Another season of extravagant spending and outrageous CBT payments from the Dodgers and Mets (and, this winter, the Blue Jays) has led to increased talk of competitive balance ahead of the upcoming end of the 2022-26 collective bargaining agreement. Owners are expected to push for a cap hit — though that’s a permanent goal and would be no matter how the usual suspects use free agency this winter — and they’ll get a lot of fan support for that.
Fans, especially those of small-market teams, have a clear sense of defeat, knowing that their clubs rarely (or in some cases will not) have top-name players in free agency. The Dodgers were close enough to losing the World Series that it’s not fair to say they can comfortably buy themselves a championship — the Mets wasted a lot of time in 2025 and missed the postseason entirely — but it’s fair to say they spent enough money to give themselves something like a 95% chance of making the season and entering as the favorite.
The other side of the cap argument, of course, is that it would certainly bring about the implementation of the salary cap — the level at which teams must spend on payroll or be subject to a certain level of penalties. There is already a weak “floor” in the area of revenue sharing clubs, but it seems to lack any consistency of teeth. The A’s felt compelled to spend enough money to drive their CBT revenue up to $105MM last year — about 1.5 times the annual profit-sharing amount — but that was apparently because they were the only club to have been stripped of profit-sharing status in the past. The Marlins should have been in the same boat this winter, and are confident in their spending mindset, as evidenced by CBT’s salary in the $80MM range.
I can see the arguments for the cap/floor system. I doubt it will actually force the game’s lowest-income clubs to spend in meaningful ways, but that’s another topic — and one we’ll debate. nauseum next year as CBA negotiations heat up.
But whether it’s lower wages, stiffer penalties for not using profit-sharing funds in tangible ways, or greater access to draft/international resources for non-playoff clubs that are always competitive, there has to be something to offer. Right now, there is at least one piece of content that should stay in its hands as five different offices seem to combine that same level of defeat felt by their small and mid-market fans.
If the Dodgers are a rising dynasty, that’s arguably in part because of their limitless spending capacity. But it’s also because there are groups that seem content to throw their hands up and ask, “why bother?” At a certain point, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy — and I’d argue that at least as far as the AL Central is concerned, we’ve reached that point. Let’s take a look at each AL Central club’s season so far.
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