MLB news roundup
Happy Friday, Athletics Nation!
“I’ll take sports economics for $500, Alex.”
“Sports economics it is: They’re blue and white and rolling in $335 million dollars.”
“Boy, sure ain’t Dr. Evil. How about...who are the 2025 Los Angeles Dodgers?”
$335 million dollars. That’ll buy a lot of Dodger dogs, and that is the Dodgers’ projected payroll per Cot’s Contracts. Meanwhile, the A’s say they intend to pump their 2025 payroll all the way up to $105 million.
Granted, the A’s deserve their reputation for being cheap. But few teams can keep pace with big market behemoths like the Dodgers and Mets, who are free to spend as much as they please as long as they’re willing to pony up for the luxury tax. And now that top tier free agents like Shohei Ohtani and Juan Soto have contracts worth in excess of half a billion dollars, it should be no surprise that team payrolls are ballooning to previously unimaginable levels of corpulence.
The NFL, NBA, and NHL all have salary caps—not MLB, though it certainly has been discussed. But Evan Drellich at The Athletic suggests that team owners might be willing to dig in and hold out for a salary cap in 2026, when negotiations on the next Collective Bargaining Agreement with the player’s union will take place.
Major League Baseball is a nightmarish microcosm of wealth inequality, a winner-take-all economy where top stars command obscene levels of compensation while minor leaguers often struggle to make the most modest living wage.
I will generally side with the players when conflicts arise with ownership, but the top earners are overdue for a haircut. The savings shouldn’t go into owners’ pockets—better wages are richly deserved and desperately needed for minor leaguers, stadium workers, and everyone else working hard to make a living in baseball outside of the spotlight.
Equity matters to many of us, but the lions share of any spoils from a salary cap fight will likely just be divvied up between millionaire players and billionaire owners. Still, a salary cap could improve the competitive balance in MLB. Drellich’s piece considers the potential consequences of a salary cap fight, and how it might play out.
Have a wonderful weekend, AN.
Pache gets around the league like a hot potato.
Pache has compiled a slash line of .181/.243/.275 in 557 MLB at-bats over 5 seasons... https://t.co/6Gcz02jTvc
— Athletics Farm (@AthleticsFarm) December 19, 2024
A blind eye, indeed.
It’ll never cease to amaze me that Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds were allowed to cheat to save the game of baseball… then they were thrown under the bus for cheating… and the commissioner who allowed it all to happen… is in the Hall of Fame
— Fuzzy (@fuzzyfromyt) December 19, 2024
