MLB’s Latest CBA Proposal Offers Thought-Provoking Hypotheticals, Even if It Is DOA
As Pete Crow-Armstrong authors his breakout season and Chris Sale side-eyes Laz Diaz, the battle for the future of baseball rolls quietly on in the background. On Thursday, MLB delivered to the MLB Players Association its latest set of proposals for the next collective bargaining agreement. This is news for nerds and diehards — you either have to love the minutiae of labor relations or have a vested interest in the structure of the Rule 5 draft to get excited about this stuff.
Fortunately, I know what my audience is.
MLB’s new proposals concern three areas: The creation of a weekly roster change window, a more aggressive Rule 5 draft, and the creation of free agent blackout periods during the offseason.
Let’s deal with each in turn.
Currently, teams set their active roster daily, and can make changes before and after every game. MLB wants to change that to a weekly structure; every club would have to set its 26-man roster on Monday and live with it throughout the week. This proposal is full of exemptions — injury, bereavement and paternity leave, the restricted list — for processes that exist now, but absent those special circumstances, teams could only promote and demote players on Monday. Teams would also be allowed to carry 14 pitchers on their 26-man rosters, up from the current limit of 13.
The injured list would change to reflect the new roster rules. Where we have a day-based IL now (7-day, 10-day, 15-day, and 60-day), MLB wants to go to a one-week, two-week, or 12-week IL to match the weekly transaction window. Position players would have to spend one full week on the IL, pitchers two weeks. The current 60-day IL, which allows players on long-term injured reserve to be exempt from 40-man roster limits, would change to a 12-week IL. (For those of you who don’t want to do the math, 60 days is eight and a half weeks.)
The next pillar of MLB’s proposal is the Rule 5 draft. The Rule 5 draft exists to prevent teams from hoarding major league-ready prospects indefinitely. If a prospect isn’t added to the 40-man roster within a certain period of time, any team can draft him for a nominal fee, and if they can keep him on the big league roster all year, they get to keep him.
MLB wants to do away with the requirement to keep the player on the big league roster and shorten the timeline for prospects who enter pro ball through the Rule 4 (i.e., the first-year player) draft. Players who enter affiliated ball before age 20 would be eligible for the fourth Rule 5 draft after they sign; players who turn pro at 20 or older would be eligible for the third Rule 5 draft.
Finally, MLB wants to create a free agent signing window that starts on Day 1 of the Winter Meetings and lasts until December 21. Anyone who doesn’t sign by then would have to wait until the first week in February. Teams could still make trades or re-sign their own pending free agents before the Winter Meetings, and the five-day window after the World Series to exercise or decline a contract option would remain in force. But between the end of the first signing window and the start of the second, no major league transactions would be allowed.
MLB says these proposals are designed to limit midseason roster churn, encourage a return to more traditional big league playing roles, and spark interest in free agency, like what we see in the NBA every summer. Those goals seem uncontroversial enough, but this being a labor dispute in postmodern America, it’s important to look for the catch, because there always seems to be one.
Having laid out the broad strokes of MLB’s plan, I’ll offer four points of analysis.
First, and most important: None of this matters. Every one of these measures was proposed contingent on the MLBPA accepting a salary cap. The Rule 5 proposal additionally works in concert with MLB’s proposal to limit the amateur draft to 12 rounds and make it college-only.
I’ve said over and over that the MLBPA’s stance on a salary cap might as well include the phrase “over our dead collective body,” as it has for almost 60 years. In his post on these proposals, Evan Drellich of The Athletic quoted a statement from interim MLBPA executive director Bruce Meyer: “The suggestion that the only way to limit roster churn, or incentivize earlier free agent signings is with a salary cap is entirely unserious… Players have proposed changes that would address these priorities, but the league is not interested in any changes that don’t directly reduce the rights of all players and shift leverage to the owners.”
It’s still early, but in my (admittedly limited) experience, it’s not a good sign when one of the principals of a negotiation uses the phrase “entirely unserious” on the record.
My position on the general shape of this CBA negotiation remains unchanged: Only one Big Four sports league has imposed a salary cap on its union in the 21st Century. The NHL got its salary cap, and severe salary rollbacks, but not until it broke the union. And that took canceling an entire season, which damaged the sport in ways from which it still has not recovered 20 years later.
It’s going to take at least one lost season to break the MLBPA, maybe more, and I have no idea whether the owners have the stomach for that intense a fight. I’m not sure the owners themselves know at this point; that’s the kind of thing we won’t be able to get a read on until next February or March at the earliest. Until then, we can treat any proposal that’s contingent on a cap-and-floor system as DOA.
