MLB owners are ready to cancel the whole 2027 season and I hope they do it.
I’m a Pirates fan. What the hell are you threatening me with?
This is what baseball needs, a cap and a floor. A real MLB salary floor, not the soft one these guys just put on paper.
Some of them actually believe there won’t be a single game played next year, per Jeff Passan, and they’re telling their GMs to price that in before the August 3rd deadline. So somewhere this week a general manager is going to trade real prospects for a guy who helps him win games in a year that might not have any games in it. Everybody’s losing their mind about it. I’m sitting here going… finally.
Here’s where it actually stands. The current labor deal dies December 1st. The owners want a salary cap at $245.3 million and a floor at $171.2 million, and it’s the first time they’ve asked for a cap since the strike that ate the 1994 World Series. The players told them no and they’re not bluffing. Last time these two sides did this it took 99 days.
The Dodgers were never the problem here
Manfred stood up at his own owners meetings and said 12 teams would have to add $617 million between them just to touch that floor. Twelve. That’s 40 percent of the league spending less than the bare minimum their own bosses drew up. Miami sits at $78.8 million. Meanwhile the Dodgers and the Mets are both north of $300 million. That’s not a sport, and pretending the Dodgers are the villain in it has always been the con.
The MLB salary floor is soft as hell
About $23 million of that $171.2 million isn’t even salary, it’s benefits. The Pirates already sit at $136 million on the same measuring stick, so the gap Bob Nutting has to close is about $35 million. One starting pitcher. That’s it. A whole season of baseball burned so Bob has to buy one arm.
Bruce Meyer is right and I still want the cap
Bruce Meyer runs the union now and this is his best shot at me.
“an all-purpose excuse for inaction and mediocrity”
That’s what he says a cap hands the owners, and he’s right, too. A floor doesn’t make Nutting smart, it just makes him spend. The players countered with a competitive-integrity tax that punishes the cheap guys without capping anybody, and I’d listen to that all day. What I will not listen to is another 20 years of this.
So make the floor $200 million and I’ll wait as long as you want. So be it. I’ll take 2 years off if it means the game is fixed.
I’ve already done 20 of them. What’s 2 more.
