{"id":1453,"date":"2025-07-11T12:03:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-11T12:03:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/1453\/"},"modified":"2025-07-11T12:03:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-11T12:03:08","slug":"mlbs-rob-manfred-is-pushing-for-salary-cap-and-players-are-skeptical-union-official-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/1453\/","title":{"rendered":"MLB\u2019s Rob Manfred is pushing for salary cap, and players are skeptical, union official says"},"content":{"rendered":"

Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred recently outlined<\/a> his plans to convince players to make big changes to the sport\u2019s economics. Tuesday, Bruce Meyer, the second-in-command at the Major League Baseball Players Association, said Manfred is trying to push for a salary cap, and players in turn bear \u201cthe right amount of skepticism.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is the third straight year Manfred has held meetings with each team.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s kind of continuation of a pattern which has gone on for decades, which is, the other side \u2026 tries to go directly to players, tries to create divisions between players,\u201d said Meyer, the MLBPA\u2019s deputy director, on the television show \u201cFoul Territory.\u201d \u201cThe league and some of the individual owners have made no secret that they would like to see a system that they tried to get for 50 years, which is a salary-cap system.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

MLB\u2019s labor deal expires in December 2026. Baseball is the only major North American sport that does not have a salary cap, and the owners\u2019 push for one was central to the 1994-95 strike, which led to the cancellation of the 1994 World Series. The owners have proposed a cap or something similar at least five times going back to the 1970s, Meyer said, and another such proposal appears likely when bargaining begins this round.<\/p>\n

Manfred has said the owners have not yet chosen a course of action, but the arguments he makes to players seem tailored to a cap.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe pitch is like, \u2018Hey, this is really good for the players,\u2019\u201d Meyer said. \u201cOne of the things players immediately seize on is, \u2018Well, if this is so good for us, then why are they pushing it so hard? Why do they want it so desperately? Why did the other leagues lock out players to get it?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cGuys immediately understand that the reason they want that system is not because they want to pay players more.\u201d<\/p>\n

Manfred has continually expressed concern<\/a> over the way fans perceive the difference in revenues in the sport. The Los Angeles Dodgers have a payroll that will cost them a projected $408 million in 2025, per Cot\u2019s Contracts, an all-time high for the game. On the low end this season, the Miami Marlins come in at $86 million.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the whole premise is wrong,\u201d Meyer said on \u201cFoul Territory.\u201d \u201cBaseball hasn\u2019t had a repeat winner in 26 years. To fans in small markets, I would say, look, competition is crucial for us, crucial for players. Our market system that we have, it\u2019s not perfect by any means, but it relies on competition.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo the extent we have teams that are unwilling to compete, it\u2019s not because the Dodgers went out and signed some players. That doesn\u2019t explain why the Pittsburgh Pirates, for example, don\u2019t go out and spend money.\u201d<\/p>\n

By market size, no bottom-15 team has won a World Series since the Kansas City Royals in 2015. Baseball\u2019s playoff system is something of a crapshoot, however, making World Series victories an incomplete gauge<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are things you can do to incentivize teams to spend,\u201d Meyer said. \u201cLast time in bargaining, we proposed numerous changes to the revenue-sharing system. We said, \u2018Look, it doesn\u2019t make sense right now. You\u2019re giving all this money to certain teams, and they\u2019re not spending it, and they\u2019re basically putting the money away.\u2019 And what we heard from the league was, \u2018We don\u2019t disagree on some of these things, but we can\u2019t change it. We won\u2019t change it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Players want a salary floor, but owners are not going to give up a floor without a cap, which is \u201creally the opposite of competition,\u201d Meyer said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt really is a form of collusion, he continued. \u201cNobody can compete to put the best team on the field on any given day.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of Manfred\u2019s four points to players is that other major sports have a signing deadline, and therefore, more exciting free-agency periods. But cap systems would also likely bring less obvious changes that would be harmful to players, Meyer said. Baseball players have individual guaranteed contracts.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou really can\u2019t have them in the cap systems the way our players have them,\u201d he said. \u201cIn football, this is most obvious. Every free-agent period is like a bloodbath. They\u2019re cutting players, players at all levels \u2014 Pro Bowl players, middle-class players \u2014 to try and squeeze in a salary for a quarterback. Even the quarterbacks, they go to continuously and say, \u2018Well, would you take less so we could sign this guy?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Meyer said escrow in basketball and hockey is significant because it also means pay in those sports is not guaranteed.<\/p>\n

The union has been holding its own set of meetings with players. Meyer and the rest of the union leadership regularly visit every team during spring training, and during this season, they are holding lunches at which they discuss collective bargaining.<\/p>\n

Meyer suggested there\u2019s an irony to Manfred\u2019s meetings with players.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve run into owners at games and things, and when I introduce myself, they literally say, \u2018We\u2019re not allowed to talk to you,\u2019 Meyer said. \u201cI think they get fined. \u2026 They\u2019re apparently afraid of their owners talking to us individually.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though the players\u2019 union does not operate its own television station the way the commissioner\u2019s office does MLB Network, the MLBPA has had a financial relationship with the network on which Meyer appeared. \u201cFoul Territory\u201d is part of Make Plays Media, a company the MLBPA paid $207,500 to in 2024 for what\u2019s listed as \u201cmedia services,\u201d per the union\u2019s annual financial filing.<\/p>\n

\u201cMake Plays Media is an independent, privately owned media company and the producer of Foul Territory. Neither MLB nor the MLBPA holds any equity in MPM,\u201d Make Plays Media said in a statement. \u201cLike other media platforms, the MLBPA has worked with MPM on brand activations and events \u2014 not on any editorial direction. Foul Territory is always open to conversations with all sides of the game.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since the 1994-95 strike ended, baseball had not entered a work stoppage until owners locked out the players in 2021. Spring training was delayed in 2022, but a new deal was reached that March without any games being missed.<\/p>\n

Manfred has said multiple times that offseason lockouts are a norm in professional sports, a point the union has taken to mean a lockout in baseball is a foregone conclusion come December 2026.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat are we doing then for the months before that, when we\u2019re supposedly bargaining in good faith, if a lockout is a sure thing? Meyer asked on the program.<\/p>\n

If there is another lockout, the key question will be the same as last time: Are any games missed?<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we got reasonable people on both sides, hopefully,\u201d Meyer said. \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s in the economic interest of the owners, or the game, to shut down the game. They\u2019re making lots of money.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Photo of Bruce Meyer: Richard Drew \/ Associated Press)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred recently outlined his plans to convince players to make big changes to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1454,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[363,99,1794],"class_list":{"0":"post-1453","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-mlb","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-sports-business"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1453\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}