Point no. 2: I understand why Manfred is licking his chops at the idea of a free agent bonanza every offseason. This all dates back to 2023, when everyone went to the Winter Meetings in Nashville and twiddled their thumbs waiting for Shohei Ohtani to sign. Manfred, his people, and a lot of the national newsbreakers had a freakout because the market was waiting for Ohtani, and Ohtani’s agent wasn’t leaking anything publishable.
That’s where this signing window nonsense started. As a general principle, I tend to be highly skeptical of proposals to make systemic changes to combat past problems of idiosyncratic origin. Remember when the refs blew a pass interference call in the NFC Championship game, so the NFL made pass interference reviewable for a year? Let’s not do that to free agency because the weirdest superstar in recent baseball history cut off the content spigot for four days. I was there, I was bored out of my mind too, but let’s not do anything rash.
There are elements of this signing window I don’t mind. I don’t mind giving teams an extended exclusive negotiating window with their own pending free agents. It wouldn’t change much, with the open market right around the corner, but fans would probably appreciate anything that gives their team an advantage when retaining homegrown players.
A transaction blackout around Christmas and New Year’s is probably healthy, too. The NHL has one, and Formula 1 has an enforced summer break in the middle of the season where factories have to shut down. In the past, the threat of a major trade or signing has made for a useful excuse for me to avoid my relatives around the holidays, but I can think of something else.
But keeping that window shut until two weeks before camp opens would only create artificial pressure on free agents to sign. Meyer nailed this in his statement — I’m sure Manfred wants an NBA- or NFL-style free agent bonanza, but it’s especially useful as a Trojan horse to install a deadline that reduces free agents’ leverage. It’s not as draconian as the trial balloon that would’ve limited free agents to one-year deals past the deadline, but players would be forced to sign before Christmas or risk remaining unemployed until the start of spring training.
Besides, I remain unconvinced that four days of frenetic action is preferable, from a standpoint of mainstream interest, to a steady trickle that lasts three months. Manfred might look at other sports and covet what they have, but making an NBA, NHL, or NFL structure work for baseball is more easily said than done. Manfred himself must’ve learned this lesson from his efforts to promote the draft.
It’s not all bad news in this proposal, though. Point no. 3: I love the idea of allowing teams to keep Rule 5 picks in the minors. Over the past decade, organizations have gotten so good at self-scouting that the Rule 5 draft has basically become meaningless. Would-be Shane Victorinos don’t change hands like that these days.
Nevertheless, prospect-rich teams — including everyone’s bogeyman, the Dodgers — are still collecting more talent than they can use. Any measure to break up those gluts would be an advantage to teams that struggle to draft and develop players and give prospects a faster path to the major leagues. I doubt this proposal would end up in a CBA that doesn’t include a cap-and-floor system and the 12-round all-college draft, but if it did, I’d approve.
The same goes for the weekly roster change window. Our Jon Becker crunched the numbers; on average, there have been 96 promotions and demotions per week this season, distributed more or less evenly across the days of the week.
| Day of the Week | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday | Sunday |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Promotions/Demotions | 334 | 353 | 298 | 234 | 348 | 287 | 291 |
Forcing teams to set their rosters every Monday might cut down on some of that roster churn, and if we were designing major league baseball (lowercase) from scratch, a weekly roster system might be the way to go.
Personally, I’d go with the system they use in soccer: Each team has a season-long squad of players to choose from, and before each game they pick a subset of those players to be available for selection. So the entire 40-man roster (or however many men) is available, but you can only dress 18 or 19 players for each game: 10 starters, four reserve position players, and four or five relief pitchers.
A weekly roster limit of 26 players with 14 pitchers isn’t the balance I’d choose, but I understand why MLB proposed it — expanding the active roster to 27 players would introduce 30 more full-time major league salaries to the owners’ costs, and they don’t want that.
Most fans probably wouldn’t notice the change; even going from a 60-day IL to a 12-week IL would be fine. That designation is (or ought to be) for extreme long-term injuries — Tommy John surgery, torn ACLs, busted rotator cuffs — where the difference between eight weeks and 12 is academic.
Weekly roster eligibility, a more aggressive Rule 5 draft, and schedule tweaks to line up free agent news with the Winter Meetings are all interesting ideas. Any or all of them could make life easier on players and front office workers, more profitable for the league and the media outlets that rely on baseball news, and more fun for fans. In a world in which the rules were set by a deliberative body with the best interests of the sport in mind, these proposals would be worthy of discussion and examination.
Unfortunately, we don’t live in that world, so all of these reforms are tied to a salary cap, which is a total nonstarter with the union. Until one of two things happens — either the cap is off the table or the union implodes — all of this is a thought experiment, and nothing more.
