The collective bargaining agreement talks have begun.
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. The owner of the Colorado Rockies’ franchise Dick Monfort has joined the chorus led by Baltimore Orioles owner David Rubenstein and New York Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner that want something done. The owners do have an opportunity to push for a salary cap with the players association during upcoming collective bargaining negotiations. The present Collective Bargaining Agreement ends in December 2026. Major League Baseball will be played for the next two seasons without any interruptions, after that, it will be up to the negotiators as to whether there is an interruption in 2027. There seems to be three camps here 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 owners against the other 29 owners and then the owners versus the players. The owners’ rift needs to be healed.
“Something’s got to happen. The competitive imbalance in baseball has gotten to the point of ludicrosity now. It’s an unregulated industry,” Monfort told The Denver Gazette. “The Dodgers are the greatest poster children we could’ve had for how something has to change. Sports are supposed to have some sort of fairness, right? There’s got to be some purity. The only way to fix baseball is to do a salary cap and a floor. With a cap, comes a floor. For a lot of teams, the question is. How do they get to the floor? And that includes us, probably. But on some sort of revenue-split deal, I would be all-in.” Salary and cap are fighting words to the players. It is still early in the MLB negotiating game.
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