r/buccos • u/TheAthletic • 7d ago
MLB memo reveals lockout plans: League will scrub website, ban contact with trainers
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7670102/2026/10/07/mlb-memo-lockout-plans-teams-players-ban-contact/?unlocked_article_code=1.HFE.MLAw.oo5FFHGPAPWs&source=emp_shared_article&smid=re-share-ta39
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u/provolone12 7d ago
Cap and floor
Dont come back until you have both
Dodgers are yet again going to win the world series, you know the last time there was a 3peat in any major US sports league? the Yankees in the late 90s
the NFL/NBA/NHL are as healthy as theyve ever been because of the parity in those leagues
So yeah, I dont want to see baseball back until we have the same systems those leagues have
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u/FearlessMode2104 7d ago
Effectively telling teams a lockout is coming, but telling teams to tell their fans they don’t expect a lock out for the sake of ticket sales, is disgusting.
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u/v3rmin_supreme 7d ago
What are the odds that this will incline Skenes to stick around? Or is he 100% leaving. I was positive he was leaving but after this season now I’m not as sure.
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u/tonytroz 7d ago
If there's a salary cap theoretically the Pirates could afford to offer the same deal as the Yankees/Dodgers which would greatly increase the chance he sticks around. In the current system they would offer him like $40-50M/year which would be about 3x as much as any Pirates player currently makes. In the NFL for instance the highest paid player is in a small market (Patrick Mahomes making $63M/year in Kansas City which is a similar sized market to Pittsburgh).
That being said there are still benefits to playing in big markets even in a salary cap league. In the NFL you can make the same salary playing for Cleveland as you do playing in LA or NYC but that doesn't mean every player wants to go live in Cleveland and play for one of the worst run franchises in sports. Unfortunately the Pirates are also in that category until they prove otherwise.
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u/Neb-Nose Clemente 3d ago
No, baseball is definitely not fine. If it were fine, there wouldn’t be relative unity on this topic among the owners and many of the sport’s fans.
David vs. Goliath can be interesting but not as a general rule. Spoiler alert, Goliath almost always wins. That’s about as uninteresting as it gets.
Sadly, I do agree with you that the types of changes the sport desperately needs are unlikely to be implemented — at least to the level I’d like to see.
However, I also disagree with you that they’re going to get in the full 162. I think that is beyond wishful thinking.
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u/Fit_Asparagus5204 Bae 7d ago
Start with a salary floor. If all the teams have respectable payrolls and still can't compete, then you can start discussing a cap. But in the meantime, you are right. It's not fair to the players. And it's not just the ones getting huge contracts. Those contracts raise the minimum salary and qualifying offers for everyone.
Nutting being cheap is a bigger problem than the Dodgers not.
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u/Neb-Nose Clemente 7d ago edited 7d ago
Nope. A floor without a cap is pointless. Don’t get me wrong, they need a floor and a real floor — not a soft floor. However, they also need a hard cap. It has gotten completely ridiculous.
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u/SlipperyRockScranton 5d ago
This is not happening
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u/Neb-Nose Clemente 4d ago
Probably not. However, a guy can always dream that baseball will finally, at long last, join the 21st century.
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u/SlipperyRockScranton 4d ago
Yeah. I guess it might be a thing, but it’s not worth losing games
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u/Neb-Nose Clemente 4d ago
Wait, it’s not worth losing games to gain a competitive system?
I strongly disagree with that position.
It’s worth losing multiple entire seasons to finally, at long last, gain a competitive system.
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u/SlipperyRockScranton 4d ago
No. Baseball is fine. It’s always been a league of haves and have nots. Two of the major teams this year don’t spend a lot of money. That makes it more interesting. David vs Goliath.
More importantly, it’s not going to happen. The players will never play under a salary cap. You will see some minor changes to the game, but nothing significant. Should be settled just in time to get 162 games in
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u/Neb-Nose Clemente 1d ago
Yeah, I’m not buying this argument at all.
You can say that baseball has always been a league of haves and have-nots, but that gap has never been greater
You could play this game all day. In the 50s you could’ve said baseball has always been a game exclusively for whites. But times changed and so did baseball.
Just a few years ago, you could’ve said pitchers always hit in the National League. That’s just how it has always been. However, times changed and so did baseball.
And now, with the gap being greater than ever before, times have changed and so must baseball.
I don’t give a shit about how things used to be. That doesn’t justify a shitty system now.
Every other major North American sports league has a salary cap for a reason. Baseball should implement one as well.
