Should MLB Have a Hard Salary Cap?

[rms13]

MLB doesn't want small market teams in the World Series. They want Yankees - Dodgers every year with the occasional Red Sox, Giants, Mets or Cubs mixed in.

[whitmm]

Originally Posted by rms13

MLB doesn't want small market teams in the World Series. They want Yankees - Dodgers every year with the occasional Red Sox, Giants, Mets or Cubs mixed in.

And the small market owners aren't interested in being competitive.

I did find it interesting that the Premier League is looking at a salary cap for the 2025-26 season

[Tom Oates]

Originally Posted by rats60

Agree. The NFL is the most popular professional sports league. MLB has gone from first to third. They need to adopt a NFL-like revenue sharing plan, a hard salary cap and floor set at a negotiated percentage of all revenues.

One small market team has won in the last 33 years. If a third of your teams are never going to be competitive, your league is not going to be popular. Until this happens, MLB is going to continue declining in popularity.

NFL Popular? The NFL games suck now. The quality of play is hot garbage. The kickoff rule is ridiculous. Don't tackle anyone high. Don't tackle anyone low. Don't land on someone. Don't lead with your helmet but if you lead with your shoulder, we're going to call that one too! Don't leave your feet. Don't leap (yeah, that's really a rule!). Don't line up on defense over center. The low scores make the game boring to watch. I've pretty much given up on the NFL. College football is a much better product.

[rwperu34]

Originally Posted by Skipscards

No salary cap necessary. The MLB just has to stop the local tv deals and get better at sharing revenue.

Winner right here^^^

If it were me, I would lower the luxury tax threshold, charge a higher % at the higher tiers, and do away with all the other nonsense, especially the multi-year penalty.

[rats60]

Originally Posted by Tom Oates

NFL Popular? The NFL games suck now. The quality of play is hot garbage. The kickoff rule is ridiculous. Don't tackle anyone high. Don't tackle anyone low. Don't land on someone. Don't lead with your helmet but if you lead with your shoulder, we're going to call that one too! Don't leave your feet. Don't leap (yeah, that's really a rule!). Don't line up on defense over center. The low scores make the game boring to watch. I've pretty much given up on the NFL. College football is a much better product.

With the Dodgers and Yankees in the World Series, an average of 15 million viewers watched the games, up from last year's all-time low of 9 million. In 1978 44 million viewers watched the Dodgers/Yankees World Series. Baseball is fast becoming irrelevant. The Super Bowl had 123 million viewers. You may have given up on the NFL, but it is by far the most popular sport.

[Ferg1945]

No.

It will never happen. The work stoppage would be monumental... like 2 full seasons I bet. The Players Union will NEVER agree to a salary cap.

[packman80]

Yes, hard cap is the way to go. It works in the NFL were all teams have X amount of dollars to spend. Only fans against it are the big market teams who's fans know there teams could never compete if all things were equal and they had the same dollars to spend as the small market teams.

[jlzinck]

No they need to contract about 8 teams.

[whitmm]

Heck, even the Premier League is in serious talk about a salary cap for the 25-26 season.

I'm in favor of hard cap that you must stay within 90% of, like the NFL. And severe penalties for going over.

Those hating the NFL can continue to hate, it doesn't change that fact that that league generated $20.24 billion in 2023, 72% more than MLB's $11.9 billion.

[mfw13]

Originally Posted by duwal

A hard cap doesn't mean anything though if teams can simply deferred portions of the contract for years and years down the line. Dodgers now have nearly a billion dollars worth of deferred money for the next 15 years

It depends on whether or not that money would count against the cap in future years....

[mfw13]

Originally Posted by rats60

With the Dodgers and Yankees in the World Series, an average of 15 million viewers watched the games, up from last year's all-time low of 9 million. In 1978 44 million viewers watched the Dodgers/Yankees World Series.

It was also a very different world back then.....no internet, the NFL just beginning to grow, and the NBA and NHL basically not on the air.

[base set]

Snell got both a ‘signing bonus’ & deferred payments. Luxury tax looking more irrelevant all the time.

re: Atlanta - aren’t the Braves generally quickly held up as an example by the players in that real estate / development projects aren’t included in the team revenue?

How long until the World Series is Pay-Per-View?

[whitmm]

Originally Posted by base set

Snell got both a ‘signing bonus’ & deferred payments. Luxury tax looking more irrelevant all the time.

re: Atlanta - aren’t the Braves generally quickly held up as an example by the players in that real estate / development projects aren’t included in the team revenue?

How long until the World Series is Pay-Per-View?

Can't speak directly to what you are asking about the Braves, but I do know that the development around the stadium is extremely important for them. Because the structure of the ownership, Atlanta is the only team whose owners (Liberty Media) can't inject funds into the team from outside sources.

[mattsey9]

Originally Posted by Skipscards

No salary cap necessary. The MLB just has to stop the local tv deals and get better at sharing revenue.

This. Were I the owner of a small market team, I wouldn't let the Dodgers or the Yankees bring their cameras into my stadium until I got a check for half or their local TV revenue for the series. If I'm half of the attraction...

[Skipscards]

Originally Posted by mattsey9

This. Were I the owner of a small market team, I wouldn't let the Dodgers or the Yankees bring their cameras into my stadium until I got a check for half or their local TV revenue for the series. If I'm half of the attraction...

Exactly. Or how about they just don’t bother showing up to the road games and forfeit? Now the big market teams lose tv revenue and gate revenue. If the small market teams really wanted to force the issue, they could. But the owners have never been capable of working together.