Michael is a writer at FanGraphs. Previously, he was a staff writer at The Ringer and D1Baseball, and his work has appeared at Grantland, Baseball Prospectus, The Atlantic, ESPN.com, and various ill-remembered Phillies blogs. Follow him on Twitter, if you must, @MichaelBaumann.
Im not really kidding with this question, but at some point does Banana ball start competing for fringy younger players?
In the last 5 years they’ve grown from something like ~$3M in revenue to an estimated >$100M.
Fewer teams and a potential huge year with an MLB lockout could push that higher and they have fewer teams to spread it to.
Or maybe MLB players play 4D chess and find a way to help fund the venture to give owners competition?
Not saying they’d ever take a player who is currently replacement level. But is it conceivable that by say 2030 it’s a real option for prospects to choose Banana Ball over the minors?
Im sure its a dumb thought, but somehow seeing even a remotely competitive other league would be nice.
Love the idea of a shorter window before players get to rule 4/5 eligibility. If done aggressively enough, that draft would be a bigger deal than the amateur draft because more of the rule 4/5 guys would make an immediate impact.
They would have to be extremely fringe-y in my opinion considering the bulk of banana ball players are closer to Indy ball washouts than AA washouts so I think it’s the Frontier, Atlantic, Pioneer leagues that feel it first.
I also think your question about 2030 would have more to do with front offices than the players and money. If front offices do not find the level of competition/conditioning consistent enough than they will likely continue their periodic selection of random guys from indy ball rather than acting like banana ball is a real stopping spot. What you may find is guys who maybe would try a comeback in KBO or grinding it out in the Frontier league decides doing a few dance moves and playing for the firemen is a better immediate plan.
Who knows though, a full year without MLB could change the calculus
I saw Banana Ball in Cleveland. Former Tribe 2B Jason Kipnis, long retired at that point, came out to pinch hit. He was visibly the best player on the field even several years into retirement. Ditto when also retired Corey Kluber came out to pitch. I think we’re a LONG way from anyone who has a plausible dream of making the show deciding Banana Ball is the way to go.
Tristan Peters? Or does he not count for this thought exercise?
That was back when the Bananas were in the Coastal Plain League, not the current entertainment juggernaut. I don’t think it’s applicable.
Yea, I wasn’t being snarky when I asked if he counted. I could see it going either way. They were already doing goofy shit–just not to the same degree or audiences. Plus, his joining the team didn’t affect his draft eligibility.
While the revenue has grown tremendously, I read the average player salary is something like $50k, with top salaries in the $100-200k range.
With the minor leagues continuing to be active during a potential stoppage, the couple that runs Bananas would have to really dip into their profits to fund their continued expansion while also upping the salaries to attract better players.
With the way they control their talent much like how the UFC does theirs, and their current ability to sell out some large stadiums (for Bananas games) and minor league stadiums (for non-Bananas), I doubt their interested in messing with a business model that is working so well for them.
Bananaball is, for the moment, more popular than MLB on the basis of user satisfaction. Would it remain so with a bigger platform, or would it prove to be a fad? I don’t think anyone knows, but I’d bet we’ll find out.
As to your question about poaching talent, yes, I do think that will happen, but not in a way MLB really cares about. They’ll sort of be an Asia for amateurs route.
This is really a Top Golf vs Golf misconstruction happening again–don’t make the same mistake Callaway did. Your typical banana ball fan is not necessarily a normal baseball fan just like the average person at Top Golf is not a Golf fan. Top Golf is a poor entry way into actual Golf because they fundamentally attract different fandoms and participation and the same is true of Banana Ball.
Thats a good point. My wife likes banana ball, tolerates baseball.
Wife and I both like pro wrestling, dislike MMA. Similar point I suppose. Some overlap but not a ton because the purpose is fundamentally different.
I don’t disagree with anything you’re saying, but it’s not really germane to my point. I’m not saying Bananaball will compete directly with MLB as a league/product. I just pointed out that it enjoys higher favorability* at the moment, and some marginal amateurs might decide they prefer fooling around on a field to spending their winters at Driveline for a longshot chance at a few weeks on a 40-man roster. I haven’t misconstrued anything.
*if you haven’t been keeping up, ask Gemini for a summary comparing their popularity with MLB on a per-user basis
Let’s consider Lorenzo Carrier. He’s a red shirt super senior the Rox took in the 14th round. Now, we know the Rox dev system isn’t good. We know senior signees are mostly scorned–doubly for super seniors. He had one big college season as a 23-year-old against mostly 20-year-olds. He’s in a resource-poor scenario with the deck stacked against him.
