A salary cap in baseball is long overdue. The head of the players’ union wants to continue to delay the due date.
Via Mike Mazzeo of Sports Business Journal, MLB Players Association executive director Tony Clark said Monday that a salary cap would take baseball “backward.”
“They [MLB] obviously have their interests, and those interests aren’t much different from the interests they’ve had for the last three, four, five decades at this point,” Clark said. “Whereas the game is in a great place; the game appears to be growing and moving in the right direction, with more attendance than we’ve had in a long time; and more people are watching and streaming the games than we’ve ever had before.”
But those numbers would be higher if there was real competitive balance. Instead, the teams that spend money stay good, and the teams that don’t spend money are the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Commissioner Rob Manfred has said that 10 percent of the game’s players currently make 72 percent of the money. That should make the other 90 percent of the players seek change..
There’s another important angle, which wasn’t mentioned in the SBJ story. With a salary cap reasonably comes a salary floor. No more moldy peanuts and stale Cracker Jack lineups. All teams would have to pay up.
The union also could make an important demand in response to an effort to implement a salary cap. The teams should share all revenues — including the grossly imbalanced local TV deals.
If baseball wants to limit maximum spending, it needs to incentivize minimum spending. And that would come from ensuring that all teams are making the same amount of money, and that they are then required to spend the same amount on their rosters.
It would be great for the game that used to be America’s pastime but no longer is, in part because fans are sick of the obvious consequences of the small-market, big-market divide.
I knew it was coming 33 years ago, when Sid Bream somehow scored from second to end the Pirates’ last shot at a World Series berth. I knew richer teams would dismantle the potent Pittsburgh lineup — and stopped following baseball then and there.
