making them more valuable properties. Fans would clamor for interest in the draft and minors to see the future for their club.
Third, careers would lengthen for many players and they would make more money due to the requirement for homegrown players. Middle relievers and utility players, who are far more common than Ohtani, would benefit.
Fourth, we would get back to real baseball where managers make gut decisions because of the lineup requirements. We would get away from these computer analytics that we watch and supposedly think is as fun as old-school baseball. It would make the game far more interesting as decisions may be affected or foreclosed.
Fifth, only the best managed and best at identifying talent to draft and develop. Essentially, every team would be rebuilding, not buying every year. Right now, small market teams have to create windows and hope it works. Under this system, all teams would have to focus on player development, making the minor leaguers more valuable, and they would be treated better.
But major league clubs would never go for it, so that brings us back to to the floor and ceiling, otherwise 27 teams will have no hope every year.
All sports require hooe to succeed. Without hope, what’s the point of being a fan. Without hooe, and escalating salaries, parents won’t he able to afford to take kids to the ballpark, where baseball is at it’s best (football and other sports translate to TV better than MLB). With a declining fanbase, not only will future players will make less overall, and the sport will fade away.
I don’t want that to happen, so put me down for even losing 2 seasons to get a cap and floor.
As for your unicorn Ohtani, let’s call a spade a spade and acknowledge what he really is due to his deferred money: a major tax cheat. Under CA law, any money deferred 10 years or more becomes tax free. By deferring all that money, he’s cheated the state out of over $110 million in a way that 99.99999999999% of his fans can never afford to live. He’s doing that without buying a house and paying property taxes in every other state. Even when he plays in states with out of state professional taxes, he’s cheating those states by having only a $2 million sakary.
While I’m no fan of paying taxes, his methodology in doing so is massively offensive.
All money paid going forward must be counted for salary as earned in that specific year, regardless of when it is paid. When you realize how he drove salaries up while skipped out on taxes, meaning he’s living off the rest of us, it’s offensive. Agents like his or Borass may be doing their jobs, but in so doing, they are ruining the sport.
Tim,if you read all of this, I’d love to hear your thoughts on response, as well as from anyone else.
1. It is impossible to cheat the government when you are playing by their rules. The government made those rules.
2. It is every human on Earth’s God given right to try to avoid paying the government anything they can. The government does not give you the value of what they take if you are in any way a productive member of society. They only endeavor to impoverish you through taxation, of which inflation is their primary tool.
3. I like your home grown ideas. They would need a ton of refinement but would definitely be a novel and interesting approach. I think injuries could be a big issue.
Maybe a hard cap isn’t the only way. The term and the pride that the MLBPA have built up pushing against it might be too much to overcome. It wouldn’t be popular to the players, but a salary floor (~125m current state) paired with contract caps for each team/player might not be seen as such a concession by the MLBPA. A model of the “max” contract format in which each team is only allowed so many(3?)on the roster and cap the term of the contracts as well to 6 years. This would allow the big spenders to spend, but not overpay to erase competition, and force larger salaries for 2nd tier and lower FAs. It would also limit the long term problem of bad contracts and players underperforming their salary to some degree. Start the max contract AAV to begin at $50m and reset every 3 yrs with existing max contracts being bumped up to the new AAV. I am not sure what formula would be used to determine AAV initially or as it increases, but that could be negotiated as well.
Secondly to incentivize keeping talent a Hometown Max contract model in which if a player signs a max contract it is not counted toward the limited number allowed and would be partially subsidized directly(30%?) by funds from the CBT fund. If traded or released those funds cease. Qualifier being that the player must have spent 4 pre FA yrs with the signing team. Limit 2 per team. Keeps icons on each team potentially and forces CBT funds directly to the players.
Players would never approve term limits on contracts or value limits on contracts.
It’s the job of the Commissioner to keep things moving and on target for the good of the game. The Players Association. and the Owners Association (there is one, they just don’t talk about it) have brilliant people figuring out the numbers every. year. There is no excuse for.a lock out. Y’all are the professionals. Get it done.
MLB already implemented another parity tool that nobody is talking about, the Wild Card. The reality is that a small group of teams are aiming for championships, a small group of teams are rebuilding, and the majority of teams are hoping to make the playoffs and run into a hot streak. IMO, the solution here is to let teams spend as much as they want, but if they choose to spend above the top threshold then they’re ineligible for a wildcard spot. If a team wants to go all-in in pursuit of a championship then let them, but they better be confident they can win their division.
Interesting idea. Would be fun to see it play out. I don’t think many teams would go for broke.
Exactly. It puts the element of risk/reward back into the equation across the board. For free spenders, the only thing they risk right now is wasting money on a bad contract, but they can spend their way out of that problem. To disincentivize unbalanced spending, you actually need to make it harder for teams on both ends of the spectrum to achieve their goals. If you spend under the floor, you don’t qualify for the lottery. Over the cap, no wild card.
I think an undervalued point Tim Dierkes made is career-length and how that impacts earning power. A real effort at a global re-do of MLB’s economic system would include a substantial raise in MLB minimums. If the purpose of a cap is to bring down the cost of high end salaries to make more teams able to compete in the FA marketplace (or extension marketplace) then some of those savings ought to be plowed back into younger players. Higher MLB minimums–not just $20/30K but six figures ought to come into the market. No low revenue team who gets heaps of Revenue Sharing–and will get more from the enhanced Owner profits–should be able to say they cannot afford to pay another $100K per player.
