MLB has a problem: money. No, it’s not a lack of money. It is, however, the surplus amount of money teams are spending on players. Teams are spending record amounts of money on free agents. All because there is no salary cap in the sport of baseball. In turn, leaving the smaller market teams in the dust. Not able to compete with the bigger market teams like the Dodgers, Yankees, Mets, Phillies, Red Sox, and Braves.
In the past two offseasons, teams in the MLB have in total spent 6.8 billion dollars on free agents, with more than 75% of that from the teams I mentioned alone, with 20% of that being the Dodgers. According to David Melendi, a writer for “Metsmerized Online“, “More than a third of the $2.9 billion dollars (spent over the last offseason) was spePnt on two players who signed with the Dodgers.” With this crazy spending by the Dodgers, they were able to land not one but two of the best players in all of baseball. They spent over 1 billion dollars in the process. Meanwhile, small-market teams like the Oakland A’s only spend a total of 13 million dollars on free agents.
The MLB needs a salary cap. Baseball nowadays is just not competitive enough. Every year, you have the same big teams that are willing to spend money to win the World Series and end up succeeding. Look at the big-market Yankees, for example; they have won 27 World Series. The second closest to that is 9. Baseball has become pay-to-win. Leaving the smaller market teams uncompetitive, and the same teams just win every single year. In turn, the number of people wanting to watch becomes less, which starts to kill the sport. In a paper by Kimberly B. Taft, an Ole Miss law student, she says that America’s pastime is dying. “Green Bay, Wisconsin, has a population of about 100,000, but their football team has as realistic a chance of making it to the Super Bowl as any other team. Over 500,000 fans crowd into Lambeau Field each year during Green Bay’s eight home games to cheer on the “Pack,” while the Pittsburgh Pirates only draw in an average of 1.5 million fans over the course of their 81 home games.” The number of people coming to the games has clearly gone down. People don’t see the point of going to the game if they know their team has no realistic chance of winning. Without ticket money, it makes it even harder for these small-market teams to generate money.
If the MLB adds a salary cap, then viewership will go up because the sport will become more interesting again. Take the NFL, for example. Every year, it seems like a new team emerges and surprises everyone. This makes watching more fun for the viewer. It gives a sense of change and freshness to the league. Something the MLB doesn’t have. Other leagues have also shown that the lack of a salary cap makes the league boring. Soccer has a similar problem, and many people agree that the leagues have become boring. Salary caps only allow the big clubs to win every year, and it’s a simple fix for baseball and a very necessary one indeed.
