2026 Collective Bargaining Negotiations

[andyb]

This seems like a big enough story to demand its own ongoing thread. Players today released their initial demands. $1.5 million minimum salary, increased revenue sharing, some small paths to earlier free agency.

News: The MLBPA today proposed a minimum salary of $1.5 million starting in 2027 in their opening economic proposal to owners, along with significant increases to revenue sharing. Some players would reach free agency after 5 years rather than 6

Next, the owners propose tomorrow pic.twitter.com/i5WMNTo1JO

— Evan Drellich ( @EvanDrellich ) May 27, 2026

Owners release their demands tomorrow.

[VoteForKalas]

Agreed, and it will only get bigger as we get closer to decision time.

[julio]

This seems like a big enough story to demand its own ongoing thread.

Yeah, that goes without saying, andyb. Another round of vicious argument about how to divvy up a very large pie.

[andyb]

It is not an awful opening offer from the players (click the link for a detailed set of bullet points). One quirk that they will have to fix is that by raising the competitive balance tax thresholds they are lowering the tax considerably for teams like the Dodgers, Mets (and Phillies). So while this claims more revenue sharing, it is in some ways less on the very rich clubs.

I keep saying that the real issue here is revenue sharing and getting clubs to share much more local TV revenue. That is the advantage the big markets have. There is a competitive balance salary floor in the player's proposal with a tax for teams going below that. That seems a fair trade for more revenue sharing.

I will be curious to see what the owners propose. Hopefully it is more nuanced than just a salary cap. If the owners actually propose significantly more revenue sharing there is a path to solving this.

[zambonir]

Yeah in the story (gift link) MLB chose to highlight that specifically:

“The MLBPA’s proposal would reduce the amount transferred to lower-revenue clubs, weaken the competitive balance tax and lead to even more payroll disparity than exists today. For example, under the union’s proposal, the Dodgers would pay less in luxury tax payments, giving them an additional $70 million to spend on payroll.”

MLB players make first labor proposal: Plan doubles minimum player salary, adds...

It's gonna be a long dispute, but hopefully owners are not so intractable on the cap as to be willing to miss games. To me the question is not only how do you get the Dodgers and Yankees etc. to share more local revenue, but how do you actually get out of the long lucrative local TV deals? I guess the answer to the latter could also be the answer to the former, both temporarily and long-term: the visiting teams get 50% of all home TV money (or something close to it).

[andyb]

My ideal local TV system would be a national package which retained home team telecasts. Then rights fees would be split 2 ways. Half would be a 30-way split. The other half would be based on viewership which would be an advantage for the big market clubs with more viewers. But it would also be an incentive for a small market club to get more TV viewers because they put a good team on the field. I like watching Pittsburgh for instance with Skenes and Griffin. They should get paid for that TV viewing.

You'd have to grandfather existing contracts in some way and you still would want to be able to sell local telecasts to local cable systems, but to me this is a solvable problem.

[zambonir]

I wonder how much the opponent really gooses home local TV ratings though. Obviously this is exactly why things have to change, but the reason Comcast paid the Phillies so much money (and gave them a % of the network) is the overall value for carriage fees, subscribers, pregame and post-game advertising and even the whole digital operation (including the streaming now), not what advertisers pay overall to reach what is still a fairly small number of viewers (like, just as many or more people watch news, game shows, and prime time TV).

The Phillies led MLB last year with around 325,000 average local viewers, but is the gap really that big for a sexy opponent or great opposing player? I would think the day, time and competition from other sports (except from June-August) is a bigger factor. Last year's most-viewed game was actually the Nats, but they had nothing to do with it - it was Opening Day. That was 560,000 viewers and presumably those 200,000+ people are the sort of fans who only watch a few games a year (and then playoffs).

[andyb]

The other side is that MLB averages like 3 million fans a day for their teams combined. This was probably larger a decade ago when everyone had the team on their cable systems. I would think MLB would have the potential of getting something like 5 million viewers a day with the right type of availability and packaging.

