CBA negotiations 2026

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/50134346/mlb-proposes-shorter-regular-season-best-7-division-series

kind of on board with all of these proposals? tell me why I’m a lackey and this is anti-labor. obviously the salary cap is a separate issue, though personally I’m not opposed to that either presuming revenue is shared equitably

Yup if revenue is fairly distributed there should be no objections to a cap, especially if it's coupled with an appropriate floor.

From a competitive balance standpoint the league needs this. The Dodgers should have to part with some players ffs.

If they win yet another championship is certainly not going to help the players case in the eyes of the public

From a competitive balance standpoint the league needs this.

counterpoint: it does not

it kinda does!

Anyone who argues in favor of a salary cap should be banned from the board

Salary cap and floor needs to happen, the other three top leagues have it.

Okay maybe not a full on hard cap, but why not a significant luxury tax with serious multipliers (like the NBA before the 2nd apron BS) incorporating deferred money (if that whole nonsense isn't banned outright) on an average annual payout basis? Close the loopholes. Luxury tax money then must be spent by other teams on players and players only, and there's still a salary floor.

But no restrictions coupled with no floor allowing garbage franchises to cheat their fans like they do today is an odious take... the status quo is not good.

the last four teams in this postseason will be the dodgers +

tampa
milwaukee
clevo/cws

where are they ranked, salary-wise?

WE HAVE EXACTLY ZERO INFORMATION ON HOW MUCH MONEY BASEBALL TEAMS/OWNERS MAKE (apart from hints from the atlanta braves' public records)

this is all a smokescreen because today's owners only care about CONTROL and MONEY. i mean george steinbrenner was an asshole but at least that guy wanted to win.

i have personally witnessed rob manfred saying what an 'honor' it was to work for this group of baseball owners. he was hired as commissioner because he was an anti-labor lawyer; he doesn't care about the game or its place in society (especially if it offends donald trump).

he and they want to make everyone a contractor subject to whatever immensely rich people feel like giving them.

is it absurd that certain individual baseball players HAVE BEEN GIVEN contracts over $30m a year? yes!

does that not make you question how much the owners are making? or why franchise values keep setting records? why shouldn't the players, WHO MAKE THE GAME, get their share?

Owners want a salary cap for cost certainty not competitive balance

We need a cap = I love to carry water for billionaires, where you want that water put, sir.

If they introduce the 7 game division series then they need a division series MVP.

Being able to choose your opponent is fucking weak shit.

Would lead to some elite upset trash talk

does that not make you question how much the owners are making? or why franchise values keep setting records? why shouldn't the players, WHO MAKE THE GAME, get their share?

― mookieproof, Thursday, October 8, 2026 8:49 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

the players should absolutely get their share. a common misconception about the salary and second apron stuff in basketball (as much as I think the current CBA is a disaster) is that owners are spending less on players because of it. while it might be true that some players are going to take less due to team-building constraints, at the end of the day the players as a whole receive 51% of all basketball revenue. that is true whether KAT’s next deal is for 62 million a year or 50. no one needs to shed a tear over that kind of stuff specifically, or should treat that particular thing as a labor issue. now, personally, do I think the players should get more than 51%? yes I do, but that’s what the current CBA says.

you can point to the teams left in this postseason, but it’s an extreme outlier year. for one thing the dodgers are still here. over the past 15 years, the world series winner has ranked 1st, 3rd, 4th, 8th, 11th, 1st, 7th, 1st, 17th (astros trash can year), 5th, 13th, 7th, 3rd, 7th, and 9th in payroll.

