MLB Salary Cap Debate: Small Market Teams and Owner Tactics

The salary cap, the salary cap thing, John, a lot of people are like, oh, well, this now this means that there's not going to be a lockout because look, a small market team went to the World Series. I hate to tell everyone this. There's still going to be a lockout. I don't know how long it's going to be. This series doesn't change that because if people think that the Dodgers, OK, let's not do a salary cap or a salary floor. Let's keep it the way it is. You think the Dodgers are like, OK, we'll abide by your rules. We won't sign anybody else. They're just going to go ahead and do what they've been doing. So they have to do this, right? This is a... The owners have been wanting to salary cap in baseball for 25 years, maybe more than that, because they lost in 94. So if you go from 94 to now, we're looking at more than 30 years. They've been trying to salary cap this league. They now have the ownership to do it. Everybody's on the same page. And I have to tell people this. The people who own the teams in 94 who caved and did not get the salary cap, These are not the same owners who own these teams now. These are hedge fund managers. These are equity groups who own these teams. They will sit on this asset as long as it takes to make sure that they can cap the amount of money that they have to give to the players. Now, obviously, you're going to get a salary floor, so that's going to raise the pay of some of the players at the bottom. But at the end of the day, this is going to happen. And I think the players kind of know this, too. The gambit's up. The 10-year, $700 million contract, those are gone. The 10-year, $500 million contract, those are gone. It created a level of unbalanced competition that the majority of the league thinks exists, and they want to get rid of it. And I want to say this. I'll read off some kind of proposals that the owners made back in May. A hard cap of $245 million in 27 with a floor of 171. um and before you said it let me say this the 171 by the way the floor there are 17 teams under the floor currently there's eight teams over the cap it would be over the cap there are more teams under the floor than there are over the cap yes um they're also trying to do a ban on deferred money like the Ohtani model and all that stuff um so there there obviously will be a fight for this but i will say there's other people that are giving out this conspiracy theory that well the dodgers threw the series on purpose so that they the owners would change their minds cut it just cut it man that's not that's not true the dodgers got beat in baseball they weren't the better baseball team okay it wasn't because they were trying to throw the series there's no conspiracy theory here as much as i do enjoy those the dodgers got beat go ahead i would say nobody is gonna sit here and beat this drum of conspiracy theory but i will say this mlb welcome to i would say the apron ring of salary cap they're going to see you're going to get a taste of what the nba is going through and they're also going to get a taste of the roger goodell rule and they're now going to see because before the joke was always baseball is where you're going to make your money it's the easiest thing to go do when they put the salary cap on here we're now going to start looking at each other like hey spend more time in college get your money in college because if the NIL is still running rapid, why do I need to go pro if they're starting to cap how much I can make at a certain time? I can get my money young early and if I decide to go pro, I can get a little bit more. But look, going forward, as much as we say it was unfair competition, it made for exciting competition because it made true heroes and it made true villains. Because when you look at a team that's being paid all this money, right? A lot of people jumped on the small market teams so they can see the big market teams fall down, right? We got a whole chant. The Yankees lose. We got so many things. People hate the Dodgers. People hate their guts. Beat LA. Beat LA. And when you create this narrative now, we're going to try to level it out. We're going to lose a lot of narratives that we was having, right? Good versus evil. You're going to have big money versus small money. It was so many narratives. No, you won't. No, you won't. I'm not cheering for the Kansas City Royals. I can't do it. Here's what's going to happen. Here's what's going to happen. the dodgers are better ran than the kansas city royals yeah they still will be okay the the uh the san francisco giants although they're the death they're better ran okay the texas rangers the Houston Astros they're better ran organizations they will be better in the long term than the White Sox who are flashing a pan this year and this year only to go back to lose 100 games next year mark my words so this isn't going to change anything it's just going to force the people down here to come up here with their pocketbook