Tucker Pact Dodgers MLB Labor Peace

MLB fans are furious, as are players and owners. What did this offseason mean for baseball’s looming labor dispute?

THERE IS A GROUP of fans angry with baseball. There are many, and they not only exist on social networks. They’re in group chats talking about how much money the Los Angeles Dodgers spent after winning the last two World Series, and in cities big and small they look at the Dodgers with envy, masked by disapproving looks and curses, and maybe they just want to spend more time playing the game – maybe they love the shot clock, Shohei Ohtani, Aaron Judge, the in-person atmosphere, or whatever else about baseball today is worth admiring – but they’re not sure it’s all fair.

The owners are angry too. The valuation of their franchises is not growing as fast as that of their billionaire colleagues in other sports, and they blame the system that governs Major League Baseball. They don’t like it. Almost all owners believe MLB needs a salary cap. Their presence, the owners say, would immediately increase the value of the franchises, with the labor cost practically fixed and without the need to chase the Dodgers by spending $500 million annually on players. At the same time, they claim, it would provide a way to achieve a competitive balance, which they consider totally unbalanced. They believe a salary cap will solve everything, even if it means jeopardizing the 2027 season. “They’re ready to rock,” a senior team official said.

The players are angry too. Faced with what seems inevitable to them: after the expiration of the current collective agreement on December 1, the owners will impose a lockout and unceremoniously suspend the game. Faced with the insidious idea that MLB will not only propose a limit in the negotiation prior to expiration, but will remain firm in its inclusion in future offers. Faced with the reality that the majority of fans, in both public and private surveys, support MLB’s adoption of a limited system, more out of familiarity than any compelling argument compared to alternative structures. Players simply want to play and receive a fair share of the more than $12 billion in revenue the league generates annually. Their ability to achieve both, they say, should not be neutralized by the owners who four years ago voted unanimously in favor of the system they now criticize.

Baseball is in a strange situation today, with everyone bracing for the biggest labor war since 1994, when owners last sought a salary cap, players resisted and the World Series was canceled for the first time in 90 years. And yet, despite all the turmoil, the diametrically opposed visions of where the game should go, something else is unfolding in real time, a fascinating contradiction: Major League Baseball is experiencing a special moment. There are new fans. They are young. It’s just what MLB wanted. They like the shot clock. They like the stars. They like stories. They like the World Baseball Classic. They like the game, even when the Dodgers beat it.

Los Angeles created an empire because in the current MLB system, money and hypercompetition are a potent combination. And as much as the Dodgers have taken over the sport as they have – and, to a lesser extent, because of what they’ve done – there’s been a renaissance in recent years, a renewed interest in the game domestically that’s matched by enormous international growth, especially in Japan. If on-field performance itself is the appropriate barometer for measuring the true health of a sport, baseball is in top form, coming off a historic World Series, a love letter to what the game can be, featuring the emerging hero against the dastardest villain.

And yet, fans are tired of the disparity and strife ahead. It’s understandable. It’s difficult to support a sport whose asymmetry is a defining characteristic. The Dodgers win everything. Out of season. World Series. Out of season. World Series. Out of season. Another World Series?

Disdain for Los Angeles has solidified organically, just as it did 30 years ago, when the New York Yankees won the World Series as if it were their birthright and left fans of other teams devastated. In the wake of that came a codified luxury tax through which baseball found a solution that kept the game stable enough for more than 30 years of labor peace, a remarkable achievement. However, times change, and so must the systems. And if the Dodgers do anything, it’s distill the fans’ desires into a clear and forceful mandate for everyone involved: Make it feel fair.

MANY OTHER Teams are lavishing players with million-dollar contracts this offseason. Baltimore keeps spending. Toronto took advantage of its World Series to sign multiple high-priced free agents. In perhaps the biggest sign that the baseball apocalypse is approaching, the Pittsburgh Pirates signed a free agent to a multi-year contract, the first time in a decade. But all that seemed irrelevant when the Dodgers signed Kyle Tucker to the deal that stunned the baseball world.

