The move that set off a firestorm of debate regarding a certain pro sports league and a salary cap was puzzling.
It was Roki Sasaki signing with the Los Angeles Dodgers. When Sasaki announced he would be joining the World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers, plenty of folks who chimed in on the 23-year-old right-handed starting pitcher from Japan’s decision didn’t understand the mechanics of the move.
Bear with me even if this doesn’t apply to the salary-cap issue, which is ostensibly what this article is about. Because Sasaki had to be posted by his club in Japan, the Chiba Lotte Marines, and was under the age of 24, he was subject to international free-agent rules. Typically, this process applies to 16-year-olds coming out of Latin America, not accomplished professionals from Japan. But there are exceptions. Shohei Ohtani came to MLB under the same process, receiving a signing bonus of $2,315,000. He made the MLB minimum his first three seasons before hitting arbitration. Sasaki received a $6.5 million signing bonus and will make the MLB minimum his first three seasons. Teams are not allowed to sign a player to an extension until they hit arbitration.
So all of the arguments that Sasaki is just the latest chapter of the Dodgers just spending, spending, spending isn’t accurate. Yes, the Dodgers gave a hefty bonus to Sasaki, but he won’t make more than any other player across baseball who will make their MLB debut in 2025. Which gets me back to the problem many were and are still crying about.
“It is bad for MLB to have superteams. Not having competitive balance ruins the game.”
That is a paraphrased post on social media that sums up where most folks are coming from. The Dodgers, who signed Ohtani to a historic 10-year, $700 million contract the previous offseason, have indeed accumulated a wealth of talent. Ohtani, Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman, Will Smith, Tyler Glasnow, and Yoshinobu Yamamoto could be penciled in as All-Stars going into this season, as well as contenders for NL MVP or NL Cy Young. They all play for the Dodgers.
Is it good for the game? Yes, in the fact that fans and media have a relatively new villain on the block to either support or chastise. The New York Yankees are the Evil Empire. Many have equated the Dodgers to the Death Star. I find that funny because we all know what happened to the Death Star. But it is not good for the game for one team to possess all that talent while others’ cupboards are pretty bare. Here is where we get into the crux of things.
Would MLB be better with a salary cap? Unlikely, if competitive balance is what you are looking for.
I went back over the last 10 years of MLB, NFL, NBA, and NHL postseasons. As it turns out, the only league without a salary cap (MLB) actually had the most franchises compete in the championship round (World Series, Super Bowl, NBA Finals, Stanley Cup Final).
In MLB, 14 teams have had one of the 20 shots at a ring, while the NHL is next at 13 and the NFL and NBA are tied with 10. What that means is the NFL and NBA have had more of the same teams vying for a championship than MLB. Stretching that out to the conference championships, it is more balanced. The NBA has had 15 franchises appear in the final four, the NFL 15, MLB 13 and the NHL 12.
When it comes to winning rings, the NHL leads the way with eight teams, with MLB and the NBA at seven and the NFL with six, a number that won’t change with the forthcoming Kansas City Chiefs-Philadelphia Eagles Super Bowl rematch in which K.C. is seeking an unprecedented third straight Super Bowl victory.
MLB hasn’t had a team win consecutive World Series since the New York Yankees captured three in a row (1998-2000), while the other three have had back-to-back winners in the last 10 years.
Championship Participants, Last 10 Seasons
MLB: 14 Franchises Have Played in World Series
Five franchises lost in the AL championship and eight lost in the NL championship.
NFL: 10 Franchises Have Played in Super Bowl
Eight franchises lost in the AFC championship and seven franchises lost in the NFC championship.
NBA: 10 Franchises Have Played in NBA Finals
Six franchises lost in the East finals and nine franchises lost in the West finals.
NHL: 13 Franchises Have Played in Stanley Cup Final
*League-wide 16-team bracket, no conferences due to COVID-19
Five franchises lost in the East finals and seven franchises lost in the West finals (includes losers of 2021 playoff semifinals).
The NFL is often held up as the gold standard of parity. Some of that is true in the fact that all 32 teams operate under the same financial restrictions and spending is balanced (total cap numbers per Sportico show a $45 million difference between the top and bottom of the league). The NFL salary cap for the 2024 season was $255.4 million. The NBA cap is at $140,588,000 for this season ($110 million difference between the top and bottom) and the NHL $88 million ($32 million difference).
Meanwhile, MLB’s biggest spender in 2024 from a competitive-balance tax perspective was the New York Mets at $356.5 million, while the Athletics were last at just $83 million.
