The MLB is experiencing a resurgence in the American zeitgeist, and former Cy Young winner turned broadcaster John Smoltz is issuing a major warning to the league as a potential work stoppage looms. The current CBA between the MLB and MLBPA is set to expire after the 2026 season, setting up a long-anticipated negotiating period over the winter.
Ken Rosenthal put the odds of a lockout as high as 90 percent on the Awful Announcing Podcast, and Smoltz feels that the onus is on both sides to get things right without allowing the 2027 season to be impacted.
“We know that if they don’t get this worked out, baseball will suffer. They cannot afford to have a stoppage with all the good that has been done and all the great games that have played late lately with the World Series,” Smoltz recently told Fox News Digital.
An early proposal from the MLB includes both a salary floor for clubs and a more divisive salary cap, something the players have long been staunchly opposed to. Although Smoltz is acknowledging that there’s a competitive balance issue in the spending disparity club to club, he doesn’t believe it was an accident that the league arrived at this point, and isn’t sure there’s a solution that will automatically fix things.
“There’s a competition issue in baseball and a disparity that’s bigger than ever, and I think a lot of it’s been on purpose to get to this point when you have the Dodgers spending beyond belief and the Mets spending beyond belief. Until recently, nothing guaranteed a championship,” he said, referencing the Dodgers’ back-to-back World Series titles in 2024 and 2025.
“There is a disparity within baseball that some system is claiming that it’s going to fix. I question that big time. Until you have teams and owners that want to put the best product they can on the field in their market, it’s hard for me to be able to tell somebody what they can and can’t spend in a free market world.”
There’s no denying the moment baseball is having. The league announced just last month that viewership is up 44 percent over last season for exclusive national games, the best mark in the past nine seasons. Even if there is no system both sides can agree on that will fix all of the issues; Smoltz believes a lockout would only hurt both sides and threaten all of the positive momentum baseball has achieved.
About Qwame Skinner
Qwame Skinner has loved both writing and sports his entire life. In addition to his sports coverage at Comeback Media, Qwame writes novels, and his debut; The First Casualty, an adult fantasy, is out now.