the MLB should absolutely open its books and pay its players their fair share, but that doesn’t mean a salary cap (and floor) should be out of the question. if some players would get paid less than their “market rate”, so be it — I’m not a market fundamentalist. I might feel differently if I were a player or an agent, but I’m not. I’m a fan, and at the end of the day, these people work for us, the people who pay for streaming subscriptions, outrageous ticket prices, concessions and watch the games in the afternoons. it’s not my problem if a player makes 35 vs 30 million dollars in a year — those are cartoon numbers to me. what matters to me is the product, and I think that’s all fans should care about

none of this is to say that any changes to the CBA are going to be a magic bullet and I reserve the right to not like whatever they end up doing. I’m not going to be part of the negotiations. my position, as someone who is inherently pro-labor, is simply: I do not care if some outrageously rich people get upset if potentially the balance of power in the sport improves

is a salary cap inherently anti-labor? yes. are the owners using competitive balance as a smokescreen for reducing costs? mostly. (baseball doesn’t have 50/50 owner/player splits like the other leagues, and the union should fight for this so that regardless of payroll, players get their share. and should also fight for a salary floor.) I’m a union organizer, I understand these things. I can also take a step back and realize that these are not real working people and my enjoyment of the sport is more important than their labor issues

the salary cap issue is going to be a convenient thing for people like bryce harper to point to, but no one needs to care about bryce harper’s material circumstances

there are tons of things the union can and should fight for. the players should get an increased and defined share of baseball revenues. right now it’s essentially a free market system where the lion’s share of salary is paid to washed up guys in their thirties. the younger players should be paid more fairly, get rid of the arb system. minor leaguers should be treated better

"Other leagues have a cap" is a poor reason to argue for a cap in MLB. Baseball doesn't have a cap, historically, because their players union is stronger than those in the other leagues and has benefitted from better leadership.

Owners have claimed that baseball economic is unsustainable and that they're "losing money" for a hundred years. Twenty five years ago, the owners claimed that nearly all of them were losing money, which is why contraction was necessary. The math didn't math then, and it doesn't now. I don't think anything has fundamentally changed. Franchise values keep going up, revenues have been steadily rising for decades (outside of the COVID blip). The cap is a scheme by the owners to increase revenues and cost certainty, that's it.

I don't see how a five year limit for contracts (six if resigning with the same team) is good for the players.

Everybody knows that the real problem in MLB is the lack of a floor, but there's no precedent AFAIK for a floor without a corresponding cap, so I don't see a way for it to happen.

The cap is a scheme by the owners to increase revenues and cost certainty, that's it.

I meant, to increase their (the owners') share of the total revenues.

I like how some people are just burying your head in the sand on what the Dodgers are doing to baseball. The economic are totally out of wack.

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/48502875/dodgers-smashed-mlb-spending-record-515m-2025

The Dodgers shattered Major League Baseball's spending record with a combined $515 million in payroll and luxury tax last year en route to their second straight World Series title, according to final figures compiled by the commissioner's office, and Los Angeles is projected for the highest total again in 2026.

Los Angeles' 2025 spending included records for payroll at $345.3 million and tax of $169.4 million for a total of $514.7 million. Despite several contracts discounted to reflect deferred payments, the Dodgers' total was seven times the $68.7 million payroll of the Miami Marlins, the lowest-spending team, and more than the payrolls of the bottom six clubs combined.

Los Angeles' total would have been about $71 million higher but for the use of deferred money for seven players that resulted in discounting for their payroll calculations. Shohei Ohtani counts at $28.2 million because $68 million of his $70 million salary last year isn't due until 2035.

Los Angeles is projected as of MLB's opening-day figures to lead in 2026 spending with a $323.3 million payroll for its 40-man roster and a $163.7 million tax for a $487.1 million total. The Mets began with a record payroll at $358.4 million and have a projected tax of $124.1 million for a $482.5 million spend.

Cleveland has the lowest opening-day 40-man payroll this year at $75.5 million.

kevin OTMFM here. I have nothing to add to all those very well expressed points!

meanwhile, tarik skubal is starting tonight for the dodgers

Could you imagine having Kyle Tucker as your number eight hitter

He will only cost 60 million a year for the next four years.

