A throwaway line on the edge of a kids’ game
A Little League game. That was the setting Rob Manfred picked to calm down a nervous baseball world.
On Sunday night, with an ESPN mic in his hand during the Little League Classic, the MLB commissioner said the line everyone around the sport had been waiting for. “Our goal is to reach an agreement. We want to reach an agreement. We want to play baseball next year. We expect to play baseball next year.”
Behind that, one date matters. The collective bargaining agreement expires on December 1. After that, nothing guarantees the 2027 season.
“We meet regularly, and that’s a good thing,” he added. “Every week, we’ve had days of talks with the players. It’s still early, but we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us, and we’re getting on with it.”
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245.3 million, the number that has everyone stuck
The real fight is over the salary cap. The owners want one, hard and fast, set at 245.3 million dollars. With a firm floor at 171.2 million.
The players’ union wants nothing to do with any payroll limit. Instead, it is pushing a counteroffer: a competitive integrity tax aimed at clubs stuck near the bottom of spending. A mirror image of the luxury tax aimed at the big spenders.
Two visions. No bridge between them just yet.
The Dodgers, Exhibit A
Los Angeles keeps coming up in owners’ talk. Last season, the Dodgers carried a 345 million dollar payroll. Then they paid another 169 million in luxury tax penalties.
The sting in the tail: the Dodgers’ tax bill alone was more than 100 million dollars higher than the full payroll of the Miami Marlins. And those same Dodgers have just rattled off two straight World Series titles.
Owners are also taking aim at the Yankees, the Mets and every club living off huge local TV deals. Service time, the international draft and TV revenue sharing are still on the table too.
If December comes and no deal is signed, the owners are expected to lock the players out. Manfred says he is not planning for that scenario. Still, he thought it worth saying on national television.
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