CLEARWATER, Fla. \u2014 In baseball\u2019s upcoming labor war, fans might back the owners on the biggest issue of all.<\/p>\n
More than two-thirds of MLB fans recently polled by The Athletic said they support bringing a salary cap<\/a> to Major League Baseball. That puts them at odds with the Players Association, the ballplayers\u2019 union that has always successfully fought off owners\u2019 attempts to install an upper limit on salaries.<\/p>\n MLBPA interim executive director Bruce Meyer responded Wednesday by saying the union heeds fans\u2019 perspectives, but believes a cap might actually harm their enjoyment of the game.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are also a lot of fans who think their owners should sell their teams,\u201d Meyer said after the union\u2019s annual spring meeting with Philadelphia Phillies players. \u201cAnd, for some reason, they don\u2019t seem to want to do that.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re very cognizant of the fans, and actually think a salary-cap system is worse for fans, because it basically prevents teams that want to make their team better from doing so. It basically is an ultimate restriction on competition and the ability of teams to do what they think is best to build the best team for the fans.\u201d<\/p>\n From a pool of 14,154 respondents<\/a> last month, 68 percent said they were in support of bringing a cap-and-floor system to baseball, compared to 27 percent who were opposed. Another 5 percent said they had no opinion. The Athletic\u2019s fan survey was a non-scientific poll conducted via its website from Feb. 10\u201323.<\/p>\n Meyer noted that in other surveys, he\u2019s seen fan support for a cap drop over time. One poll he said he was referring to showed<\/a> 84 percent support for a cap among 1,000 respondents in 2001 .<\/p>\n \u201cThere was a poll a while ago that actually showed more fan support than there is now (for a cap),\u201d he said. \u201cSo, it\u2019s either stayed the same or gone down.\u201d<\/p>\n The Athletic\u2019s polling, however, suggests more fans appear in favor of a cap system today than in 2022<\/a>. That year, 59 percent of respondents favored the change, compared to 41 percent who preferred the sport\u2019s status quo. (The 2022 poll, with more than 11,500 respondents, did not include an option for \u201cno opinion.\u201d)<\/p>\n Collective bargaining between players and owners is expected to begin in April. The current five-year labor contract expires in December, at which point owners are likely to lock out the players until a new deal is reached.<\/p>\n