Is it POSSIBLE to achieve parity without a salary cap? Yes.
But such a thing would entail a group of people, both owners and players, that would forego selfish considerations in order to achieve such a thing.
In reality, there are no good guys (Jose Ramirez might be an exception), and there are no bad guys. Everybody in baseball is doing exactly what nearly every fan would do, if they had the opportunity…maximizing their financial position.
Truthfully, how many fans would immediately jump to another job if it meant doubling, or even more, their present financial position? I would do so in a New York minute…and do it again the next year, too.
Whether you like it, or not, its the American way…called free enterprise. The fans complain, but only because most of them can’t do it, too.
Any change leading to parity would have to begin with the owners. They make the rules. The players may have a say, and some veto power, but owners make the rules. The starting point should begin with full disclosure. Lets see what the the teams really earn, and what portion is spent on payroll and player development. Lets see what each team pays out in revenue sharing, and what each team does with the money it receives in revenue sharing….then put a strict number on the percent of such revenue that must go towards payroll. If any team does not meet the number, any money not spent on payroll is immediately divided up among the other revenue receiving teams. If it happens two consecutive years, that team forfeits all its revenue from revenue sharing, and it gets divided up, too.
Owners understand losing money, and will do everything not to. If an owner makes money with a $120 mil payroll, but loses money with an $80 mil payroll, he will have a $120 mil payroll.
The players will certainly go along with an additional $40 mil added to the salary pool.
All it takes to begin is transparency. Let the fans see the numbers, and nature will take its course. Thats not the final solution, but its a big first step.
Of course parity is possible. It was even achieved for a good while between the Yankees and Astros dynasties.
The league probably ought to share revenues more. There are other, more extreme limits that could be placed on ownership that aren’t as invasive as a salary cap.
Remember, this is a game. It doesn’t have to reflect capitalism. That’s a choice we’ve made and could easily undo (legal challenges notwithstanding)
Baseball is interesting in that it allows for “more capitalism” by not having a salary cap but it is also a prime example of bad capitalism or “crony capitalism” because it is a legal monopoly in which teams gain years of control over players.
A floor would be a complicated implementation.
When does it count, beginning of the season, trade deadline, end of the season?
What about trades, will it prevent a team from making a trade, because there would be a penalty if they fall below the floor?
The way I see it, the only feasible way would be a un-luxury tax, where teams below the minimum threshold pay a tax, good luck getting them to agree to that.
The floor is more important.Dodgers have possibly the greatest player in history.They want him to win championships every season.Remember that he didn’t make the playoffs in Anaheim.
The issue with the league is that teams like the Dodgers, Yankees, Mets, etc. make significantly more local tv revenue than other teams.
All teams receive around 100 million each from National broadcast rights which are shared equally. MLB owned MLB.tv streaming but spun it off in a stock deal a few years ago but I believe each team still gets an equal yearly payout from that
The Dodgers receive 300 million plus a year from local broadcast rights. Tampa Bay only gets around 60 million for their local broadcast. It is not a coincidence that the Dodgers spend 300 million plus on payroll while Tampa trades players before going over 80 million.
The local tv revenue is the core issue, everything else is just a symptom of this problem.
All TV revenue should be split equally because you can’t broadcast a game without another team to play. But obviously the large market teams don’t want to give up the free welfare they receive. They purchased the team knowing about the imbalance and don’t want to give it up. The commisioner has the power to fix it but not the backbone.
Having a lockout to not fix the actual issue is a waste of time. In the end if cable tv dies and streaming revenue is shared equally the problem will fix itself.
The writer views a lost season as a catastrophe to be avoided. But if you’re a fan of a mid market or smaller team, it’s necessary.
Rosenthal and Drellich push agent-pandering propaganda because that’s their only source of information. Baseball is broken and more boring than ever. Owners shouldn’t be trusted either but there’s nothing that makes baseball different than any other major sport. Salary cap levels the playing field and makes more money for teams and players. Period
Between the minor leagues and 6 years of club control (7 if the team plays service time games), the vast majority of players never make much money playing professional baseball. Until that changes, I can’t see the MLBPA agreeing to a salary cap. And, shocker!, the owners will never give up that amount of player control.
They could also try and raise the minimums for the minor league players. $19k-$35k a year doesn’t really help much and when they finally get their major league contract they often go broke because they’ve never had that type of money before and they blow through it quickly. Considering the minimum major league contract is anywhere from 8x-10x as much money, that’s something they should probably change too.
Owners were forced to pay more to the minor leaguers in the last go-round. The response was a reduction in minor league teams.
The base of the Ponzi pyramid is the minors – my former neighbor’s kid made single-A for a full year around 10 years ago. He made under $14,000. In the offseason he worked nights at Home Depot and trained from early morning to early afternoon.
I don’t think Kyle Tucker will need an offseason job.
Right but Kyle Tucker could do with $20M less if it would mean some minor leaguers could make a working wage so they could focus on baseball for the winter time as well.
They need a cap and a floor
I think there’s a pretty obvious solution. Teams should be required to spend between 50%-70% of their revenue. No more, no less. The “cap” is how much money your organization generates.
