No, A Salary Cap Would Not Fix Major League Baseball

The response from fans of Major League Baseball to this year's offseason has been absurd, to say the least. 

Teams in big markets, like the Houston Astros, Boston Red Sox or Miami Marlins, have done little to nothing. In some cases, like Houston, they've traded important players like closer Ryan Pressly simply to clear salary. The Marlins, despite playing in one of the largest markets in the country, have spent literally zero dollars in free agency. The San Diego Padres, once free spenders, are now reportedly exploring trading starting pitchers Michael King or Dylan Cease to clear payroll and try to compete while rebuilding. 

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Dodgers have signed Blake Snell, Teoscar Hernandez, Blake Treinen, Tanner Scott, Hyesong Kim, Michael Conforto, Roki Sasaki, and extended Tommy Edman. All of those contracts total roughly $440 million, not accounting for deferrals. And that's just over half what the New York Mets gave Juan Soto. The Yankees have added nearly $300 million in new salary commitments themselves, between Paul Goldschmidt, Cody Bellinger and Max Fried. 

Strangely, most fans have directed their ire toward the Dodgers, demanding a salary cap to reign in their runaway spending. Some have suggested that there's no point in watching baseball in 2025, assuming that the Dodgers are unbeatable. Even though they enter the season with a 75% chance of not winning the World Series.

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Regardless, if there's a lesson to be learned from this past weekend in sports, salary caps don't fix competitive balance issues. And it wouldn't fix baseball either.

Los Angeles, CA - October 14:   Shohei Ohtani #17 reacts as teammate Tommy Edman (not pictured) of the Los Angeles Dodgers hits a RBI single against the New York Mets inning of game 2 of a National League Championship Series playoff baseball game at Dodger Stadium on Monday, October 14, 2024. (Photo by Keith Birmingham/MediaNews Group/Pasadena Star-News via Getty Images)

NFL Shows Futility Of MLB Salary Cap

The NFL has a salary cap. It also has arguably the least parity of any professional sport in America. 

The Chiefs are back in the Super Bowl for the fifth time in the past six seasons. They are favored to win their third in a row and fourth in the last six. That follows a run where teams quarterbacked by Tom Brady won four championships in seven years. 

In fact, with the Chiefs-Eagles matchup set, it's now a guarantee that there will have been just 13 organizations to win a Super Bowl since the year 2000. Major League Baseball, with all its massive spending disparities, has had 16 organizations win the World Series in the same time frame.

Salary caps don't fix parity. 

Yes, the Dodgers have massive financial advantages over say, the Pittsburgh Pirates. But even assuming the league incorporated a cap to stop them, it likely wouldn't solve the biggest problem: players want to play for Los Angeles. 

They're a winning organization, they treat their players and families well, they play in a city with spectacular weather during the baseball season, it's a desirable place to live, a huge market to enhance off-field earning potential, and the front office has shown they will invest in analytics, technology and player development, doing whatever it takes to be competitive. 

If the league enacted spending rules, which the players won't agree to anyway, all of those factors would only become more important, not less. 

Consider the hypothetical case of say, Teoscar Hernandez. Hernandez had arguably the best season of his career in LA in 2024, and was instrumental in the Dodgers' postseason run. Let's say that in a salary cap format, his contract goes from $66 million for three years (his current deal) to $45 million for three years, as cap-limited teams can no longer spend as much on individual players. 

Let's say that he's offered $45 million from the Dodgers, and $45 million from the Chicago White Sox, the Colorado Rockies, and the Miami Marlins, now all buoyed by a more "level" playing field. 

Which team is he going to choose?

The Dodgers, where attendance averages 47-49,000 fans per game, whose track record of consistent success, in a desirable city that may offer lucrative endorsement deals? Or with the White Sox, a team that just lost 121 games? Or the Marlins, who draw what some minor league teams average in attendance? Or the Rockies, who have made the playoffs twice since 2009?

If anything, a salary cap would make the Dodgers even more desirable. If all offers are the same, it stands to reason that free agents would choose the best place to live, with the smartest front office, and the best off-field opportunities. 

There's also a misconception that a salary cap would force the Pirates, Marlins and Reds of the league to spend more. It wouldn't. They've consistently demonstrated no interest in committing a higher percentage of their revenues to player payroll, and unless MLB is set to take over central ownership of television distribution like the NFL (impossible), team incomes will still vary wildly. Even still, if the league made the impossible happen with television rights, revenues would still vary because attendance for 81 home games in six months is always going to be stronger in LA than in Miami. And all the associated revenue with concessions, parking, merchandise and advertising.

So no, a salary cap to stop the Dodgers, or more accurately, the Mets, isn't going to fix competitive balance in baseball.

The good news, though, is that there's no need to fix the competitive balance, because baseball's postseason is the most random of any major professional sport. Which is why the Yankees, for all their market size and spending and television revenue, haven't won since 2009. And why the Mets spent well over $1.2 billion on player salaries since Steve Cohen took over and have just one NLCS appearance to show for it. 

Salaries just don't matter very much when randomness is the key determinant.