Last weekend proved to be a meaningful one for fans of teams other than the Dodgers. The Dodgers managed to get the Japanese phenom Roki Sasaki on Friday for just a $6.5MM bonus, given the under-25 international signing limits. Although Sasaki will enter arbitration for the final three years of club control from 2028-30, he still comes with an impressive residual value.
Then on Sunday, the Dodgers put an exclamation point on their weekend by signing the best drink on the market, Tanner Scottin the fifth largest free agent contract ever at this position. And yes, there was significant deferred money in Scott’s contract, but that’s a survey topic for another day.
We’ll hear from Sasaki soon, but he’s definitely the Dodgers’ last season signing. Shohei Ohtani again Yoshinobu Yamamoto helped lure him to Los Angeles. Since the end of the 2023 season, the club has also added Teoscar Hernandez (twice), Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnowand others, while trading Glasnow extensions, Will Smithand van trading Tommy Edman.
It’s not easy to buy an MLB dynasty. Others have tried, but the game hasn’t seen a World Series winner since the 1998-2000 Yankees make it a three-peat. Now, with the 12-team playoff format, that could be even more difficult for the Dodgers to pull off.
Most MLB teams don’t open their books to the public, so we don’t know how many clubs could profit from the Dodgers’ $370MM payroll right now. It’s fair to assume that smaller market clubs couldn’t support that kind of fee, even though some of them get more than $150MM between national income and revenue sharing each year.
Some may argue that due to the nature of the MLB playoffs, this game is already in good shape. But because the Dodgers bring in so much money (especially with their TV deal), they have the advantage of getting players that multiple markets won’t match. Maybe the Dodgers can’t guarantee a championship streak, but they haven’t won less than 98 regular season games since 2018 (adding the pandemic season). Their salary is obviously part of their success.
The number of fans, at least on social media, seems to increase with the increase in income. It’s hard to argue: if all 30 teams were limited to spending, say, $200MM in payroll, the regular season playing field would be much more balanced. There would be star free agents for the Dodgers, Mets, and other major markets who could not sign. The salary cap will be in line with league profits, and will increase accordingly. I’m not sure what the salary cap (and floor) is only way to improve equality, but it is the most obvious.
MLB owners want the salary cap for a long time. You may remember that it was the reason for the 1994 strike, which cost us the World Series that year. The players did not agree to that demand, although they did agree to the first luxury tax in subsequent years.
The thing about the salary cap is that it will probably increase equity, but as the name suggests, it will also have a lower free market income. The expectation is that the minimum wage would reduce the amount of money players earn, although commissioner Rob Manfred may dispute that point. This is why MLB is not an unbiased source when it talks about the need for a salary cap to balance competition.
Baseball has always had the strongest union in sports, largely because of one man: Marvin Miller. Miller created the MLBPA in 1966. He managed it until 1982 and deserves credit for bringing arbitration and free agency to MLB. He also encouraged players to go on strike or endure a lockout to ensure that they only make progress, and not accept a salary cap or luxury tax.
Although the MLBPA has been on the sidelines since Miller’s retirement, the game has yet to see an end to the salary cap. Baseball has managed to avoid a work stoppage since the ’94 strike, until owners locked out players after the 2021 CBA expired in December. Although negotiations often seemed dangerous, a new five-year deal was finally reached in March of 2022 and no games were lost. The two sides seemed so at odds that many onlookers wondered if we were going to end up deadlocked every five years.
After the recent CBA and given the uproar over television rights, MLB put together an “economic reform committee.” The current CBA expires on December 1, 2026. It’s not hard to see the owners coming together for the tightest salary cap since Bud Selig in ’94. Assuming the MLBPA has enough unity under Tony Clark and Bruce Meyer to match its legacy, it follows that the players may not agree, and some or all of the 2027 season may be canceled.
That leaves me with two questions for tonight’s poll. (I apologize for not being clear in the first version of this survey: assume that the salary cap comes with a floor).
Then the next question:
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