This would increase spending in the bottom 75% of the league and decrease it in the top 25%, but it leads to greater salaries for the lower to mid tier players. And as the article stated, those making the crazy salaries don’t exactly need it past a certain point. And hell, a team can still pay an Ohtani $70 mil if they want, they just have to get creative with how they fill out the rest of the roster.
Easy answer: yes salary cap is necessary
I don’t think you need a cap – but you need to save the owners, players and agents from themselves. MLB needs to limit the number of years for a contract. They need to eliminate deferrals. The need to eliminate ‘guaranteed’ contracts. They need a rule in place, similar to the NBA, where you have an advantage to keep the players you draft (with extra money and extra years – that other teams cannot offer). Encourage teams and players to work together. They need to require every penny of revenue sharing is spent on player salaries, on top of an established floor negotiated in a new CBA. For example, if the floor is $125M and a team receives $40M in revenue sharing, the minimum spend becomes $165M for that team. If a team fails to spend that, they lose all revenue sharing and their top 2 draft picks. If it happens again, it triggers a forfeiture clause where MLB takes ownership and they sell the team. Trust me, it would never happen if that’s the outcome. But fundamentally, MLB has an owner problem that needs to be solved. For example, the Detroit Tigers are owned by a trust. Chris Ilitch is the Trustee, with a legal fiduciary responsibility to his siblings (the beneficiaries). If the Tigers were to spend another $50M, that means the other beneficiaries would receive less distributions from the Trust that year, UNLESS the Tigers income was $51M more than it would have been, which in baseball is always the great unknow…if you spend more, do you ‘make more’? Maybe, maybe not. But in the Tigers case, because the team is owned by a trust, they would never be willing to risk that, since the beneficiaries rely on that money every year. The NFL for example does not allow that – you must have 1 individual owner with 30% of personal equity – NOT BORROWED (the Rooney, Mara family trusts grandfathered in). The point is, there are enormous disparities that exist in MLB, that do not exist in other sports. There are currently 15-20 or so teams that have no shot next season, or the following season, etc. That can’t happen.
I believe these salaries are ridiculous and the scale in which they raise up is happening way too quickly. However I don’t believe owners should reap all the benefits. Why not share profits with your players? Have your performance based salaries which dictate player importance, but also offer tiered profit sharing. If the dodgers want to spend almost 25 million dollar per war, they can, on a performance base, tiered scale and at the end of the year if so and so needs more money other than their 25/mil a year salary they’re receiving, and they are a tier 1 player, share a percentage of the profit your team made that year with that player. You share at max 50% of the profit made as a whole. And you share it amongst your entire organization with tiers and participation percentages.
Win win for all.
Great read. Thank you for putting in the time and work to post it. I believe sacrificing a season in order to achieve a floor and cap would be worth it. In its current state, MLB seems almost like a pointless exercise that will see little change in which teams are playing beyond the Wild Card Series, year after year.
Great article Tim! I believe most salient points are covered, and the upcoming CBA discussions will be extremely interesting to see how the known and unknown variables play into the public perception, and ultimately the ratification of said CBA terms. My gut feeling is the beloved sport cannot continue to exist “as is”…
Going to ask one more question: Why is parity the goal? Why not just competitiveness?
I think in this argument the terms are interchangeable. I don’t think the term parity is being used in the same sense as say “equity”. The Competitive Balance Tax was created to increase parity.
Tim makes good points about if all teams had the same financial resources the game would be more about who had the best systems in place. I don’t necessarily agree as I think differences in resources can lead to innovation.
They need a salary cap. Plain and simple. There is no logical reason to not have one other than being a fan of a team that can spend ungodly amounts of money with no consequences. Every other major American sports league has one. They would obviously need a floor as well to keep the total amount of money the players receive similar if not more. I would also double the minimum salary as the disparity between players salaries is ridiculous to play the same game. Other concessions would need to be made to get the players to sign off on this. Automatic free agency at age 30 or 6 years service time might do it. The other changes needed would be an international draft and banning deferrals. Parity is good. The same team shouldn’t be winning the division every single year.
A cap must come with a floor.
Fantastic article, Tim. Good subway reading to work.
First, I’m definitely not into losing the season to possibly achieve a cap goal. That has to be avoided at all costs. I think the solution will have to be no cap, but possible floor, a hardline ruling on deferals, higher taxes and more revenue sharing from the teams at the top. I think all of those items are doable and will help without going to a cap.
I think you’re going to have to retain a soft cap rather than a true hard cap if it’s going to work. the one thing players have a right to be skeptical of is the guaranteed money. with the NFL, the few outliers include quarterbacks (and my team gave out the most heinous one, and I was way against that).
there would need to be some sort of stipulation where the current system of guaranteed money isn’t done away with. if players could get that, and there wouldn’t be $58 million of $64 million is fully guaranteed being read in the news report, then I think you can get somewhere.
just like you said, Tim, the both of us have viewed the luxury tax as a soft cap on the sport. well it’s not a one for one with the NBA, you have the pieces in place to some degree. I think the players would need that assurance that the guarantees don’t ever go the way of the NFL and you could likely find some sort of common ground.
this is a simplified version of course. but somehow the thought jumped out to me right after I finished reading through the whole post.