Nothing to see here everything is fine.

where does the 169 million dollar tax go please tell me i am very stupid

my understanding is half goes to player retirement funds and half is redistributed to lower revenue generating teams

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5656610/2024/07/24/mlb-luxury-tax-tv-money/?unlocked_article_code=1.IFE.7Avw.Vm3Ro5QI9lw-&source=athletic_user_shared_gift_article_copylink&smid=url-share-ta

common misconception about the salary and second apron stuff in basketball (as much as I think the current CBA is a disaster) is that owners are spending less on players because of it. while it might be true that some players are going to take less due to team-building constraints, at the end of the day the players as a whole receive 51% of all basketball revenue.

sorry but i don't think this is true? this alleges that basketball players as a whole have a fixed amount of salary and the only question is how the pie is divided up between them, but that isn't how basketball related income works, at least as far as i understand it. 51% of basketball related income going to the players ensures that money earned by the league as a whole is divided equally, but owners can choose to pay players more than what they are deemed eligible. BRI dictates the salary cap (how much money must be spent by teams) but the tax and apron system limits what owners can spend above that, which is to say that it's a control on player salaries beyond what is promised by BRI. you hand waive this away as "some players are going to take less due to team-building constraints" but like... yeah no shit. that's the entire point. you're describing the apron system as hard cap but then also refusing to see what you are describing? it's like you're looking at a zebra and describing the zebra but then ultimately deciding that actually you are looking at a tiger

WE HAVE EXACTLY ZERO INFORMATION ON HOW MUCH MONEY BASEBALL TEAMS/OWNERS MAKE (apart from hints from the atlanta braves' public records)

actually the braves are now a standalone public entity, you can find their financials going back to 2023 here https://www.bravesholdings.com/investors/financial-information/financial-results

shitting on players for being rich but doing it leftistly while also arguing to funnel more money to the even richer owners is one of your favorite performances but i do think you need to go back to the drawing board again to make this stick. maybe next year?

if some players would get paid less than their “market rate”, so be it — I’m not a market fundamentalist. I might feel differently if I were a player or an agent, but I’m not. I’m a fan, and at the end of the day, these people work for us, the people who pay for streaming subscriptions, outrageous ticket prices, concessions and watch the games in the afternoons. it’s not my problem if a player makes 35 vs 30 million dollars in a year — those are cartoon numbers to me. what matters to me is the product, and I think that’s all fans should care about

this is such a bizarre point of view to me. "i'm not a market fundamentalist" to explain why you don't care about athlete salaries sounds like a cool thing to say but all it means is that you're fine with money being taken from players and kept by owners. it's not like there is a secret third thing that happens. there is not some other labor pool that is going to benefit here. you can hit the "i'm just a working class stiff why should i care about bryce harper's material circumstances" pose but this is a zero sum game where the lessening of bryce harper's "material circumstances" only enriches "the material circumstances" of the people who write his checks. if you want to say "fuck everyone involved" that would be a more defensible position, but instead your position is "taking money from bryce harper and giving it back to the owners is powerful to me as a fan" except you think because you organize labor IRL it's like progressive politics? idk man.

anyway, since all you care about is "the product" from your POV as a fan can you articulate for us -- in an environment where MLB owners are systematically disinvesting in the minor leagues to the point that many people who work for teams now view AAA as not conducive to development at best and an open farce at worst -- how curbing ownership spending on salary via a cap and putting more money back into their pockets would improve the game for you, as a fan. because this is an ownership class that is openly trying to remove its collective money from the sport

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7407888/2026/07/01/mlb-minor-leagues-farm-system-development/

also an interesting read: https://www.propublica.org/article/the-billionaire-playbook-how-sports-owners-use-their-teams-to-avoid-millions-in-taxes

tl;dr after a team is bought the new owner gets to deduct the purchase price against their other income. sort of like buying a car, deducting the purchase against your income and then being able to sell the car for 2x what you bought it for 10 years later.

here's my idea for a new salary system:

no long-term contracts, in fact no contracts at all. take 51% of league-wide revenue and put it in a pot.

every player makes the league minimum salary, plus a fixed and stepped amount corresponding to service time milestones (i.e. a player who reaches 3 years of service time in the 2027 season will make the minimum + the fixed amount for 3 years of service time).

then, at the end of the year, the rest of the revenue pot (after taking into account the league minimums that every player makes) is paid out to the players in accordance with how much WAR they generated.

