All The Owners Are So Bad In Multiple Ways - Work Stoppage 2027 Style

[Bertz]

This is a good article, I frankly don't expect to lose any games but that 60ish game mark looks like an absolute red line.

[macarthur31]

54 minutes ago, Bertz said:

This is a good article, I frankly don't expect to lose any games but that 60ish game mark looks like an absolute red line.

On one hand, the owners will still get the TV money for 2027 games - whether or not they happen.  That seems to me to be a useful bolstering for their war chest.  However, if they do "punt" on the season, that costs them a year in waiting to do a new lucrative media deal.  So, how greedy are they?

[Bertz]

5 hours ago, macarthur31 said:

On one hand, the owners will still get the TV money for 2027 games - whether or not they happen.  That seems to me to be a useful bolstering for their war chest.  However, if they do "punt" on the season, that costs them a year in waiting to do a new lucrative media deal.  So, how greedy are they?

This feels super super super important:

Quote

 

For 2023, local media accounted for 21 percent of the average team’s revenue, with 12 percent being the lowest and 32 percent the highest, the union told its players.

Central revenue, meanwhile, made up 26 percent of an average team’s income. This bucket, which is shared equally by the 30 teams, includes all the national TV deals — but also includes other streams, such as national sponsorship deals.

 

So 26% is shared revenue, and that is mostly but not all national TV money.  Let's for the sake of round numbers call it 20% that they can count on still getting from the central pot even without playing

~20% is local TV, which has some leeway for missed games (30ish, depending on the team) but much less than the national deals

The remaining 55% is not broken out, but it's presumably mostly game day revenue.

So if owners want to absolutely maximize their free lunch they're looking at ~1/3rd of their typical revenue? However the national TV dollars are essentially just borrowing from 2029.  You also, presumably, have major deleterious effects on the next set of rights deals.

I just see no reason to believe owners are willing to do that.  If I had to place odds on how this plays out, it'd be something like:

4% - A deal is reached before spring training is impacted.  This would have been 0% six months ago, but Monfort and Moreno are two of the mkre problematic owners from a labor standpoint and they're on the way out 

10% - A deal is reached where ST gets a bit of a haircut but before the regular season is impacted

70% - Like last time, a deal is reached where 162 games are played but with a scheduling adjustment (the league setting Opening Day a week early was not an accident IMO)

10% - We miss games, but basically just enough to be obnoxious.  Teams play like 148 or something stupid like that

5% - We miss enough games to horsefeathers with local TV contracts, but few enough to avoid this 60 game national TV cliff 

1% - We cross this national tv red line

0% - We miss a full season or more

 

[Andy]

12 hours ago, macarthur31 said:

On one hand, the owners will still get the TV money for 2027 games - whether or not they happen.  That seems to me to be a useful bolstering for their war chest.  However, if they do "punt" on the season, that costs them a year in waiting to do a new lucrative media deal.  So, how greedy are they?

That 2027 thing is textbook bad faith maneuvering. The NFL pulled the same horsefeathers during the 2011 lockout, as I recall. At the absolute best, it's sketchy, and more likely it illustrates that they absolutely did intend and have intended to have a lengthy lockout if they felt like they could get away with it.

[Tangled Up in Plaid]

https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2026/10/mlb-proposes-shorter-regular-season-playoff-changes.html

tl;dr mlb proposing 154-game season but expanding division series to 4 out of 7

Edited Thursday at 09:43 PM by Tangled Up in Plaid

[Rex Buckingham]

1 hour ago, Tangled Up in Plaid said:

https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2026/10/mlb-proposes-shorter-regular-season-playoff-changes.html

tl;dr mlb proposing 154-game season but expanding division series to 4 out of 7

Contingent on players agreeing to a salary cap 

[Andy]

Fewer Cubs games, and less money for the players, in exchange for more crap shoot baseball, none of which I care about if it doesn't involve the Cubs

These horsefeatherss are intentionally making their proposals more and more laughable and awful

[Tangled Up in Plaid]

There's also some BS about the teams with byes choosing their opponent? Just reseed, idiots 

[Bertz]

Interesting that they offered 154.  Most of the scuttlebutt the last few years has been around 156:

- 26 week season with 1 scheduled off day every week

- Two 3 game series every week (no more 2s or 4s unless it's a rainout/makeup)

- Maths out cleanly for a relatively balanced schedule both in the current division setup and also the coming 32 team/4 team divisions setup 

[Derwood]

And the higher seed gets to "pick their opponent" each round, however that works

 

[BigSlick]

Returning to a 154 game season is such an odd solution I almost don’t know how to think about it.

i will say any solution that reduces the meaning and importance of the longest regular season in professional sports to further increase the almost completely random roulette wheel that is the postseason pisses me off. 