I’m less concerned about parity than I am the fact I’ve been priced out of being able to go to more than one, maybe two games a year.
Amen brother
Just rate the free agents on levels. The top 10% of pitchers based on era, Ks, or whatever, and same with hitters, and have each level in 10% increments until the bottom 40 or 50 %. Force each team to sign a certain number of free agents from the top 10 %, at a salary rate based on their production, almost at a rate per HR, H, or SB for hitters and maybe a tier system for OPS, and Ks, SV, ERA, and whatever for pitchers, and have the rate be based on an average of their production over the previous 5 years. If a team exceeds the cap, take a way the right to sign a free agent from the top 10 % the next year. If a team falls below the salary floor, take away any revenue sharing, still make them meet the floor next year or cut into more profits, and maybe take away the right to some draft picks. Penalize the top and bottom. Dodgers can’t spend too much and Rays can’t spend too little, and hopefully the end result will be a Pirates, Tigers, Rays, and Reds title in the next 20 years along with a few other teams that don’t realistically have a shot the way it is now.
The Dodgers traded DeLuca and Pepiot for Glasnow. I think that one worked well. I loved how they drafted Ohtani, Tucker, Betts (another good trade in their favor), Yamamoto, Sasaki, Snell, Diaz, am I forgetting anyone?
No
No cap needed. Its much fun watching the big spenders lose to smaller spenders with good baseball.
I disagree because the two divisions with the lowest payroll typically for each year are both the AL and NL Central.
after the 2016 World Series, which featured Chicago (NL) vs Cleveland (AL), there has been a 9-year-long drought of a Central Division team having made the World Series since the Central Division head to head in that 2016 World Series.
that nine year long drought is the longest in the Wild Card era of neither Central Division being represented in the fall classic.
going off Spotrac’s 2025 payroll figures, only the Cubs (11th) ranked in the Top 15 in Payroll of the 10 total Central division teams.
Detroit (16th, $188 million), Kansas City (17th, $180.975 million) and St. Louis (19th, $153.5 Million) were the other three not be in the 20 or lower range in 2025 payroll per Spotrac
spotrac.com/mlb/tax/_/year/2025
the lowest payroll ranked team to win the World Series going back to 2011: The Houston Astros in 2017 (ranked 19th). only the 2023 Astros ranked outside the top 10 in payroll from the 2018-2025 versions, and they didn’t win the fall classic.
spotrac.com/mlb/tax/_/year/2017
2015 Kansas City ranked 11th in payroll, with the next two lowest being Atlanta (13th, 2021) and St. Louis (15th, 2011)
all the other teams that have won in recent memory have been top Spenders. while it’s a nice idea, what you’re suggesting is more of a fallacy
You discuss the issues with the current system and then, in summary, say to do more of that. It must be fair to each team, playing by the same rules, the same amount of $ to spend, etc, or it is, by definition, rigged.
The gap continues to widen, and it will continue to widen when a team wins, it will attract more fans, more revenue. The Dodgers have a top 2 farm system according to fangraphs and they continue to spend 100’s of millions in FA. fangraphs.com/prospects/farm-system-rankings
They can put out more and more $ for international signings, team facilities, coaching, and don’t even have to trade from their minor leagues. Sharing all TV revenue is a step in the right direction but it won’t be “fixed” until every team has the same constraints or it is rigged.
1. Share ALL TV revenue
2. Open books for all teams
3. Same rules for everyone, floor and ceiling.
4. International draft
5. and for God’s sake, get us robo-umps
Make draft picks tradeable, too.
The thing is they have tried their hardest to knee cap the big market spending and it hasn’t worked. The gap between the haves and have nots has never been greater and is only getting worse with the loss of local TV money
I think parity is only possible without a cap if there are outrageous penalties for overages (as in 400%), where even the Mets and Dodgers aren’t willing to tread, or if TV, streaming, and radio revenue is all shared pretty much equally. And then, there would have to be either a floor or a heavy tax on consistent losing such that most teams are trying and not just pocketing the money.
But the economics are broken when one team makes 3x what many other teams do. Deferrals also need to be reined in, say a max of 20% of a team’s cap? Would also be fine with a hard dollar figure or deferral cap per person.
People want parity in outcomes but doing so decreases the value of big city teams and increases the value of small city teams if it involves the transfer of wealth from big city teams to small city teams. And without such a transfer, there cannot be a significantly higher floor.
Owners paid more to acquire the Dodgers and Mets than say acquiring the Rays and A’s. Now you want to reward small city owners who have been pocketing profits and getting hundreds of millions in increased equity value in ownership of their team.
These solutions are from each according to their ability to each according to their need – or communist-based equality. America is all about wealthy groups bullying the poor and middle class groups with an occasional brief victory for the working stiffs. Funny to see so-called conservatives endorsing the communist model of equality. I sure don’t. Baseball is mostly great the way it is. Limit deferrals as a PR move, sure! Forfeit a first round draft pick if you spend over $400 million, sure! Let’s play ball!
For baseball to be relevant, it’s needs to have a salary cap/floor.
Relevance is measured by cable/internet viewership and live attendance. These are all constant or up! Baseball is relevant! Let’s play ball!
There’s no way to establish fairness without a stringent high/low cap. If it takes a missed season to get it, then so be it.
Do you oppose allowing children to inherit anything from their parents?
