Question of the week: do you care more about a floor or a cap?

[MrTPlush]

A salary floor is more important:

Why?

Partially because a salary floor wouldn’t exist without salary cap. So the answer is really both combined. But even then, the forced revenue sharing that must happen to allow such a salary floor is more important than a cap.

A floor or cap is useless by itself, honestly. Forcing the limitation of the Dodgers ability to spend while forcing the spending of other teams is the most ideal situation. In theory, it should also spread out talent a little more and make more teams competitive.

 

[Thurston Fluff]

5 hours ago, wiguy94 said:

Brock I'm not sure what you were expecting asking this on a Brewers forum but I'd be shocked if a single person said they would rather have a floor than a ceiling.

I am for practical reasons. I think it's the only way to get revenue sharing with player approval. If teams share most revenue then the cap will naturally occur. Ideally we'd have a floor and ceiling with an agreement on percentage of revenue going to players. We don't live in an ideal world so taking the practical approach lets do the next best thing. 

[nate82]

3 hours ago, markedman5 said:

This is encouraging 

 

Very encouraging as I think the revenue split was the blocker during the strike for a salary cap.

[Jopal78]

1 hour ago, wibadgers23 said:

I'm not trying to start a debate about whether Mark A is just hoarding money every year but are the owners of teams like the Brewers and Pirates essentially admitting they have a lot more money to spend but simply choose not to spend?  I'm assuming all owners are in agreement of the $171.2 million floor?  That's a good $50 million more than what the Brewers typically spend in a given year.

Ok, I’ll bite. Mark Attanasio is high finance,  private equity, institutional capital rich. This narrative that owners pocket their baseball team’s money is ridiculous, and just dumb sportswriter drivel. The Brewers are merely one asset in a much larger portfolio of Attanasio’s holdings. He’s interested in increasing the team’s value ten fold more than the cash it generates on a year to year basis. 
 

Teams like the Brewers and Pirates spend what their market provides balanced against what the executives propose in their annual budget. 

[BarremlensTSSC]

2 hours ago, wiguy94 said:

MLBPA's offer included a much stronger share of local media money. There wasn't a number specified so I doubt it's an even split but it would be bigger than it currently is. They also had the competitive integrity tax as well if teams were below $150M in payroll.

the difference between the MLBPA's competitive tax at $150 million and a hard floor of $171 million from MLBs offer is interesting to me..... the other point you made about the owners historic refusal to open the books complicating any likelihood of MLBPA entertaining a cap/floor:  completely agree  But after decades of collusion and lying by the owners I'm not sure even opening the books would help.  I think the words "cap" and "floor" are probably non-starters even if the tax system proposed by MLBPA are basically soft cap/floor structures

[BarremlensTSSC]

1 hour ago, Jopal78 said:

This narrative that owners pocket their baseball team’s money is ridiculous, and just dumb sportswriter drivel. The Brewers are merely one asset in a much larger portfolio of Attanasio’s holdings. He’s interested in increasing the team’s value ten fold more than the cash it generates on a year to year basis. 
 

That's a distinction without a difference.  Certainly agree that the current group of owners is far more interested in increasing the value of their franchises than they are year to year revenue/profit.  Historically that hasn't been the case but it is now and has been for much (though not all) of Attanasio's ownership.

[Bulldogboy]

Floor

[Matt]

I don't care about either if local TV revenue is being distributed equally (even better if if more is being given to smaller markets).

[Lathund]

The MLBPA proposal also includes more revenue sharing (And a soft payroll floor), and I think that alone will go a long way towards more parity without needing a cap. Team payroll spending is highly correlated to team revenue, so more revenue sharing will see small market teams be able to spend more and take some money away from the Dodgers and Yankees and the likes and will even the playing field a lot. Finding a way to increase parity without a cap would be ideal IMO. Because the cap itself only benefits the owners. The rest of us may benefit from the side effects of the cap, but a cap isn't the only way to achieve that. There are a bunch of good ideas in the MLBPA proposal which adress these issues too. 

[thebruce44]

This doesn't seem difficult to me on what is best for the sport without getting into the minutia:

1. Salary cap and floor to mathematically keep overall player compensation consistent.
2. Revenue share so that all teams can hit the floor without losing money while also being incentivized teams and players to stay with their original team.
3. Pay prospects earlier but still reward teams that properly develop talent.

I wish the owners and players could agree on these overall goals before getting into detailed proposals. A work stoppage would be bad for both parties.
 

