As baseball's "Final Four" competes in the Championship Series, a lockout looms after the season. Plenty of grievances remain to work through in what promises to be a grueling winter, likely extending into spring and potentially canceling some regular-season games.
One of the hottest issues coming into this lockout has been circling the sport for decades, and that's the idea of a salary cap. The other three big four sports have one. MLB is the only league that lets teams spend as recklessly as they please.
This has been a hot-button issue for fans and owners of small-market teams since before the start of the latest millennium. And yes, in the 1990s and 2000's this was a fair argument. Now though? It's starting to lose a lot of steam, and fast.
This year, three of the four teams still standing have payrolls in the bottom ten of the league. Of course, the biggest outlier here is the Dodgers, who are, for the third year in a row, in the NLCS with baseball's highest payroll.
Still, this doesn't take away from what teams like the Brewers, Guardians, and Rays have done. Especially the Brewers, who are in the postseason for the fourth consecutive year, and each team, spending much less than the National League counterparts.
Moneyball came out in 2002; the movie in 2011. It changed the game, gave small-market teams a shot, and moved the game of baseball, to the ire of some, into the computer room rather than the baseball diamond. The movie is good, but it fails to mention that the 2002 A's had one of the best rotations in baseball with Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder, and Barry Zito, along with eventual MVP Miguel Tejada.
The movie makes it seem like middle reliever Chad Bradford was cast off; Scott Hatteberg carried the A's to a 20-game winning streak and a 100-win season. The A's, however, already had a great roster that was homegrown. Very similar to what the Rays and Brewers have done over 20 years.
Small-market teams since 2002 have made the playoffs regularly. It's not the 90s when the big bad Yankees would dominate. The only argument I used to make was that these small-market teams would get swallowed up in a five-game series against the bigger-market teams. That changed in the 2020's as teams like the Yankees and Dodgers got bounced by teams with lesser payrolls. At this point, if a small-market team can't top the bigger-market team, it's not due to a lack of money, but rather a lack of risk in trading prospects for big-name players at the deadline. Championships are won in July.
Will a Brewers vs. Rays World Series dissolve the salary cap argument? No, of course not. It's a good point for the Players Union to use in showing a salary cap isn't needed if small market teams like that can get all the way to the World Series. The 2026 Mets are the perfect example of how spending big can land you with minimal results. They finished in last place, behind the penny-pinching Marlins and Nats. Not the first time in the Steve Cohen era that it's happened. In 2023, the Mets had the second-highest payroll in baseball and finished a distant fourth.
MLB has a lot of work to do this offseason, but let's put to rest this same tired story that small-market teams can't compete with the Yankees, Mets, and Dodgers of the world. Even if the Dodgers get a three-peat, the fact that three teams fighting for a trip to the World Series spent so little proves the point on its own.
15 comments:
Those without a strong, robust talent pipeline are doomed to overspend. Milwaukee and Tampa pipelines vastly outshine the Mets. Then, Uncle Steve digs deeper in his pockets for suspect “stars” like Sean Manaea. Then the cycle of failure continues.
The issue of a salary cap will doom the 2027 season.
I'm being told that the owners intend on Flushing the entire season away to achieve this.
The players will grow hungry for a real paycheck around July 1
They all can't be Savannah Bananas'
The lack of budget to go buy a high priced free agent star seems like a hindrance, but may actually be a blessing. It forces a team to become better at evaluating the factors that make a team work - this is a matter of survival. For those with the riches to "buy a solution", they take the easy road, but overlook intangibles that ultimately become their downfall.
Sportswriters with minor league press credentials will triple their readership... he he
The Dodgers are the oldest team in BB. And they are beginning to look it. They have a 60m/yr player batting 8th and their best player at even more money than that obviously limited by injury. If they lose to the Brewers, I am pretty sure we will see if they really do have the top farm system in BB. Frankly, as I pointed out in a post a few months ago, they have not done well with their top draft picks over the past 5 years, their current team is filled with FA, trades (mookie betts) pitchers with prior pro experience in Asia, etc. Will Smith, Muncy and Pages are their main home grown position players.
That’s what they say out loud, but losing a whole year’s worth of tv dollars will hurt much more.
I don't see a salary cap. Here's a simple way to think about it. The owners clamor for it, but all they really have to do is exercise individual discipline and do a better job evaluating and developing players. It's a classic case in which they would all be better off if they could agree among themselves (not literally since that would be collusion) but by each of them individually exercising more discipline than they do in free agency, but the rich guys have no incentive to do that, and if anything, they benefit from the poorer guys having no choice but to be disciplined. So instead of constraining themselves, they want to shift the costs of constraint to the players. In other words, they want the players to bear the costs of their inability to exercise restraint.
I don't see how any fan, once aware of what is really going on in game theoretic terms, can side with the owners on this. It is simply a case of the owners wanting to externalize (push onto someone else) the costs of their own behavior.
Just add a brief additional note here. If the players and owners acted jointly as opposed to competing across the table on some issues, this wouldn't be an issue. The negotiations are complex interweaving of looking for appropriate areas of competition and other areas of cooperation. It's not easy.
One exercise to consider: What would be the rational solution to all the issues if the players and the owners were instead just one person. That person wouldn't be able to externalize costs (ex hypothesi) and all the costs and benefits would be his or hers. Try to imagine what that outcome would be if you were both sides wrapped into one. Then take a look and see how far from that the ultimate CBA finally is.
But then when you are done with that remind yourself that there is yet another group that is not included in the negotiations (many in fact), namely the fans. So there IS a group who can have the costs externalized onto them and have no direct voice in the negotiations.
And you can quickly see that each party in the negotiations tries to get the fans on their side. Don't be fooled. You're just being used by both sides for posturing purposes and to gain a bargaining advantage.
A foreign concept in today's world: focus on doing your job well instead of taking the easy way out.
Unfortunately, the fans have lost some of their power as well. The cable and streaming companies pour billions into the owners' coffers for rights to broadcast games. Fans could boycott all games because of ticket prices and the money would still flow. I don't see them ever turning off the TVs.
Amen on the farm system… pure bullshit
The players have the most to lose, because their skills are finite. Age catches up, and it would be terrible to lose their primes on the picket lines.
Even worse are the guys who would have achieved their dream of reaching the majors, but due to millionaires arguing, the opportunity passes them by.
You're asking greedy owners to not cave when they get wind one of the other owners has swooped in
Forgettaboutit
When SOB owners get old SOB sons take over.
We've had experience with this
Looks like we will have lively discussions here once serious negotiations begin.
Hey
We lively discuss lunch
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