Why the World Series will define the MLB lockout battle

| Getty Images The last thing anyone will remember before MLB embarks on a potentially generation-defining labor war will be the 2026 World Series. The winner will enjoy a longer-than-normal celebratory honeymoon, since the beginning of the 2027 season will almost certainly be locked out, and they will perhaps even benefit from the easiest title defense in the history of the sport, should the full season be lost in the yelling. But first, we need a winner, and the Cleveland Guardians, Tampa Bay Rays, Milwaukee Brewers and Los Angeles Dodgers still stand as perhaps the last four teams to play MLB baseball until 2028. Bluntly, World Series results are what got us in this mess in the first place, with the Dodgers seemingly trading for, or signing every fun player in the league, and winning the last two titles. The specter of a third in a row is a large part of why MLB owners think they can impose a salary cap on their players, a feat achieved in the modern era only by the NHL in 2005. To oversimplify the debate in two sentences: MLB owners believe a salary cap, which would limit and floor spending on players and exists in the NHL, NBA and NFL, would ensure better competitive balance, improve their product, and skyrocket franchise valuations and revenue. The MLB Players Association believes that a salary cap murders their unchecked leverage to negotiate the kinds of ludicrous contracts like the 15-year, $765 million deal that Juan Soto signed, as well as axing the earning potential of the next generation of players. In short, we’re talking about who controls the flow of money. The owners’ argument that a salary cap will massively increase TV revenue and franchise valuations is true, and eventually that money will reach the players. But a cap also permanently limits players’ ability to access that money, while the MLBPA has essentially held for its entire existence that it will accept a salary cap only when the forces of hell march on earth and Jupiter turns into a pinecone. So how will the World Series affect all of this? It’s rare that a labor dispute is prosecuted almost entirely in the court of public opinion, but MLB’s upcoming lockout will be that kind of party. MLB has already launched a pro-salary cap PR campaign, and both sides will have to reckon with the fact that everyone will remember the World Series the whole time this negotiation is going on. Intuitively, one would say that anyone but the Dodgers winning — or, with the Dodgers currently down 2-0 to the Brewers, without Los Angeles even in the World Series — should destroy the owners’ argument that MLB has a competitive balance problem. Cleveland, Milwaukee and Tampa Bay all spend nothing on players. They are small markets which have looked New York, Boston and Los Angeles in the eye and said “lol, nice try.” But that interpretation is a miscalculation. MLB owners are not dawdling buffoons who wagered their entire salary cap case on the Dodgers three-peating. That would be stupid, and these are not stupid people; these are shrewd, ruthless business operators, who understand that the amount of money they stand to gain from a salary cap is so overwhelming that they will endure a year of vilification from fans if it comes to that. I don’t believe Cleveland, Milwaukee or Tampa Bay winning it all saves us from a long lockout— in fact, I think it makes it more likely. The MLBPA will have something clear to point to as to why a cap is unnecessary, and many fans will probably agree with them; but believe me when I say the owners have the stomach for this. Do you? Should the Dodgers win, I actually think it reduces our chances of a protracted lockout if for no other reason than how strong it makes the owners’ case that MLB needs a salary cap now and no, we can’t wait, look what the Dodgers are doing. I personally could care less if the Dodgers three-peat, and the MLB Postseason is honestly a rather-idiotic carnival game that distills literal millions of data points over a 162-game season into a crapshoot where anything can happen. Are the Guardians and Rays successful because MLB doesn’t need a salary cap and is super fair, or are they successful because the playoffs are just random? Nothing they did all year tells me either team is actually that good, so I’d lean the latter. The great irony of this whole discussion is it doesn’t matter. In reality, the World Series result does not change anything about MLB’s need for a salary cap. Owners will hold firm on the need for one no matter what, and the MLBPA will continue to say they’d rather go play cricket — the World Series winner just changes the air around the negotiating table, not whether we need the thing in the first place. So do we need a salary cap? I’ve gone back and forth on this all year, and after a full season of thinking landed exactly here: a salary cap would definitely improve Major League Baseball if we could just snap our fingers and get one. Equality of results, like, say the Rays winning, is not the same thing as competitive balance, and part of the issue with giga-payroll teams like the Dodgers is they choke out fans of small markets from getting to watch their favorite players. It was monumentally stupid that Detroit Tigers fans knew that they couldn’t keep Tarik Skubal, and monumentally stupider that Pittsburgh Pirates fans are just counting down the days until they have to trade Paul Skenes. That’s not a healthy environment, and fans of smaller market teams should be allowed to be excited about the future. But I’ve decided that a salary cap does not improve MLB enough to be remotely worth what it’s going to take to get it. The main beneficiaries of a cap are, simply, billionaires, and I’m not going to pound the pavement canvassing for the interests of the 0.1 percent. Spending on players is only one facet of success in Major League Baseball, and competent scouting, analytics, development and front office operations are another — ask Arte Moreno and the Los Angeles Angels how well simply buying players and ignoring infrastructure worked for Mike Trout’s career. World Series winner agnostic, the ensuing fight to get a cap could do more damage to baseball than it would improve it. So I kindly ask everyone around me… who seem to be sharpening pitchforks… to please calm the hell down.

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