simple, right? :)

i think the argument about "the product" is the most perplexing to me because, imo, the best thing happening for MLB's "product" right now is the dodgers. having a legacy brand on a dynasty run w/ several of the most famous players in the sport playing in the most meaningful playoff games every year is amazing, and is also completely in line w/ baseball history. dodgers playoff games are appointment viewing because they have a bunch of stars
& hall of famers on their team. pushing for the opposite of that dynamic is to push for an NFL style bastardization of the sport, just like the NBA

shoutout to the brewers and the rays -- as a baseball nerd i find their organizations fascinating -- but i'm not going to sit here and tell you that i wanna watch more playoff games featuring jake bauers and andrew vaughn as opposed to ones featuring shohei ohtani and freddie freeman. instituting a cap system that will distribute player talent around MLB might sound like a good idea if you are Bee OK and you're a fan of the giants so the only thing you care about is weakening the dodgers, but the idea that doing so would be better for "the product" overall is bizarre to me. sports are better when there are dyanstic teams with rosters stuffed w/ stars & in baseball that truth runs very deep

Idk I like that Cleveland’s got Jram and Milwaukee had Yelich, baseball is more interesting when the stars are spread out on different teams and not just clustered on one or two - that is in a scenario where the teams are actually competitive ofc. Is it good for Mike Trout he got paid? Ofc. Is it good for “the game” the org that signed him has made the playoffs once in his career? Probably not. Is it good for fans in Anaheim that they got to see him stay there rather than going to some big market team?

I really hope the Rays sign Caminero. They got burned badly for signing Wander but as fun as these low budget teams are, they’re a lot better when they can pay to keep some of their talent instead of operating as de facto farm teams.

HAS Yelich, that made him sound like he’s retired.

i'm not going to sit here and tell you that i wanna watch more playoff games featuring jake bauers and andrew vaughn as opposed to ones featuring shohei ohtani and freddie freeman.

Interesting to pick out those two names instead of Junior Caminero and Yandy Diaz, or Christian Yelich and Brice Turang. Or Misirowski. I’d definitely rather watch Chandler Simpson on the basepaths than anything the majority of the Yankees lineup could offer, and that’s a $308m payroll.

i do admire j0rd's position on this even though the current state of affairs is what has made his marlins blow up their world series winning teams repeatedly

I mean the marlins are just not a very well run organisation in general

i dunno, i think the marlins do a lot with a little. they innovate, their usage of alcantara/perez out of the pen on their bullpen days in september is prob what gave cleveland the confidence to have gavin williams close game 4 then pitch game 5.

everyone is making good points here, i have to say; but am sort of leaning with what jordan is saying. not so much that lopsided payrolls are great, but that it is part of what makes sports in general compelling. and i am saying this as a Jays fan that had to watch the Dodgers beat my guys last year and have to deal with the yankees every season! if a team wants to put all their chips in and try to win – i cannot be mad about that. i *can* be mad at teams that treat their fanbase like suckers and put as little as possible back onto the field. i don't think a salary cap will fix what i see as what's wrong with baseball. why would we limit what the people we pay to see earn and not discuss caping profits. why listen to a fucking word these owners have to say when so much of their finances are hidden from us (as best as i understand)? it may be petty, but i don't think the owners deserve our support with anything they want so long as they are misleading us – crying poor when we know that's most likely not true.

jordan it’s not that I care or don’t care about athlete salaries, it’s that given the amount of money we’re talking about, I care more about my enjoyment as a fan. we’re not talking about uber drivers here. that’s my personal opinion, I won’t fault anyone for disagreeing. also, can you be less of a dick to me? we’ve been posting on this message board for 20 years at this point, lighten up

you might be right about the BRI thing in basketball. that was my impression based on last time I looked into it, but maybe I’m misremembering

also, I don’t know for sure that a cap-and-floor system will fix the competitive balance issue, maybe it won’t. seems like it couldn’t hurt though

i dunno, i think the marlins do a lot with a little. they innovate, their usage of alcantara/perez out of the pen on their bullpen days in september is prob what gave cleveland the confidence to have gavin williams close game 4 then pitch game 5.