Or he could have joined Bananaball and entered as one of their premier power hitters performing to packed stadiums.
Somebody will find that calculus tempting.
Was he a theater major? Can he sing, dance, and act? Do acrobatics?
No? Then the Bananas probably aren’t interested, because judging from their Instagram account, baseball talent is the least important part of the skillset they require.
Some people play baseball to win (and/or make money). Some people play it for the sheer love of the sport.
Bananaball is for those in the latter group who want to perform on one of the biggest stages in the world.
Banana ball is for people who don’t like baseball.
Banana Ball is basically the Globetrotters.
I have the Washington Generals at +10000 to win the title this year, I just feel like they’re due!
Banana ball is akin to the Harlem Globetrotters. Fun to watch vs staged competetion. Would be crushed by the Colorado Rockies.
Banana ball is fun (I have attended once), and some of the players are good athletes, but it reminds me of eating way too much cotton candy at a state fair or similar event—Fun to start with but eventually cloying and dissatisfying,
Have you ever watched any clips from the Savannah Bananas?
I hadn’t until like a month ago, and always assumed they were like the Harlem Globetrotters – more or less normal baseball but wackier – but they’re actually a full-on theatrical production with scripted dramatics, musical numbers, dance routines, running plotlines, people wearing stilts, etc., that’s more akin to a Broadway musical than a normal baseball game. They even recently “signed” a Broadway actor as a new “player.”
They’re basically “Disney on Dirt,” and the idea that they’re going to start seriously competing with MLB for prospects is about as likely as “Disney on Ice” competing with the NHL for minor league hockey players. The required skillsets have very little in common, and it’s simply never going to happen.
You should watch a full game. It’s not a theatrical mens league like you imply.
The pitchers sit 90-95. The hitters are good enough to handle that velocity. Yea, it’s a silly enterprise, but the underpinning game is between Low-A and Double-A caliber. That they happen to juggle or do magic tricks isn’t a reason to belittle their talent.
I think you’re giving them a lot of credit. I doubt they’re as good as even a fall complex league. Most of the players when I saw them (2024) were DIII types. Nobody was hitting 95 on the gun.
I’m going to politely decline, but if you have supporting evidence, please provide it, because I simply don’t believe this. They’ve posted dozens of videos with pitching to their Instagram page, and not a single one shows anything close to MLB velocity. I’m not saying you’re wrong – I haven’t been able to find regular game footage online – but I find it extremely difficult to believe that they’re sitting 92-93 when the average MLB fastball in 2026 is 94.6 mph.
The players should ask for half the TV money for the playoffs, or just getting rid of arbitration and every player becomes a free agent after three years. Why are the owners the only ones allowed to propose outlandish, unserious changes?
I suppose I understand why they’re doing it – maintaining public support, and also it’s got to be easier to 30 people to agree on something outlandish than a few thousand people – but I’d be very interested in seeing dueling proposals to fundamentally shift baseball’s economics!
It’s only like 72 individuals on the union side that need to agree on something. The few thousand choose their representation, they’re not individually voting/agreeing on policy.
But 30 is still fewer than 72 and I also think ownership is far more aligned on their primary goal of increasing franchise values vs. the players who have competing priorities influenced by what class of player is being represented (minor, replacement level, middle class, star, etc.).
If the Union started putting out random proposals youd get every Tommy Pham in the league pointing out when they thought something was stupid
I don’t really think other unions are like MLBPA (or police unions, for that matter), but when I was on the barg team for our last round of negotiations (edit: for a nonsports union), management started off with some hilariously stupid things (rolling back discrimination protections, ending severance, etc.), and so we responded by asking for a 12% annual salary increase. Positional bargaining is fun (*in the end, when you win).
I have no predictions about the future, but I do know that if the top 10 annual earners in MLB set aside 5% of their income to float the rest of the players, and the players decided to do some barnstorming at HS and CCs around the country during the lockout for goodwill, ownership would lose a huge chunk of their presumed leverage.
The roster window idea is pretty good, though why expand to 14 pitchers? Make teams use pitchers multiple innings, and go deeper into their bullpens. Make them have to give some credence to longevity over max effort. That will help slow the three true outcomes. Also, why go from 8.5 to 12 weeks? That’s just stupid and pointless.
The free agent signing window is not that important as long as it’s not that long of a break without the stupid 1-year deal aspect. The Rule 5 changes are pointless if they go with the incredibly stupid draft changes.
My favorite roster reform proposal (because as far as I know it’s my idea), is that if a player throws a pitch in an MLB game and he is not the one day callup for a doubleheader, then he is on your roster for the next 4 days.
