MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred Pushing For Salary Cap, Which Is A Terrible Idea

Major League Baseball ownership and the league office apparently wants to lock players out again during their next labor agreement negotiations. That's the only possible takeaway from a new report this week about commissioner Rob Manfred pushing for the introduction of a salary cap in MLB.

Bruce Meyer, one of the top executives at the MLB Player's Association, told "Foul Territory" on Tuesday that Manfred has been openly talking about a salary cap in team meetings this season.

"It’s kind of continuation of a pattern which has gone on for decades, which is, the other side … tries to go directly to players, tries to create divisions between players," Meyer explained during his interview. "The league and some of the individual owners have made no secret that they would like to see a system that they tried to get for 50 years, which is a salary-cap system."

If the league takes a hardline on adding a salary cap to MLB, players will fight it during the next round of negotiations after the 2026 season, and we'll move ever closer to a disastrous work stoppage. 

MLB commissioner Rob Manfred. (Photo by Tony Avelar/San Francisco Giants/Getty Images)

Rob Manfred And MLB Want To Tamp Down On Player Salaries

There's only one reason why the league and its owners want to introduce a cap: to artificially limit player's earning potential in a free market.

Meyer said the players aren't having it. 

"The pitch is like, ‘Hey, this is really good for the players,’" Meyer said. "One of the things players immediately seize on is, ‘Well, if this is so good for us, then why are they pushing it so hard? Why do they want it so desperately? Why did the other leagues lock out players to get it?’

"Guys immediately understand that the reason they want that system is not because they want to pay players more."

Salary cap discussions have grown in recent years as big market teams like the Los Angeles Dodgers, New York Yankees and New York Mets sign expensive players and drive up team payrolls. Manfred and other owners have seized on the opportunity to act as though spending money breeds competitive imbalance. Meyer and the players don't accept that argument, largely because it's false.

"I think the whole premise is wrong," Meyer explained. " "Baseball hasn’t had a repeat winner in 26 years. To fans in small markets, I would say, look, competition is crucial for us, crucial for players. Our market system that we have, it’s not perfect by any means, but it relies on competition.

"To the extent we have teams that are unwilling to compete, it’s not because the Dodgers went out and signed some players. That doesn’t explain why the Pittsburgh Pirates, for example, don’t go out and spend money."

The Pirates are perhaps the best example of how broken the league's model is, and why a cap won't fix it. They take in tens of millions of dollars in revenue sharing to offset some of the market-size disadvantage. But they don't spend it. Instead, owner Bob Nutting uses the team as a piggy bank instead of using that money to build a competitive roster.

The league knows that several owners have abandoned any pretense of caring about winning, and they simply don't care.

"There are things you can do to incentivize teams to spend," Meyer continued. "Last time in bargaining, we proposed numerous changes to the revenue-sharing system. We said, ‘Look, it doesn’t make sense right now. You’re giving all this money to certain teams, and they’re not spending it, and they’re basically putting the money away.’ And what we heard from the league was, ‘We don’t disagree on some of these things, but we can’t change it. We won’t change it.’"

This is why salary caps are such a bad idea. It won't mean the Pirates or Marlins spend more money, because there will always be a way for them to avoid it and make excuses. And several players have talked about how salary caps wouldn't hurt big market teams, because their innate advantages become even more important.

If you're being offered the same salary by the Dodgers, Yankees or say, the Milwaukee Brewers, players would gravitate towards the city that offers the best off-field opportunities, track record of winning, and stadium situation. That's going to be New York or LA. 

Oh, and the competitive balance nonsense? The Dodgers have lost six games in a row, the Yankees and Mets sit in second place in their respective divisions, and the Detroit Tigers have the best record in baseball. Last year, no team even won 100 games. There's never been more parity, even with big market advantages. Why fix something that's not broken?