I thought that was really fucking dumb for a non-playoff team to do in a meaningless game with a guy less than two years removed from TJS honestly. In the playoffs whatever do what you need and what your guy’s willing to do because it’s win or go home but that was just stupid. They’re also not the first team in the league to swap starters/relievers in the pen by a long shot, Bruce Bochy was doing that in meaningful games in the playoffs. The Rays themselves have successfully converted two relievers to starters this year and used one of them in a variety of start/long relief roles pretty successfully and now back to relief for the postseason. (Ian Seymour). Honestly for pitching development I look at the Brewers, Guardians, Yankees and ofc the Rays. Marlins aren’t bad but they’re not in the same league as those teams.

? to be clear, it's not converting a reliever to a starter or vice versa. it's taking your starter and having him throw 10-20 game intensity pitches out of the bullpen in a game on his 3rd or 4th day of rest, which replaces the bullpen session he would have had that day where he probably would have thrown that amount of pitches anyway. he's not really doing that much extra work. i think it's a neat idea, probably not for every starter depending on their rest schedule but if it takes on you can certainly see how it might change how teams use their pitching staff.

it's certainly not yamamoto going out the day after throwing 100 pitcheds and closing out the world series.

Interesting to pick out those two names instead of Junior Caminero and Yandy Diaz, or Christian Yelich and Brice Turang. Or Misirowski.

caminero is great. yelich & turang... not exactly sure i'm calling those ABs must see TV

i'm glad you brought up Miz tho. the best thing the dodgers are doing w/ their money imo is investing in frontline starting pitching and being one of the very few franchises left in baseball that is resisting the model that ends up w/ teams opening playoff series w/ bullpen days.

i'm reading jane leavy's book about sandy koufax right now & it's not an exaggeration to say that the foundation of the dodgers in los angeles was built almost solely on the backs of koufax & drysdale, and in particular koufax's performances as a starting pitcher in the playoffs. now i'm not asking for every SP in baseball to be treated like sandy koufax, we know why teams don't do that, but baseball in los angeles *should* be legendary starting pitchers putting the team on their backs and dragging them to a championship. so when the dodgers spend a fortune to sign yoshi yamamoto and then routinely put him in a position to carry on that legacy from koufax -- that's what i want to see in baseball. i think that's what everyone should want to see, frankly.

so i tip my hat to the brewers & rays organizations for building consistent winners under financial constraints, but i'm not out here trying to push the game further down the path where we have robert gasser hoping to make it thru 3 IP in game 3 of the NLCS. give me teams spending money on guys like blake snell and telling them to go win them a game under the brightest lights

Sorry, joining this very late, but re the Dodgers and Koufax: enthusiastically recommend Michael Leahy's The Last Innocents: The Collision of the Turbulent Sixties and the Los Angeles Dodgers. (Didn't really like Leavy's Koufax book.) O'Malley treated all those players terribly--expected them to go right to Japan after the season and play goodwill tours...maybe that paid off five decades later for the organization, but the players resented it deeply.

right so my point is not to treat players like it's the 60s again of course they hated management they were being treated like serfs. but we're talking about "the product" and yeah "the product" is a lot better to me when teams are invested in SP and putting those players at the forefront of their teams in the playoffs. curt schilling and the bloody sock, madison bumgarner putting on his superman cape in the world series etc. and with starting pitching in particular there is a pretty big difference especially when it comes to the depth of the rotation between the big spending teams these days and the non big spending teams. i have no love in my heart for the yankees but i want to see more teams w/ rotations that look like gerrit cole, max fried and carlos rodon than ones that look like drew rasumussen, freddy peralta, and griffin jax

drew rasmussen right now: "what he say fuck me for?"

I would consider supporting a salary cap, but only on the condition all the teams had to open all their finances to public scrutiny down to the penny. I think that's a longer way of saying I won't support a salary cap, because that condition will never happen. I have sports on the bar TVs all the time at work and repeatedly have the same conversation with people -- "they're already millionaires, why do they need more?" "the owners are billionaires and they're never going to reduce ticket prices, the players deserve every penny they can get" "yeah but the players are already millionaires, why do they need more?" "you god-damn moron, finish that drink and pay up"

rays/brewers or guards/brewers would hit so hard imo, and not only because of the tears manfred would cry

Otm if you don’t want to see the teams that regularly dog walk the guys who don’t spend money good finally win a title idk what your problem is.