I don’t care if you trade him. I don’t care if he’s hit by a bus crossing the street. I don’t care if MLB banned him for life as he left the field. He is on your roster, and eating a roster spot for the next 4 days (and unless suspended without pay he’s drawing an MLB salary during that time).
Starters who only go 5 and then 4 relievers who each go 1 inning is simply not sustainable baseball without a revolving door on the bullpen or a huge roster of pitchers.
Yeah, I think we can give you credit for that one. I think there are lots of ways to try to limit the bastardization of pitching staffs that goes on. Of course the problem is a lot of that stuff seemingly helps keep costs down. A never-ending cadre of young flamethrowers who will turn their arms into mashed potatoes before they reach free agency isn’t exactly bad for owners’ bottom line, so long as it doesn’t turn off too many fans.
Sic semper fandoms.
There’s already a … uh … lively debate … wherein large segments of the fans are of the opinion that the players owe them entertainment, and should just be happy to accept anything the owners offer them. If that means kids blow their arms out so that Joe Fanboi gets the 7 innings he expects from every starter, so be it.
I kind of like the weekly roster idea and Rule 5 guys being allowed on minor leagues. I feel like the IL stints are needlessly restrictive though and more options should be present, but maybe there are more subtleties to it than I know. None of it matters though until the cap elephant can be addressed
Nobody likes these things enough to agree to a salary cap to get them. Especially not the players.
The only thing that maybe gets them a cap is a very high cap with a high floor to go with it or limiting years of team control to about two. Neither of those are going to happen and even they might not do it.
I agree it’s not a good sign….but I think in a different way than you mean. Context: I have a good amount of deal negotiations experience (not labor negotiations, but large $ deals between two sticks in the mud).
MLBPA’s position above looks to me like on-their-heels bloviation. It’s dangerous to infer too much from articles, but everything I’ve read to date leads me to believe that MLBPA is behind. Clearly a salary cap is not entirely unserious, it is a key pillar in the negotiation! And if these type of comments are meant to be appeals to outsiders to to curry public favor and extract leverage in the deal, then I suspect the MLBPA will find out that league structures and baked-in economics matter more than public sentiment. Again, dangerous to infer too much, but I read these statements as shows of weakness.
I don’t think this argument holds…for one, the 21st century timing arbitrarily excludes the NFL. More importantly, labor vs. capital is an obvious vector of analysis, but that vector is not everything! Competitiveness is clearly another one. I make this point across multiple FG articles on the labor negotiations, but I have not seen a good argument made that a cap and floor system is not a net benefit for the sport. Raising the cost of being a shitty owner is in my mind an obvious benefit. And I find it very unlikely you get a floor without a cap, because of the nature of negotiating gives and takes compared to the as-is.
Couldn’t you also raise the minimum salary to increase the floor? I don’t think a cap and floor is the only way to raise the cost of being a crappy owner. You could adjust revenue sharing, or playoff payouts, etc – these are all more complicated but there are other levers. And while simple has its appeal, the simplest solution is not always the best one.
IMO that might nominally increase floor but doesn’t address the problem. Where I’m coming from, MLB is a regulated cartel. A cartel needs tight bands between cap and floor if you want long-term competitiveness for the greatest number of teams possible.
If you raise the floor as you suggest without doing anything to the cap, then the teams spending today remain incentivized to spend under that new system, and the teams that do not spend today remain disincentivized to spend more than the bare minimum.
Re-pasting what I’ve commented in the past as it better explains in full why I think MLB ultimately needs a cap.
Here it is (from https://blogs.fangraphs.com/how-much-would-mlbs-draft-proposal-cost-the-best-players/):
“When the benefit accrues for simply having *made it* to the inner 30 circle then there’s a few forces at play:
-Cartel membership benefits overcome bad geographies / markets
-Doing well in a bad market will not come close to approaching the perk of being in the club of 30 in the short or medium run
-Force of will (including good owners who care about winning and are persistent and will spend long-term $) can help create a good MLB franchise and fandom regardless of location, but…
-mid to long term levers will often be deprioritized for short-term and more directly controllable ones (cost), and…
-bad owners will gladly not compete because the marginal gain of their spend is low, and they will keep cutting spend, especially because…
-the big gap between the platinum tier (in platinum markets) and the rest of league further reduces marginal utility of their $ spend
It’s fairly easy for bad owners to fall into the easy path of doing nothing but cutting costs, and it’s fairly easy for bad owners to become owners….ultimately this is where I believe the per year cost of being an owner must be sharply raised. Increasing marginal utility of incremental spend through a tighter floor to cap band would, I think, also help”
These are all good points. It does make me wonder whether relegation systems help incentivize spending for clubs fighting to maintain the perk of being in the top league.