[Tangled Up in Plaid]

27 minutes ago, BigSlick said:

Returning to a 154 game season is such an odd solution I almost don’t know how to think about it.

i will say any solution that reduces the meaning and importance of the longest regular season in professional sports to further increase the almost completely random roulette wheel that is the postseason pisses me off. 

At least the LDS would be less roulettey. It would make me hate the 2/3 WC even more though 

[Hunter]

One of the other ideas in the proposal was the addition of a doubleheader with every team in your division. No thanks.

[Rcal10]

2 hours ago, BigSlick said:

Returning to a 154 game season is such an odd solution I almost don’t know how to think about it.

i will say any solution that reduces the meaning and importance of the longest regular season in professional sports to further increase the almost completely random roulette wheel that is the postseason pisses me off. 

How does adding 2 games in the DS increase randomness in the playoffs? Or, why would letting the better team pick who they want to play in the playoffs increase randomness? Wouldn’t that be an attempt to reduce it? To me, nothing worth being pissed off about. 8 less games doesnt bother me either. 

[CubinNY]

On 9/25/2026 at 11:13 AM, macarthur31 said:

On one hand, the owners will still get the TV money for 2027 games - whether or not they happen.  That seems to me to be a useful bolstering for their war chest.  However, if they do "punt" on the season, that costs them a year in waiting to do a new lucrative media deal.  So, how greedy are they?

Never underestimate the magnitude of their greed. They have a lifestyle to maintain. 

[CubinNY]

On 9/25/2026 at 5:11 PM, Bertz said:

 

10% - We miss games, but basically just enough to be obnoxious.  Teams play like 148 or something stupid like that

 

 

I would put this as the most likely outcome, along with some harder luxury tax system in place and no floor. The owners are in a tough place. They want cost containment, but don't want to share with the players or each other. I think it will be a marginal win for the owners, while the players get a 154-game season moving forward. 

[macarthur31]

22 minutes ago, CubinNY said:

I would put this as the most likely outcome, along with some harder luxury tax system in place and no floor. The owners are in a tough place. They want cost containment, but don't want to share with the players or each other. I think it will be a marginal win for the owners, while the players get a 154-game season moving forward. 

From my limited vantage point, I intuit that centralizing the media inventory and landing that next rights deal ASAP is top priority for Manfred.  (IIRC, I don't think they need unanimous owners vote to get that done.). I agree that the MLBPA isn't going to buckle on salary cap, but the owners will extract enough other items (domestic draft contraction, establish int'l draft, etc) to support more cost certainty.  They can live with a "tougher" soft cap, since 80% of owners already treat it like a hard cap - and we will lose a small sliver of games, but likely will play ball by April.

[Rcal10]

51 minutes ago, macarthur31 said:

From my limited vantage point, I intuit that centralizing the media inventory and landing that next rights deal ASAP is top priority for Manfred.  (IIRC, I don't think they need unanimous owners vote to get that done.). I agree that the MLBPA isn't going to buckle on salary cap, but the owners will extract enough other items (domestic draft contraction, establish int'l draft, etc) to support more cost certainty.  They can live with a "tougher" soft cap, since 80% of owners already treat it like a hard cap - and we will lose a small sliver of games, but likely will play ball by April.