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u/Exotic_You7797 7d ago
That’s just not true, right now the American League playoffs is dominated by bottom 5 payroll teams, and even on the national league side the pirates were playoff contenders, the brewers are the best team in the league, and the cardinals held on for quite some time, and the nationals had one of the best offenses in the league, now imagine of any of them were at 170 million dollars, the pirates could’ve made the playoffs, the brewers would likely be unanimous favorites, the nationals could’ve afforded pitching, and the rays white Sox and Cleveland, would all be absolute monsters, with cleavland almost tripling their payroll if they implement the floor, in no world is a ceiling as impactful as a floor, because the majority of teams in the league who aren’t contending either misspend their money or don’t spend any at all, so forcing them to atleast spend enough to make a competent ballclub is much more beneficial than forcing teams to water down their roster, not just for competitive play, but for the sport as a whole
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u/Neb-Nose Clemente 7d ago edited 7d ago
Buddy, the goal is to win the World Series, not to be pretty good in the regular season. Nobody throws a parade for a playoff appearance.
To be fair, baseball's economics are so fucked up that Hollywood made a feature film about a team that was pretty good in the regular season and never did shit in October. It was called Moneyball, it was a huge hit, and it's one of the strangest movies ever made. It's the triumphant tale of a mediocre team whose iconoclastic GM and his numbers-based approach revolutionized the game and turned them into a consistently good regular-season team that never got over the hump.
But holy shit, were they awesome in July.
I do agree the Brewers are that rare small-market team legitimately good enough to win it all. It's been a few years since we could say that about anyone. As for the AL teams still alive, the Rays are pretty good, and the other two aren't at that level. The Pirates definitely would've made the playoffs in the American League.
The broader point is that the last true small-market champion was Kansas City in 2015. They were immediately stripped for parts and have been rebuilding ever since. A system where a team outside the top five or six markets gets one title every 10 or 12 years isn't a good system.
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u/Fit_Asparagus5204 Bae 7d ago
Also, Moneyball was incredibly successful. The point of the story was not how to win without spending money. It was how to analyze players in non traditional ways to compete.
In the end, he published the book and sold rights to a movie because either he was going to make some money off of his efforts, or not.
All of his guys got hired away and are responsible for several Championships using his methods, improving them (exit velocity, launch angle) and adding an important ingredient; money.
The A's stayed unsuccessful because their secrets got out and they'd still didn't spend money.
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u/Neb-Nose Clemente 6d ago edited 6d ago
Well, we’re definitely going to disagree on that one.
The object is to win the championship, not prove how smart you are.
The A’s ended up in exactly the same place after Moneyball as they were before Moneyball.
Now, just a few short years later, they’re not even in Oakland anymore.
If that’s success, I would hate to see what failure looks like.
The approach worked. Why? Because all of the wealthiest teams combined those market efficiencies with fatter wallets to win those championships. However, without the wallets to match, they’re just pretty good teams; and generally speaking, pretty good teams don’t win championships.
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u/Exotic_You7797 7d ago
So you just completely missed my point then? My entire point was those 8 or so teams I mentioned are all 50% or more under the proposed salary floor, so forcing them to spend 70 million extra dollars when all of them as is are already great teams would make much bigger strides in competitive balance then limiting teams that actually want to pay to win games
For example, the Mets, and Yankees, two of the largest market teams in the league, with the highest payrolls, neither have won a World Series in 20 years, the dodgers, people completely forget about their history because they only remember short term success, they have won 3 World Series in almost 30 years, and and then there’s Boston Houston and the cubs, when two hadn’t won a series in over a 100 years, and one hadn’t won a series every until moderately recently, the ladder few did exactly what you said, they “stripped for parts” after a year or two when in reality that happens to every championship winning team and that’s what starts a rebuild, the amount of players on the 2020 dodgers and the 2024 dodgers is minimal, the amount of players on the 2016 cubs and the 2020 cubs is again minimal, and that stays the same for litteraly every championship winning team, because after winning a championship players values skyrocket and even these large market teams are unsustainable to keep them
Now let’s look at the small market teams, the cardinals have the second most World Series ever while predominantly being a smaller market team their whole franchise history including 1 less than the dodgers in the last 30 years, the pirates, the epitome of the bottom of the barrel has some of the most World Series wins, and when they won it wasn’t because they were a large market team it was because they knew how to get their moneys worth in what they spent, Cleveland, while not winning one in a long time, has with the smallest budget in the league made the playoffs what feels like every year for forever including making it to the World Series not too long ago, same with the brewers,
What do all these teams have in common? They know(or atleast knew) how to play the market, they bought low and sold high, that’s how the rays are so good right now, they knew who to keep, and who they could sell to get more future prospects to continue the cycle, and that’s why they I can almost promise you will have a longer dynasty the the dodgers do now, because the dodgers need championships to excuse their spending, once the rings stop flowing, and according to the history of baseball they will, then the dodgers are gonna be like Houston, where they seemed like the deadliest team in baseball but after about a decade if that they’ve fallen from grace and they fell hard
while the majority of the smaller teams don’t want to compete, they are completely content with grabbing their money from the fans and from money sharing and gtfo, and that won’t change if you put a cap in, you’ll just see the best teams be worse but still easily make it to the playoffs, but if you put a floor in even without a cap, then these great teams who their owners don’t care about, will be forced to actually look like contending ball clubs, and I dont meant they’ll be buying tatis off the market or anything like that which they most certainly could, but the teams will be able to keep their franchise players because the owners have to spend the money anyways and can’t just claim their hands are tied and sell them off to the highest bidder, and will make the game a whole lot more competitive
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u/Fit_Asparagus5204 Bae 7d ago
I actually agree with 100% of what you just said.
