In the wake of the Kyle Tucker signing, MLB Owners will be pushing for a salary cap

Major League Baseball fans are fed up with the Dodgers’ spending, and the owners are fed up as well.

An anonymous source told Evan Drellich of The Athletic that MLB owners are going to do whatever it takes to push for a salary cap to be implemented after the 2026 season. Negotiations will have to wait until the conclusion of next season because that is when the current Collective Bargaining Agreement ends.

The owners’ urgency for a salary cap comes from anger towards the Dodgers and high amount of spending, most recently signing outfielder Kyle Tucker to a 4-year, $240 million contract. The Dodgers’ payroll for 2026 will be over $400 million. Only two other teams — the Mets and Yankees — have payrolls over $300 million, and seven teams have a payroll below $100 million.

BREAKING: It’s “a 100 percent certainty” that MLB owners will push for a salary cap after Kyle Tucker’s free agency agreement with the Los Angeles Dodgers, a source tells @EvanDrellich. pic.twitter.com/v3y5Kumr3Y

— The Athletic (@TheAthletic) January 20, 2026

The Tucker signing comes after the Dodgers have won the previous two World Series with the highest payroll in the sport. Other large contracts the Dodgers currently include: DH/P Shohei Ohtani, 10-year $700 million, RHP Yoshinobu Yamamoto $325 million, OF/SS Mookie Betts 12-year $365 million and LHP Blake Snell 5-year, $182 million.

Instead of a salary cap, MLB has a luxury tax with four thresholds where teams get penalized, whether that be paying a competitive balance tax or the team’s highest draft pick being lowered, depending on which threshold they surpassed and how many years over they’ve spent. This means if a team is willing to face these penalties, they can spend as much money as they want, which is what allows the Dodgers to spend as much as they have.

For a salary cap to be implemented, the owners and the MLB Players Association will need to negotiate it into the next CBA. The MLBPA has long publicly expressed disinterest in adding a salary cap.

“The issues that we see in the system we know can be addressed without a cap,” MLPA Executive Director Tony Clark said.

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This isn’t the first time there’s been tension within MLB over a salary cap, as in 1994, MLB players went on strike Aug 12, 1994, primarily in protest of the owners wanting a salary cap to be added to the next CBA. The remainder of the season and postseason were cancelled, making it the first time since 1904 that a World Series was not played.

“Players and fans want a full season of competitive baseball,” MLBPA said in a statement to The Athletic. “The league and owners say they want to avoid missing games but at the same time they appear to be dead-set on trying to force players into a system that, the last time they proposed it, led to the most missed games ever and a cancelled World Series.”

Many fans are speculating that the fight over a salary cap between the owners and the MLBPA will cause another lockout. The most recent MLB work stoppage came after the previous CBA ran out in December 2021, as that lockout lasted from December 2, 2021, until March 10, 2022, and did not result in any games being cancelled. Only time will tell if there will be another lockout or if both sides can come to an agreement while avoiding a work stoppage.