Why is it fair that some are born into wealth and others are not? Don’t you want to “level the playing field”?
So, what is better for the fans to have 5 or 6 teams always on the top because they are in big markets, and the 15 small market teams always on the bottom? This isn’t about the owners or the players its about the fans who pay for this sport. It’s going to be harder and harder to bring fans to small-market team games when their tickets are $200 or more for a seat and they have year or year losing records, because we have players making huge bucks that small markets have to compete with. The fans ultimately pay for it, and they are the losers.
There are more fans in big markets so profit is maximized if championships are proportional to population. No one wants the same team to win ten times in a row, but big cities should win more than small cities.
This whole thing reads like Owner propaganda. We need to address the real issue: All 30 owners are Billionaires who could spend like the Didgers do with no issue. They simply choose not to because its easier for them and their profits to cry poor and blame the Dodgers or “greedy players” to sway fan appeal into supporting a cap which is both anti-free marker and anti-labor.
You read the whole thing and saw it as owner propaganda??!
They can continue to band-aid the current system but baseball will not be here in 20 or 30 years. It resembles a Ponzi scheme that will eventually collapse, because those at the bottom (Fans) will reach a limit.
If you do not support fixing the system – fully open books, 100% revenue sharing, hard cap, hard floor, removal of the ridiculous anti-trust exemption…you are responsible for it all. Why bleacher seats are $40 instead of “two buck night” and will soon be $100. Why that beer is $12. Why you’re paying for streaming this and that when it used to be on free TV, and why those fees will go up.
Kyle Tucker should not be making $60M a year. I am old enough to remember when guys like Mike Schmidt and Eddie Murray put up numbers way better than Tucker in an era when it was harder to do so and cracked $2 million. At the same time, ownership was colluding to keep salaries down. The games were on free TV and I could treat the family to a game on my allowance.
$60M is nearly 90x the league minimum. $2 million in 1985 was less than 20x the league minimum.
Another owner will take up the Dodgers challenge and the arms race will be on. Major league baseball will be a stars and scrubs model with a few teams that compete to spend on the stars and 25 teams that don’t.
I am by no means a socialist. But whenever the top gets that distanced from the bottom, basically there is more and more squeezing to the bottom and then the weight of the bottom drags the whole system down. If major league baseball wants to contract to 5 or 6 teams, then by all means no restrictions. But the owners want expansion, that means even more money for them. The players will be thrown a bone and the fans will see costs jacked up more.
But if you are pro-owner, anti-cap, then maybe you are not old enough to remember having to RENT A HOME TELEPHONE from AT&T’s monopoly just so you can make calls. There has to be limits to encourage competition and more participation.
I don’t think there will be a 2027 season. I don’t have a lot of faith that whatever comes out of it will be more of a band aid than a solution. If you want baseball in 2040 or 2050 then the 2027 season is not much of a sacrifice.
Thornton
Packs of baseball cards were ten cents, hamburgers were nine cents and gasoline was thirty cents. Times have changed.
So while I agree with some of what you say (certainly not all), the fact that Eddie Murray got only $2 million per year means very little.m
It seems unlikely that the players would accept a cap low enough or the owners accept a floor high enough to create balance. So a salary cap won’t create balance.
Instead revenue sharing should be restructured. Either make it so that it can only be used for player salary, and is forfeited if not spent, or…
Make 75% of the pool distributed to eligible clubs by win total. Want your revenue sharing money? Figure out how to field a team that wins more.
A cap only benefits the owners, and the cheapskate/incompetent franchises are never going to spend up to it or win anyway so what’s the point? Parity isn’t going to happen in baseball. Too many games, and when you look at the NFL/NBA as examples of a cap system “working” it makes even less sense. It’s still going to be the same handful of teams making deep playoff runs every year. Hell, for the last decade it was basically almost a given that the Chiefs would make the super bowl. Before that it was the Patriots. The NBA is even dumber because the team who signs the bestest player ever can just waltz their way into the finals despite playing 4 scrubs around him. In 25 years, since the last time the Yankees won 3 in a row, there hasn’t been a back-to-back world champion in baseball until the Dodgers did it after spending all kinds of stupid money, and at any given point that can collapse on them rapidly.
I am all for a higher salary floor, though. These cheapskate teams like the Pirates and Marlins need to go out there and try to field a good team instead of crying poor after signing a couple of washed up 35 year olds to 1/8M deals after gutting significant portions of the roster. At minimum they should do their actual level best to keep the star players they somehow build themselves.
Just close the league down. I could care less any more. I used to love it, but it’s so predictable now with a few exceptions. No small market team can hold their stars. Let’s just watch Indy ball. I don’t care who is really playing. That’s just me though and I know as a fan, I am the least important part of the equation.
Absolutely, a floor would be better, owners should be spending much more in smaller markets
Lots of interesting points on both sides…
Does anyone else think that this could be the Dodgers throwing down the gauntlet saying we’ll spend the $60M/year on a guy like Tucker, and daring others to follow them on a path they think no one will keep up with them on? That way they can basically wring all the other teams for their lunch money – pay up or we get the player. and you settle for less.
Because every player agent will be comparing their client to Tucker now. Look what he got for 4.6 WAR/.841 OPS, my 7 WAR or .920 OPS client the same age is worth more.