To me this whole cap/floor idea the owners are said to be for is all nonsense to get other things. I just don’t see lower spending teams agreeing to a floor. And if there is a cap there has to be a floor. Even if the owners wanted a cap of $270M, what would the floor be? I would guess it should be at least 70% of the cap? At that, then floor is almost $190M.  Does anyone honestly believe the small market owners are going to want to have a payroll of $190M? I certainly don’t. Also, with a cap/floor I would imagine there wouldn’t be luxury tax given to lower market teams. There shouldn’t be any luxury tax since in a cap no kne can go over. But also, there shouldn’t be any different rules to give lower spending teams extra picks in the draft, or more IFA money or any other advantage they get. All teams should play by the same rules. Again, why would small market teams want that. Then on the other side of the argument, do we really believe the high revenue teams really want full revenue sharing? Do they really want to spread their revenues around the league, evenly? The whole idea from the owners POV doesn’t make any sense to me. 
I know a lot of guys know way more than me in this, so maybe what I am saying doesn’t make sense. But could someone(maybe cubinNY) explain why a salary cap with any floor and ceiling and revenue sharing would be something enough owners would get behind. 

[macarthur31]

23 minutes ago, Rcal10 said:

To me this whole cap/floor idea the owners are said to be for is all nonsense to get other things. I just don’t see lower spending teams agreeing to a floor. And if there is a cap there has to be a floor. Even if the owners wanted a cap of $270M, what would the floor be? I would guess it should be at least 70% of the cap? At that, then floor is almost $190M.  Does anyone honestly believe the small market owners are going to want to have a payroll of $190M? I certainly don’t. Also, with a cap/floor I would imagine there wouldn’t be luxury tax given to lower market teams. There shouldn’t be any luxury tax since in a cap no kne can go over. But also, there shouldn’t be any different rules to give lower spending teams extra picks in the draft, or more IFA money or any other advantage they get. All teams should play by the same rules. Again, why would small market teams want that. Then on the other side of the argument, do we really believe the high revenue teams really want full revenue sharing? Do they really want to spread their revenues around the league, evenly? The whole idea from the owners POV doesn’t make any sense to me. 
I know a lot of guys know way more than me in this, so maybe what I am saying doesn’t make sense. But could someone(maybe cubinNY) explain why a salary cap with any floor and ceiling and revenue sharing would be something enough owners would get behind. 

I align with you that the prospect of a salary cap is likely more of a negotiating chip with regards to the reality of executing it - they'd have to open their books, discern what counts as "Baseball Related Income", and the current proposal of floor is like 70% of cap, which is laughable given that NBA/NFL/NHL floors are at 90%.

However, I understand that cost certainty is the biggest prize - and namely that through a salary cap they can limit player spending, even as the media deals and other potential revenue streams keep rising.  (Or perhaps this prevents rogues like Steve Cohen to uber-invest on payroll; or in the NBA - see Steve Ballmer circumventing the cap to give Kawhi Leonard's camp all the monies). 

Quick google search says to me that it takes 23/30 owners to pass major league wide rules. The biggest winners in local TV revenue are LAD ($334M), NYM ($217M), LAA ($172M), CHC ($132M) and NYM ($128M).  If the average MLB team makes $40-$50M, Manfred just needs to make the case that a centralized media package could net $90M-$100M per team, and he could get enough votes to pass.

[Rcal10]

46 minutes ago, macarthur31 said:

I align with you that the prospect of a salary cap is likely more of a negotiating chip with regards to the reality of executing it - they'd have to open their books, discern what counts as "Baseball Related Income", and the current proposal of floor is like 70% of cap, which is laughable given that NBA/NFL/NHL floors are at 90%.

However, I understand that cost certainty is the biggest prize - and namely that through a salary cap they can limit player spending, even as the media deals and other potential revenue streams keep rising.  (Or perhaps this prevents rogues like Steve Cohen to uber-invest on payroll; or in the NBA - see Steve Ballmer circumventing the cap to give Kawhi Leonard's camp all the monies). 

Quick google search says to me that it takes 23/30 owners to pass major league wide rules. The biggest winners in local TV revenue are LAD ($334M), NYM ($217M), LAA ($172M), CHC ($132M) and NYM ($128M).  If the average MLB team makes $40-$50M, Manfred just needs to make the case that a centralized media package could net $90M-$100M per team, and he could get enough votes to pass.

Would they get 23 votes? I assume you agree the higher revenue teams wouldn’t like to share and drop to $90M in revenues. So they would be against it. Then, the low earning teams, even getting $90M instead of what they normally get in their own revenues and from the luxury tax, would they want to have to go to $190M for  team payroll. I don’t think several teams would want that. The total payroll of the 3 non Dodger teams in the playoffs is $364M. Would any of them want to have to spend $190M?

