Although the labor fight won’t arrive in earnest until the end of the year (you just know that there won’t be much deep negotiation until the pressure of the lockout arrives, but then that won’t be enough, the lockout will kick in on December 1, and then the pressure won’t return until the spring), the areas of dispute are already well-known, and well-discussed.
The big one, of course, is the salary cap. That fight is coming, and no one believes the fight can be avoided at this point:
With lockout looming, sources say teams have assembled a $2B-plus war chest (and players have a big one,too). Ominously, teams seem nearly unanimous on a salary cap. Says one source: “I have never seen the clubs more united.” nypost.com/2026/02/19/s…
— Jon Heyman (@jonheyman.bsky.social) 2026-02-20T02:19:07.836ZFrom the report:
“Negotiations are expected to begin after the regular season opens at the end of March. At this point, MLB plans are still preliminary, but sources have told The Post that ownership is willing to discuss significantly raising the minimum wage ($780,000 in 2026) and lowering the service time needed to reach arbitration and free agency as bargaining chips if it can get a cap in exchange.
The initial, but, again, very preliminary, sense was that the floor for a first cap proposal would be in the $140 million-$160 million range and the ceiling $260 million-$280 million, according to sources, and that it would have to be grandfathered in for a few years to allow current low-payroll teams to rise and top-payroll clubs like the Dodgers, Mets and Yankees to cut back.”
Let me say that, although I’m not sure a cap/floor system will ultimately be right for MLB, I am increasingly certain that the *ONLY* way it could work is if the spread between the cap and floor was much larger than the other sports, and if the players received significant increases in money in the early years of their career (i.e., higher minimum salary and earlier free agency). The fact that this is already in the reporting is a good sign in that regard – the owners are being realistic about the lengths they’d have to go to in order to get the players to even consider a cap/floor system.
That said, it’s not like the players have equivocated over the years. The fight against a cap in any form has always been a firm one. It’s hard to imagine them bending, because once a cap is in place, it’ll never, ever go away again. Their argument boils down to: the owners wouldn’t want a cap unless it reduced the total amount they’re paying out to players. And even if the cap/floor setup looks OK initially on paper, once its installed, the owners can chip away at the value to the players over the next 20+ years.
I think there’s probably something there – it’s just logical – but that does not allow for two things: (1) owners want a cap because that kind of certainty going forward can dramatically spike franchise valuations (without an attendant cost to the players, in theory), and (2) if a cap/floor/revenue-sharing system somehow helped the league better grow overall revenues, then it’s at least conceivable that the players could overall get more than they are now.
Ultimately, what this side of the fight could come down to is the extent to which owners are willing to guarantee a larger share of the revenues overall than the players are currently getting on average, and the extent to which the owners are flexible on what gets included in “team revenue” for CBA purposes. That stuff is where the REAL money lives, and it’s also where I suspect we’ll see the biggest fights among the union and owners, and among the owners and themselves.
Hence then, the article about players unified against a salary cap owners unified in favor of one so that seems great was published today ( ) and is available on Bleacher Nation ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
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