I know this article isn’t about the salary cap – per se – but what strikes me as interesting is how disconnected the proposed cap / floor range (which is roughly $170m to $245m) is from current owner behavior.
Only 9 teams are running payrolls within this range in 2026. Of the teams outside this range, it’s a fairly even split between those above, and those below.
Obviously – this is just an opening position. But it makes me wonder what the endgame really is
The idea is to slow wage acceleration. In 2021, the Dodgers led the league in payroll + tax at $318,249,909. By 2025, that had risen to $586,717,377. That’s an 84.4% increase in just four years.
Bit of a cherry pick here – how much has total payroll across all 30 clubs risen in those 5 years? Not close to $84%
And treating luxury tax payments as payroll is somewhat disingenuous as well, partly because almost 50% of those dollars in effect represent a revenue transfer to other teams.
I don’t think there shouldn’t be further constraints on spending of the top end clubs. I also don’t think the Dodgers should have a $200 million plus local broadcast revenue sharing exemption but I’m not sure the CBA negotiations can touch that fact
If most teams already operate within the cap and floor, it wouldn’t be much of a cap and floor, would it?
Can we all agree that when we say “payroll” we stipulate whether we are saying actual or CBT payroll.?
Because CBT payroll is meaningless to 2/3 of teams not exceeding the tax. But CBT payroll is what MLB (read owners) will refer to because it magnifies the “stated” payrolls of lower $ payroll teams and sharply constrains the top with the cap.
Using 40 man payroll – which is what teams are paying this year excluding estimated benefits ($18 mil) and the bonus pool for pre arbs ($1.67 mil ) – 15 teams are below $170 and 5 are above $245. So it’s actually not an even split.
You might have negotiated deals, but your reading comprehension could use some work. Here’s the quote again:
[empahsis mine]
The quote is stating the fact that these proposals are tied to accepting a cap is what is unserious. Getting a cap would be a massive concession, not something you take in order to futz around the edges with roster management. Because MLB’s explanation on tying the two is “In our current economic system, these changes would be too harmful to competitive balance and would not be practical.” Someone’s going to have to explain to me how cap/no cap affects these specific proposals, because otherwise, I’d agree that coupling these proposals with the cap is entirely unserious.
This is a bit like trying to get your cat to come out to go to the vet by halfheartedly shaking their sixth-favorite toy for 10 seconds.
That’s not a very polite way to disagree with someone or have a discussion. Not the rudest, but not very nice either
I’m not sure if the players would actually go for even an NBA-style cap system, which (and I could be wrong) seems like the most overall player-friendly. But as of right now, the owners are proposing an NHL-modeled system that will take a whole lot of money away from the players.
It might not be an unserious demand in isolation, but it is unserious in the context of MLB labor history, where players waged total war to prevent the implementation of a salary cap in 1994, and won. Given the size of the MLBPA’s war chest ($520MM as of March 2026), it’s extremely unlikely that the owners can force them to capitulate with anything short of a full-season lockout, which isn’t going to happen because they’re not willing to sacrifice an entire season’s revenue for the second time in eight years – especially when hoping to radically restructure the league’s media contracts in 2029. Even if the owners were willing to throw down the gauntlet NHL-style, and lay siege to the players union, there’s no guarantee they succeed before the federal government and courts (including the presumably friendly, but wildly mercurial executive branch) intervene, as happened in 1995.
So yeah, while a salary cap might seem like a reasonable demand, both the MLBPA and owners fully understand what it’ll take to get the players to agree to one, and that the owners aren’t willing to escalate to that level. That’s why it’s “entirely unserious.”
I am anti union. That said, these proposals are “dead on arrival.” A total waste of time. Again quoting, “First, and most important: None of this matters. Every one of these measures was proposed contingent on the MLBPA accepting a salary cap. That Union will never agree.”
I guess you’re against weekends, health benefits, pensions, and restrictions on child labour, too.
Maybe he’s like the heir to a massive fortune or something. Then that sorta makes sense I guess, if you ignore a few aspects like child labor.
$1 says his full username is Robert M.
Dude, you can’t say things like that in public, only when you talk in person to real people who understand nuance
I’m curious about why you feel the NHL has not recovered from the lockout of the 2004-5 season. The data I’m looking at says the attendance per team barely changed. However, the attendance per team has barely changed since then. In comparison, MLB attendance has declined in the last 20 years from about 74.9 million to 71.4 million. When adjusted for inflation, MLB revenue has barely changed, from $4.7B (worth $7.75B today) to $7.8B.
