Baseball has a
$417,300,000
problem.

That's what the Dodgers' roster cost last season once the luxury tax counted everything up. No team has ever spent more.1 Cleveland opened this year at $62.3 million.2 Both are perfectly legal under the current labor deal, which runs out in—

— Days
— Hours
— Minutes
— Seconds

The deal expires at 11:59 pm ET on December 1, 2026, and almost everyone in the sport expects the owners to lock the players out that night.15 I run this site because I think the fight is worth having, if it ends with a salary cap, a floor, and a competitive integrity tax.

Where I stand.

1

MLB needs a salary cap.

Football has had one since 1994, basketball since 1984, hockey since 2005.9,10,11 Baseball never got there. You can still win smart and poor in this league, sometimes, for a while. Mostly you win by being rich, and everyone in the sport knows it.

2

The Dodgers are ruining the integrity of the game.

I don't think they cheat. I think they found the cracks in the rules and drove a truck through them: two straight titles, a record $169.4 million tax bill1 they treat like a parking ticket, a billion dollars in salary pushed out into the 2040s.5 Good for their fans. Bad for the other twenty-nine.

3

Teams that refuse to spend should pay for it.

The flip side matters just as much. A cap alone would hand cheap owners an excuse, so put a floor under every payroll and fine the clubs that duck it. Make not-trying cost more than trying. Even the owners concede the principle: their own proposal pairs a $245.3 million cap with a $171.2 million floor.14

The gap, in one chart.

$0M Mets payroll, 2026 opening day2
$0M Guardians payroll, 2026 opening day2
0× Top-to-bottom spread (the NFL's is under 1.4×)
2026 opening day payrolls — the top five and the floor · $M, MLB Labor Relations Dept. figures2

The lighter piece of the Dodgers' bar is the $78.6M their deferrals knock off under MLB's present-value math. Counted in full, the 2026 roster costs $395.2M, not $316.6M.2

Data table
TeamPayroll ($M)

The Dodgers' 2025 tax bill alone, $169.4 million, was more than double what the Athletics spent on their entire Opening Day roster.1,3

NFLCapped since 1994 — $279.2M in 20259
NBACapped since 1984 — $154.6M in 2025–2610
NHLCapped since 2005 — $95.5M ceiling, $70.6M floor11
MLBNo cap. No floor. Ever.

A price, not a penalty.

The luxury tax is the only brake baseball has on spending, and the teams it's aimed at have stopped pretending to care. A record nine clubs owed a record $311 million for 2024.4 The next year the record fell again: $402.6 million, nearly half of it from one team.1 The Dodgers paid $169.4 million and won the World Series anyway.

$0M Total tax paid for 2025 — an all-time record1
0 Teams over the line, tying 2024's record1
2→2 Titles won by the top tax payer, 2024 and 20251
2025 luxury-tax bills · $M · three more clubs owed smaller amounts1
Data table
TeamTax ($M)

A limit you can buy your way past is just a price, and the richest team in the sport keeps deciding it's a fair one. Over the last two seasons the Dodgers have paid more in tax than most clubs spend on their whole roster.1,4 At some point you have to stop calling that a deterrent.

The deferral machine.

Shohei Ohtani makes $2 million a year right now. Starting in 2034, the Dodgers will pay him $68 million a year for a decade.7,8 Run that structure across a roster and you get a superteam whose sticker price the tax system barely sees. Nobody broke a rule, which is exactly the problem.

Dodgers deferred salary by player · approx., $M, owed 2028–20465,6
Data table
PlayerDeferred ($M)
$0B

in Dodgers salary owed to eight players between 2028 and 2046.5 Some of these checks will arrive long after the players have retired.

The accounting is what gets me. MLB discounts deferred money to present value, so the league officially scored the Dodgers' 2026 payroll at $316.6 million even though the roster really costs $395.2 million,2 and Ohtani's $70 million season counts as roughly $46 million against the tax.7 None of this is Ohtani's fault, and honestly it isn't the front office's either; they're playing the rules as written better than anyone else. Fine. Change the rules. Count salary at full value in the season it's earned and the whole trick dies overnight.

What I'd actually do.

Hard salary cap

A real ceiling, not a tax line you can budget around. Deferred salary counts at full value in the year it's earned. Nobody buys a five-year head start again.

Salary floor

If there's a ceiling in Los Angeles there's a floor in Cleveland, Miami, and Sacramento. Ownership's own proposal puts it at $171.2 million,14 nearly triple what the Guardians spent to open this season.2

Competitive integrity tax

Miss the floor and you pay the difference, plus a penalty, into a pool for the clubs that did spend. Tanking stops being a business plan once it comes with an invoice.