[Dragonbait]

I'm for whatever keeps ticket and food prices low. Especially as a family of 5.

[adambr2]

2 hours ago, Dragonbait said:

I'm for whatever keeps ticket and food prices low. Especially as a family of 5.

I assure you that nothing could be further from the minds of either side.

We will however get to hear them posture and tell the public repeatedly over the next 8 months how awful and greedy and unreasonable the other side is while they bicker on how they should split up a multi billion dollar pie and we smile and nod as we put $4.50 gas into our cars.

[jw5511986]

15 hours ago, tmwiese55 said:

I was pleasantly surprised by the local TV being agreed upon by the teams.   Trying to think it through, is there any reason the MLBPA would be opposed to that specifically?   In that it leads or starts the walk towards a more true 'cap' is the only reason I'm quickly coming up with.  Or that, if NY/LAD have to give an extra 70 mil each per year to a 'cheap' owner that won't spend it (or is barred from spending it by the cap).

But at least, the owners are fine with it. That's one battle I expected that doesn't seem to be there 

One reason would be these splits provide a new high water mark for the owners to negotiate down from each subsequent CBA. Meanwhile their franchise values go up up up and the players get none of that gain in equity.

[BrewerFan]

On 5/29/2026 at 5:50 AM, Dragonbait said:

I'm for whatever keeps ticket and food prices low. Especially as a family of 5.

I don't think anything is going to do that.

If the Brewers payroll was 30M this year, they'd still be charging the same for tickets and concessions. 

They don't raise ticket prices because they spend on payroll. They raise payroll because they're able to generate more revenue from ticket sales(and all other forms of revenue, merchandise, concessions, etc...). 

[BrewerFan]

On 5/28/2026 at 5:23 PM, wibadgers23 said:

I'm not trying to start a debate about whether Mark A is just hoarding money every year but are the owners of teams like the Brewers and Pirates essentially admitting they have a lot more money to spend but simply choose not to spend?  I'm assuming all owners are in agreement of the $171.2 million floor?  That's a good $50 million more than what the Brewers typically spend in a given year.

Yeah, but in this scenario, they'd be getting a MUCH bigger chunk of revenue from the TV deals all being shared. I'd imagine that'd more than make up for the 50M(or come close to it). 

I'm shocked that the local TV revenue sharing was agreed to by the large markets. 

 

I think you have to start this by grandfathering in some deals, maybe progressively building to it. You can't just punish the Dodgers because they like 120M a year in deferred money or a 360M payroll. 

But no, I don't think Mark Attanasio is hoarding the money. I think they leave a healthy room each year and turn a modest profit.

 

And once again, just to remind everyone, Attanasio owns somewhere in the 35-38% of the Brewers. He's the principal owner, not the majority. So he's making the decisions, but he's not quite as responsible as everyone is inferring. If we're going to lose 20M a year, he has to get approval for that as he did when they borrowed for the AZ and LA complexes(I believe). If it's approved, they move forward. Likewise, if they're going to go 20M into the red, that usually requires a capital call and the other owners, even smaller owners like Giannis is going to have to pay for the2% he owns(or whatever it may be). 

[Brock Beauchamp]

On 5/28/2026 at 6:01 PM, Thurston Fluff said:

I am for practical reasons. I think it's the only way to get revenue sharing with player approval. If teams share most revenue then the cap will naturally occur. Ideally we'd have a floor and ceiling with an agreement on percentage of revenue going to players. We don't live in an ideal world so taking the practical approach lets do the next best thing. 

I also prefer a floor for this reason. I’m also over teams that have a payroll similar to what they receive in revenue sharing, that’s utter nonsense that should stop. 

[Thurston Fluff]

1 hour ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

I also prefer a floor for this reason. I’m also over teams that have a payroll similar to what they receive in revenue sharing, that’s utter nonsense that should stop. 

One of the things few talk about is how the lack of a salary cap boosts innovation. Right now it's the small market teams that are forced to find new ways to win. It's the Brewers, Rays and Guardians of the sport that keeps baseball from stagnating. Without teams like Milwaukee we'd still be in the wait for the three run homer stage of baseball on offense and the only three inning relievers would be end of the roster mop up guys. Stealing bases, and defense would still be afterthoughts. 

A cap and revenue sharing would eliminate the need to find new ways to win. A floor and revenue sharing would do the opposite. It would prevent some teams from pocketing the profits but also force the big spenders to live within the same budget restraints as all the rest. That, to me at least, seems like a good way to get more teams to find new ways to win.