Given this data, if I were an MLB owner who cares about annual revenue and profit, not holding the team as a property to sell later, I would say the NHL team owners were correct in breaking the union. I admit this is not a subject I’m strongly familiar with. So, what am I missing?
TV. Before the lockout, the Stanley Cup Finals were consistently getting 3-4% of the US TV audience. In the 14 years between the lockout & COVID, they averaged 2.5%; post-COVID, it’s down to 1.7%.
As for TV income, I can’t find a good breakdown, but the NHL remains a distant 4th in annual income from TV rights, and is dwarfed by the NBA, which was viewed as a (roughly) peer league pre-lockout.
Thanks. While I suspect MLB viewership has also declined, a search of the data makes it difficult to compare the 2005 MLB US TV audience with the last 20 years. That is why I looked at revenue.
Then where did you get that MLB revenue is $7.8 billion? Across 30 teams that would be $260 million per team. I don’t know if any MLB franchise today has revenue of that little, and clearly a couple have revenue of 3X that number.
The actual estimated MLB revenue is $12,5 billion
Hasn’t MLB viewership as % of US TV audience declined as well?
Probably, but (viewership of anything non-football) as a % of the US TV audience has declined in recent years
Thank you Michael for explaining this in a way in which I can understand it. Appreciate you.
I don’t agree at all about the 60 day IL, bc it operates differently from the shorter ones. If you have a player out long term, that’s a slot missing from the 40-man—except that the 60-day doesn’t count against the 40-man. So if your 40-man includes 3 SS, one of whom is a not-ready MiLBer, and your starting SS goes down, you’re potentially screwed, unless you can use the 60-day. But the difference between 60 and 84 days is almost 15% of the season.
Konnor Griffin comes of the 60-day on September 4; under a 12-week system, he’d either be ineligible until after the season ends, or the Pirates would have had to roster an injured player for 2 months. To what possible end?
The MLBPA is hardline enough, and has a large enough war chest, that the owners are never going to force them to capitulate without cancelling the full 2027 season, at minimum, and there’s zero chance the owners are willing to sacrifice an entire year of revenue for the second time in eight years, especially with television rights negotiations looming in 2029.
The owners are trying to make players nervous enough to agree to meaningful concessions on important, but secondary concerns like the draft, arbitration, free agency, etc., but they’re ultimately bluffing, and I expect things to play out like they did last time, with a new CBA that doesn’t change the sport’s economic structure in any fundamental way signed signed sometime in early-to-mid March 2027.
Though the owners are trying to make the negotiations all about a salary cap, I expect that a lot of discussions will go on behind the scenes between the high revenue teams and the low revenue teams with the low revenue teams seeking more sharing of revenues. MLB is trying to prevent any “leakage” on this issue by limiting any negotiation announcements to the Commissioner. I expect that as we approach the start of spring training that will fail and that some of the owners will start leaking information to their favorite sportswriters.
Oh, I absolutely think the owners would cancel a full season. So long as they are reasonably sure that will break the union.
Fixed that for you.
Meanwhile, I’m pretty dubious about the Rule 5 concept, unless they hand out extra years for TJS recipients. You draft a guy out of college, develop him for 1.5 years, he gets TJS, appears for the last month of year 3, and then another team can just take him? I don’t know what the owners are even thinking there.
How about a different time frame for hitters and pitchers? Hitters it’s 3 years, pitchers are 4. Or the clock stops while injured/if you miss a year, it doesn’t count against the time frame.
Honestly, the 3 year time frame would make pitchers less valuable to draft. I would be much less likely to pick & pay pitchers if I knew I would lose them before they could give me value & I had the ability to just pick up pitchers post TJS that I could develop.
The union should ask for mandated public reporting of team financials in the same way regulators require public companies to file quarterly statements, with an income statement, balance sheet, and sources and uses of cash. Benefits include 1) public shaming of miserly owners who are using these as profit engines and 2) owners should be required to prove the teams are not supported by insurance companies and circular financing.
Lack of transparency/trust over financials is why comparing MLB (as a business) to the NFL is apples to…I dunno, faulty WWI-era grenades.
NHL’s situation was pretty dire which resulted in breaking the union. Unlike other pro sports that cry out that they are not making money. Hockey was really in that situation where only a handful of clubs were consistently profitable with and the league had been experiencing team bankruptcies that were seemly becoming more frequent. There were a number of teams that were saved at the last second from filling for bankruptcy an angle minority partner or city booster. Existing as the fourth most popular sport yet having the same fixed costs or higher in some cases really cut into the revenue pie.
