For all of MLB’s apparent faults — real, imagined or otherwise — this much seems indisputable: when it comes to spending, there are the haves and have-nots.
Sure, there are small-market teams that have managed to make the most of their situations. But at a certain point, it’s fair for fans to feel like the Los Angeles Dodgers ($390 payroll, per FanGraphs) and the Miami Marlins ($70 million payroll) aren’t even playing the same sport.
The most obvious solution would be for the league to implement a salary cap and floor in order to attempt to ensure that all 30 teams build similarly competitive rosters. Yet despite Major League Baseball being the only major North American sports league with a salary cap, the sport has resisted adopting such a construct.
That, however, could soon change.
Citing “people familiar with the matter,” CNBC’s Alex Sherman and Lillian Rizzo report that MLB owners and commissioner Rob Manfred have “begun privately contemplating what a new league economic structure could look like as the league heads toward a new Collective Bargaining Agreement with players.” MLB’s current CBA is set to expire on Dec. 1, 2026, with a potential lockout expected if the two sides can’t reach a new deal.
While such negotiations are typically messy, the potential implementation of a salary cap and floor appears to already be emerging as one of the key issues in this round of negotiations. The MLB Players Association has long opposed the adoption of a salary cap, which could suppress player salaries.
Appearing on FS1’s The Herd last month, Manfred addressed the possibility of the league adding a salary cap in its next CBA.
“We do hear a lot about it from fans, particularly in smaller markets,” Manfred said. “But the reality is we’re two years away from the end of the [collective bargaining] agreement. We’re just not in a position where we are talking about or have made decisions about what’s ahead in the next round of bargaining. I think that a lot of water is going to go over the dam before we need to deal with that issue.”
Meanwhile, MLBPA president Tony Clark made it clear where his organization stands on a potential salary cap during an interview with The Athletic’s Evan Drellich.
“My position on the cap hasn’t changed as a player,” Clark said in February. “It has not changed as an executive. Our organizational history hasn’t changed. The concern hasn’t changed. It’s not in the best interest of players.
“We’ve always believed in as free a market system as possible, such that the individual player can realize his value against the backdrop of teams that are interested in his services. A cap is an artificial lever that is the ultimate salary restrictor, independent of where you are on the salary food chain. The salary cap itself highlights for everyone exactly what it is.
This isn’t the first time that a potential salary cap has become a sticking point in MLB’s CBA negotiations, as it also played a role in the 1994 lockout with the players avoiding such measures. Time will tell whether they can repeat that success 32 years later. But it’s certainly interesting to see both sides already digging in more than a year away from the expiration of their current CBA.