Having a superteam is new in MLB. There are popular teams—Dodgers, Yankees, Boston Red Sox, Chicago Cubs—but you couldn’t really classify any of the previous iterations as a superteam as none were really put together with jaw-dropping contracts or trades. The current Dodgers are thanks to following up their 2024 World Series championship by adding Sasaki, starting pitcher Blake Snell, relievers Tanner Scott and Kirby Yates, infielder Hyeseong Kim, and outfielder Michael Conforto, while retaining outfielder Teoscar Hernández and reliever Blake Treinen. As of this writing, starting pitchers Walker Buehler (free agent, Boston Red Sox) and Jack Flaherty (free agent), relievers Joe Kelly (free agent) and Daniel Hudson (free agent), infielder Gavin Lux (trade, Cincinnati Reds) and infielder-outfielder Kiké Hernández (free agent) are not returning to L.A.
But if 2024 is any indication, a superteam is good for MLB. Why? The Dodgers had the largest road attendance of any team since 2008, according to Stats Perform. And as Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic points out, the Dodgers’ high payroll (and corresponding luxury-tax penalty) as well as popularity only helps other teams’ bottom line.
Spending isn’t a guarantee of success, it only guarantees talent. The really good front offices do it well and it results in playoff appearance after playoff appearance. But the postseason is always a crapshoot. In 2021, the 106-win Dodgers were relegated to an NL wild card thanks to the San Francisco Giants winning the NL West with 107 victories. The Dodgers made the NL Championship Series that year. They followed that up with 111 wins and an easy NL West title, but got bounced in the NL Division Series.
The so-called big spenders from other sports don’t always experience success. Just look at the Dallas Cowboys. They might have the most visible owner in sports with Jerry Jones. He runs the whole show for “America’s Team,” not only signing all the paychecks as the owner but also making the personnel moves as the general manager. Yet the Cowboys have not made it to a conference championship game since the 1995 season, the longest active drought in the NFC—15 years longer than the next team, the Chicago Bears.
Sure, a salary cap is an interesting topic to talk about and would likely raise the competitiveness of the recent poor performers in MLB, the A’s, Colorado Rockies, and Miami Marlins (OK, the Chicago White Sox, too). Still, that doesn’t guarantee anything. Three NFL teams tied for the worst record at 3-14. The worst two NBA teams finished 14-68 and 15-67. The worst NHL team won just 19 times in 82 games.
Yeah, the White Sox set the modern MLB record with 121 losses in 162 games. That was a winning percentage of .253. What was the worst percentage in the other sports? The NFL is .176, the NBA .170, the NHL .232.
All of those are poor marks regardless of whether there is a salary cap. But can you imagine an MLB team winning just 28 games? That is what the salary-capped leagues allow on a regular basis.
If this issue (at least on social media) could be dismissed with an appeal to logic, your very well argued and written article would suffice.
Alas, that’s just not where we are as a society.
What ?
Had to read twice to make sure this wasn’t satire.
Steve, I am usually a fan of your articles, which are thoughtful and full of insight and balance. This one, not so much. You’ve got a number of false equivalencies, and you ignore collective regular-season records.
As sports fans, it’s easy for us to lose sight of the fact that teams are companies and leagues are industries with special rules. The cap/floor systems in the NFL and NHL prevent the 4:1 disparity between the biggest and lowest spenders. (The NBA is a special case because of its “soft cap,” which creates a lose-lose situation, limiting salaries without significantly increasing competition.)
Does MLB need a cap? Maybe. But it definitely needs a floor. The only participants in MLB who would logically argue against this are teams pocketing their revenue sharing instead of spending it on the team (e.g., OAK and TB). And as we’ve seen in collective bargaining in other leagues, there’s no floor without a cap.
There is a similar anti-cap article on Fangraphs right now. From an editorial perspective, both your article and that one would have benefited from being half of a point-counterpoint pairing.
I realize upon re-reading that was a little harsh. I wish that I could delete that second paragraph.
I understand why using playoff results to measure “parity” is tempting, but this analysis should really be based on something with less variance, like point/run/goal differentials.
Using high-variance playoffs as a band-aid for discrepancies in team roster quality leads to exactly what we’re seeing, which is most teams not wanting to spend beyond 90 wins or so.
The other point is that enjoying baseball is not just about the results, it’s about **HOPE** and the meta-narrative. It is not enjoyable when your team does nothing during the offseason while the rich teams add star after star (especially if that star came from your own team.) Hopeless fans don’t spend, they find other things to do with their time.
Also, come on…
“Yeah, the White Sox set the modern MLB record with 121 losses in 162 games. That was a winning percentage of .253. What was the worst percentage in the other sports? The NFL is .176, the NBA .170, the NHL .232.”
You have to do some sort of normalization for the fact that every league plays less games than in the MLB, and that the individual variance of a game in MLB is higher for various reasons (pitching rotation, batting order, etc.) I guarantee if you take NFL/NBA/NHL-sized game samples from each season instead of 162, you’d see that .253 record broken.