If MLB is thinking of changing Rule 4 & 5; I’d like to suggest a rather unconventional idea to balance the proposed late draft, Rule 5 and the arbitration years. (Which taken together pretty much cover the average player’s peak years and make his disposable when he reaches free agency) Let a player buy his own free agency early. If he matches the last team offer with his own money, he’s a free agent. Or if he gives the team what he submitted as an appropriate salary, he’s a free agent. I’m sure there would be a market for loans to cover the player cost.
The Monday window is a decent attempt to limit the slop relief pitcher DFA churn where a different 5 ERA AAA guy is called up every other day to be the sacrificial lamb if the game gets out of hand. I expect the Union to be against this since it would be less jobs. My proposal was to simply add an extra spot or two on the 40 for “up-down” players, essentially a vet could do what Adam Ottavino did at the end of his career with the Yankees where he commits to one organization but wont necessarily be on the active roster. Basically you can “buy” a player with a volunteer option
The 40 man roster/active 26 proposal would also work but would be pretty limiting for development of some players. Would probably need to be carved down to like 30/26
Also while we’re taking proposals from other sports they should borrow what the NHL is doing with EBUGs now and let every team have their bullpen catcher or pitching coach be a retired pitcher who can come into blowouts. The novelty of the position players has worn off, especially since they all now throw 40mph. Let some old dude come in and pump his 85 – this can be the compromise for eliminating the 60th terrible DFA pitcher getting his major league debut at age 31 only to be DFA’d after the game and never seen again
Some of these are interesting, but pointless. I have a feeling I will be playing a lot of OOTP & eBaseball Pro Spirits next season to scratch my baseball itch. I understand the players saying “no salary cap,” and I have generally agreed with this. But I want baseball, and it would be interesting to see a Pirates team that can spend to keep their guys or a Guardians team that could actually decide to have outfielders. That said, the AL’s parity isn’t exactly pretty currently.
Nothing is going to get the Guardians to spend
How about a version of the A’s where their owner can named an MLB player other than Aaron Judge?
Baseball is uniquely awesome, yet seemingly all of the proposals from the 30 Mr Burnses (owners) are based on the premise that baseball needs to change and be like other, inferior sports.
1. Then how about relegation, you risk averse clowns?
2. If the owners hate baseball so much, they should go buy a banana ball team or invest in the (equally intelligent) pro wrestling.
I’ve always felt that there should be some tweak to the active roster rules that would benefit the players and also maybe make the game itself more interesting. The idea of the soccer theory is ok, but I think a better approach would be to have a 35 man traveling roster with 26 players active for each game. This helps to solve the problem that has never made any sense in that every team carries four starting pitchers (give or take) for every game even though they are never going to play. 26 active players with 10 pitchers max would create significantly more bench players for each game. More pinch hitters and a stolen base guy or two, along with whatever else might fit could provide a little more drama and excitement to games.
This would also be a good way to work toward a salary floor by creating these extra MLB salaries. While the owners don’t want that without a cap and the players are dead set against a cap, there will have to be some give and take. These are negotiations, after all. It would seem to make sense for the union to accept a cap /floor situation where the total of player salaries would have to fall at a point that is a percentage or so higher than it is now. It really seems that by fighting so hard against a cap, the union is selling out to a relatively small group of superstars at the expense of the majority who will never reach that level. I think the rule 5 proposal is also good for the fringe guys who are blocked in their current org.
Somehow, it seems that the answer is going to lie in the shadowy area where more younger guys get opportunities at the expense of the guys at the top of the salary scale so long as the players get a slightly bigger piece of the pie overall.
I’ve been through this sort of tango before – business ignores its current customer base in order to chase customers who aren’t interested in the product and aren’t going to be swayed by tinkering around the edges.
The owners seem to think they can’t chase me away just because I’ve been a fan for 60 years. They’re wrong.
Someone explain to me in layman’s terms why a salary cap works in every other major US sport but won’t work in the MLB.
I don’t think it’s “a salary cap won’t work”, it’s a “this is a transparent attempt to shift revenues over time from players to owners, and we see it for what it is.”
The fallacy in your statement is that you presume something works merely because it functions at the baseline level to not completely fail. It’s difficult to say that the NBA salary cap “works” when we’ve had multiple attempts to circumvent said cap by the very people who supposedly are happiest with it. The NFL owners practically acted like the barbarians at the gate the second they got let off the leash in their uncapped year. A salary cap “works” only because it saves the equity holders from acting irrationally and in the interest of labor with that whole supply and demand thing.
Someone will have to explain to me why people willingly forfeit their economic rights like they do civil rights the second some bogeyman comes calling.