Category: COVID-19

Do MLB owners want a salary cap, or for everyone to believe that’s true?

Like with free agency, you have to think of why certain positions are stated in public.

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There’s been a whole lot of discussion lately, from the ownership and league side, anonymously and with names attached, to the idea of both an MLB lockout in 2026 when the current collective bargaining agreement expires, and the desire for a salary cap being part of the impetus for said lockout. I’ve already written about the lockout portion of things, but I wanted to reiterate something this morning, given that the owners wrapped their winter meetings in Florida, where the subject of discussion was often the game’s economics.

Evan Drellich wrote a story last week about part of that, headlined, “MLB owners debate push for salary cap at summit this week”. A key section from that piece, for our purposes:

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Notes: Fay Vincent, Sacramento A’s, SABR Awards

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Fay Vincent, former Major League Baseball commissioner, passed away on Saturday at the age of 86. He had been receiving treatment for bladder cancer, according to ESPN, but complications in that treatment led to his death. MLB released a statement announcing Vincent’s passing on Sunday.

Vincent took over as MLB commissioner for Bart Giamatti in 1989, following his sudden death just five months into his tenure. Vincent has had his name come up in this digital pages on more than one occasion, as he was the commissioner during the 1990 lockout, and the stepping stone then-owner Bud Selig used to grab the commissionership for himself.

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Ignore Rob Manfred: lockouts exist to preempt strikes

Lockouts are a necessity for one thing only, and you’re not going to hear Rob Manfred say what that is.

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MLB commissioner Rob Manfred can say whatever he wants about the need for a lockout as something of a routine part of collective bargaining. And he certainly has, as evidenced by a recent interview with The Athletic’s Evan Drellich. A pertinent excerpt:

But one action looks virtually certain. Manfred said an offseason lockout, as there was in 2021-22, should be considered the new norm.

“In a bizarre way, it’s actually a positive,” he said. “There is leverage associated with an offseason lockout and the process of collective bargaining under the NLRA works based on leverage. The great thing about offseason lockouts is the leverage that exists gets applied between the bargaining parties.”

To which MLBPA executive director Tony Clark’s responded by saying that, “Players know from first-hand experience that a lockout is neither routine nor positive… It’s a weapon, plain and simple, implemented to pressure players and their families by taking away a player’s ability to work.”

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Orioles’ owner publicly wishes for salary cap

David Rubenstein spoke up about his wishes for a salary cap, which signals we should be watching to see if other owners start bringing it up, too.

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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:

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Pirates want to win, just trust them, they’re good for it, say the Pirates

The Pirates are all words and no action, again.

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A thing I tell my kids all the time is that saying sorry is fine and all, but what matters is changing the behavior that led to having to apologize in the first place. Words are merely words without the actions to back them up, and an apology without this kind of change is nothing more than a plea for the offended party to stop being mad at the offender. An attempt to buy time, to change the subject.

The Pirates had their annual offseason fan fest over the weekend, and the main takeaway — whether from CEO Travis Williams or general manager Ben Cherington — is that the team is committed to winning. They want to win. They’re trying to build a winner. The most important thing is winning. Owner Bob Nutting isn’t in attendance and here to take your questions, no, but rest assured there’s nothing that man cares about more than winning. When asked if the team can extend young players like Oneil Cruz and Paul Skenes, Cherington responded with meaningless drivel about “creative ways” to keep the roster competitive, and that the most important way they can keep players in Pittsburgh is by winning.

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Mailbag request!

Not a mailbag, but a request for things to put in one.

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Time for a mailbag? No! Time to ask for questions to put in (and then take out of) the mailbag? That’s the one. January is a pretty quiet month in the realm of baseball labor stories, when the players and the league aren’t in open war, at least. So what better time to put out a request for questions from you, the reader, than now?

This is how the mailbag usually works. If I receive a few smaller questions, I can bundle the answers together into a response article or two. If I get some questions requiring larger and more complex answers, though, those end up as standalone responses. So, feel free to go big, small, or anything in between: ask what’s on your mind, whether it’s topical or historical or just something that’s been nagging at you and related to the scope of this newsletter.

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Notes: Twins could sell soon, Rays write another letter

The Twins might have new owners soon, the Rays write another off-base letter, and there’s a fight among Padres owners that’s now in court.

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A real ownership-based version of the notes column today. Back in mid-October, it was reported that the Minnesota Twins were looking to sell, finally freeing the league from the Pohlads, a family that at one time was the wealthiest in the league — yes, even wealthier than George Steinbrenner back when he owned the Yankees — and has spent its decades in the game pretending that’s not true.

It’s just a few months later, but hey look at that, the Twins might even be sold by Opening Day in 2025, according to Dan Hayes at The Athletic. There’s a “robust market” per that report, so there are no concerns a deal can’t be put in place in the next few months. Which is funny, since if you ask a bunch of MLB owners about the business of owning a team, they’ll tell you that it’s not a good investment and not a place to make money. Famously, the wealthiest people around love to spend money on things that won’t make them a profit, so this is a confusing turn of events for those of us without critical thinking skills or a shred of skepticism to cling to.

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Notes: Diamond isn’t Diamond now, an A’s reminder, Best of BP

A little holiday round-up to start the new year.

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Happy New Year! Sure, that was a couple of days back, but this is the first Marvin Miller’s Mustache of 2025, so it’s fitting all the same. (Sometimes I forget that’s what I ended up naming this newsletter, too, so please enjoy this reminder if you’d forgotten about that change from last year.)

Let’s kick things off with some notes from the holiday break.

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Notes: 2028 and beyond, Rays get their bonds, holiday sign-off

My latest at Baseball Prospectus (and reasons to subscribe to BP), the Rays get their way in the end, and saying goodbye to 2024.

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I said I’d get my thoughts organized here for use in a feature down the road, and that’s just what I did. My latest for Baseball Prospectus — titled “Baseball in the Future, Tense” by the wonderfully witty editors I work with over there — published on Thursday.

Within, I give some background on how things stood in the league, regarding spending in relation to the luxury tax threshold, back before the 2019 season, and where it stands now. Which is all a build up to show that there’s a growing divide between the teams willing to spend — which barely existed six years ago, in the runup to what MLB and its owners knew would be a defining labor battle with the Players Association over the new CBA — and those who are not. One that’s only going to worsen for sure as the new broadcasting arrangement comes into play in 2028 and requires a heavier revenue-sharing load for the “big” market teams to carry in order to subsidize the “small” market ones, and might worsen further depending on the ability — or lack thereof — of Rob Manfred’s successor as commissioner to keep everyone unified despite said growing divide.

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The A’s have to spend now, or else

The A’s have to spend, due to increased revenue-sharing, and oh, they also aren’t projected to spend more than they did in 2024, so maybe relax the “dawn of a new era” reactions.

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The A’s publicly said, quite awhile ago, that they planned on increasing their payroll in the future. They also stated that the expectation was that this would begin in the 2024-2025 offseason — it was clear that signing players might be difficult for them, given convincing anyone to intentionally play for them in a minor-league stadium in Sacramento for a few years was going to be a tough sell, but trades were always an option, too.

They’ve recently added a couple of expensive — for them — players onto the roster, which of course implies that it truly was Oakland holding them back, or that their ways have changed, or whatever positive interpretation they hope you take away from this for their benefit; MLB’s own website is of course happy to promote a “new direction” for the franchise. The truth of the matter is much simpler, however: the A’s have to spend, or else a grievance will be filed against them.

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