The Cap is a trap

 As the 2026 season enters it's final month, we can start to get a picture of what the 2027 lineup will look like. It's full of promise, and now, with young players getting experience playing meaningful baseball, it looks like the next window will open much sooner than we were expecting. 

To wit, the roster on opening day next year may look like this:

C - Victor Caratini
1b - Royce Lewis
2b - Kody Clemens
SS - Kaelen Culpepper
3b - Brooks Lee
OF - Walker Jenkins, Byron Buxton, and one of Trevor Larnach, Austin Martin, Luke Keaschall, Alan Roden or Emmanuel Rodriguez, with another as the DH. 

SP - Joe Ryan, Pablo Lopez, Taj Bradley, Zebby Matthews, Baily Ober

RP - Jeff Hoffman, Yoendrys Gomez, Andrew Morris, Cole Sands, Connor Prielipp, Kody Funderburk

I think that team, goes into the 2027 with substantially more optimism. Now here is a thought exercise for you.

Let's say the next CBA gets agreed to, and there is not only a salary cap but the salary floor so many fans think will fix baseball. If the floor is at $150m as has been commonly bandied about, the Twins, with the above roster, would be well short of that number. So how are you getting there?

The first option is raises all around, with extensions for the arbitration eligible players. The second is to dramatically overpay to fill out the bullpen and the bench. The third option involves hijinks, not dissimilar to what you see in the other sport that famously has a salary floor, the NHL. 

Major League Baseball has had a free market for decades, and most teams still won't be worrying about the cap. Rebuilding teams like the Twins will be worried about hitting the floor. I can see a couple ways of doing this without paying for mediocre players to block elite young prospects.

The first is the salary dump. Let's say the Dodgers really want to keep Teoscar Hernandez, but know that he isn't worth the salary he is making any longer, especially as they try to get under the cap. The Reds have no use for him, but agree to take Hernandez and his salary, and a prospect, then immediately release him. He signs back with the Dodgers for the league minimum.

Hearkening back to the Dodgers, since they seem to have a creative front office and are really the reason this conversation has started in the first place, let's look at the other solution I can foresee. This is a favorite in the NHL, the pass through trade. In this scenario, two top payroll teams are trying to fit a deal with one another, and it isn't working. Let's say the Dodgers are looking to add one of the high priced and disappointing Mets this offseason. To work this one out, the Mets send, let's say Marcus Semien, to Los Angeles. The Mets and Dodgers both want to get under the cap, so they enlist your Minnesota Twins to pay Semien's salary. The Mets and Twins get prospects, the Dodgers get the star infielder. 

A salary cap and salary floor isn't going to redistribute players, but rather salaries. If you look at the media landscape right now, and hear talk about where it is headed, it sounds like all baseball teams will be on a common media plan, and the fiscal advantage of local TV contracts will be gone. The Dodgers and Yankees will only have an advantage if their owners' aggression, and no longer one of market size.

A salary cap will give the big market teams a scapegoat as they pare their payroll, something they are going to need to do in the near future anyway. A salary floor will simply shift the burden to smaller teams, and have them foot the bill for the big market salaries. 

Payroll manipulation isn't going to work how you think it will, and it won't work how you want it to. It will primarily benefit the wealthiest owners, and won't really affect on the field competitiveness. The lengthy rookie and arbitration contracts already take players deep into their prime, and large contracts go to old players as they hit the back end of their best years. The Dodgers have won the last two World Series, but the longest active playoff streak is only 12 years, and it belongs to the other team in Los Angeles, the Angels. There is no parity problem as it relates to market size. It has to do with front office ability and ownership will. (see: Tampa Bay Rays, San Diego Padres) 

Tie up some loopholes in contract rules, absolutely, but also focus on the development of your internal talent and don't encourage a plan that benefits not only billionaire owners, but the wealthiest ones that are already winning.