<\/p>\n
Commissioner Rob Manfred answers questions during a news conference at MLB’s winter meetings, Dec. 8, 2025, in Orlando, Fla.<\/p>\n
John Raoux\/Associated Press<\/p>\n
Bruce Meyer, interim executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association, speaks at a news conference in New York on March 11, 2022.<\/p>\n
Richard Drew\/Associated Press<\/p>\n
PHILADELPHIA\u00a0\u2014 With Major League Baseball\u2019s collective bargaining agreement with the Players Association expiring after this season, the rhetoric is heating up on both sides as demonstrated during the annual Baseball Writers\u2019 Association of America meeting Tuesday at the Philadelphia Marriott.<\/p>\n
Union head Bruce Meyer described the owners as \u201cpromoting negativity\u201d with an ad campaign labeled \u201cLevel the Field,\u201d calling that \u201cperverse\u201d given that franchises now sell for record amounts and revenues and ratings are healthy.<\/p>\n
Commissioner Rob Manfred, speaking after Meyer, quickly acknowledged that attendance is up, ratings are strong and acknowledged, \u201cWe\u2019re having another good year, there\u2019s absolutely no question about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Why then does the specter of a work stoppage next year loom over the sport? As in years past, the owners\u2019 support for a salary cap is the primary issue, arguing that smaller-market teams\u00a0\u2014 despite revenue sharing\u00a0\u2014 cannot compete with the bigger market teams and payrolls that, in the case of the Dodgers, are more than $400 million. Los Angeles has won the past two World Series.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat our fans in a number of our markets are telling us, better than half of them, is there\u2019s a lack of competitive balance in the game and everything we propose is directed at addressing that fan concern,\u201d Manfred said.<\/p>\n San Francisco Chronicle Logo<\/p>\n Make us a Preferred Source to get more of our news when you search.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Add Preferred Source<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n The counterpoint is that baseball has more parity than the other three major men\u2019s sports, which all have salary caps, andthat\u00a0 franchises in smaller markets, such as Tampa Bay, consistently compete without comparable payrolls. The union also argues that the franchise valuations\u00a0\u2014 including smaller-market teams\u2019 worth\u00a0\u2014 demonstrate the overall financial health for all clubs. Meyer pointed to repeated labor stoppages in the other leagues\u00a0\u2014 even after salary caps are introduced\u00a0\u2014 thanks to attempts to reduce the players\u2019 portion of revenues.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cA salary cap is the ultimate excuse for an owner to say, \u2018Gee, I would like to make a team better, but you know, I can\u2019t,\u2019\u201d Meyer said. \u201cSalary caps are bad for fans. Salary caps prevent teams from doing the things that they believe are in their interest to make the team better. We all see what\u2019s going on in the NBA. I won\u2019t belabor the point. Nobody\u2019s happy with that.\u201d<\/p>\n All of MLB\u2019s big-league proposals to date are predicated on the acceptance of a salary cap, which remains a no-go for the players. MLB has also proposed changes to the draft, reducing it to 12 rounds and making high-school players ineligible, essentially turning colleges and junior colleges into development leagues, reducing team development costs substantially. As Meyer pointed out, that would have affected as much of a third of Saturday\u2019s Futures Game players, not to mention a great many of the game\u2019s current stars.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI think the proposals that they have made have been kind of a joke,\u201d Dodgers player representative Max Muncy said. \u201cUnfortunately, the tactics have always been the same by the owners and they wait until the last second instead of using all this time they have right now to actually discuss things and negotiate. They draw things out, they try to sweat us out to the very end and we never fold.\u201d<\/p>\n Should MLB continue to push for some sort of cap, there undoubtedly will be a work stoppage, most likely a lockout by the owners should no deal be struck before spring training next year.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re going to stay unified in what we believe is right and keep those talks going because the game\u2019s in a great spot right now, and we don\u2019t really want to mess that up,\u201d Giants<\/a> player rep Logan Webb<\/a> said.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Future Hall of Famer Justin Verlander<\/a>, who pitched for the Giants last year and who is retiring after pitching for the Detroit Tigers this season, agreed.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are so many reasons why a real work stoppage and losing games would be detrimental, so I hope that doesn\u2019t happen,\u201d he said. \u201cThis current system must be working OK if the game is as popular and rising as it is. I don\u2019t see any shortage of people wanting to buy a MLB team, so it must be a decent investment, right? It kind of has to be, I would think. I don\u2019t think anybody wants to make a poor investment at that level. These guys are really smart. People are fighting for the chance to buy an MLB team, so it can\u2019t be that bad.