With Major League Baseball’s collective bargaining agreement set to expire after this season, there are sure to be plenty of changes in the game by the time the 2022 season roll around (when the season rolls around is another story if things really get contentious). Already there have been leaks to the media over ideas and proposals that are aimed at making MLB more exciting and overall more competitive.
One idea already thrown out there is the concept of a salary floor.
In this early proposal, a salary floor would be set at $100 million across MLB, meaning every team would have to have a minimum payroll of $100 million or face a penalty of some kind. Ideally, this helps more players get higher salaries, but at the same time, it would conceivably help more teams remain competitive throughout the season, especially as the playoff field looks to expand permanently moving forward.
Additionally, baseball’s owners have proposed lowering the luxury tax threshold to $180 million from the current $210 million, which would essentially help teams afford the new salary floor.
Under the current luxury tax structure, there are three tiers with penalties that get steeper the higher a team’s payroll gets, hence why a team like the Yankees are taking the blasphemous route of actually trying to reduce payroll these days. The current $210 million tier includes a 20% tax, while the proposed $180 million tier would include a 25% tax, which would increase from there.
The salary floor is likely going to face an uphill battle with the players. While the floor would likely get more players paid, they have also been pushing to actually increase the luxury tax threshold to incentivize more teams to spend more money. Decreasing that threshold might be a non-starter even with a salary floor. There might be some room for compromise, though, if the owners agree to decrease the amount of years it takes for a player to get to arbitration.
Aside from the financial aspects of the proposal, would a salary floor really make MLB teams more competitive? Or would it simply allow teams to give more players bad contracts that just send them deeper into baseball purgatory?
Like anything else in baseball, this will all come down to the front office a team has. For teams like Cleveland and Tampa Bay, a salary floor would potentially make a huge difference in their ability to retain homegrown talent. Would the Guardians then be able to offer Jose Ramirez a contract extension that keeps him in Cleveland his entire career? Or Shane Bieber for that matter? Would the Rays be able to lock up Wander Franco long-term when he inevitably deserves that big contract?
These all become possibilities instead of the usual pipe dreams that end up in painful trades angering and alienating portions of a fan base. And the free agent pool suddenly becomes a lot more appetizing to these mid-market operators as well. Scouting and player development will remain the keys to having a winning ballclub, but it sure won’t hurt to be able to spend some money at the same time.
Coupling the salary floor with the proposed expansion of the playoffs would likely keep far more teams in the race each season, incentivizing them to aim for contention rather than painful, years-long (or in some cases, decades-long) rebuilds. It wouldn’t make teams like the Pirates, Diamondbacks or Orioles instant contenders or anything close to it, but once their windows of contention do open, the salary floor would certainly keep that window open longer – in theory.
A salary floor would be a bold step forward for the only North American sport to still not have a salary cap. The stiff penalties of the luxury tax have acted as a de facto salary cap in recent years, which has helped to some extent. But the salary floor – coupled with expanded playoffs – is an intriguing idea that the fans of any mid-market team should consider an exciting proposition for the future of MLB.
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