The big question looming over MLB: Will owners take up the fight for a salary cap?

The most important question in Major League Baseball is not when the league will expand to 32 teams, or if technology should aid umpires in calling balls and strikes.

Its whether commissioner Rob Manfred and the owners are preparing for the largest fight for a salary cap in more than 30 years.

The expiration of the sports labor deal is still two years away, at midnight Eastern entering Dec.

2, 2026.

That makes the next year a crucial time when both owners and players will formulate plans for the negotiations.

Advertisement An offseason lockout again looks highly likely in 2026, yet that doesnt overly worry industry officials who now consider it pro forma.

They instead wonder whether the lockout this time will cost regular-season games.

Because if owners decide to push aggressively for a cap, history says the fallout will be ugly.

Manfred was coy last month in a press conference during owners meetings in New York when asked whether his owners would go that direction.

To date, we have not really even begun, in a meaningful way, discussions about labor, Manfred said.

Certainly cant make a judgment as to what were going to propose on any labor topic.

At baseballs Winter Meetings last week, three days after he finished negotiations with the New York Mets on Juan Soto s record-setting $765 million deal, player agent Scott Boras was asked if he expected calls for a cap to arrive again.

There is every five years, he said, a reference to the length of each collective bargaining agreement.

Whats new? Owners are indeed considering a cap proposal, according to people briefed on their conversations who were not authorized to speak publicly.

But it would also be surprising if they werent.

More notable is that, for a few reasons, owners could be energized to pursue a cap in a way they have not for a generation.

The future of local television rights is a key motivation.

Its evergreen to say baseball owners want a cap for its potential cost savings, and to make baseball operate as other major U.S.

sports leagues do.

The NBA, NFL and NHL all have caps and floors.

Smaller-market teams and their fans have also always complained about the exploits of bigger-market teams, and theyre not lacking fodder this offseason.

Sotos most serious suitors were limited to the sports biggest markets.

The World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers , meanwhile, are carrying a projected $335 million payroll per Cots Contracts, the highest in the sport, and have deferred more than $1 billion in salary to later seasons.

Advertisement But well before this winter, it seemed MLB could newly push for a cap .

Shortly after the last CBA negotiations, Manfred created an economic reform committee , a group of six owners dedicated to reviewing two issues: the future of local television, and club revenue disparities.

By the end of 2025, likely about two-thirds of the league will have taken a pay cut in rights fees at some point in the last three seasons.

In response, Manfred wants to radically change how teams share their revenues, pooling all the local TV money together while reducing or eliminating what teams share from other streams.

A cap could be a unifier amongst his owners, something that all 30 could gather behind even if they wouldnt like the changes otherwise a potential means to an end.

The large-market teams, in particular, dont want to share more of their valuable TV revenues, but could greatly benefit from a cap.

For owners, a cap has also always been an end of its own.

Perhaps the end.

They have long sought an upper limit on player spending, while the players have only wanted a minimum or floor to be installed, but the sides will never achieve one without the other.

The union declined comment for this story.

MLBPA executive director Tony Clark said in spring 2023, Were never going to agree to a cap.

Mark Attanasio of the Milwaukee Brewers , John Henry of the Boston Red Sox , Chris Ilitch of the Detroit Tigers , Terry McGuirk of the Atlanta Braves , Dick Monfort of the Colorado Rockies and Mark Walter of the Dodgers make up the economic reform committee, a person briefed on its proceedings said.

McGuirk is the chair, having succeeded Walter.

Monfort chaired Manfreds labor committee in the 2021-22 negotiations, when owners locked out the players during the offseason.

Attanasio and Henry served on it as well.

Advertisement The lockout froze the winter, halting free agency, trades and most anything else.

The league then made one cap-like proposal early in talks, but quickly moved on when players balked.

We didnt miss any games, and thats what really matters at the end of the day, Manfred said in a recent interview with the website Questions for Cancer Research .

Offseason lockouts are offseason lockouts, you know? Its sort of the norm in professional sports.

The sentiment of a lockout as the norm might be more representative of reality circa 2011, when the NBA and NFL both had lockouts.

Besides baseball, none of the three major U.S.

mens sports have had a lockout, offseason or otherwise, in more than a decade, since the NHL in 2012-13.

But those other three leagues also have CBAs that run longer.

A lockout that cuts into the 162-regular game season would undoubtedly be a different animal than one that does not.

And no single issue in baseball is more likely to produce that result than a cap if owners dont budge.

Collectively, players have always regarded a cap as a third-rail issue, believing the system would produce a bevy of negatives for them, including, over time, a reduction in how much money they make overall.

A fight over a cap sat at the center of the ugly 1994-95 strike , which lasted 232 days and led to a canceled World Series.

The full impacts of a cap and floor would be intricate and massive, in no small part because the league and players would be agreeing to share a set percentage of revenue annually.

The league could produce a long list of pros it would argue, and the union cons.

Besides the overall economics, competition is another major talking point.

The league believes a cap would help parity, giving smaller-market teams a better chance to retain and sign the best players.

Players, meanwhile, have long felt a less restricted system is better.

Advertisement Competitiveness is what should run leagues, and the idea of how they compete in our league has a varietal approach to it, Boras said.

There is no bar to it.

Franchise values still appear to be growing at a healthy rate even as cord-cutting hurts local TV fees.

The major sports leagues all now allow private equity firms to buy stakes.

We have now got billionaires buying teams in all sports.

Thats whats changing, Boras said.

Youre going to have not one person buying it.

Youre going to have multiple people, contingents buy it.

...

The prior generation of owners will receive massive wealth from that.

It is a billionaire business.

It is not a local, regional-shop business anymore, and that, I think, is the adaptation we have to look at.

Not the rule structure of the game and how we work.

We all know what cap systems have brought in other sports, and frankly, its not been particularly exciting.

Its unclear how baseballs new owners, such as Steve Cohen of the Mets and David Rubenstein of the Baltimore Orioles , will influence labor, and whether they would prefer to stay in the fans good graces.

Conversely, a new generation of owners could be eager to push change, believing they can succeed in challenging the union where their predecessors did not.

If owners do aggressively pursue a cap, plenty more unknowns await.

Would they hold together while foregoing potentially a years worth of revenues, or more? Would players? The game has a shine right now.

MLB took in approximately $11.6 billion in 2023, and Manfred said in October that the haul increased this year.

The introduction of the pitch clock two seasons ago has helped increase attendance and interest, and the 2024 World Series featured a marquee match-up between the Dodgers and New York Yankees .

Missed games, however, could tarnish the leagues leverage in future TV negotiations.

Advertisement Clarks leadership was challenged early this year by a group of players unhappy with a variety of issues.

Owners could see the union as weaker than in the past, but a cap proposal could also galvanize players.

At least a small segment of players and agents may be cap-curious, wanting to learn more about its effects.

Some might even support the change, believing that, at the least, their own individual lot could be improved.

But theres no evidence that MLB has a groundswell of support among players for a cap.

Manfreds own legacy will be affected by the path he and the owners choose.

The next CBA is to be the commissioners last, ahead of planned retirement in 2029.

I do think that there are a lot of positives going on in the game right now.

I think our attendance is very strong, and thats always a great thing for us, Manfred said during his interview with Questions for Cancer Research.

It shows that the game is popular.

And I think that the positive things that are going on always motivates the parties to find a solution to the economic issues that face the game.

Weve never missed a game, and I hope to keep that record intact in my last go-round.

(Top photo of Manfred and Clark: Daniel Shirey / MLB Photos via Getty Images).

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