Without An MLB Salary Cap, Parity Falls Flat With Fans
This has been the offseason where the Dodgers’ desire for dominance seems to have found yet another gear.
Los Angeles won the World Series in 2024, which came after an offseason in which it signed the biggest star in the sport (Shohei Ohtani), the best young pitcher in the free agent class (Yoshinobu Yamamoto) and a valuable outfielder (Teoscar Hernandez).
The Dodgers celebrated their title by signing two-time Cy Young Award winner Blake Snell to a five-year contract, re-signing Hernandez, extending Tommy Edman, signing top free agent reliever Tanner Scott and landing Roki Sasaki, the top young pitcher on the market.
Baseball’s champions added multiple stars to an already star-studded lineup and rotation, which has led some fans to complain that baseball’s competitive balance is broken.
While the Dodgers were signing seemingly everyone, the Kansas City Chiefs earned a shot to become the first team in NFL history to win three consecutive Super Bowls. It will mark the Chiefs’ fifth trip to the Super Bowl in the past six years. With Patrick Mahomes at quarterback, the Chiefs have made it to the AFC Championship in each of the past seven seasons.
I’ve run all the numbers. Others have, too. There’s no data that shows MLB having more inequality and less parity than other major U.S. sports leagues. The Chiefs have gone to more Super Bowls in the past six years than any MLB team has made it to the World Series in the 21st century. The Houston Astros are the ones to go to even five World Series in the 21st century.
No matter what time frame you use, fans of a MLB team are more likely to see their team win a World Series over a 10-, 20-, 30- or 40-year timeframe than a fan of an NFL or NBA team is to see their favorite team win a title.
But I also have come to realize that this doesn’t matter to many fans. This isn’t a data-driven argument. It’s about perceptions. And it’s a perception that MLB will continue to struggle to shake.
Blame human nature. If the Chiefs win the next five titles, there will be plenty of complaints about how fans are tired of watching them in the Super Bowl. But the basic structure of the NFL—and the way in which teams without a franchise quarterback are effectively shut out of the Super Bowl—will be left largely untouched as a critique. The salary cap and draft provide a blanket of perceived equality.
Similarly, when the LeBron James-led Cleveland Cavaliers faced the Steph Curry-led Golden State Warriors for four straight seasons, it was viewed as a sign of greatness, not of a league with minimal parity.
Everything laid out above points out that having a salary cap and a salary floor haven’t given the NFL or NBA more competitive balance than MLB. But that’s not really what concerns fans upset with MLB’s current structure.
The presence of a salary cap in those sports makes it appear to be a fair game, even if the results don’t indicate that at all.
If the Browns remain shut out from ever making the Super Bowl, it’s viewed as a sign of the organization’s incompetence, not the league’s. Cleveland has had top draft picks, and the Browns could spend as much as anyone else.
The Chiefs may be dominating the NFL, but because everyone is allowed to spend the same amount of money, it’s viewed as a credit to their quarterback, coach and front office.
But when the Pirates or Reds fail to make a deep playoff run for 30+ years, there’s a handy excuse: They are trying to survive in an unfair game, where they are outgunned by teams with many more resources.
Never mind that the same is true for the Rays (two World Series appearances this century), the Royals (two World Series appearances and the 2015 title), Diamondbacks (two World Series appearances this century and the 2001 title), Guardians (2016 World Series appearance), Rockies (2007 World Series appearance) and even the Marlins (2003 World Series champs).
Smaller market teams can win in baseball.
But when they do, it’s viewed as them overcoming long odds. When those teams come crashing back to earth after their success, it’s viewed as a further sign of the imbalanced structure of the league.
When the Patriots produced one winning season and two four-win seasons in the first five years after Tom Brady’s departure it was viewed as a sign of how the league’s parity is at work. The same is true when the Cavaliers failed to win a third of their games in any of the three seasons after LeBron left.
So how does MLB fight against a feeling? For the Major League Baseball Players Association, which has long been against a cap, that’s a problem. For the owners, who want a cap partly for the likely increase in franchise valuation it would bring, it’s less of an issue.
There’s no proof that adding a salary cap would add any more parity to the major leagues. There’s not really any assurances that it would significantly change the offseason approach of the teams that largely sit out free agency currently.
But if MLB owners renew their push for a salary cap in 2026, there will be a lot of fans who will be very receptive to that sales pitch.
As long as they perceive baseball as being less fair than the other sports, they will worry about competitive balance.
The salary cap actually won’t fix what fans are complaining about. It will only adjust their ire. If a salary cap arrived the complaints would shift from the Dodgers unrestrained spending to the revenue disparities. If 15 MLB teams (or more) never spend to a salary cap does a cap do anything other than limit big spending teams from doing even more?
The root of MLB fans complaints has to do with revenue distribution. But that’s an unsolvable problem for MLB owners. The Dodgers/Mets/other big market teams’ owners paid a premium to buy teams with massively larger revenue streams than small market clubs.
In a sport where local revenues play a much larger role, that’s a conundrum that a salary cap will likely do little to change.
