Welcome to 2026! Maybe the last year of Major League Baseball as we know it! I mean, probably not. But the odds are slightly higher this year than most years due to the upcoming Collective Bargaining Agreement negotiations that are due to take place in advance of the end of the current CBA before the start of the 2027 season. Those negotiations are expected to be particularly acrimonious after the last set saw the start of the MLB season delayed by a week in 2022. Still, I\u2019d put it in the 1-2% range, MLB might be damaged but there is too much money to be made for it to die out, just yet.<\/p>\n
That said, MLB has some work to do if they want to keep the sport healthy. Or, better yet, make it healthier. Let\u2019s talk about it.<\/p>\n
Figure out the TV\/streaming situation<\/p>\n
For years, MLB has suffered under the weight of its own blackout restrictions. At first, it might seem reasonable that it would be more difficult to watch a sports team from your local area as a method of encouraging people to watch the team live. But we\u2019re well past the era where that ever made sense. And the definition of \u201clocal area\u201d has always been completely out of whack. In North Carolina, I can\u2019t watch games that are played in Atlanta using my MLB.TV subscription because I am deemed to be in their local area, even though they don\u2019t broadcast locally or on cable in my area and I am 4-5 hours away from their stadium by car. There are fans in Iowa with similar complaints trying to watch Royals games. It\u2019s ridiculous.<\/p>\n
Recently, there has been an added issue where one group has owned many teams\u2019 local broadcast rights but has struggled to pay their fees on time. Diamond Sports Group, owners of the FanDuel Sports Network, went through bankruptcy proceedings from 2023-2025 and eventually rebranded and Main Street Sports. Now, FanDuel Sports Network itself has threatened to declare bankruptcy <\/a>as early as February of this year. All the while teams have had to pick up and broadcast the games themselves, with the help of MLB and MLB.tv.<\/p>\n MLB games need to be broadcast on TV to keep the sport in the public consciousness. No one is going to care about the World Series if they\u2019re not able to watch the regular season games. Fewer people are going to want to play baseball and work towards a pro career if they can\u2019t see the stars playing on a regular basis.<\/p>\n MLB is faced with lots of difficulties, but those difficulties could lead to opportunities. If they can regain control of their local broadcasting rights and arrange things such that everyone can watch every team from anywhere, it could go a long way toward increasing the popularity of the sport to something closer to what the NBA enjoys, even if they\u2019re unlikely to catch the NFL ever again. And that\u2019s important both for short-term profits as well as long-term health and profitability.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t know what the exact solution should be for this, but I know they need to figure it out and they need to figure it out soon. Preferably the final solution would be an affordable way for baseball fans to watch any team, anywhere, at any time.<\/p>\n Get a reasonable salary floor<\/p>\n This is a drum I\u2019ve been banging for a while now. You can even see where I wrote about it last off-season here<\/a>. I can\u2019t find it now, but there was a graphic going around during the 2025 postseason that showed what percentage of their gross income teams spent on the payrolls and many teams were spending a significantly smaller percentage of their income on talent than others. Sure, the Dodgers and Blue Jays got to the World Series with two of the most expensive rosters in MLB, but they also spent a high percentage of their income on their rosters. Teams that spend higher percentages of their income did better than teams that didn\u2019t, even when they had a lower income.<\/p>\n All signs point to MLB trying to shove a salary cap down the MLBPA\u2019s throat. I\u2019m not convinced that\u2019s a good idea, but I\u2019d be willing to accept it if MLB accompanied it with a salary floor that forces teams who currently coast by, continually losing and not spending money, to actually make a dang effort. Pittsburgh, Minnesota, and Athletics fans shouldn\u2019t be as miserable as they are.<\/p>\n At this point, MLB has had pretty hefty revenue sharing for years. They\u2019ve added things to help teams with smaller market sizes to compete. The only thing that\u2019s going to truly get some teams to be competitive is a requirement that some team owners stop pocketing quite so many profits.<\/p>\n Drastically reduce shifting<\/p>\n MLB has had a rash of rule changes in recent years. One of the most controversial was a reduction in allowable infield shifts. However, it seems obvious now that MLB simply didn\u2019t go far enough. Jayson Stark, an MLB writer at The Athletic, recently wrote<\/a> about how outfield shifting has drastically reduced the number of doubles and triples in MLB over recent years. This has helped contribute to a decline in overall offense, even as home run numbers continue to increase.<\/p>\n