[fabiani12333]

Originally Posted by rats60

With the Dodgers and Yankees in the World Series, an average of 15 million viewers watched the games, up from last year's all-time low of 9 million. In 1978 44 million viewers watched the Dodgers/Yankees World Series. Baseball is fast becoming irrelevant. The Super Bowl had 123 million viewers. You may have given up on the NFL, but it is by far the most popular sport.

No, no -- you're looking at it wrong. The World Series is barely able to compete with regular season NFL national broadcasts:

Monday was a tight race between Dodgers-Yankees World Series Game 3 and the Giants-Steelers “Monday Night Football” game, and the winner just depends on who you ask. A holistic number combining English and Spanish telecasts would give Fox 13.6 million viewers for Game 3 compared to 13.3 million for “MNF.”

https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.co...s-world-series

Of course, MLB would just point to their international audience, with two superstar Japanese players drawing in huge numbers from Japan:

An average of 12.1 million people in Japan watched this year’s World Series even though every game began at 9 a.m. local time. Not only was it the most-watched World Series for the country, but Game 1 (14.4 million viewers) and Game 2 (15.9 million viewers) were Japan’s two most-watched postseason games in MLB history.

The viewership from those two countries plus Canada, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Taiwan and on the MLB app pushed this World Series’ average global viewership past 30 million, with some countries still to report.

https://www.mlb.com/news/yankees-dod...ies-viewership

[fabiani12333]

The Dodgers reportedly made a lot of money from Ohtani this year -- $120 million, according to AJ Pierzynski: https://x.com/foulterritorytv/status...60465903763800

A lot of this money is from sponsorships, I'd imagine. This is why the Dodgers are spending a lot of money -- they're making a lot more back.

MLB is also making a lot of money from Ohtani. In fact, they make money from Dodgers broadcasts and merchandise sales in Japan:

While the Dodgers control and profit off their broadcasting rights in the United States, MLB owns all of its teams' international broadcasting rights, which it packages together. It then splits the revenue evenly among the 30 clubs.

https://sports.yahoo.com/ripple-effe...183038149.html

Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Freddie Freeman, Mookie Betts and the rest of the Dodgers players are making the Dodgers ownership and MLB a lot of money. This is why the Dodgers are spending big on players like Blake Snell -- they want the money train to keep going.

[JRX]

This hasn't been a huge issue until recently mainly because Hal doesn't spend nearly as high a percentage of revenues as he could. The dodgers are and Steve Cohen will likely go even more full tilt trying to compete with la. Meanwhile you have 2 teams playing in minor league stadiums.

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[JRX]

I also wonder if the dodgers use of defferals is more so the players can avoid CA taxes by moving out of state after the contract is over. I don't know how true it is, but most think ohtani is jetting off to Japan once the 68m annual payouts start.

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[fabiani12333]

Originally Posted by JRX

This hasn't been a huge issue until recently mainly because Hal doesn't spend nearly as high a percentage of revenues as he could. The dodgers are and Steve Cohen will likely go even more full tilt trying to compete with la. Meanwhile you have 2 teams playing in minor league stadiums.

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With the RSN bubble bursting, MLB is quickly becoming a league of have and have-nots -- just like America overall. A half decade ago, teams fresh off new RSN deals were swimming in the deep financial waters. Now, only teams in the biggest markets, like LA and NY, are readily spending big on free-agents.

[fabiani12333]

Originally Posted by JRX

I also wonder if the dodgers use of defferals is more so the players can avoid CA taxes by moving out of state after the contract is over. I don't know how true it is, but most think ohtani is jetting off to Japan once the 68m annual payouts start.

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Oh, yeah, definitely in Ohtani's case. He doesn't want to give a cent more to California than he must. He certainly likes the nice coastal weather and beaches in LA, though -- plus the relative proximity to his native country.

[packman80]

Originally Posted by JRX

I also wonder if the dodgers use of defferals is more so the players can avoid CA taxes by moving out of state after the contract is over. I don't know how true it is, but most think ohtani is jetting off to Japan once the 68m annual payouts start.

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Just googling it he would be paying a 45% income tax rate in Japan. So he would be smart spend like 7 months of the year in the USA in non-income state and have his deffered payments paid during those 7 months. Then can live the other 5 months out of the year in Japan.

[JRX]

Originally Posted by packman80

Just googling it he would be paying a 45% income tax rate in Japan. So he would be smart spend like 7 months of the year in the USA in non-income state and have his deffered payments paid during those 7 months. Then can live the other 5 months out of the year in Japan.

The dodgers would be demanding a salary cap if baseball were actually popular in Texas and Florida lol.

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[itsbaytime]

Originally Posted by packman80

Yes, hard cap is the way to go. It works in the NFL were all teams have X amount of dollars to spend. Only fans against it are the big market teams who's fans know there teams could never compete if all things were equal and they had the same dollars to spend as the small market teams.

This x1000. Yankees fans are already upset this offseason because the owner is being cheap. What a joke of a league as it sits. 2/3 of the teams are out of it before the season even starts. Yankees and Dodgers will have all stars at every position and Mets will try to buy back in as well.

[JRX]

Originally Posted by itsbaytime

This x1000. Yankees fans are already upset this offseason because the owner is being cheap. What a joke of a league as it sits. 2/3 of the teams are out of it before the season even starts. Yankees and Dodgers will have all stars at every position and Mets will try to buy back in as well.

Yankees don't have all stars at every pos, we had one of the worst 1b, 3b, and lf in baseball. Our gripe is hal can easily afford for that to not be the case, but they spend so poorly.

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