Lower Salary Clubs In MLB Playoffs A Contrast To Proposed Salary Cap

MLB Owners Unconvinced Competitive Balance Is Shifting

The contention from the owners is the need for a salary cap and floor to equalize the system. The MLB Players Association, which represents the 1,200 players on the 40-man rosters, ardently opposes it.

A spokesman for MLB said this year’s results are an anomaly and, without a requested statement from Commissioner Rob Manfred, presented a comprehensive and color-coded spreadsheet documenting the results of the last 10 years set against the results of other major leagues with salary caps.

“This changes nothing in the negotiations,” an MLB spokesman said during a phone interview, pointing to past statements made by Manfred.

“Your opportunity to make the playoffs if you are a larger-market team is dramatically higher, and your opportunity to proceed to the subsequent rounds, that advantage grows with each round,” he said during a question and answer session with baseball writers at the All-Star Game in Philadelphia.

“It defies human experience to ask a fan to think that the bottom end of that gap has the same opportunity to win as the top end,” he added.

Not this year. The union provided a texted statement from executive director Bruce Meyer, which said in part:

“In terms of any effect on bargaining, the results of any particular season’s playoffs aren’t going to affect the owners’ longstanding desire for a system that suppresses salaries and guarantees or the players’ opposition to such a system.”

Furthermore, Meyer pointed out that the Brewers, with 103 wins, led all of MLB with the best record in each of the last two seasons, although last year they were swept in the NLCS by the Dodgers when they ran into the Shohei Ohtani buzzsaw in Game 4: three homers at the plate and 10 strikeouts and two hits allowed in nearly seven innings on the mound.

“We were part of an iconic performance, maybe the best individual performance ever in a postseason game,” Brewers manager Pat Murphy said that night at Dodger Stadium. “I don’t think anybody can argue with that.”

Can the No. 19 Payroll Brewers Beat the No. 1 Dodgers?

Whether they’ll be any better off against the Dodgers this season remains to be seen. The Dodgers have more offensive power and depth, and a real starting rotation as opposed to the Padres, who couldn’t get a starter further than five-plus innings in the NLDS and have holes throughout their lineup around their high-priced core of Fernando Tatis Jr., Manny Machado and Xander Bogaerts.

Despite all that, the Brewers defeated the Padres in four games, outscoring them by an aggregate of three runs. The Padres outspent them this season by $109.9 million.

“As was the case last year the team with the best record in baseball is the Brewers,” Meyer said. “The best record in the AL was Tampa Bay [with 98 wins]. Three of the four remaining playoff teams are towards the bottom of the league in payroll.

“The league’s claims that payroll disparities require a salary cap, which is the ultimate restriction on player compensation and fundamental rights, is as always a sham, to mask their real goal of putting more profits in owners’ pockets. Every team in baseball has the ability and resources to be competitive if they have the desire to do so.”

The reality is, the Brewers have gone this far with the No. 19 payroll ($154.7 million) this season and the No. 22 payroll ($143.6 million) last year. Ohtani himself is on a 10-year contract paying him $70 million a year, $68 million of it deferred.

In MLB’s presentation, teams like the Brewers haven’t been able to keep their best players, trading closer Devin Williams to the Yankees after the 2024 season and starter Freddy Peralta to the Mets prior to this season, a year ahead of them reaching free agency.

MLB doesn’t note that the Yankees haven’t made it beyond the ALDS the last two seasons and the Mets failed to make the playoffs after both.

Meanwhile in Milwaukee, under general manager Matt Arnold, they keep drafting or churning out great young players like left-fielder Jackson Chourio, shortstop Cooper Pratt and flame-throwing right-hander Jacob Misirowoski. They signed veteran DH Christian Yelich to a seven-year, $188.5 million deal and the 22-year-old Chourio to an eight-year, $88 million contract buying out his arbitration years and early free agency under the current Basic Agreement.

How does a team like the Brewers compete?

“We have to be smarter,” longtime Brewers owner Mark Attanasio said last year.

To be sure, MLB points out the last 10 World Series have been won by high-spending teams. The last lower-spending team to win was the Royals, who defeated the Mets in 2015. They made the World Series in 2014 as well and lost to the Giants.

And then the window slammed shut again. But since then, that one championship exceeds the high-spending Yankees, Mets, Blue Jays, Red Sox, Phillies and Padres, who all haven’t won.

Overall, the Phillies have won twice in the history of their franchise; the Mets also twice and not once since 1986; the Blue Jays twice, back-to-back in 1992-93. The Yanks haven’t won since 2009. The Braves have won four times, moving from Boston to Milwaukee to Atlanta. Twice in Atlanta.

That’s more the norm than the 27 titles the Yankees have won since 1923.

It’s a long 162-game season and the four rounds of playoffs is now a crap shoot. It’s not all about the money market size, as this current postseason proves.

Let the negotiations continue.