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There’s been all kinds of talk in MLB lately about the need for a salary cap. There is no need at all, of course, given it’s attempting to solve a problem that doesn’t actually exist in more ways than one: there’s what Rob Mains pointed out last week at Baseball Prospectus, in that the competitive imbalance cited as evidence of the need for a salary cap doesn’t actually exist, and there’s also what I’ve been harping on for some time now, where the problem is not the teams like the Dodgers that are outspending everyone, but the huge chunk of the league that wasn’t spending enough years ago and isn’t spending more now even as other clubs do increase spending.
It keeps coming up, though, so let’s dive in again. Jeff Passan, over at ESPN, wrote a piece last week that included this bit that I want to highlight:
With every transaction pushing the Dodgers further from the former and more toward the latter, MLB faces growing cynicism that has reignited calls for a salary cap — and made collective bargaining discussions set to start a year from now, before the current basic agreement expires following the 2026 season, that much more fraught with peril.
Now, my initial read of this was that the “growing cynicism” was coming more from fans and media, rather than MLB itself, but apparently, that’s not the case. Here’s Orioles’ owner David Rubenstein, speaking to Yahoo Finance at the World Economics Forum in Davos last week:
“I wish it would be the case that we would have a salary cap in baseball the way other sports do, and maybe eventually we will, but we don’t have that now,” Rubenstein told Yahoo Finance at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “I suspect we’ll probably have something closer to what the NFL and the NBA have, but there’s no guarantee of that.”
…
“I think the big city teams have some advantages. Now, in Los Angeles, they have another advantage. They have Japanese players, [a] number of them that they got like Shohei [Ohtani], and people in Japan really love watching the Dodgers, and they sell a lot of merchandise in Japan for Dodgers players,” explained Rubenstein.
Again, this advantage didn’t come out of nowhere. The Dodgers didn’t get this advantage — meaning “Japanese players” — because they’re a “big city” team. The Dodgers built up a massive fan base in Japan by putting themselves in a position to be an attractive destination for Japanese free agents, and when that paid off, they got the fans. Which was done in no small part because teams like the Red Sox shipped off Mookie Betts to the Dodgers in a salary dump, and then the Braves refused to give Freddie Freeman that one more year that the Dodgers were willing to give him, and oh, all of the talk about money obscures that the Dodgers’ front office basically doesn’t miss in a meaningful sense when it comes to talent evaluations. They built a juggernaut with a whole lot more than just money, with help from other teams — like the Orioles, in fact — not putting in the effort and cash where they could.
So yeah, of course Shohei Ohtani, looking for the best chance to win after spending all those years with the hapless Angels, was going to see the Dodgers as the top destination. And of course other Japanese players would see something in them, too, and not just the money, especially after Ohtani signed, and, maybe even more importantly, won.
Rubenstein does say he plans on raising the Orioles’ payroll (and Yahoo Finance mentions that he also plans to renovate Camden Yards, though, it should be pointed out, the team received $600 million from the state for that purpose by simply signing a new lease agreement with a promise to not leave Maryland — Rubenstein renovating the stadium isn’t a new cost, is the point, and the current plan is for $400 million of work, so they haven’t even spent all of the funds earmarked for them), though to exactly where is unclear. The point is more that he’s publicly expressing interest in a salary cap, which is curious. Notable, but curious.
We’ll have to wait and see if this is going to be something other owners express in public, which would give us an indication of whether or not this is something that’s going to be pushed for in the upcoming collective bargaining talks that’ll begin in earnest in 2026, given the current deal expires that December. Or if it’s just the new guy making his position known.
What we also might not know right away, even if other owners do speak up, is if this is going to be a universal position among the owners during the next round of bargaining, or, if instead, what we’re seeing is the invisible cracks between ownership groups starting to grow into visible ones. From where I was sitting a month ago, while ruminating on the coming switch from cable broadcasts to streaming ones, it was looking like 2026’s CBA talks were going to be hugely important but maybe stage-setting for an all-out brawl — not just player vs. owner, but owner vs. owner, too — in 2031. If Rubenstein is out here saying this now, though… well, we’ll see.
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