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sikeston bulldog2 wrote: ↑16 Feb 2026 06:10 am You have made a well understood point. Why does it not happen this way- greed, out of control industry, and, how much of your issue is an issue at CBA. Bunches?

Revenue sharing between the owners and the CBA are huge issues.

To make it work, the big market teams are going to have to share more revenue with the small market teams.

The Marlins can likely spend more than the $70 million they spent on payroll in 2025, but they may not be able to spend $130 million consistently. Maybe the biggest teams need to give them another $30-$40 million in revenue sharing and expect the Marlins owners to reach in their own pockets and find the additional $20-$30 million to get to a $130 million floor.

And the players will demand that any cap and floor system come with assurances that the money going to the players doesn't go down.

With $5.28 billion going to players in salary in 2025, they would probably ask for a guarantee in the CBA that that number would increase by 3-5% per year over the duration of the CBA in order to agree to any cap and floor system.

mattmitchl44 wrote: ↑16 Feb 2026 06:19 am

sikeston bulldog2 wrote: ↑16 Feb 2026 06:10 am You have made a well understood point. Why does it not happen this way- greed, out of control industry, and, how much of your issue is an issue at CBA. Bunches?

Revenue sharing between the owners and the CBA are huge issues.

To make it work, the big market teams are going to have to share more revenue with the small market teams.

The Marlins can likely spend more than the $70 million they spent on payroll in 2025, but they may not be able to spend $130 million consistently. Maybe the biggest teams need to give them another $30-$40 million in revenue sharing and expect the Marlins owners to reach in their own pockets and find the additional $20-$30 million to get to a $130 million floor.

And the players will demand that any cap and floor system come with assurances that the money going to the players doesn't go down.

With $5.28 billion going to players in salary in 2025, they would probably ask for a guarantee in the CBA that that number would increase by 3-5% per year over the duration of the CBA in order to agree to any cap and floor system.

Very well written. Is this no longer a question of revenue fairness, but more of an industry survival event one.

Ok, here goes my proposed fixes
1. Hard cap and Hard floor. Contract deferrals are counted against the cap during the contract length (you can’t use deferrals to get around the cap)
2. I suggest 280-300 million cap and a 150 million floor. I think the floor should raise twice as much as the cap does until the disparity between the two is much less
3. EVERY Sport uses a salary cap….baseball is the only sport not to have one and baseball is the sport that is not growing as quickly as the other major sports. When I say growing, I am saying team worth evaluations….
4. Revenue sharing is an absolute must.
5 if a team is in the bottom 3 of payroll 3 years in a row…they should lose premium draft picks as well as a large percentage of their revenue share until they are no longer in the “bottom 3”
6. Every player drafted gets a three year entry level deal. After that, they get 2 years of arbitration and then they become a FA. In my model, the 3 year deals start whether they are in the minors or not. Sounds radical…but the other sports do it that way.

For those that feel that salary caps are unamerican…..give me a break. Baseball is not like regular business. It never has been. There is no one that has worked at IBM for 15 years and then can use the money they made and buy IBM. Arod made 750 million dollars during his playing career. When he retired, he could have bought 40-50% ownership in at least 5 of the franchises.

Baseball is broken. It has been for years.
Every sport has a variation of a hard cap except baseball….and every sport is healthier than baseball….hmmmm.

Bubble4427 wrote: ↑16 Feb 2026 11:43 am 2. I suggest 280-300 million cap and a 150 million floor. I think the floor should raise twice as much as the cap does until the disparity between the two is much less

I hear people pushing this idea based on other professional sports, however:

How big were the differences in team-to-team revenue and spending before those cap/floor systems were introduced?

IMO - the history, and present reality, of MLB makes it unlikely that you'll ever see a cap/floor system in baseball where the two are narrowly separated. I think floor at ~50% of cap - without a complete, crazy redo of revenue sharing between big and small market teams - is about as good as I could ever hope for.

mattmitchl44 wrote: ↑16 Feb 2026 06:19 am

sikeston bulldog2 wrote: ↑16 Feb 2026 06:10 am You have made a well understood point. Why does it not happen this way- greed, out of control industry, and, how much of your issue is an issue at CBA. Bunches?

Revenue sharing between the owners and the CBA are huge issues.

To make it work, the big market teams are going to have to share more revenue with the small market teams.