\u201d<\/p>\n Since the last CBA was signed after a shortened spring training in 2022, ever more investment groups have bought stakes in teams, including Sixth Street Sports, which holds 10% of the Giants, and an earlier investment concern, Arctos Partners. Arctos owns a piece of the Warriors and Dodgers, among other franchises, and was recently acquired<\/a> by a much larger private equity firm, KKR.<\/p>\n There are strict rules on the size of investment groups\u2019 stakes. Manfred said such entities cannot shape MLB policies.<\/p>\n \u201cThey don\u2019t even get information, let alone have an opportunity for influence,\u201d Manfred said. \u201cNot only are the rules in place, everyone understands them on the way in. We pay a lot of attention to what is actually going on in terms of the investments. \u2026 I also think that, particularly given some of the issues that we\u2019re dealing with right now,\u00a0 people are thinking that a game could be on an upshot in terms of its investment potential.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n The union believes that such investments show that the sport is flourishing but still has concerns about investment ventures and their potential for, say, advocating reduced spending.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIn our view, owners having access to more sources of capital is a good thing,\u201d Meyer said. \u201cHopefully they use it to pay players and make the team better. But I\u2019ve also heard\u00a0\u2014 we all hear things, so I\u2019m not vouching for the truth\u00a0\u2014 but I\u2019ve heard people say a lot of what\u2019s happening in bargaining is driven by private equity. Private equity gets into a business, they look at it like a widget factory. All due respect to my private equity friends, they look to cut costs, and if you\u2019re looking at baseball that way, the easiest place to look to slash costs is paying players\u2019 salaries. I\u2019ve heard that that\u2019s a lot of what\u2019s going on.\u201d<\/p>\n Many teams, the Giants included, are expanding their holdings to include real-estate and entertainment ventures, which raises concerns about how diversified interests might affect big-league payrolls. The Giants say their real-estate ventures are entirely separate from baseball operations and point to the 50-50 development deal<\/a> they have with Mission Rock partner Tishman Speyer,\u00a0 but the union has reservations on this front as well.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople have said baseball is more a real estate play than baseball play,\u201d Meyer said. \u201cI think we have owners of all different types. There are some who love and value baseball and some who may look at it as more of a traditional business.<\/p>\n \u201cI know they\u2019re making a lot of money from around the ballpark. Obviously, the Battery (in Atlanta; the Braves are owned by a publicly traded company) is public, and everybody is trying to replicate that. That\u2019s dependent on playing baseball games\u00a0\u2014 it\u2019s another thing that kind of doesn\u2019t make sense to me. If they\u2019re going to shut everything down, all that stuff around the ballpark goes dark. I\u2019d like to think that\u2019s increased motivation for them to not want to shut down games to get a salary cap, but it remains to be seen.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n After the Giants\u2019 Pride Night controversy\u00a0\u2014 when three players wrote Bible verses on their Pride hats, and another chose to wear the standard Giants hat rather than one that incorporates the Pride flag\u00a0\u2014 Manfred said in a response to Senator Josh Hawley that the Giants had not communicated options adequately with their players.<\/p>\n Asked to expand on that Tuesday, Manfred said that the Giants and Dodgers were grandfathered in when it came to allowing Pride logos on their hats with the understanding \u201cthat they would take responsibility for communicating with their players that they had the option to wear their normal uniforms if they were uncomfortable with whatever the logo happened to be. That didn\u2019t happen, end of story.\u201d<\/p>\n The Giants have declined to issue a response and remain under fire from many fans for their refusal to make an apology to the LGBTQ community or to address what was communicated to the players. The Department of Justice had threatened to investigate Major League Baseball for infringing upon the freedom of religious expression, but the protesting pitchers themselves discounted the idea<\/a> and a league source told the Chronicle that the Giants were not the target of such an investigation.<\/p>\n After the DOJ threat, MLB clarified that no uniform changes of any kind are allowed without express permission, such as that granted to Venezuelan players to add \u201cVZ\u201d to their hats after the double earthquake in the Caracas area devastated the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Commissioner Rob Manfred answers questions during a news conference at MLB’s winter meetings, Dec. 8, 2025, in Orlando,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":800549,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,5126,1788,591,85],"class_list":["post-800548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-giants","tag-labor","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=800548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800548\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/800549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=800548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=800548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=800548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>
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