I think the Phillies ranking first at 325K was a transient thing in the first half of last year, but I also bet that number is helped by their relatively large and stable RSN (which gets on more streaming services than others). The Yankees and Mets games are all over the place and expensive to watch.

MLB knows they need to solve this accessibility problem. I just wish they got together with the players on a system designed to sell the game more and add viewers.

[andyb]

And the owner's response is a $245 million salary cap with a $171 million floor (including the $23 million benefit payment).

Much more extreme than the player's proposal IMO. It seems they are proposing to share 100% of local TV revenues. That is fascinating because I assume the larger market owners agreed to this. I guess with local stadium revenues it guarantees them profits, but also likely there is additional hidden stuff in there.

MLB’s first offer to union includes initial look at details of hard salary cap

[allentown]

That salary cap is a killer for the Phillies -- almost $40 million less than our opening day salaries this season and last season.

[zambonir]

Like the Flyers before them! In a vaccum I'm not sure that cap is a bad thing if the 12 teams that have to get to the floor are really ready to do it. The NHL model is fairly straighforward in that regard, unlike the NBA and NFL with all the loopholes. But the main sticking point appears to be the escrow and the salaries rising or falling depending on revenue, probably in large part because the owners have so many other sources of revenue that won't be part of the 50-50 split.

[julio]

Yeah, and because most of the organizations are so closed with real information that it will be easy to hide revenue. It's not as if these ownership groups have a history of honesty or anything...

[bkox]

173M floor means a guaranteed 5.136 Billion to players each year. So about 6B probably for teams that spend close to the cap. Google says 5.56B for this season.. so not really much of a raise for the players

Seems like this would end mega contracts. cant pay someone 50M if its gonna be 16% of your salary cap. Feel like we would see more players with salaries in the 15M range and less in the 30M+ range.

[allentown]

Turner and Harper are going to be big drags going forward if this is the cap and it doesn't move much in following years. Harper worth his $ now, but probably not a little down the road. Turner really not worth his $ today -- hopefully this is just a bad year. and he has another plus year or two in him going forward. We aren't the only team which will be caught in this trap, but still we will one of the 'leveled-down' organizations. I guess that's why we are finally active in Asia. TPTB undoubtedly saw this coming and are acting -- a tad late, as per normal.

[zambonir]

I guess we have not yet seen how existing contracts will be affected by the cap. It's expected there will be loopholes/grandfathered figures if it really happens.

But I don't know that it is really going to happen. We certainly won't be watching baseball at this time next year if it's headed that way for sure, IMO.

[zambonir]

Yeah, and because most of the organizations are so closed with real information that it will be easy to hide revenue. It's not as if these ownership groups have a history of honesty or anything...

I bet they don't pay taxes either!

Even aside from the obfuscation and possible lying, there's also the secondary income for the teams which have real estate and entertainment districts (Phillies are supposed to be partners in whatever Comcast ultimately does), and above all, the franchise valuations, which is apparently the single biggest reason owners want a cap. And it's not like they are already hurting - the Padres sold for $3.9 billion, versus the $2.4 billion Cohen paid for the Mets.

[zambonir]

Well maybe that will change some players' minds

President Trump sides with MLB owners on issue of hard salary cap

[VoteForKalas]

What a shocker that he supports the corrupt and inept billionaire owners.

[andyb]

Against a bunch of workers who are often undocumented immigrants.

Realistically this is a non story. MLB just can't credibly argue for a cap when they are making lots of money. There are other ways to add parity to the game (i.e. revenue sharing).

[julio]

Trump knows more than anybody else about sports, and about salary caps, and about contract negotiations! Bigly!

In his dreams, that is. In reality... well, Trump no longer lives in reaity, so his opinion on the pending MLB contract isn't worth the time he spends ranting about it on Truth Social.