The Marlins can likely spend more than the $70 million they spent on payroll in 2025, but they may not be able to spend $130 million consistently. Maybe the biggest teams need to give them another $30-$40 million in revenue sharing and expect the Marlins owners to reach in their own pockets and find the additional $20-$30 million to get to a $130 million floor.

And the players will demand that any cap and floor system come with assurances that the money going to the players doesn't go down.

With $5.28 billion going to players in salary in 2025, they would probably ask for a guarantee in the CBA that that number would increase by 3-5% per year over the duration of the CBA in order to agree to any cap and floor system.

Haven't CBAs, at least in MLB, historically linked player salaries to a percent of of total revenues, e.g. around the 50% mark? Is that tactic just off the table now?

Obviously the revenue streams are much more diverse than they used to be and it would be extremely difficult to find all the true "baseball revenue" and separate it from real estate investments, etc. (which I'd argue are still baseball revenue since they depend on stadium traffic).

alw80 wrote: ↑15 Feb 2026 07:32 am Is it "fair" if a team spends $250M and another team only spends $125M?

Nothing is stopping them.

3dender wrote: ↑16 Feb 2026 12:21 pm

mattmitchl44 wrote: ↑16 Feb 2026 06:19 am

sikeston bulldog2 wrote: ↑16 Feb 2026 06:10 am You have made a well understood point. Why does it not happen this way- greed, out of control industry, and, how much of your issue is an issue at CBA. Bunches?

Revenue sharing between the owners and the CBA are huge issues.

To make it work, the big market teams are going to have to share more revenue with the small market teams.

The Marlins can likely spend more than the $70 million they spent on payroll in 2025, but they may not be able to spend $130 million consistently. Maybe the biggest teams need to give them another $30-$40 million in revenue sharing and expect the Marlins owners to reach in their own pockets and find the additional $20-$30 million to get to a $130 million floor.

And the players will demand that any cap and floor system come with assurances that the money going to the players doesn't go down.

With $5.28 billion going to players in salary in 2025, they would probably ask for a guarantee in the CBA that that number would increase by 3-5% per year over the duration of the CBA in order to agree to any cap and floor system.

Haven't CBAs, at least in MLB, historically linked player salaries to a percent of of total revenues, e.g. around the 50% mark? Is that tactic just off the table now?

Obviously the revenue streams are much more diverse than they used to be and it would be extremely difficult to find all the true "baseball revenue" and separate it from real estate investments, etc. (which I'd argue are still baseball revenue since they depend on stadium traffic).

Perhaps the only thing the players can know, for certain, is how many billions of dollars are going to player salaries.

If the owners want a cap and floor system, then, if I'm the MLBPA, I'm going straight to that and asking for guaranteed increases in total player salaries in order to agree to that system. That's more straightforward than trying to agree on "revenue" whether the players get 48, 50, 52, etc. percent of it

mattmitchl44 wrote: ↑16 Feb 2026 06:19 am

sikeston bulldog2 wrote: ↑16 Feb 2026 06:10 am You have made a well understood point. Why does it not happen this way- greed, out of control industry, and, how much of your issue is an issue at CBA. Bunches?

Revenue sharing between the owners and the CBA are huge issues.

To make it work, the big market teams are going to have to share more revenue with the small market teams.

The Marlins can likely spend more than the $70 million they spent on payroll in 2025, but they may not be able to spend $130 million consistently. Maybe the biggest teams need to give them another $30-$40 million in revenue sharing and expect the Marlins owners to reach in their own pockets and find the additional $20-$30 million to get to a $130 million floor.

And the players will demand that any cap and floor system come with assurances that the money going to the players doesn't go down.

With $5.28 billion going to players in salary in 2025, they would probably ask for a guarantee in the CBA that that number would increase by 3-5% per year over the duration of the CBA in order to agree to any cap and floor system.

The Marlins are supposed to spend 1.5x what they receive in revenue sharing.
The flaw is that they can spend those monies anywhere in their system without
it all having to go towards the roster.

The large revenue teams also don't put all the money that should go into the kitty
in the kitty according to the 48/52 splits. There are caps. There is also places to not include
all revenue from the baseball team like owning the broadcast, which is considered an investment.

Clean up the rules make a few adjustments and caps may not be needed at all.
There have been multiple articles written on this. the most recent was by Rosenthal


https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/704365 ... y-lockout/


https://sporthiatus.com/mlb-revenue-sha ... the-money/