MLB Owners Reportedly 'Agitating for' Salary Cap as Players 'Bracing for a Lockout'

Negotiations on a new collective bargaining agreement for MLB are shaping up to be just as contentious as you'd expect.

"Owners already are agitating for a cap," The Athletic's Ken Rosenthal reported Monday. "Players already are bracing for a lockout commissioner Rob Manfred all but promised when the current collective-bargaining agreement expires after the 2026 season."

It's not as though this would set the next round of CBA discussions apart from what has transpired in the past. Owners around MLB have unsuccessfully pursued a salary cap for years. The 1994 season ended in mid-August because of a strike, and the 2022 season was delayed by a lockout.

Labor negotiations in baseball are almost always combative, high-stakes affairs. However, the way in which MLB's financial landscape is shifting means the next CBA could be an outlier even within that context.

The league's television outlook is murky at both a national and local level. The steady decline of regional sports networks is starving teams, especially those in smaller markets, of revenue.

Meanwhile, even MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred admitted to the New York Times' Michael S. Schmidt that the lack of free-agent spending is a "massive problem."

Sure, Juan Soto got $765 million from the New York Mets this offseason, while Vladimir Guerrero Jr. just agreed to a $500 million extension with the Toronto Blue Jays on Sunday, per multiple reports. However, some notable players penned long-term deals that look team-friendly on paper.

The Arizona Diamondbacks' Ketel Marte (six years, $116.5 million), San Diego Padres' Jackson Merrill (nine years, $135 million), and Boston Red Sox's Kristian Campbell (eight years, $60 million) all took the sure thing over potentially making more by letting arbitration and/or free agency play out.

That's a concerning trend from the perspective of the players' union because of the market effects it could have down the line. The price for elite talent becomes artificially lower when fewer stars are hitting the open market and somebody as good as Merrill will max out at a $21.1 million salary.

A potential lockout and the possible end of the TV bubble may have incentivized players to get paid now rather than wait. You can't blame Marte and Merrill in particular for settling on $100-plus million paydays.

No fan wants to think about CBA negotiations right now when the 2025 season is only a few weeks old, but it's clearly a massive issue on the horizon.