Tucker, a four-time All-Star and the top free agent available this winter, had a decision to make. The Blue Jays, who were two outs away from dethroning the Dodgers in the World Series and, at least temporarily, quelling protests against them, had offered him a 10-year, $350 million contract with no deferrals, according to sources. The Dodgers and the New York Met represented a divergent path: both offered four-year contracts, eager to take advantage of the prime of Tucker’s career. Los Angeles guaranteed $240 million with a $64 million signing bonus and $30 million in deferrals, while the Mets responded with $220 million that included a $75 million initial bonus and no deferrals.

Never in the 50 years of free agency had a player turned down an offer of more than $300 million. On the other hand, a team had never tried to convince a player with a deal like the one the Dodgers or the Mets had. Five years earlier, reigning NL Cy Young Award winner Trevor Bauer led the way by signing a three-year, $102 million free agent deal with Los Angeles, foregoing longer contracts with lower average annual values. Last winter, third baseman Alex Bregman turned down a long-delayed six-year offer from Detroit for a three-year, $120 million deal with Boston, and he also earned buyout clauses, one of which he converted into the five-year, $175 million deal he signed this offseason with the Chicago Cubs.

Tucker surpassed his version. He sold his best years for a fortune. Flexibility was given with termination options after the second and third seasons. He can accumulate $120 million over the next two years, return to the market at age 31 and get a more representative long-term contract. Or he can pocket $250 million, spend four years with the scariest baseball machine in a generation and hit after the most talented player in baseball history.

Ohtani’s contract alone, signed before the 2024 season, is worth more annually than Tucker’s, and it is so deferred (Los Angeles pays him $2 million a year and delays payment of the remaining $680 million for a decade) that its current value is around $400 million. A year after Ohtani revolutionized the salary scale, Juan Soto surpassed him with a 15-year, $765 million no-deferral contract with the Mets.

That the Dodgers and Mets are the nexus of exorbitant salaries should surprise no one. They are owned by smart, curious and ruthless businessmen. Guggenheim Partners, the investment firm that owns the Dodgers, manages $350 billion. Steve Cohen, the hedge fund titan who bought the Mets in 2020, is worth more than $20 billion. They got rich hunting alpha. Any advantage, no matter how minuscule, is still an advantage. And in baseball, money (and the commitment to spend it) separates the shark from the minnow. The Dodgers and Mets don’t know what the future of baseball holds for them. What they do know is that, with this system, all it takes to accumulate one good player after another is money, something they have in abundance. And they use that money because teams willing to invest money in their Major League rosters operate in a different stratosphere. It’s them, and then everyone else.

Cash is critical to the deals players are seeking. They love signing bonuses because they save on taxes, and the Dodgers and Mets are happy to accept them. Players do not resist deferrals, since as long as they have residences in states with tax advantages, they benefit. The Dodgers and Mets are content to fund the deferred money (in Ohtani’s case, for example, MLB rules require the Dodgers to deposit $44 million annually into an escrow account so it can grow and eventually pay what he is owed), since it reduces the salary used to calculate their luxury tax bills. Other teams say liquidity problems prevent them from topping up contracts with signing bonuses and deferrals.

Over the past five seasons, between payroll penalties and the competitive balance tax (CBT), the Mets have spent $1,785,385,388 million, just above the Dodgers’ $1,716,051,502 million. The closest team is the Yankees, nearly $200 million behind the Dodgers, but the difference between the best and the worst is less due to them. At the bottom are the Athletics, who have spent $347,310,744 million in the last decade. Not far behind is Pittsburgh, with $356,028,106 million. Miami, Tampa Bay, Cleveland? Neither spends even a quarter of what the Mets or the Dodgers spend.

It is irrefutable that the Dodgers and Mets play a different game than the rest, and it is exactly what any fan would want their owners to do. You hate them because you’re not like them. The Dodgers not only have the largest payroll in baseball. They have the largest staff, one of the best minor league systems, some of the best facilities and, even without payroll, what their rivals consider the most robust operation in the sport. They’ve built the Death Star, and the rest of baseball is their Alderaan.