The Red Sox have like a quarter billion dollar payroll and they were running out a split squad lineup in the playoffs. The Rays don’t stack their lineups with 9 Junior Camineros because there aren’t 9 guys like him in the game. They’re lucky to have one! Hating the Rays cos they do more with less than the Yankees who waste gobs of money every single season not winning anything… can’t believe this very simple point needs such handholding. Apparently though?

small ball is so good. i want chaos on the base paths, i want safety squeezes, double steals, baltimore chops, sacrifice bunts that turn into doubles, running on contact. put the ball in play, make em play baseball.

my favorite player of all time is rickey.

Also I find the idea that drinking platooning is new school moneyball slop very funny when the Simpsons famously had Mr Burns do it in an episode that aired two decades before Moneyball was published.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abq9Y7YVDWA

My phone is sabotaging me with these autocorrects that and the fact I’ve been at work nearly 12 hours RIP

The Red Sox have like a quarter billion dollar payroll and they were running out a split squad lineup in the playoffs

red sox are a funny example to bring up given that they've been slashing payroll steadily over the last several years, traded rafael devers & mookie betts for jack shit, are trying to run themselves like the brewers, and as a result their fans hate ownership. what i actually would love to see is one of the marquee teams in baseball keeping their clean up hitter instead of trading him for kyle harrison and then running out wilyer abreu in the 4 hole in the playoffs. precisely the kinda thing that i think is bad. let's have some self respect

Hating the Rays cos they do more with less than the Yankees who waste gobs of money every single season not winning anything… can’t believe this very simple point needs such handholding. Apparently though?

― bruich, a stór (gyac), Tuesday, October 13, 2026 2:45 PM (eighteen minutes ago)

i'm not hating the rays for doing more with less than the yankees, i'm hating the rays for running out a bunch of anonymous slapdicks in the playoffs and treating the ALCS like it's a thursday getaway game. and i don't think baseball should be further pushed down the path of that style, which the owners are more than happy to have happen because it means they can all spend less money

i would say in general that when rich and powerful people want to spend less money on things as opposed to more money it is bad instead of good, but you guys seem to think baseball is exempt from this principle

I mean if you can get to the ALCS with a bunch of “anonymous slapdicks” then maybe the other bozos need to spend money better?

And yes I’m familiar with the Red Sox, doesn’t change the fact that was a quarter of a billion for a roster of slop.

Not sure where I ever said players shouldn’t be paid. I think Soto deserves his money, if you’re that good that long pay the fucking money. I think it’s really really funny that small teams can beat big teams and I don’t think that like two or three teams monopolising all the good talent makes for an interest game in a 30 game league. I’m very simple, I like watching teams play the game well, and I’m not holding up fringe players (which every team has) as a reason to protest that it’s not fair when the big money teams can’t compete. Everyone knows how these small teams run their game and win games, so why aren’t they doing it? Are they stupid?

my point is not that it's unfair for the rays to beat the yankees, but rather that it's boring, because i don't think watching their players is more fun than watching better and more famous players, and i think baseball as a sport should be working to create fewer teams like the rays, rather than more

shoutout to junior caminero tho

Winning is interesting regardless of how it’s attained.

false! what the hell

Jordan any reply on that post where I quoted where you’d rather watch players like Stanton and Judge in the postseason even though they can’t actually walk and Soto even though he’s on a big name bad team? Are you just like, I want to see the big names waaah that deck is not stacked enough waaaah?

Actually the Dodgers the last couple of years - not all that interesting. That would be my one exception.

yeah I think if it were really that easy everyone would be doing it, that said you could convincingly argue a lot of franchises aren't really trying to win though

the grim reality of the situation is that as players have gotten faster and stronger and pitchers are routinely hitting 99+ they are also getting hurt more, you could argue it doesn't really make financial sense to sign anyone to a long term contract. when you think of the most recognizable faces in the league all I see is a much of guys who are always hurt. I'd love to be proven wrong on this but I feel like the days of Jeter or Verlander are gone, the game is just way too demanding now for a player to be above average for more than a few years. every sport is having this problem not just baseball. but baseball's the one that's uncapped.

also not sure I get Jord's point, the Dodgers have been in the World Series five times in the last decade, is it not boring to see Freddy Freeman on TV all the time?

