The big question looming over MLB: Will owners enter the fight for a salary cap?

The most important question in Major League Baseball is not when the league will expand to 32 teams, or whether technology should help umpires call balls and strikes. It’s a question of whether Commissioner Rob Manfred and the owners are bracing for the biggest salary cap fight in more than 30 years.

The expiration of the sport’s labor agreement is still two years away, at midnight Eastern time on December 2, 2026. That makes next year a crucial time when owners and players will formulate plans for the negotiations.

An off-season lockout seems very likely again in 2026, but that doesn’t overly worry industry officials who now view it as pro forma. Instead, they wonder if the lockout this time will cost regular season games. Because if owners decide to push aggressively for a cap, history says the consequences will be dire.

Manfred was coy last month during a news conference at owners’ meetings in New York when asked if his owners would move in that direction.

“So far, we haven’t even really started, in any meaningful way, discussions about labor,” Manfred said. “I certainly can’t make a judgment on what we’re going to come up with on a work-related topic.”

At baseball’s Winter Meetings last week, three days after completing negotiations with the New York Mets on Juan Soto’s record $765 million deal, player agent Scott Boras was asked if he expected calls for a cap to return.

“There are every five years,” he said, referring to the length of each collective agreement. “What’s new?”

The owners are indeed considering a cap proposal, according to people briefed on their conversations who were not authorized to speak publicly. But it would also be surprising if they weren’t. What’s more notable is that, for several reasons, homeowners might have an incentive to pursue a cap in a way they haven’t done in a generation.

The future of local television rights is an essential motivation.

It is common to say that baseball owners want a cap on potential savings and that baseball operates like other major American sports leagues do. The NBA, NFL and NHL all have caps and floors.

Smaller market teams and their fans have also always complained about the exploits of larger market teams, and they have no shortage of fodder this offseason. Soto’s most serious suitors were limited to the sport’s biggest markets.

The World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers, meanwhile, have a projected payroll of $335 million per Cot’s contract, the highest in sports, and have deferred more than $1 billion in salary to later seasons .

But long before this winter, it looked like MLB might push for a cap again. Shortly after the latest CBA negotiations, Manfred created an “economic reform committee,” a group of six owners tasked with examining two issues: the future of local television and club revenue disparities.

By the end of 2025, about two-thirds of the league will likely have had their tariffs reduced at some point in the past three seasons. In response, Manfred wants to radically change how teams share revenue, pooling all local TV money while reducing or eliminating what teams share with other streams.

A cap could be a unifying element among its owners, something all 30 could rally behind even if they might not otherwise welcome the changes — a potential means to an end. Teams in large markets, in particular, are unwilling to share more of their valuable TV revenue, but could greatly benefit from capping.

For owners, a cap has always been an end in itself. Maybe THE END. They have long sought to put a cap on player spending, when players only wanted a minimum or floor installed, but games will never achieve one without the other.

The union declined to comment for this story. MLBPA Executive Director Tony Clark said in spring 2023, “We will never agree to a cap. »

Mark Attanasio of the Milwaukee Brewers, John Henry of the Boston Red Sox, Chris Ilitch of the Detroit Tigers, Terry McGuirk of the Atlanta Braves, Dick Monfort of the Colorado Rockies and Mark Walter of the Dodgers make up the economic reform committee, a person briefed on its work, said declared. McGuirk is president, having succeeded Walter.

Monfort chaired Manfred’s labor committee during the 2021-2022 negotiations, when owners locked out players during the offseason. Attanasio and Henry also served there.

The lockout froze in the winter, putting a halt to free agency, trades and almost everything else. The league then made a cap-type proposal early in negotiations, but quickly moved on when players balked.

“We didn’t miss a game, and that’s what really matters at the end of the day,” Manfred said in a recent interview with the Questions for Cancer Research website. “Off-season lockouts are off-season lockouts, you know? This is sort of the norm in professional sports.

The feeling of a lockout as the “norm” might be more representative of reality circa 2011, when the NBA and NFL both experienced lockouts. Aside from baseball, none of the three major U.S. men’s sports have experienced a lockout, off-season or otherwise, in more than a decade, since the NHL in 2012-13. But these other three leagues also have CBAs that last longer.

A lockout that interrupts the regular 162-game season would undoubtedly be a different animal than one that doesn’t. And no problem in baseball is more likely to produce that result than a cap — if the owners don’t budge.

Collectively, players have always viewed the cap as a third-order problem, believing that the system would produce a multitude of disadvantages for them, including, over time, a reduction in their overall winnings. A fight over a cap was at the center of the ugly 1994-95 strike, which lasted 232 days and led to the cancellation of the World Series.

The full impacts of a cap and floor would be complex and massive, largely because the league and players would agree to share a fixed percentage of revenue each year. The league could produce a long list of what it says are pros and cons of the union.

Besides the overall economic aspect, competition is another major topic of discussion. The league believes a cap would help achieve parity, giving small-market teams a better chance of retaining and signing top players. Players, meanwhile, have long felt that a less restricted system is better.

“Competitiveness is what should make leagues work, and the way they compete in our league has a varied approach,” Boras said. “There is no obstacle to this.”

Franchise values ​​appear to continue to grow at a steady pace, even as cord cuts hurt local TV rates. Major sports leagues now allow all private equity firms to acquire stakes.

“We now have billionaires buying teams in every sport. That’s what’s changing,” Boras said. “No one is going to buy it. You’re going to have several people, the contingents are buying it. … The previous generation of owners will derive considerable wealth from it.

“It’s a billion-dollar company. It is no longer a local, regional company, and this, I think, is the adaptation that we must consider. Not the structure of the rules of the game and the way we work. We all know what cap systems have done to other sports, and frankly, it hasn’t been particularly exciting. »

It’s unclear how baseball’s new owners, such as Steve Cohen of the Mets and David Rubenstein of the Baltimore Orioles, will influence the job and whether they would prefer to stay in the fans’ good graces. Conversely, a new generation of owners may be eager to promote change, believing they can successfully challenge the union where their predecessors failed.

If homeowners strive to reach a ceiling, there are many more unknowns ahead. Could they hold it together while giving up potentially a year of income or more? Would the players do it?

The game is shining right now. MLB raked in about $11.6 billion in 2023, and Manfred said in October that amount had increased this year. The introduction of the pitch clock two seasons ago helped increase attendance and interest, and the 2024 World Series featured a marquee matchup between the Dodgers and New York Yankees.

Missed games, however, could tarnish the league’s influence in future televised negotiations.

Clark’s leadership was challenged earlier this year by a group of players unhappy with various issues. Owners might view the union as weaker than in the past, but a cap proposal could also galvanize players.

At least a small segment of players and agents may be curious and want to know more about its effects. Some might even support change, believing that at least their own lot could be improved. But there’s no evidence that MLB has a groundswell of support among players for a cap.

Manfred’s own legacy will be affected by the path he and the owners choose. The next collective agreement will be the commissioner’s last, before his retirement scheduled for 2029.

“I think there are a lot of positives in the game at the moment. I think our participation is very strong, and that’s always a good thing for us,” Manfred said during his interview with Questions for Cancer Research. “It shows that the game is popular. And I think that the positive things that happen always motivate the parties to find a solution to the economic problems that football is facing.

“We have never missed a game and I hope to keep that record intact during my final go-around.”

(Manfred and Clark top photo: Daniel Shirey / MLB Photos via Getty Images)