President Donald Trump threw his support behind Major League Baseball owners Friday, endorsing a salary cap just days after labor negotiations began and as concerns grow that the sport could be headed toward another damaging work stoppage, even one that could cancel part or all of next season.
Trump’s remarks immediately placed his administration on the same side as MLB owners in a growing battle over competitive balance, player salaries and the future economics of the sport â a fight some fear could lead to a repeat of the 1994 work stoppage catastrophe that led to the first season without the World Series being played since 1904.
Trump made the comments aboard Air Force One, responding to a reporter’s question about whether baseball needs a salary cap.
“Don’t they sort of have one?” Trump responded.
A reporter explained that the luxury tax threshold allows wealthy clubs to spend freely beyond the line. Trump then stated his position on the MLB issue.
“If you don’t have a salary cap you don’t have a sport, because they can’t help themselves,” Trump said, as quoted by Dan Zaksheske of the Fox-owned sports site Outkick. “They should have done it a long time ago.”
Trump added he found it “shocking, frankly, that they didn’t put a cap on many years ago” and said baseball had “a chance to implement one a long time ago but they blew it.”
Trump’s statement comes with some degree of irony. A majority of the players he is effectively opposing are his own supporters, or at least supporters of the Republican Party. A VoteHub analysis of publicly available voter registration data found that among 434 sampled MLB players, 233 were registered Republicans and just 34 were Democrats, with 157 independents and 10 registered with an alternative party.
MLB Salary Cap Debate: The Numbers
The Los Angeles Dodgers carry a payroll of over $420 million â roughly five times the Miami Marlins’ figure â and paid an additional $169 million in luxury tax penalties last season, according to a report by ESPN‘s Jorge Castillo. That tax bill alone exceeded the Marlins’ entire payroll by more than $100 million.
Owners have proposed capping each team’s payroll at $245.3 million, with a salary floor of $171.2 million. The union rejected both. The current luxury tax threshold sits at $244 million, but clubs can spend as far beyond it as they choose, as the Dodgers have clearly demonstrated.
MLB is the only major North American professional sports league without a salary cap system. Commissioner Rob Manfred has called the luxury tax system a failure on competitive balance. The union has opposed a salary cap for decades and is not expected to soften.
MLB Lockout Risk, and What It Could Mean for 2027
The current collective bargaining agreement expires Dec. 1. Owners are expected to lock out players on Dec. 2, beginning a standoff industry officials expect to grind into spring â and potentially wipe out regular-season games in 2027. The last time a salary cap was seriously on the table, during the 1994-95 strike, players walked out for 232 days and the entire World Series was canceled.
“Of course I do,” Manfred said Wednesday at league headquarters when asked whether he feared a repeat, according to ESPN‘s Castillo. “You just can’t ignore that financial penalties have not gotten it done for us.”
The MLBPA declined to comment Friday, and the league did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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