Tyler Glasnow has a great interview on Chris Rose where he’s basically like, yeah if you are a pitcher and you want to get paid and succeed you are going to get hurt and that’s the price of the game and everyone accepts that.

also not sure I get Jord's point, the Dodgers have been in the World Series five times in the last decade, is it not boring to see Freddy Freeman on TV all the time?

Maybe not if you’re really into his awful veneers

if you guys think that last year's world series was uninteresting we are watching different sports

i don't think watching some of the best hitters of a generation gets boring, no. we're talking about baseball that's the whole point

Jordan any reply on that post where I quoted where you’d rather watch players like Stanton and Judge in the postseason even though they can’t actually walk and Soto even though he’s on a big name bad team? Are you just like, I want to see the big names waaah that deck is not stacked enough waaaah?

― bruich, a stór (gyac), Tuesday, October 13, 2026 3:40 PM (eight minutes ago)

well yeah i'd rather judge and stanton be healthy and be in the playoffs and soto to be on a good team in the playoffs. i would rather watch hall of fame talent than the rays style of team building

Lmao

yes last year's WS was extremely entertaining but so was Brewers-Padres a week ago, there's no one thing that makes for great baseball, but all great series feel competitive and that is something that is generally down to luck.

i mean you did see hall of fame talent in the playoffs this year, it's just that the phillies, braves, padres, astros and yankees all got knocked out by slapdick shit goblins 🙃

and, god willing, the dodgers!

This might be a reductionist take, but whenever I see the Dodgers payroll, and look at the wealth of the owners of [insert your team here], all I can say is "Hell, at least the L.A. bilionaire ownership is willing to spend, they shouldn't be denied the ability to put money in the hands of players because other teams' billionaire owners are too cheap to do so!"

I just don’t understand the mentality that would rather see 2026 Giancarlo Stanton in the playoffs hobbling to the plate than Jackson Churio walking off the best closer in the game.

xp aren’t they also doing so with a TV deal that’s ten times the size of that that the team that beat them last night? I mean let’s not pretend that money isn’t at least partially propped up by that lol

well we've reached the stage of arguing on the internet where everybody's just taking pot shots at each other's strawmen xp

to try to bring it back to the CBA, at the end of the day what the fans care about is competitive balance. the owners know that and are trying to use that as the trojan horse by which they sneak in a salary cap. in that sense, i do care that bryce harper's material circumstances improve, because bob nutting's material circumstances ($3.6b net worth) are already 10x what harper's are, plus all the other advantages that come with being an owner rather than a player

don't forget that the dodgers tv deal is incredibly unfair to the rest of the league xp https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/inside-dodgers-tv-deal-helped-010000990.html

I just don’t understand the mentality that would rather see 2026 Giancarlo Stanton in the playoffs hobbling to the plate than Jackson Churio walking off the best closer in the game.

― bruich, a stór (gyac), Tuesday, October 13, 2026 4:42 PM (two minutes ago)

the mentality is not about 2026 giancarlo stanton. but stanton is one of the great power hitters in history whose playoff career stats across 162 games would equate to a .251/.319/.598 slash with 58 homers and 143 RBI... so yeah i want to see guys like that in the playoffs. jackson chourio is a fun player, but he ain't that (i like watching jackson chourio hit)

to try to bring it back to the CBA, at the end of the day what the fans care about is competitive balance. the owners know that and are trying to use that as the trojan horse by which they sneak in a salary cap.

exactly correct. it's a race to spend as little as possible in the name of "competitive balance" and why anyone thinks this is good for the sport is not something i really grasp. and it's not just baseball, this is happening in every sport

jackson chourio was a 5 WAR player in 2026, you don't like watching a 5 WAR player? jeez

idk if you're using a version of ilx that erases parentheticals but i stated at the end of the post that i like watching jackson chourio hit. his AB against mason miller was amazing. i didn't set up the false dichotomy but if you're asking me whether i would rather watch prime giancarlo stanton or jackson chourio i would pick stanton

