The Collective Bargaining Agreement with the players is over in December 2026.
The words salary cap have been tossed around by some Major League Baseball owners but according to Commissioner Rob Manfred that is not the case. “What’s out there right now is noise,” said Manfred. “No decisions have been made by ownership as to strategy, actual content of what we’re going to propose. We’re a year away.” Manfred is not yet engaged in serious collective bargaining negotiations with the Major League Baseball Players Association as the present CBA ends in December 2026. The Major League Baseball Players Association is not taking Manfred at his word. Manfred in the past has said that players’ salaries are an issue but he has not used the words salary cap in his assessment of the state of baseball’s economic climate. Owners are speaking out about the need for some mechanism to control players’ salaries. The owner of the Houston Astros franchise, Jim Crane said he is not pushing for a salary cap, but something needs to be done.
Crane’s comments follow those of the owner of the Colorado Rockies’ franchise Dick Monfort who 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 here in 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 owners against the other 29 owners and then the owners versus the players. Despite the talk nothing has been decided, Manfred may be slowly laying the groundwork for a lockout at the end of the 2026 MLB season.
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