Baseball Salary Cap?

[RedRamage]

Browsing MLB Trade Rumors and they have a story/poll on a Salary Cap in baseball.

Now, I'll readily admit that being a fan of a mid(ish)-market team obviously is influencing my opinion here, but I'm ready for a cap. Seeing the Dodgers just spend and spend and spend and spend and pick up all the big names is frustrating. It doesn't feel like mid and small teams can compete when they don't have the budget to bid along side the major players.

Now, on one had I do think Chris Ilitch could spend more on the Tigers payroll and still make money, but I don't think the Tigers could get anywhere close to $370M and be profitable. 

I'm not opposed to looking at other options beside a hard cap, but I think it needs to have some more teeth if MLB is going to stick with a Luxury Tax model. I think the tax needs to be higher and perhaps based on a percentage of local media revenue from the "offending" club.

[monkeytargets39]

If you have a cap, then they should also have a floor.

 

The thing that has been jumping out at me is the absolute massive advantage the west coast teams have in being able to appeal to the Japanese players—and there are a handful of teams that are basically in line to acquire plus MLB ready talent without having to invest time in developing them.  
 

Clearly I understand why they’d want to go there so I don’t fault them—but mlb maybe needs to take a look at setting up something that levels the playing field in that regard.

In the NBA you have to draft the player in the foreign league in order to get them as opposed to them just signing wherever they please.  Perhaps something like that could work for MLB.  You can use your draft pick on a player in a foreign pro-league and you then have their exclusive rights for maybe like 3 years.  You’d have to pay them X amount times the typical slot price for it—then if that player wants to come to the MLB they can only do it with that team and have to be in that teams organization for their first X amount of years in the league.  If they decide to stay abroad for those 3 years, then they can be drafted again by another team in the next draft.  

Edited Monday at 07:17 PM by monkeytargets39

[Motor City Sonics]

There will never be a salary cap in baseball.   The players union will shut the sport down forever before ever caving on that.    They had no shame in getting a World Series cancelled, in fact they were proud of it.    

[Edman85]

9 minutes ago, Motor City Sonics said:

There will never be a salary cap in baseball.   The players union will shut the sport down forever before ever caving on that.    They had no shame in getting a World Series cancelled, in fact they were proud of it.    

Is that true? My understanding is the owners couldn't get their **** together.

[RedRamage]

2 hours ago, monkeytargets39 said:

If you have a cap, then they should also have a floor.

The thing that has been jumping out at me is the absolute massive advantage the west coast teams have in being able to appeal to the Japanese players—and there are a handful of teams that are basically in line to acquire plus MLB ready talent without having to invest time in developing them.  

Clearly I understand why they’d want to go there so I don’t fault them—but mlb maybe needs to take a look at setting up something that levels the playing field in that regard.

I think that a Salary Cap would limit the west coast advantage. Suzuki is a bit of an wild card here because he was considered part of the amateur pool. If players like him show up more often then they might need to tweak the rules there. But if he was "regular" free agent and the Dodgers didn't have infinite money to throw given that they already spent so much of the hypothetical pool last year, then I think it would have been less certain that Suzuki would have gone west coast.

[RedRamage]

2 hours ago, Edman85 said:

Is that true? My understanding is the owners couldn't get their **** together.

I should have linked the MLB Trade Rumor's story in my first post, but here it is now: https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2025/01/poll-would-you-trade-the-2027-mlb-season-for-a-salary-cap.html

They didn't say anything about the players being proud, but they did mention this:
 

Quote

MLB owners have wanted a salary cap for a long time.  You may recall that was the reason for the 1994 strike, which cost us the World Series that year.  The players did not give in to that demand, though they did allow for the first luxury tax in subsequent years.