Tag: luxury tax

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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Juan Soto, the Mets, Dodgers, and spending

Even if only the Mets could get Juan Soto because Steve Cohen would do anything to get him, there’s plenty to learn from the signing on what this says about the rest of the league and their spending habits.

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Earlier in the offseason, there was an entire cycle of outrage at the Dodgers, for their decision to keep adding good baseball players who cost money to their team, that won a championship in 2024. The deferrals were a particular sticking point, but also just the idea that a team had resources and was using them was another. Let’s prepare ourselves for the same thing happening now, with the Mets, as they signed Juan Soto to a 15-year, $765 million contract — and one without deferrals, too, to really show off how much owner Steve Cohen has more money than anyone else in the league.

You’re going to hear people complain about a salary cap, or the fact that the Mets spending like this isn’t fair because not every team has this kind of money. Conveniently enough, I already covered the aforementioned outrage cycle for the Dodgers over at Baseball Prospectus, and quite a bit of it overlaps here with the Mets — to the degree that I already used Juan Soto as an example for points I was making within. So, I’ll just share some of that now:

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The question isn’t ‘Can the Angels keep Ohtani?’ but ‘Will they?’

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Buster Olney’s latest for ESPN (Insider subscription required) asks the question, “Can the Angels keep Shohei Ohtani?” with the implication from the second part of the headline “A payroll crisis looms in Los Angeles” being that the question is really “Can the Angels afford to keep Shohei Ohtani?” Yes. Yes they can. Alright, see you all next week.

OK fine let’s get into this.

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