With the 2024 World Series currently happening a discussion needs to be made. Does the MLB need a salary cap? Many fans would say so and so do I.
A salary cap is a rule implemented in many professional sports leagues to keep teams from having advantages over other teams when it comes to signing players. Uniquely the MLB is the only league out of the four major North American sports leagues that doesn’t have a salary cap.
Instead of having a threshold on how much a team could spend on players, the MLB lets its teams spend how much money they desire. While all teams have millions of dollars in the bank, some teams have a lot more money than others. Teams such as the New York Yankees and LA Dodgers are large market teams. So with more fans, jersey sales, and TV viewers, these organizations are able to bring in more money. Thus creating more money to spend in free agency to land the best players.
Small market teams can’t afford to make massive moves and sometimes can’t even pay a player they drafted and developed. It’s essentially a monopoly. Although, a salary cap wouldn’t fix the only problems when it comes to a baseball payroll.
A salary floor should be implemented as well. This would require teams to spend a certain amount of money on their team. Theoretically this would help avoid teams from tanking to their maximum and keep fans somewhat engaged with the team. Notoriously, the Oakland A’s owner John Fischer has spent as little money as possible so he can move the team out of Oakland and keep the fans from persuading others to stay in Oakland.
Teams that spend the most money don’t necessarily translate to being good, but it’s a safe bet. Out of the four teams that made it to their conference championship, three of them are in the top five highest payrolls. The other two teams on the list qualified for the playoffs as well. The team that made their conference championship and is not in the top five highest payrolls is the Cleveland Guardians, who have developed a majority of their team unlike the Dodgers, Yankees, and Mets.
You can’t blame these big market teams for spending either. Notable highly paid players such as Shohei Otanhi, Aaron Judge, Freddie Freeman, Juan Soto, and more guys have been key players for each team’s run. To some fans it may be fun seeing some of the best players team up. For other fans it isn’t as fun and a bit unfair.
Realistically a salary cap won’t be implemented in the near future, but if it were to it would probably be a soft cap. That is where teams can exceed the salary cap if they are re-signing a player currently on their roster. The NBA does this, and it still brings some great teams together. It just takes some more drafting planning to fit these high paid guys on a roster. The soft cap would also let teams keep most of their players without having to break up the roster they created before the cap was created.
While no cap is part of what makes MLB baseball unique, it does hinder certain teams and should be added as soon as possible.
