Major League Baseball doesn't just want a salary cap, it wants a hard limit on how long most stars can get paid. In its proposal to the players' union on Thursday, MLB owners included a system in which free agents who jump to a new team could sign deals no longer than five years and worth at most 15% of that club's payroll, with small annual raises. Teams could keep their own "Cornerstone Players" for up to six free-agent years, mirroring the NBA's "Bird Rights." The players union was having none of it, ESPN reports.
The owners' plan, which would start after the 2027 season, is bundled with a salary cap-and-floor structure—$171.2 million floor, $245.3 million ceiling—as well as a record jump in the minimum salary to $1 million, earlier free agency for some 30-year-olds at five years' service time, an expanded pre-arbitration bonus pool, and the end of both qualifying offers and deferred money. MLB frames it all as a competitive-balance fix and a 50/50 revenue split. "The biggest issue baseball fans want solved to strengthen the game is fixing the payroll disparity that leaves too many fans without hope of their team competing for a World Series title," an MLB statement said.
A connection between competitive balance and payroll caps has not been proven, CBS Sports points out. The players association called the package "misleading," built to "eliminate the free market," and designed to suppress pay and limit contract length. The union, long opposed to a cap or term limits, said players remain unified behind the association's proposal, which would keep the current luxury-tax model and avoid hard restrictions on years or earnings.
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