Side effect: They broke the model. If I am an owner of any other team I am mad, to pay up I might have to do without that 3rd yacht.
Great write up, Tim. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Instead of a cap and a floor….how about the teams must “meet or exceed an average salary for the 40 man roster”…
Let that one sink in…
Comment section so close to fathoming and appreciating dialectical materialism. I’m proud of us, we’ll get there soon.
You need a floor, but is there a question here about forcing owners of teams that perform badly to sell?
What if MLB/MLBPA came up with a new pay scale where the they figure out the total combined salaries of every player in the the game. guarantee a 3-5percent year over year raise. Than INSTEAD of teams paying players directly, they pay the union and than have the union pay out the salary to each player based on a merit formular depending on what they did that year and let the owners squabble over how much each team pays into the salary pool.. The only negociating between player and team would be for length of contract yrs.
Great piece, Tim.
Cap and floor. OR whatever else will create a competitive balance. I’m sick and tired of all the inequity between the teams. Truly outraged that the Dodgers are getting away with this BS and no concerted efforts by sports journalism as whole to take this on AND call out the BS. Baseball fans are lucky that the smaller markets even try to stay involved, because the MLB is in trouble if it doesn’t get this BS under control. If any mid-market team tried this deferment crap the commissioner would call them out for cheating the books. But it’s ok that it’s the Dodgers doing it, can’t mess with the precious Dodgers or Wankers or RedSox. Let’s talk about whatever it is they are putting in the water out there in L.A. This is contrary to everything I was ever taught when negotiating a salary! Are they dosing these players with something that has them so easily agree to defer monies? The reality is the AMOUNT of money that is being a’greed’ too is so obscene, and the quorum of journalist’s are more than happy to glamorize this crap in the hopes to gain readership among younger fans who have no instinct about
Baseball will be so much more fair and competitive when a cap and floor are finally instituted!
Good read. Thanks for putting in the effort.
Tim,
I appreciate your thurough attempt of explaining the situation.
However, I find that your logic about a cap/floor system fixing players earnings to a diminishing pool completely innnacurate.
A viable system would move up/down in proportion to league revenue.
Whether it be yearly, every set period of time, I’d imagine if players were guaranteed a % of league revenue, any CBA would necessitate that a floor/cap system would move equally in the direction of the leagues revenue growth (+-%) or some linked variable to said growth.
The NFL already somewhat does this. Nevertheless, I think more players would make more money, but not Shohei money.
Revenue, not profit. Profit is too easy to manipulate. 100% revenue sharing is a must otherwise player salaries are artificially limited by a cap. Deferrals are fine, but no matter how much is deferred, it all counts toward the cap. I agree wholeheartedly about times a player can be optioned or DFA needs to be limited. Drinking Coors is absurd. Get a real beer.
Ouch on $21! Can I put it in me camelbak and sneak it in under my jersey?
Just bring the FA Type A/B system back.
Or add Competitive Balance Tax to the point that LAD will give up signing Kyle Tucker.
Couple of questions / thoughts
1) If there was a salary cap/floor, how would the toothpaste get back in the tube? Per spotrac, the Dodgers currently have a 2026 tax payroll of $412 million with millions defered. For arguments sake, let’s say there was a new salary cap of $250 million and a floor of $150 million implemented today. How would they get to $250? Would they just have to drop players and the players don’t get paid what their contract says they should be paid? Would they have to trade some guys to other teams to get under? What’s the mechanism? Who takes the hit on the future contracts, the Dodgers, the players or ?
2) Given the increasingly analytic / moneyball approach of teams not wanting to pay for the decline phase of a player, if the players give into a salary cap / floor, they should insist on less years to become a free agent.
There would have to be phase in period. Maybe like 3-5 years where the floor/cap stepped into place. My kids stopped watching baseball due to it being rigged. Fix the dang thing already!
Here’s an idea: if an owner can’t get their team into the playoffs within 10 years they have to sell. Resets ten years of they do. Many of the issues come down to ownership. Going to buy the Marlins? Be prepared to take a hit. Or perhaps MLB just needs to fold the team.
This years AFC championship game is patriots vs broncos. Last year was chiefs vs bills. If you add the Steelers to the conversation, you are talking about 5 teams out of 16 who have absolutely dominated the AFC. If you go back to 1984, there have been FOUR games where one of those 5 teams isn’t in the afc championship. 4 times. If every team had an equal chance the odds of that would be 1 in 2.35 million.
Interesting article, but your writing conventions make your argument sound shakier and more awkward.
“It would seem, then, that both sides have at least one ‘non-starter.’”
“Another solution, then, is for MLB’s 30 owners to solve competitive balance themselves””
“Then” adds nothing to these sentences and interrupts the syntax, making it choppy. And they sound very awkward. It should be removed.
“And the game does already have a soft cap, ineffective as it may be against certain clubs.”
It’s “AS ineffective as it may be.” Use proper grammar.
“It’s worth noting, too, that regular season games and the World Series could get cancelled.”
You can’t just use “too” in place of “also” as you feel like it. The sentence should read: “It’s also worth noting that regular season games and the World Series could get cancelled.”
Okay okay okay. Thanks for teaching grammar.
Short version:
The Dodgers organization has made their team too good and it’s so not fair.
MLB might need to look at absorbing more of the international money coming to the Dodgers due to Ohtani and making it shared instead.