Due to the tax imposed on teams that exceed the capitalized salary limit (CBT) – salary surcharges that seek to discourage organizations from flexing their financial muscle – the Dodgers must pay a 110% penalty for each dollar they exceed the limit of $304 million. This means that, with a salary adjusted to $57.1 million to reflect his current net worth, Tucker will cost the Dodgers $119.9 million this year. This surpasses the current 2026 rosters of 10 teams.

Such an imbalance is astonishing, even considering that nothing in the rules prevents other owners from replicating the Dodgers’ behavior, other than their own willingness to deficit spend. Few are willing. Which leads them to push for a boundary, convincing themselves, with Mandalorian stubbornness, that this is the way.

THE DODGERS ARE an easy scapegoat for any owner who wants to argue for a salary cap. Limit enthusiasts cite a long list of facts related to payroll and success, and they are persuasive. Like more than half of the teams that have made the playoffs since the beginning of the century have had rosters in the top 10. Twelve of the last 15 World Series winners, too. League-wide winning percentages correlate more strongly with payroll than in the NFL, NBA or NHL. No one can deny that, in the MLB, an owner’s spending matters.

The players have a contrasting set of compelling data. The team that won the most regular season games in 2025? The Milwaukee Brewers, with a payroll of $117.1 million, ranked 23rd in MLB. The usual stingy Cleveland Guardians have won the last two American League Central division titles and have had more wins in the last decade than any other team except the Dodgers, Houston Astros and Yankees. The Tampa Bay Rays’ win total has surpassed the first two figures of their payroll, which has never reached $98 million, in five of the last 10 years. Since the turn of the century, more MLB franchises have won championships (16) than the NHL (14), NFL (13) and NBA (12). Money helps, players acknowledge, but it offers no guarantees. Case in point, the Mets, whose only postseason appearances in the last nine years included a wild-card round disaster against San Diego in 2021 and a 2024 National League Championship Series that ended at the hands of the Dodgers despite having a top-two payroll in each of the last four seasons.

Players argue that it only takes one trip to the playoffs for baseball’s randomness to reveal itself.

Texas won the World Series as a fifth seed against sixth-seeded Arizona in 2023, the last time the Dodgers lost in the postseason. They responded over the next two-plus years by signing Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Tucker, two-time Cy Young winner Blake Snell, right-hander Tyler Glasnow, utility man Tommy Edman, reliever Tanner Scott, three-time reliever of the year Edwin Diaz and Japanese sensation Roki Sasaki for a combined $1.8 billion. The guarantee for those nine players is greater than what the Rays, Marlins, Pirates and A’s have each spent in the entire 21st century.

At the center of the looming battle between the union and the league are different worldviews. The union system is zero-sum: it offers organizations a wide range of options for building their teams, and the owners decide how to proceed. Players don’t care how the money is spent. They only care that it is spent. And that is what bothers them most about a system with salary limits. As lucrative as MLB’s offer is, Ohtani, Soto and Tucker did not get their contracts in a system with limits on player compensation. Giving that up after a winter in which Tucker hit the $60 million threshold, Bo Bichette got a contract worth $42 million annually from the Mets and nine players have received nine-figure deals is like giving up a goose that lays golden eggs for one that lays eggs of unknown metallurgy.

MLB and owners consistently suggest that players would generally make more money in a cap system. This may be true. A cap consists of a predetermined pool and a defined income distribution with a ceiling and a floor. Its flexibility varies. The NFL operates with an inflexible maximum limit, the NHL with a strict maximum limit, with exceptions for long-term injuries, and the NBA with a flexible minimum limit that allows contracts to be renewed with local players, but imposes severe penalties for exceeding the maximum limit too much.

Certainly, MLB could design a cap system so magnanimous that players would put aside their preconceptions, fostered by years of anti-cap rhetoric drilled into their heads during MLBPA meetings, and consider its merits. It is exceptionally unlikely. But if MLB’s top priority truly is competitive balance, and the league is convinced that a cap would foster such an environment, its first offer could reflect that rather than seem like what players believe: a tactic to increase franchise values ​​disguised as a vehicle for fairer play.

