Major League Baseball Commissioner Robert D. Manfred, Jr. on February 2023 Speech Wednesday, March 15 … [+]
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It’s been less than a year since the labor dispute in baseball ended.
Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association finalized a collective bargaining agreement on March 19. This came after the owners locked out the player for 99 days.
The CBA will continue until 2026. So it seems like the sport deserves at least a few years of labor peace.
However, due to the 30 player salary gap in MLB, storm clouds are already forming on the horizon
The New York Mets are projected to start the upcoming season with $336 million in salary, which would be the largest in baseball history. Instead, the Athletics’ salary is projected at $40 million amid uncertainty over whether the team will remain in Oakland or move to Las Vegas.
Simply put in mathematical terms, the Mets will have more than eight times the payroll of the Athletics.
In addition to the Mets, six teams are projected to have at least $200 million in payroll: New York Yankees ($267 million), Philadelphia Phillies ($231 million), San Diego Padres ($219 million), Los Angeles Dodgers ($217), Toronto Blue Jays ($206 million) and Los Angeles Angels ($202 million).
The Athletics are one of nine teams with projected payrolls under $100 million: Baltimore Orioles ($50 million), Pittsburgh Buccaneers ($60 million), Tampa Bay Rays ($64 million) , Cincinnati Reds ($70 million), Cleveland Guardians ($75 million), Kansas City Royals ($77 million), Washington Nationals ($77 million) and Miami Marlins ($81 million) .
Commissioner Rob Manfred believes the wage gap is one of the sport’s biggest problems and has formed a committee of team owners to look into the issue. However, aside from changing the luxury tax threshold, the last CBA did little to address this issue.
Manfred thinks MLB needs to become “a more national product.”
“When I talk about more nationalized products, the idea is that more nationalized products generate more pooled and shared revenue, which in turn , we hope, will reduce the wage gap,” Manfred said. “At various times we have discussed and proposed, including in the last round (collective bargaining negotiations), on direct wage regulation and, beyond that, minimum wages.
“We are open to these solutions. Obviously, we’re a long way from the next round of bargaining, but there are ways to do it. “
In other words, it goes without saying that Manfred directly wants a salary cap as part of the next CBA. The economic structure of the NFL, NBA and NHL. However, the MLBPA doesn’t want any caps, and any discussion of a system for the system has been a non-starter in the negotiations.
Not surprisingly, last weekend, the MLBPA Executive director Tony Clark shot down the idea of ​​a salary cap as he met with reporters at the league’s new satellite office in Phoenix.
“About a team’s payroll vs. Compared to another team’s payroll, the question that should be asked is whether the team made a conscious decision to pay the payroll there, or whether it has the ability to increase the payroll,” Clark said. “The answer is the latter, not the former. “
The lockout that ended last year was MLB’s first since the 1994-95 strike. While it’s still early, the game looks set to shut down again by the end of the decade .
