MLB Faces Potential Work Stoppage Amid Salary Cap Debate

Major League Baseball seems to have a great ballgame going right now. It'd be a shame if anything came along to mess up the mojo.

Individually speaking, the stars shine brightly. Shohei Ohtani keeps doing his two-way dance like nobody in MLB history. Aaron Judge continued to be the biggest offensive force since Barry Bonds. Cal Raleigh enjoyed the best season for a catcher since Johnny Bench. Yoshinobu Yamamoto pulled double duty in an unprecedented way in the World Series. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. reminded everyone how MLB is a generational phenomenon.

The World Series wasn't a universal hit in its entirety because not everyone was pulling for the Los Angeles Dodgers to win, but it was an unqualified international success, with huge swaths of Canada and Japan tuning in to make it one of the most watched Series in decades.

Baseball Fever... catch it. Right?

Well, what does one do to treat a fever? Old heads said to starve it. Behind the scenes, the powers that be seem to be pushing MLB toward a work stoppage after the 2026 season. The basic agreement between owners and players runs out next year and commissioner Rob Manfred has been trying to sell the workers on the upside of a salary cap. They have one in the NFL, NBA and NHL, and maybe Rob's house, and their great, he says. You might have heard about the time earlier this year when Philadelphia Phillies slugger Bryce Harper asked Manfred to leave the clubhouse after listening to his pitch. Harper's reply, taking some of the emotion away: Why not just adjust the revenue sharing on the owner's part? Good question, Bryce!

No matter that Manfred and Harper didn't hit it off, the owners are said to be still posturing for a lockout. It was long enough ago that younger fans don't remember the strike of 1994-95, but killing the World Series turned enough fans off that, if nothing else, it's still used as an excuse for some to hate on baseball. It's their prerogative. Potentially killing an entire season, well, it would be an emotional apocalypse for countless fans.

The two sides are said to be negotiating now, and the disagreement won't reach a head until after the next World Series, but the owners push for MLB salary cap stands to be the context by which all stories from this point are told. By the time the players are back for Spring Training, and certainly by the All-Star break, a sense of overwhelming dread figures to ruin the mood -- if not worse.

As Harper implied, the owners haven’t really shown a lot of evidence, much less proof, that a salary cap would solve whatever competitive balance/savings account balance problems they claim. The Dodgers won the World Series for a second straight season, which freaks some people out – until they acknowledge that nobody had repeated in 32 years. The most recent Small Fish to win the Big Trophy was the Kansas City Royals in 2015. The Royals also spent more that season than all but 23 teams. What’s stopping them now? Only their own frugality.

As for competitive balance, the other sports don’t have more of it than MLB, which has crowned 16 different champions since 2000. There are plenty of things to be sorted out – on the ownership side – to make it fairer for the Pittsburgh Pirates to be more competitive going forward. Owner Bob Nutting spending revenue sharing money on payroll would be a great start.

There's no good reason to make the players pay for mismanagement, or to expect that capping salaries will lead to a better world for the Bucs and their fans.