Summary:
With the signing of Blake Snell the Dodgers are basically pricing 50% of MLB teams (including the Twins) out of post season contention or serious WS contention.
The Dodgers payroll is approximately $305 million for 2025 which is 2+ times the Twins projected $142 million and 3-4 times at least 5 other teams 2025 payrolls.
The Dodgers look at the luxury tax and laugh. For them paying 45-65 million in "tax" is not a big deal.
Basically MLB is becoming European Soccer and a new Twins owner can't / won't change that.
My Take:
I have been saying for years that MLB has given way too much power to the union. MLB at every chance to bust the player's union or reign in it's power has either blinked or stubbed its toe. I am not on an anti union rap here. I realize what the Union has done for MLB and the good things they have brought about. But the union has become it's own worst enemy ensuring that 90% of their members will never reach the world series unless they play for a top tier team (Similar to the European Champions league) or their team happens to get lucky and catch lightening.
MLB needs to implement a HARD cap – I'm talking NFL hard cap – where if your team is over the cap or under the floor on a set date(s) your team pays the price – until you get in line with the cap. And by paying the price – it means that you don't get to sign FA's, you lose draft picks, and pay fines. The cap in the NFL works. Players get paid. No one is going to say Pat Mahomes or Kirk Cousins, etc… are under paid for what they produce.
I would propose that the 2025 cap for MLB be around the 170 – 180 million mark – Sorry Dodgers, Yankees, Braves, Padres, etc… that would mean you have to make some tough decisions – Do you keep Ohtani or Snell?
11 comments
The players absolutely will not take that pay cut.
>Basically MLB is becoming European Soccer
So when are we getting a promotion/relegation system?
I hear what you are saying but the disparity in revenue creates the problems. Players won’t take the pay cut and teams won’t share the revenue. A cap is just not feasible.
This is WAY more the fault of the owners than it is the player’s union. Getting rid of the player’s union would A) never fucking happen in a million years and B) be absolutely terrible for the sport of baseball.
It is wild to me that after the recent lockout that fans would blame the players or their union over the owners about anything. The MLB owners have time and time again put profits over the good of the game
If you want a salary cap, and I don’t disagree, there also needs to be a salary floor and THAT is the reason it isn’t happening. The cheap teams don’t want to give up this current situation where they are raking in cash with their tiny payrolls.
You are widely off base to put most of the blame on the players union and saying “I’m not anti-union” isn’t really helping you here cause holy cow you are leaning right into the owners anti-union propaganda
In the long run, I think a salary cap actually would help the players get paid more, but there are too many obstacles making it very difficult to accomplish that. Salary caps typically give players somewhere close to a 50/50 split with the owners.
However, to accomplish this league wide revenue sharing would need to be implemented. This is probably the biggest obstacle since you’d have to get NY and LA to agree to make less money in the short term for the benefit of long term success for the league.
Also, in the short term it would likely mean a lengthy holdout to straighten out these details. Players already under contract aren’t incentivized to hold out. They want to get paid their agreed amount and don’t want to forfeit their current salaries. It could mean missing an entire season which in the short term would really hurt baseball.
There’s a bunch of other things that would go into it obviously but these are a couple of hurdles that will prevent it anytime soon.
MLB doesn’t need to bust the player’s union, they need to bust the owner’s cartel.
Though what they actually need to do is to institute a system of competitive disadvantage that rich teams can’t buy their way out of. In the NFL, if you violate spending rules, you lose draft picks, so if you’re trying to field a competitive team, it’s just not worth it.
I don’t know what the equivalent is, but MLB needs to find an on-field incentive to maintain spend parity.
Pohlads fuckery aside this is just one of many more reasons why I lose just a bit more interest in the MLB every year in general. With the way that they are pricing themselves out of any type of parody in the league I still think in my lifetime eventually that bubble will burst and teams will eventually start the fold and or attendance will be so low that they will have to make some drastic changes. As of right now I have little interest in going to watch a team that I know has zero chance of ever competing from the get-go
So sad. Too bad. You live in a country where individual greed takes priority over basic human needs much less small market playoff contention. Don’t like it? Watch football.
It’s frustrating to see. The counter argument is there’s always been disparity in baseball and ratings went up last year. Can’t argue that but this ratings went up at the cost of small market teams. It’s starting to feel like a Harlem Globe Trotters situation and the other teams only exist to give a handful of teams someone to play and get their asses kicked.
How’s that boot taste
100% wild to see someone look at billionaire owners not spending and conclude “this is labor’s fault.”
I wouldn’t mind seeing a cap and floor system of some kind, but for the most part the problem is, as it always is, capitalists valuing short term profit over long term benefit of any kind.