The union will fight a cap the way it always has. They struck for 232 days over one in 1994 and lost a World Series doing it,15 and that history is a big part of why the coming stoppage could run long.17,19 I understand the reflex. But a cap tied to a real floor is a different offer than the one they walked out on thirty years ago. It drags the bottom half of the league into free agency, which means more bidders and more jobs in the middle of the market. The 2022 deal raised the minimum salary 23% in a single negotiation,12 so the money is there. If it takes a lost spring training to get the structure right, I'll live.

How it got here.

Aug 1994

The strike

Players walk out on August 12 over a proposed salary cap. The stoppage runs 232 days and wipes out the World Series, the only time that has ever happened.15

Dec 2021

The lockout

Owners lock the players out the night the old CBA dies, the sport's first stoppage in a quarter century. It ends 99 days later with a higher tax threshold, a 23% raise to the minimum salary, and no cap. The real argument gets punted.12,13

Dec 2023

The $680M deferral

Ohtani signs for ten years and $700 million, with $680 million of it payable from 2034 to 2043. His tax number drops by about a third in the process.7,8

2024–25

Back-to-back

The Dodgers win the World Series in 2024 and again in 2025, paying $103 million and then a record $169.4 million in tax along the way.1,4

2025–26

Cap talk goes public

Reports put a formal framework on the table: a $245.3 million ceiling over a $171.2 million floor. The union's answer is no cap, period. Both sides start digging in.14,17,18

Dec 1, 2026

The CBA expires

11:59 pm ET. If the owners lock the doors that night, as everyone expects, this is where the sport's economics finally get renegotiated.15,19

2027

The season at stake

Spring training goes first if the stoppage drags, and maybe more. I'd rather lose March than keep this version of the sport.

If it takes a lockout,
take the lockout.

Baseball has come back from every stoppage it has ever had. I'm less sure it comes back from another decade of this.

Frequently asked.

When does the MLB collective bargaining agreement expire?

The current CBA, signed in March 2022, expires at 11:59 pm ET on December 1, 2026.12

Will there be an MLB lockout in 2026?

A lockout is widely expected the moment the CBA expires on December 1, 2026. Owners locked players out at the last expiration in December 2021, and both sides have spent 2025–26 preparing for a fight over a salary cap.15,19

Does MLB have a salary cap?

No. MLB is the only major North American league without one — the NFL has capped payrolls since 1994, the NBA since 1984, and the NHL since 2005. MLB's only spending brake is the competitive balance tax, a penalty teams can simply pay.9,10,11

How much luxury tax did the Dodgers pay?

The Dodgers paid a record $169.4 million in competitive balance tax for the 2025 season, on a tax payroll of about $417.3 million, after paying $103 million for 2024. League-wide, a record $402.6 million in tax was owed for 2025.1,4

How much deferred money do the Dodgers owe?

About $1.051 billion to eight players, payable from 2028 through 2046 — including $680 million to Shohei Ohtani, whose contract pays him $2 million a year now and $68 million a year from 2034 to 2043.5,7

What is a competitive integrity tax?

A proposed penalty on under-spending: paired with a salary floor, any club that fails to spend the minimum on payroll would pay the shortfall plus a penalty into a pool distributed to teams that do spend. It is the mirror image of the luxury tax, aimed at tanking instead of overspending.

Sources

  1. Dodgers lead MLB with record $169M luxury tax after winning 2nd straight World Series — ESPN / AP
  2. AP study: MLB average salary hits a record $5.34M as the Mets lead spending again — AP via FOX Sports
  3. MLB payrolls 2025: full list of every team from highest to lowest — Yahoo Sports
  4. Dodgers must pay $103 million in MLB luxury tax as a record nine teams owe penalty — CBS Sports
  5. Dodgers' deferred payments hit $1.051B to 8 players in 2028–46 — ESPN / AP
  6. Dodgers owe $1B+ in contract deferrals to Ohtani, Snell, more players — Bleacher Report
  7. Shohei Ohtani's Dodgers deal and deferred money, explained — MLB.com
  8. Ohtani's $700 million deal reportedly includes $680 million in deferrals — Forbes
  9. NFL sets salary cap at $279.2 million per team for 2025 season — NFL.com
  10. NBA salary cap for 2025–26 season set at $154.647 million — NBA Communications
  11. NHL, NHLPA announce team payroll ranges for next 3 seasons — NHL.com
  12. MLB, union reach agreement on new CBA as lockout ends — ESPN
  13. MLB lockout: timeline of CBA negotiations as lockout ends after three months — CBS Sports
  14. MLB owners reveal new details of salary cap proposal — OutKick
  15. Will there be baseball in 2027? What you need to know about MLB's looming labor battle — ESPN
  16. How could an MLB salary cap work? Lessons from NBA, NHL and NFL systems — ESPN (Passan)
  17. MLB weighs a salary cap as potential lockout looms in 2026 — CNBC
  18. 10 reasons why MLB is pushing now for a salary cap system — Forbes
  19. MLB lockout looms as 2026 CBA expires and salary cap talks stall out — Fox News

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