The negotiations have informally started.
The Commissioner of Major League Baseball Rob Manfred is not yet engaged in serious collective bargaining negotiations with the Major League Baseball Players Association as the present CBA is ending in December 2026. Manfred did say that players’ salaries are an issue but he did not use the words salary cap. “Payroll disparity is such a fact of life among the ownership group that there’s not a lot of need for talking about whether we have it or not. Everybody kind of gets it. We understand that it has become a bigger problem for us, but there has not been a lot of conversation about that particular topic. Obviously, over the winter, we’re going to have to decide what is going to be out there from our perspective, but no decisions on that topic so far.” In previous CBA negotiations the owners’ lived by a loose lips sink ships policy but not anymore. Owners are speaking out. The owner of the Houston Astros franchise, Jim Crane said he is not pushing for a salary cap, but something needs to be done.
The owner of the Colorado Rockies’ franchise Dick Monfort joined the chorus led by Baltimore Orioles owner David Rubenstein and New York Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner that something has to be done. There seems to be a concentrated effort from Major League Baseball’s ownership side that the business must rein in spending by the Los Angeles Dodgers ownership. There seems to be three camps in what has become the first volleys fired in negotiations between the owners and players. The owners are annoyed at the Dodgers ownership, so there is not a united ownership message, it’s the Dodgers ownership against the other 29 owners and then the owners versus the players. Manfred is slowly laying the groundwork for a lockout.
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