[macarthur31]

4 minutes ago, Rcal10 said:

Would they get 23 votes? I assume you agree the higher revenue teams wouldn’t like to share and drop to $90M in revenues. So they would be against it. Then, the low earning teams, even getting $90M instead of what they normally get in their own revenues and from the luxury tax, would they want to have to go to $190M for  team payroll. I don’t think several teams would want that. The total payroll of the 3 non Dodger teams in the playoffs is $364M. Would any of them want to have to spend $190M?

Aside from the Local TV Deal money, I'd imagine that getting the salary cap installed would go a long way towards getting clearer franchise valuations.  MLB just increased the cap for single private equity investment up to 20% (though it can't exceed the owner's controlling stake) - so perhaps higher franchise valuations now ups the potential moolah gained through P/E coming in.   Getting this done also paves the way for expansion to get to 32 total teams - (16 in AL/NL, 4 divisions of 4 teams each), and clearer cost certainty may increase the amount of potential owner candidates.  All in all, estimated to be roughly $6B in expansion fees to divvy between 30 teams - $200M in one fell swoop sure helps.

So, this does become a "intramural" battle within the owners - status quo is good for some (big markets who want to keep pushing their advantage, as well as small markets who are shielded from having to spend up to a floor), but are they willing to trade the known present for a potentially more lucrative future?

I have to imagine that trying to align 23/30 is easier than the amount that the MLBPA has to align; and owners will have a bigger warchest to wait the lockout out than the players.

[Rcal10]

11 minutes ago, macarthur31 said:

Aside from the Local TV Deal money, I'd imagine that getting the salary cap installed would go a long way towards getting clearer franchise valuations.  MLB just increased the cap for single private equity investment up to 20% (though it can't exceed the owner's controlling stake) - so perhaps higher franchise valuations now ups the potential moolah gained through P/E coming in.   Getting this done also paves the way for expansion to get to 32 total teams - (16 in AL/NL, 4 divisions of 4 teams each), and clearer cost certainty may increase the amount of potential owner candidates.  All in all, estimated to be roughly $6B in expansion fees to divvy between 30 teams - $200M in one fell swoop sure helps.

So, this does become a "intramural" battle within the owners - status quo is good for some (big markets who want to keep pushing their advantage, as well as small markets who are shielded from having to spend up to a floor), but are they willing to trade the known present for a potentially more lucrative future?

I have to imagine that trying to align 23/30 is easier than the amount that the MLBPA has to align; and owners will have a bigger warchest to wait the lockout out than the players.

I completely understand the players not wanting it. I never questioned that. My skepticism is in the owners trying to have us believe 23 of them would agree to a cap/floor revenue sharing salary cap. I appreciate your explanation of how they might. 

[CubinNY]

Currently, only 12 teams have a payroll above $190M. So, to make that work, more teams are going to be takers than givers. 

[Rcal10]

48 minutes ago, CubinNY said:

Currently, only 12 teams have a payroll above $190M. So, to make that work, more teams are going to be takers than givers. 

Do you believe enough owners would vote for a salary cap with a floor at 70% of the ceiling and full revenue sharing? All teams then play by the same rules? I don’t. 
And, if the ceiling is $270M, is it possible players actually earn more in his format. 18 teams would have to spend more than they do now. Only the Dodgers and maybe a few other teams would have to cut payroll. 

[CubinNY]

23 minutes ago, Rcal10 said:

Do you believe enough owners would vote for a salary cap with a floor at 70% of the ceiling and full revenue sharing? All teams then play by the same rules? I don’t. 
And, if the ceiling is $270M, is it possible players actually earn more in his format. 18 teams would have to spend more than they do now. Only the Dodgers and maybe a few other teams would have to cut payroll. 

I don't know. But I have a hard time seeing the big clubs willing to send that much money to the small clubs, if they are telling the truth about revenue. I don't believe they are telling the truth.

It's funny how you can play with numbers. The "average" payroll is 183 million, but the median payroll is well south of that at 174 million. 

If they were to somehow manage a cap at 270 million, only 5 teams would be over the cap, while 18 would be under the floor if it lands at 190 million. I'm having a hard time making the math work unless the "small" teams are hiding money. 

Edited 11 hours ago by CubinNY