Major League Baseball’s next labor fight is shaping up to be ugly, and the commissioner just confirmed one thing. The owners are on the same page. That’s not necessarily good news for anyone hoping to avoid a work stoppage in 2022.
Rob Manfred spoke before the All-Star Game in Denver on Tuesday, and when a reporter asked about the salary cap issue — the single most divisive topic between the league and the players’ union — the commissioner’s answer landed hard. Instead of addressing the standoff head on, he made it clear where his loyalties sit.
“I have an ownership group that is more united than any group in my entire time in baseball,” Manfred said, according to Bill Shaikin of the Los Angeles Times.
That’s a loaded statement. The NFL has a hard cap. The NBA has one too, with some exceptions. Baseball doesn’t, and the owners have wanted to change that for years. The players see a cap as a ceiling on their earnings, and they’re not wrong. The current system lets big market teams outspend everyone else, but it also gives top free agents the chance to land nine-figure deals. A cap would change that math.
Manfred didn’t mention the MLBPA in his response. He didn’t reach across the table or signal any kind of flexibility. He just talked about how united the owners are. That kind of language doesn’t exactly scream “compromise.” And it’s the kind of thing that pushes both sides closer to a lockout when the current collective bargaining agreement expires in December.
A lockout would stink for everyone. The sport is still pulling itself out of a few weird years. Attendance and TV ratings had been flat or trending down before the pandemic, and 2020 was a mess. Now there’s some actual momentum coming out of the All-Star break. The game itself was good. Young stars are everywhere. A work stoppage would kill all that buzz and leave fans stuck watching highlight reels while lawyers argue over revenue splits.
Small market teams can spend more under the current rules. Nobody is stopping them from writing bigger checks. But the reality is that the Yankees, Dodgers and Red Sox operate in a different financial universe than the Pirates or the Rays. A salary cap would even things out — at least in theory. But it would also cap what the best players can earn. And the union has made it clear that’s a non-starter.
Both sides want what they want. The problem is that the people caught in the middle are the ones who work in the game, the fans who buy tickets and the broadcasters who fill airtime. A lockout wouldn’t just be a negotiating tactic. It would be a real hit to a sport still recovering from a lost season and a pandemic.
The two sides still have months to figure something out. But if Manfred’s comments this week are any clue, the owners aren’t looking to bend.
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