After 2026
What might be next for baseball
The existing collective bargaining agreement between the MLB players’ union and the owners expires in December. It is the agreement the two sides reached after they ended the 2022 work stoppage that delayed the start of spring training and opening day but ultimately didn’t affect the length of the regular season. All things considered, its impact was quelled by the fact that it stretched from December to March, when no games are being played.
This time around, the expectation is that things are going to be different. Contentious. Potentially drawn out. There’s pretty open speculation that the 2027 season might not get played at all.
There are a few reasons why this could happen, but the biggest one is the state of team payrolls and player salaries. Because baseball has avoided implementing a salary cap for so long, individual player contracts have gotten enormous, and some team payrolls have run into the hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars, while other teams won’t pay their entire roster much more this year than the Dodgers will give Kyle Tucker.
Add on the practice of including deferred money — one that thus far only a few teams are employing — and the financial state of baseball gets even more complicated.
In the wake of the Kyle Tucker deal, a few owners shared that they will push for a salary cap in the next collective bargaining agreement; a move that would almost certainly spark a work stoppage.
