Many baseball fans and pundits fear greed will damage or destroy the next Major League Baseball season.

The “Armageddon 2027” scenario isn’t far-fetched.

Team owners will insist on a hard salary cap, it appears now, while the players will continue to insist against it.

Playing hardball, owners will lock out the players when the collective bargaining agreement expires Dec. 1.

From there, both sides will climb the escalation ladder, ultimately postponing games slated for 2027, then canceling them.

It will fall on MLB commissioner Rob Manfred, 67, and union leader Bruce Meyer, 69, to explain the outcome to fans.

Manfred worked on MLB’s negotiating team in 1994, when a labor stalemate nixed Tony Gwynn’s .400 pursuit and the World Series while also dooming the Montreal Expos.

Would a similar outcome next summer lead Manfred to reprise former commissioner Bud Selig’s comments three decades ago depicting the labor strife as tragic and terrible?

Would Meyer choose to echo Donald Fehr, who blamed owners for provoking the work stoppage by insisting on implementing a salary cap?

While the situation appears more fraught than at any other time in MLB since the horrors of August 1994, I don’t expect a comparable outcome.

I see Dodgers owner Mark Walter as a potential dealmaker who can appease his fellow owners while also commanding respect from the players.

I put stock in Walter’s ability to see the big picture, evidenced by his comments in March that acknowledged the Dodgers’ massive TV deal confers massive advantages.

“We can’t win all the time,” Walter told the Los Angeles Times’ Bill Shaikin. “We’ve got to have some parity.”

It could be wishful thinking on my part, but Walter seems agreeable to moving MLB’s economic system toward one that improves the opportunities of teams in smaller media markets, such as Brewers, Reds, Pirates, Royals, Padres and Athletics.

While I don’t believe MLB can replicate the NFL’s economic system in terms of equality of opportunity,  it’s encouraging that Dodgers ownership is willing to move in that direction. Among the small-market owners, the Brewers’ Mark Attanasio draws widespread respect, making him a potential dealmaker.

There’s another factor that’s even more likely to bring about a new MLB labor pact that doesn’t take a (big) bite out of the ’27 season.

A U.S. economy beset by numerous challenges could make it too unpalatable for MLB’s wealthy actors to withhold regular-season games while so many fans suffer financially.

If a majority of Americans continue to report inflation and affordability concerns, MLB power brokers stand to get clobbered in the court of public opinion by not reaching a timely agreement.

Two out of three Americans feel deep anxiety about affording basic necessities, per the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, while also viewing inflation as a “very big problem.”

In similar numbers, reports data journalist Elliott Morris, Americans describe the cost of living for an average family in their local area as “not very affordable” or “not affordable at all.”

While U.S. investment giants such as Vanguard project resilient consumer spending and a stable labor market, they also forecast headwinds from sticky inflation and strained real income.

So although economic forecasts can be as volatile as baseball game forecasts, the affordability crisis that a majority of Americans are experiencing today seems likely to persist beyond the expiration of MLB’s current labor pact.

A powerful dissenting voice about the economy comes from U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who doesn’t buy the polling results.

Per the New York Times this week, Bessent downplayed the impact of inflation on lower-income Americans, declaring that the “K-shaped” economy — shorthand for the divergent fortunes of the rich and poor — is a thing of the past.

In baseball, the K denotes a strikeout.

Whether or not Bessent is correct in his analysis, which comes less than three months before the November elections, MLB leaders will want to keep an eye on how the majority of Americans are faring economically.

MLB’s billionaires and millionaires will both strike out in the court of public opinion if they take for granted the millions of fans whose thin financial margins may be dwindling toward zero.