^ more or less how I feel (re: prefecture's post).
i also feel like baseball is one of the harder sports to buy your way into a title (yes i know the dodgers have done very well at this). but you can't just go out and get one or two players that will be front and centre most of the time – you have 9 hitters, 5 starters and a couple of relievers that are going to get regular appearances 6 of 7 days a week for half a year. there's a lot of opportunity to assemble different types of teams within that structure that can go out and find ways to win. admittedly i don't know squat about (american) football, baseball is my main thing followed by soccer and then NHL & NBA in sparse dosages – so maybe I'm way off base with that.
all that to say a salary cap isn't going to stop teams that will actually spend from spending one way of the other (there's other ways you can dump money into teams other than players – granted, those other ways are much more affordable) and other teams from being cheap. you're maxing out how much the actual people we pay to see – the people who put in the labour – can make because some owners are cheap shitheels. we will never see those savings when we buy tickets and i am not convinced at all that it will level the playing field significantly.

again, massive xposts to prefecture

the mentality is not about 2026 giancarlo stanton. but stanton is one of the great power hitters in history whose playoff career stats across 162 games would equate to a .251/.319/.598 slash with 58 homers and 143 RBI... so yeah i want to see guys like that in the playoffs. jackson chourio is a fun player, but he ain't that (i like watching jackson chourio hit)

then i think we're having different conversations and i'll leave it here if not for my sake then at least for everyone else's

to bring it back to the CBA -- my argument ultimately is that MLB is currently set up to more or less punish teams that spend a lot of money, bcuz a player's best years happen before teams have to pay them. this is a system that essentially disincentives teams to spend money, and in that void franchises like the brewers and rays have flourished, and are celebrated for their ingenuity in the face of financial constraints, including loudly on this message board. i think it's great for those teams that they have managed to work this system -- a lot of what the brewers and rays do on the player development side is really interesting -- but a system that disincentivize the people who hold the money from spending it only in the end benefits the people who hold the money. which is why we're about to have a lock out, and i think if the players can hold their ground and change the rules so that owners have more incentives to spend money on players the sport will be better off

if you're asking me whether i would rather watch prime giancarlo stanton or jackson chourio i would pick stanton

prime giancarlo stanton is dead and buried so why bring him up, or if we're running no-longer-existant players out in our fantasies I'd rather watch prime Tony Gwynn than any of those non-slapdicks

because he hit 7 homers in 14 playoff games two seasons ago. but i don't think there's anything wrong with saying you'd like to see more players of tony gwynn's stature in the playoffs. i agree with you

https://www.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/USATSI_27432641-1000x714.jpg

MLB’s Labor Philosophy: A Reader’s Guide

Jake Bauers terrorising the Dodgers is specifically because he reads this thread.

i kneel at the altar of the power hitting boppers in milwaukee

Mike Petriello
@mike_petriello

The 2026 Brewers right now in the NLCS are running the highest three true outcome rate (47%) of any LCS since the series began in 1969.

oh no, my narrative

slob wizard (J0rdan S.)
Posted: 13 October 2026 at 17:57:36
when the brewers scored 4 runs across 4 NLCS games last year were you guys going to bed dreaming of the turang & yelich ABs in your head or were you pulling them up on youtube to watch them back again?

I think I was enjoying the 2026 Bewers sweep in 2026, since it was their run this season people were discussing.

_but i'm not going to sit here and tell you that i wanna watch more playoff games featuring jake bauers_

Well unfortunately he just won NLCS MVP against that stacked roster so.

lol that post did not age well

The Dodger Yankee glazing as arguments for good baseball viewing (and how parity is overrated) was seriously painful to read. Very excited for this upcoming World Series.

Brice Turang is going to be a guy that’s up in MVP voting most of his career if he stays healthy, he’s easily the best 2B in the whole game, and that post talks about him and actual former MVP Yelich like they’re bums. Fucking hated it.