Lets see… Last World Series…
Teams paying Luxury Tax: LAD 2025, NYM 1986, NYY 2009, Phillies 2008, Jays 1993, Padres never, Astros 2022, Red Sox 2018, Rangers 2023
Bottom 9 teams: Miami 2003, ChiSox 2005, Tampa never, Pittsburgh 1979, A’s 1989, Cleveland 1948, Washington 2019, Twins 1991, Brewers never.
A bit surprised that KC (2015) wasn’t in the bottom 9 payrolls as they are a bottom 9 market (ChiSox & Washington both sucking on purpose until ready to contend). Forbes bottom 9 in value had Detroit (1984), KC (2015), and Cincinnati (1990) as bottom ones, not ChiSox-Washington-A’s.
So clearly the spenders win more than the tiny markets. Not a shock to any sane person. KC proved they can win, Tampa has been in the World Series in 2020, Brewers had the best record in MLB last year so it is possible for these teams to contend, just not for long. Meanwhile the NFL has one side with 2 teams only advancing (New England or KC) every year for over a decade.
Make Macys stop spending so Mike’s Department Store specializing in Sheep Shearing can survive.
Until the owners make a legitimate offer that forces small market teams to spend more, this is all smoke and mirrors.
They just want to drive down player salaries. Competitive balance is just what they claim to the media to get fans on their side.
If there’s a salary cap agreement, I predict a lost 2027 season and no effective difference in competition. The Dodgers will still be the team to beat, and the Marlins, Pirates, and Athletics will pay the absolute minimum and occasionally luck into a >.500 season.
I think the answer is keeping it simple. Ownership and the PA don’t like complex things, as they end up going with automatic “No” assuming it will lose them money. A simple solution:
Take the top 15 payroll teams in the year and average their payroll, make that the Cap. Take the bottom 15 teams in the year and average their payroll, make that the floor.
Make every dollar spent over the cap taxed at exactly 100% ($1 over = $1 into “Competitive Balance Pool”). Then the Competitive Balance Pool is evenly distributed to all teams the following year, that are above the floor and below the cap (so no teams under the floor get anything). These teams must use that money on payroll exclusively.
This forces teams to be above the floor if they want any handouts, forces teams to use the handouts for their payroll/the players (can be new players, arbitration, extensions, etc). Forces teams willing to go over the cap to lose double their money and fund their direct competition (if their competition stayed under the cap).
Teams are happy as they get handouts, players are happy as the money has to go to them, which means bigger arb or extensions, and more teams in the bidding for free agents. Win win for everyone.
tl;dr, short answer is No, no long term or lasting parity without a salary cap; an occasional small market team miraculously wins the WS? sure, Miracle on Ice style…
As a fan, I would like to see players get paid for their performance after the season is finished with a baseline salary to begin with maybe based on age or years of experience. As an owner, I would like to spend as much as I want to, no cap, no floor. Viewing the entire system with players, owners, and fans we’re all going to need to make compromises to find a system all can live with or find within 4-6 on the fairness scale (out of 10). Agents can go pound sand…
We know players salaries because agents want us to know them. It’s their recruiting tool. Owners are loathe to expose their books because then we’d know for sure when they’re lying by claiming poverty instead of simply assuming they’re lying. All the talk of who gets how much and when is so much distraction for me. I barely watch games anymore. I read game stories or watch the game casts online. More trade and signing analysis and prognostications and less about dollars please.
Not that anyone cares, but I have a few thoughts/questions:
First and I think most importantly, if we’re so focused on competitive balance and have that as such a huge part of why we’re advocating a salary cap, [i]we need to judge how well salary caps have helped with competitive balance in the sports that have it[/i]. (I tried to italicize that, I don’t really know how to do that here.)
But ARE the other sports more balanced competitively than Major League Baseball is? (And if not, is there something worth noting? A single player can generally have more impact on a team’s record in football and basketball than in baseball, so if that’s something…)
Otherwise, it seems like deferred money needs to be accounted for regarding luxury tax and a potential salary cap. Ban it, or allow it but have it count for the luxury tax IN THE SEASON BEING PLAYED rather than when it will later be paid, I’d think.
If there’s a salary cap, maybe have some workarounds for certain scenarios. Like, maybe have salaries count “half” in terms of salary caps if a team is re-signing/extending a player as opposed to signing a free agent. Maybe limit that exception to players who have played their whole career for that team, or maybe have played a certain number of seasons with the team. That would help teams keep hometown heroes and such; I’d hate to see, for example, the Angels have to let Mike Trout go because they can’t keep him without going over the salary cap.
Or maybe instead of a cap, have the luxury tax be based on whatever the median or average payroll is. Every team above that year’s median payroll has to pay, and the more they are above it the more they have to pay. (Apologies if that’s basically how the luxury tax already works, in my head there’s a difference..)
It’d be great if that money was then given either to minor league players regardless of franchise (they don’t make much, especially at the lowest levels), or are given to the poorer franchises but with some kind of rule the money has to be used for development or something and can’t just be taken as profit. There’s probably something I’m missing about why that can’t be done or how teams might take advantage of it.
Would also be great if they put money into a fund to help pay for ballparks so cities don’t have to pay for them, but that’s not happening.
