PHILADELPHIA – The expiration of the current Collective Bargaining Agreement is still more than four months away, but Commissioner Rob Manfred is adamant that the best way to solve Major League Baseball’s competitive balance issue is the introduction of a salary cap and floor in the next agreement.
Manfred and MLB Players Association executive director Bruce Meyer held their annual Q&A sessions with the Baseball Writers’ Association of America on Tuesday prior to the All-Star Game, and as expected, collective bargaining was the primary topic of the day.
“I believe that in order for this game to reach its full potential, we need to continue to address concerns that our fans have, particularly concerns that go to the core of what we're about – that is competitive balance,” Manfred said. “We need to make sure that fans in markets at the beginning of the season have a realistic belief that their team has a chance to win.
“I think that we need a system where fans, particularly in smaller markets, can have some hope that the players that are signed and developed by their organizations can actually stay there through free agency. And honestly, I think we need a system where there is a more robust free-agent market, so if you don't want to go to New York or Los Angeles, you have a realistic opportunity to get a viable free-agent contract. I also think we have an obligation to our players to try to get into a system where salary growth in baseball is not the slowest among the four-major professional sports.”
MLB’s initial proposal included a cap that would initially be set at $245.3 million, which would be accompanied by a $171.2 million floor. That would force 12 teams to increase payroll by a combined $617 million to meet the floor, while eight teams would have to reduce payroll by a combined $578 million.
The NFL, NBA and NHL all have cap systems in place, and while MLB has seen a Top-10 payroll team win the World Series in eight of the past 10 seasons (the 2021 Braves ranked 14th and the 2017 Astros ranked 18th), the other three sports have seen teams in the lower half of league payroll win 15 combined championships (NHL 7, NBA 4, NFL 4).
“I think the number from top to bottom in our sport in terms of payroll, the gap is $441 million,” Manfred said. “It defies human experience to ask a fan to think that the bottom end of that gap has the same opportunity to win as the top end. There is no question that everybody in any sport is not going to win once every 30 or 32 years, depending on how many teams you have, but the data in our sport is stark. Your opportunity to make the playoffs if you are a larger-market team is dramatically higher, and your opportunity to proceed to the subsequent rounds, that advantage grows with each round.”
Meyer argued that competitive balance isn’t an issue in baseball, citing the success this season and in recent years by clubs such as the Brewers, Rays and Guardians.
“The fact of the matter is, baseball has better competitive balance than the cap sports,” Meyer said. “Cap sports certainly don't guarantee competitive balance; we know that. We've seen dynasties in football. We've seen teams in all those sports, the cap sports, that small-market teams included, have never won anything. In baseball, the Dodgers are the first team in 25 years to win back-to-back World Series. But if you look at teams that have made the playoffs, teams that have been successful, teams that have been to the World Series, you'll see a wide variety of teams. Payroll, there is some correlation between winning and paying players; that's to be expected. Good players tend to cost money, so that's normal.”
Tampa Bay, Milwaukee and Cleveland have been to the postseason a combined 19 times since 2016, and while the Rays and Guardians each advanced to the World Series once, the three clubs failed to advance as far as the League Championship Series in 14 of those 19 postseason appearances. Cleveland’s last World Series title came in 1948, while neither the Rays nor the Brewers have ever won a championship.
Although bargaining began in earnest in late May, the CBA doesn’t expire until Dec. 1, giving the two sides several months to try finding common ground.
“I am an optimist with respect to collective bargaining,” Manfred said. “I truly believe that if people engage in the process, that you find ways through things. I think that it's important to point out that what we've put forward is a system that has been beneficial in all of the other major professional sports.”
MLB has done extensive polling of fans on a number of issues, on the competitive balance issue among others, cutting the demographics into age, avidity and size of market. While the sport is thriving following the recent introduction of the pitch clock and the ABS challenge system, Manfred believes there is work to be done to address fans’ concerns, most notably regarding competitive balance.
“Momentum in the game is a great thing,” Manfred said. “We got that momentum by listening to our fans and making changes that, candidly, the MLBPA was not interested in. Those changes have paid off in terms of creating that momentum, and the best way to lose momentum is to stand still.
“We're doing exactly the same thing that we did with the rule changes: We're listening to our fans. What our fans and a number of our markets are telling us, better than half of them, is there's a lack of competitive balance in the game, and everything we’ve proposed is directed at addressing that.”