New MLBPA Executive Director Bruce Meyer on Salary Cap, Potential Lockout
The Major League Baseball Players’ Association voted unanimously to elect Bruce Meyer as interim executive director, replacing Tony Clark, who resigned from the position due to an inappropriate relationship with his sister-in-law.
Meyer’s tenure as interim head of the MLBPA comes in the final year of the league’s current collective bargaining agreement, which expires on Dec. 1. Meyer will continue to serve as the chief negotiator with the league through the ongoing talks.
One of the biggest points of contention in the upcoming discussions will be the possible implementation of a salary cap, which, if added, would have to come with a salary floor.
Teams like the Pittsburgh Pirates, who operate in smaller markets and don’t have the luxury of enormous television revenues, will be proponents of adding a salary cap. On the flip side, teams like the Los Angeles Dodgers will be against adding a cap but would surely like to see a floor put into place.
ESPN’s Jesse Rogers wrote about Meyer, and based off his comments, the implementation of a salary cap looks very unlikely.
“It’s the ultimate restriction,” said Meyer. “It is something that owners in all the sports have wanted more than anything, and baseball in particular, there’s a reason for that because it’s good for them and not good for players.”
In addition to a salary/cap floor system, there are a number of other contested topics that will be the subject of intense negotiation talks, such as revenue sharing, a potential international draft, arbitration and league expansion among others.
With a laundry list of issues to sort through and based off how last cycle’s negotiations went, a lockout feels inevitable.
Meyer feels the same way.
“A lockout is all but guaranteed at the end of the agreement. The league has pretty much said that,” he explained. “Their strategy in bargaining has always been to put as much pressure on players as they can to try and create divisions and cracks among our membership. It’s never worked. I don’t think it ever will work.”
Get ready baseball fans. This could get ugly.
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It is disingenuous and misleading for Meyer to state that a salary cap is not good for the players. What is much more accurate, and truthful, is that a cap may not be best for a very small group of select players – those players who could actually get more money in a system without a cap. But for the great majority of players, they will not ever have the reality of reaching the cap amount, simply because not everyone can be the very best player. Having no cap will simply perpetuate the current absurd system, where success is tied firmly and directly with which team has the most money. A system with a cap, and a floor, however, will significantly benefit the great majority of players, which is who the union should be representing, not the extremely few very elite. To have competitive baseball across the board, where all teams have realistic chances to win, it would be much better to have most players making a mid-range salary (arguably about half way between the cap and the floor), with a guaranteed minimum and a shot at making the max, than it is under the current system where you have hundreds of players making the absolute minimum while a very few are making more than 500 times as much. Every sport except baseball has long recognized this simple truth and logic.
Under the current system, over 60% of all MLB players are making at or near the league minimum. This is way higher than any of the other 3 North American sports. So he is lying when he says that a cap system is not good for the players.
I will gladly give up the 2027 season to get this crap fixed. Screw that guy. He’s beholden to agents like Scott Boras anyway, so he’s not going to be truthful.
What I don’t get is that a small percentage of players are making most of the total money. Why would the majority want it to continue to be this way? With no cap that will continue.
Everyone might get the year off.