It is all about the salary cap.
On August 12th, 1994, the Major League Baseball Players Association went on strike and effectively shut down the Major League Baseball industry. Neither the players nor the owners offered a compromise that could have allowed the games to go on. MLB owners wanted various forms of a salary cap while the players said no. The 1994 World Series was cancelled, the first time in 90 years that the event was not played. The owners wanted to use replacement players in 1995 but the Players Association went to court. Judge Sonia Sotomayor restored the old collective bargaining agreement and told both sides to “Play Ball” and there would not be “replacement baseball.” That was the last time that MLB games were missed because of a labor dispute although that was a 2022 owners’ lockout of the players which did impact spring training.
According to ESPN reporter Jeff Passan, some MLB owners think there will not be a season in 2027. The players and owners collective bargaining agreement ends on December 1st. The salary cap is again looming large over the negotiations. But there is a long time to go but the talks get serious. In December, players aren’t getting paid while the owners are presumably taking in money from the sale of 2027 tickets. But there are no regular season games until the end of March. There is no deadline really to get anything done until February, 2027. The third party involved here are the municipalities who put up public money to build spring training facilities and depend on tourism but those stakeholders don’t matter. There may be some pressure from politicians on the industry but both sides will ignore the outside noise. The main issue never changes. The owners want to cap salaries and the players don’t want a salary cap.
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Evan can be reached at evan_weiner@hotmail.com