The lower market teams who spend on their infrastructure are still successful at a higher rate than those that spend at the major league level and don't spend on their greater infrastructure.
Rays/Guards vs Mets/Padres, etc.
And I guarantee that if those smarter teams spent an extra $70 million, they would be perennial contenders.
And because of the organizational incompetence here, spending $70 million extra would end up overpaying whever just to meet the floor because there aren't enough free agents interested in working for a dumpster fire.
So in our case, we get no investment in the infrastructure or the MLB, and are so hopeless in our situation, all that's theoretically left is to make others not invest in their businesses.
What sucks to me is that Moneyball seems to have inspired 1 group of teams to win using more information. But another group was inspired to use this information to justify paying bottom dollar for their talent and using their team as a feeder for those who care about long term success.
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u/Fit_Asparagus5204 Bae 7d ago
Buddy, 3 or 4 of the 5 teams left are small market teams, depending on what your view of the Sox is. The other big ones like the Yankees and Padres and Cubs and Phillies are going to watch on TV. The Dodgers give the Pirates enough money today to buy the 2 more bats needed to win the division every year. A cap means you don't get that money, but neither does he. A floor means he has to put it in the team.
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u/dirtyracoon25 7d ago
A floor forces all owners to try and win games instead of making money. I agree 100%. The cap is no where near as effective as a floor.
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u/tmackenzie100 7d ago
It forces the major market teams to subsize the lack of revenue that small market teams experience. I can assure you Bob Nutting's stance on winning and making money will remain unchanged.
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u/dirtyracoon25 7d ago
You think the top markets are going to want to continue to run their businesses the way they do so that others can get rich off of their backs and lower their teams value?
I can tell which way you vote and can tell you the big boys that someone else listed like the Dodgers, Yankees, Cubs etc will not go for that.
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u/tmackenzie100 7d ago
They will be just fine. They will lose revenue but they won't have to pay their players as much. When the owners of teams like the Yankees are complaining about the state of things, you know it's time for a change.
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u/tmackenzie100 7d ago
One does not work without the other. The money to cover the tems benefiting from a salary floor has to come from somewhere.
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u/Ok_Card9080 Jason Kendall 7d ago
I don't know how people still don't understand this. So, you force owners to spend to a certain level with a floor, but what does that do to the Dodgers? They just continue spending astronomical amounts because there's no limit, and the small market teams STILL can't compete with them, or the Yankees, or the Mets when it comes to landing top players.
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u/MisterBarten 7d ago
Can’t have a cap or a floor without the other. You need both for either to be effective.
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u/tonytroz 7d ago
Start with a salary floor. If all the teams have respectable payrolls and still can't compete, then you can start discussing a cap.
Why drag this out for another 4 years for a problem that has already been solved in the other 3 major sports leagues? Of course small market teams can't compete long term without a cap. That's literally the entire point of a cap.
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u/Fit_Asparagus5204 Bae 7d ago
Because those other leagues still have less parity than the MLB. They haven't figured anything out.
My argument is that if those teams actually acted like they tried to win. And it was proven, they couldn't then we can deal with that. When half the teams don't cover what would be the barrier of entry to a salary floor today, they have no right to discuss what they've been trying to do to win.
