Salary cap would tear Dodgers dynasty apart as MLB insider begs league to look for ‘other ways’

MLB could be facing dramatic changes at the end of 2026.

The current Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) expires on 1 December 2026, and many expect the biggest roadblock to be the issue of salary.

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MLB‘s owners have long proposed a salary cap system, which would better distribute total revenue from various teams across the league.

There would be a salary floor – roughly $170 million – while there would also be a hard salary cap, of about $240 million, according to ESPN’s senior MLB insider Jeff Passan.

Currently, eight teams have payrolls higher than the proposed cap, including the back-to-back champions, the Los Angeles Dodgers, and the New York Mets.

If this were to go into effect, all eight teams would need to cut their payroll down to the cap amount or face league penalties.

Fans have often argued in favor of a salary cap, to prevent teams like the Dodgers and the Mets from signing all the best players in free agency.

This offseason, the Dodgers signed the best position player on the market, Kyle Tucker, to a four-year $240 million contract, a $64 million signing bonus and $30 million deferred.

They also added arguably the best free agent reliever on the market, Edwin Diaz, to a three-year, $69 million contract.

Superstar Shohei Ohtani‘s contract on paper is 10-years, $700 million, but in actual fact, his salary is just $2 million per season. A full 97 per cent of his salary, $680 million of the contract.

This has been done in an effort to avoid the current luxury tax penalties, which are evidently not a strong enough deterrent.

Ken Rosenthal doesn’t want to see salary cap introduced

MLB insider Ken Rosenthal sounded off on the talks surrounding the salary cap and the proposed new system this week.

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“This drives me crazy,” Rosenthal said on Foul Territory.

“For years, the way I’ve always understood the sport, and I started baseball writing in 1987, is that the regular season is the true measure of a team’s quality.

“The playoffs are the playoffs and you only have one World Series champion.

“But what you do in the regular season matters. And the sport, even while it’s expanding the playoffs, has largely been built around that.”

Currently, four out of the six division leaders across the game have payrolls nowhere near the figures that the Dodgers and Mets have.

The Mets, in particular, have endured a difficult start to the season, proving that sometimes flashing the cash doesn’t quite work out.

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Rosenthal would go on to point at the successes of teams who don’t spend as much as a reason why the salary cap might not be the best thing for the sport.

“What I look at is competitive balance is the success of Milwaukee [Brewers] and Cleveland [Guardians] and Tampa Bay [Rays] almost year after year,” Rosenthal continued.

“Their ability to compete in the regular season. And maybe one of these years they’re going to be able to do it and go all the way through in the postseason.

“Now, does that mean the system is perfect and can not be fixed or should not be fixed? No. I am not saying that. And again, I can’t imagine anyone would say, hey, this is great right now, this is just perfect. It’s not perfect.

“But does it need a salary cap that could cost us games in ’27 to be rectified?

“I still believe the answer is no and I will be always believing the answer is no. There are other ways.”

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