Although academic research on the effectiveness of caps as competitive balancing tools is limited, a 2011 study by two Middle Tennessee State University economists determined no causal relationship between caps and balancing. As surprising as it may seem, mathematics proves it, and ultimately any collective agreement is little more than a mathematical problem.

And it is there, more than decades of hostility against the salary cap, where such a system loses the interest of baseball players. NBA player salaries were cut by nearly $500 million last year because the league failed to meet revenue expectations. After all, the guaranteed money was not guaranteed. Even if that weren’t an impediment, finding a minimum and maximum that satisfied all parties involved and achieved the league’s stated goal would be difficult.

Let’s use a potentially realistic example that would maintain the roughly $5.5 billion teams paid for players in 2025. With a $280 million cap hit and $150 million floor, the money teams spend would be within $50,000 of last season. What players lose on the high end ($236 million to the Dodgers, $150 million to the Mets, $85 million to the Yankees and $69 million to the Philadelphia Phillies) would be made up on the low end. To reach $150 million, the Marlins would need to spend an additional $82 million, the A’s and Rays $71 million, and so on: 11 teams and a total of $540 million.

The problems are multiple. The union would mock the limit for teams that have shown they are willing to spend twice as much. Lower-revenue organizations would shudder at the additional tens of millions more than a third of the league would be forced to pay. And in no universe is a $130 million gap between the top and bottom teams constituted competitive equilibrium. Pushing both in opposite directions (a $320 million cap and a $130 million minimum) would appease teams’ selfish desires, but it would be a snub to parity. Moving everyone toward a middle ground, albeit a more equitable one, would exacerbate the disillusionment of restricting teams that want to spend and forcing those that don’t.

MLB’s labor relations department recognizes the complications it faces, not only over player objections, but also in reaching consensus among owners with varying degrees of confidence in a salary cap. Some are inflexible, others are opposed to uncontrolled spending, but they are flexible. Everyone also knows that as much as they want a salary cap, the most pragmatic solution is not to cross the limits imposed by the MLBPA as if they were Carl Lewis. There is an agreement, one that appeases the players for now, that defers the salary cap issue and positions the league to make a much more compelling argument for its ultimate goal.

For years, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred has dreamed of trying to follow the NFL’s model and nationalize local television rights. With the league’s domestic deals with Fox, TNT, NBC and ESPN expiring after the 2028 season, Manfred, according to sources, is also looking to acquire local rights for all 30 teams and market all of MLB’s television properties.

And that’s where the opportunity arises. Currently, MLB’s national television deals generate about $1.8 billion annually. With Amazon, Netflix, Apple, Paramount, ESPN, NBC, CBS, TNT and Fox as potential bidders, and with the ability to sell every minute of every baseball game within reach, baseball broadcast rights could stabilize vital revenue streams. Regardless of the MLBPA’s willingness to accept a limited system, profits from a television gold mine — and a proper revenue-sharing system designed with competitive balance in mind, something the union has resisted as a panacea — could boost low-income laggards. When they are strong, baseball is strong. When baseball is strong, popularity grows. When popularity grows, the value of franchises tends to grow.

“The only reason I’m confident we won’t miss games,” said one team president, “is because of what television can do for us.”

Baseball’s crucial decision is not to impose or not to impose a limit. It is adapting or tempting obsolescence. The more fans feel alienated, the more franchise values ​​become the owners’ divine purpose, the more the union denies that the growing wage gap is a short- and long-term problem, the more likely baseball will weaken toward the latter. Open-mindedness, creative thinking, clear communication – these are not just buzzwords. They are necessary to save a relationship as deteriorated as the one that exists between the league and the union.

How long owners have the guts to hold on to a cap proposal will guide these negotiations. They are the ones trying to introduce radical change into a system that has existed for more than half a century, fed up with standard operating procedures, lighter and gas can in hand. They know that if baseball disappears, no matter the reason, people will find other things to do with their lives. The owners understand this and remain firm, confident, with a posture of justified indignation while their customers repeat in unison a mantra that will undoubtedly become stronger and stronger.

Whatever it takes, please just solve it and don’t ruin the game for us.