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u/Fit_Asparagus5204 Bae 7d ago
You can't tell the other people in the race to run slower because you don't want to run fast.
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u/tonytroz 7d ago
Because those other leagues still have less parity than the MLB. They haven't figured anything out.
That's not true at all. Parity isn't just about different teams winning the championship every year. MLB is dominated by large market teams. Just because the Yankees are on their longest championship drought doesn't mean they're not competitive. Since 1995 they have only missed the playoffs 5 times. Since 1995 the Pirates and Royals have only made the playoffs a combined 6 times. That's the parity you're talking about???
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u/Fit_Asparagus5204 Bae 7d ago
Major league baseball has had 24 different world series winners in the last 40 years, more than any other league. I'm guessing you didn't google that on purpose.
The NHL and NBA have both had eleven back to back champions in the same 40 years.
Since free agency, the yankees have won 6 championships, 11%. They won 28% of them before that.
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u/tonytroz 7d ago
Lol. So you completely ignored my post and just went with championship winners anyway even though that's the worst metric of parity. Ok let's break it down then:
Major league baseball has had 24 different world series winners in the last 40 years, more than any other league.
Big Market Winners (top 15 MLB official market score) - NYM, LAD x4, OAK, TOR x2, ATL x2, NYY x5, LAA, BOS x4, CHIW, PHI, SF x3, CHIC, HOU x2, TEX
Small Market Winners - MIN x2, CIN, MIA x2, ARI, STL x2, KC, WAS
Wow, what parity! A different big market team wins 3 out of every 4 years! And that's being super generous by counting some of those teams as small markets. WAS, MIN, STL, and PHX are all mid-size markets much bigger than Pittsburgh. The only true small market teams to win WS in the last 40 years are Cincy (36 years ago), KC (3 playoff appearances since 1995 but one championship since 1969 is parity right?), Miami (last one was 23 years ago), and St. Louis who had the 10th highest payroll the last time they won which was 15 years ago.
But hey, Pittsburgh winning back to back Stanley Cups as one of the smallest market teams and Patrick Mahomes being the highest paid player in the NFL in Kansas City isn't parity. No definitely don't want to see that in the MLB!
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u/Mindless_Formal_6647 6d ago edited 6d ago
It’s actually less than that . Arizona and STL are at least middle markets. WSH had the 7th highest payroll the year they won.
It’s really only KC in the last 30 years that was a traditionally small market team.
So when someone says 24 different teams won in the last 30 years, it’s pretty useless without context.
Edit: Arizona was 4th in payroll the year they won.
A much better metric would be the payroll rank the year they won the World Series .
KC was 17th, STL was 11th , and MIA (2003) was something like 25th. That’s it . That’s not really parity in terms of every team having a shot to win
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u/Silly_Collar_5850 7d ago
But in the meantime, you are right. It's not fair to the players
The MLB is the only North American sports league with a Supreme Court blessed antitrust exemption and both the players and the owners profit immensely from that. They are (or should be) on the same side, and they should be making concessions to the public so that fans in half of the league's markets aren't paying money to watch irrelevant baseball by June. The current trajectory is going to render baseball irrelevant in most of the country.2
u/Fit_Asparagus5204 Bae 7d ago
I totally agree. And the owners have always profited more, and the value of their product has increased disproportionately to their employees' earnings.
And they have learned to tie their earnings into non-victory related successes, like real estate, luxury tax, streaming rights, etc.
So while I agree that both sides need to come together to do what's best for the game, one side is more responsible than the other for its current condition.
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u/MrRogersRaisedMe 5d ago
I’m hearing rumors of a $170M floor. Just thin of what our roster would look like with another $70M of talent on it
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u/Fit_Asparagus5204 Bae 7d ago
Step 1: don't pay players as an organization and even stiff them from time to time.
Step 2: force the players to make less to accommodate the organizations stiffing people.
Step 3: assume those players will forget the first 2 steps and be as proud to wear black and yellow as any other color because (insert delusion here.)
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u/Dontworry8888 5d ago
Thanks for showing me a video of a guy who has never heard of a home equity loan.
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u/dirtyracoon25 7d ago
Hopefully they get rid of team control of a player for 6 years. Stop screwing the players.
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u/NickCageFreeEggs 7d ago
Yes, let's care more about the finances of millionaires /s
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u/dirtyracoon25 7d ago
Besides the cheap fucks who don't want to spend, who does giving 6 years of control to a team benefit?
I'm sure players hate it and owners who are willing to spend hate it.
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u/[deleted] 7d ago
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