Salary deferrals are already in luxury tax numbers (using a reasonable net present value calculation) over the period that a player is playing under a contract, *not* when later paid.
Alright, good.
Missing from all this is the problem of guaranteed contracts. It’s a killer for the smaller market teams that sign a “big fish” then have that player injured and/or performs well below the expectations. Think Anthony Rendon. Pitchers needing TJ surgery can cost teams up to a 2 year absence, then have to be babied back to the expected work load.
The better solution is something similar to the international player pool. When a team (the Dodgers) hits a threshold in spending, they are barred from signing or trading for elite players in the next two seasons. Putting restrictions like this not only control the Dodgers spending but actually benefits their own farm system. It requires them to bring up young players instead of blocking them and effectively ruining some minor league careers. Ie, you can get your Ohtani or Tucker but you aren’t getting anyone else the next 2 years. Doing something like this eliminates the need for a cap while also controlling the Dodgers. Which need to be controlled.
Restrictions that include outright bans on some teams signing more free agents (or certain tiers of free agents) would be dead on arrival with the MLBPA. Honestly, I’d expect MLBPA to hate that idea even more than some type of salary cap/floor system.
Pretty sure all the team owners are billionaires. If they feel they are at a disadvantage and it actually bothered them they would open that check book and set to work. The owners are allowing teams like the dodgers to run away with salaries because they want to force the fans to think they want the salary cap. They are trying to manipulate the fans to put pressure on the players to agree to a cap. In reality the salary cap is just a way for the owners to maximize profits. I wish people would see it for the stunt that it actually is.
Increasing penalties and creating a floor will help balance things out. MLB is in good shape, you just have a team like the Dodgers who do everything better than other teams right now AND players want to go there. outspending teams doesnt win games, spending smart, developing players, drafting well, and trading well, that wins games The Angeles were a top 5 spender for a decade and made the playoffs once. the Mets have been spending crazy money every year and have 2 playoff appearances in 4 years. The Brewers dont spend, trade away their stars yet 7 playoff appearances in 8 years. people just Hating the Dodgers because they are winning, developing, trading, drafing better than everyone else. TB was winning with a tiny payroll when Freidman was GM there. Some teams dont care about winning, you cant fix that. Some teams have terrible owners, you cant fix that. The Dodgers are good for baseball just like the Yankees and the Evil Empire was good for baseball.
One idea that at least mitigate the parity problem and also address the problem of teams routinely losing players fans have come to identity with would be to provide, via the revenue sharing income, a fund to allow teams to specifically pay free agents to re-sign with their teams. Or some other mechanism to give teams parity or even an advantage in bidding for their own free agents.
This is a *great* article!
One thing that’s in many ways unique about MLB compared to the NFL and NBA is player development in the minor leagues. The NFL and NBA’s “minor league” is college football and basketball. With prospects coming from HS and internationally, MLB’s different. The amount of $ spent by ownership throughout their minor league system is important.
A year or two ago there was an article that detailed how little the Pirates spent on their minor league coaching and scouting compared to other teams. I recall a quote in that article mentioning that the Pirates just don’t have some of the same technology as other teams. At least one of the post mortems about Mike Rizzo’s time with the Nats mentioned that the Nats were one of, and perhaps the only team, that didn’t have a Tajekt pitching machine.
All that is to say that a salary cap/floor or even a binding agreement where the owners were required to spend a specific % on MLB payroll and revenue sharing recipients couldn’t just “pocket” the money they receive as the Pirates owner has been alleged to have done, may not necessarily get MLB to competitive balance. I do agree that it’ll result in it probably being more difficult to “stockpile” big name/big dollar free agents. I’m just not sure that’ll result in more competitive balance overall because of the unique player development aspect in MLB.
I always come back to the fans…as player salaries rise, more and more fans are being priced out from attending games. As attendance becomes more corporate, the truest of fans will be staying home enjoying games on their television. While I could pull it off now, 10-15 years ago I took my kids separately to games. The financial hit was lessened breaking it up into 2 games. And while I am saying this, the bottom teams must spend more than a third of their profit margin on the team. So to me, the salary cap with a floor is vital for relationship between MLB/Players and the fans!
Tim, I am a big fan of this site and of the podcast, but it’s reporting like this about deferred comp that explains why fans are uneducated and therefore upset. As you point out, if deferred comp wasn’t allowed, the Dodgers would have simply offered Ohtani a contract with a $46M AAV. In reality they are paying him $2M per season and setting aside another $44M that will eventually grow into the $68M needed to pay him down the road (your correction wasn’t correct either). Ohtani didn’t free up any additional money for the Dodgers. The reason he is doing this is he likely won’t be living in California in 10 years when the deferred money is due, thus escaping California income tax. It’s the same reason Tucker got a huge signing bonus. He get’s tax on the bonus based on his home state, rather than having to receive it and pay taxes when he’s in California.
No. It is not possible. There should be 2 leagues, 1 league with 10 high spenders and another with 20 low spenders. The champions of each league only meet in the World Series. Yes, this would ruin player statistics, but this model at least gives low spenders a realistic chance while still giving the high spenders an easier path. Or… you know have real revenue sharing and put teams on more equal competitive balance.
Lets say the competitive balance receipients can only use the money received to sign players, and only a maximum 60% of the salary can be paid out of that money pool.