MLB Players Are About To Be The Bad Guys. Let’s Hope They’re Prepared.

This article was written by Jason Foster and published on Sport & State, a new media company founded by Clay Travis that is built around sports, culture, original voices, and live conversation.
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If MLB players want a peek into what could be in store, they should look at the smoldering corpse of the Republican Party after its historic nuking in Tuesday’s midterm election. The parallels are closer than one might think.

The GOP was handed a mandate in 2024 and had the opportunity to ride the momentum into a period of national prosperity. Instead, Republicans wet the bed with a tsunami of self-inflicted failure.

MLB players find themselves on a similar path. Baseball is booming right now. TV ratings and general popularity are at a place they haven’t been in a long time. The level of on-field talent is greater than at any point in history. But trouble looms, and it will largely, perhaps ultimately, be up to the players to avoid catastrophe. Otherwise, they will become the villains in their own story.

As it stands now, deserved or not, it’s the players who are on track to be the bad guys of the offseason — and perhaps much longer.

Read the room

There’s a good chance the 2027 MLB season will be shortened, perhaps significantly, thanks to an impending lockout that’s almost certain to begin at midnight Dec. 1 when the league’s current collective bargaining agreement expires.

MLB owners will lock out the players so they can try to institute a salary cap, something the MLB Players’ Association has adamantly opposed for decades, even though baseball is the only one of the four major North American sports without one. There’s no indication that the players will budge this time, so expect a long, ugly and annoying fight.

With free agency already underway, and recognizing that Clubs will need a full offseason to operate within the cap and floor system, MLB is proposing to phase in the salary cap and floor in 2028

The projected cap and floor payrolls for 2028 would make 12 clubs increase payroll by $636M to reach the floor, and 8 clubs to decrease payroll $528M to reach the cap. Overall, this would net a $108M payroll increase

Starting in 2028 would allow a smoother transition into the cap and floor system without delaying key player benefits

— MLB (@MLB) November 3, 2026

Though the owners technically control whether the season begins on time, or whether it happens at all, it’s the players who will face the most public pressure to reach a deal. And it’s not going to be pretty from a PR standpoint.

The MLBPA’s stern dismissal on Tuesday of MLB’s latest salary cap proposal, which would delay a cap until 2028 and pay a minimum salary of $900,000, is a reminder that the players are about to be about as popular as Republicans were on Election Day.

Statement from the Major League Baseball Players Association https://t.co/rQNq5RXjDY

— MLBPA (@MLBPA) November 3, 2026

Before I go further, let’s get this out of the way: Nobody feels sorry for MLB’s mega-rich owners. Perhaps literally no one. This isn’t about carrying water for “management” against “labor,” as if the players are a bunch of factory workers just hoping to make enough to pay their mortgage.

The owners definitely play a huge role here, but this is about not living in a fantasy world that’s completely untethered from social and economic realities — and avoiding the consequences of ignoring those realities.

At a time when basic necessities have become borderline unaffordable for millions of people, the public just does not want to hear about the “struggles” of rich people — especially athletes. A guy making $22 an hour isn’t interested in hearing that $900,000 or $1 million or $20 million just isn’t enough. Or, worse, isn’t “fair.”

Public support for cap remains strong

An October poll conducted by the Sports Business Journal and Seton Hall University showed that 54 percent of baseball fans want a salary cap. This follows other polls in recent years with similar results, with some showing even more support for a cap. It’s not that fans want players to make less money. It’s a matter of competitive balance: Too many fans believe their team has no realistic shot at a championship.

Yes, the Brewers won the World Series with a low payroll. Good for them, truly. But that’s not the norm, nor will it ever be the norm. A top-10 payroll team has won the World Series 17 times since 2001. Over the past 11 seasons, it’s happened eight times. The haves will always win a lot more often than the have-nots.

It’s very true that many of the have-nots could be a lot closer to the haves if they actually invested in their teams. The proposed $180.2 million salary floor for 2028 that goes with the owners’ proposed $258.2 million cap would help a lot. But, of course, you won’t get one without the other.

Lavish ‘security’

Players say a cap hurts their earning potential. That’s true. But let’s be real: It’s also the First Worldiest of First World Problems.

The NFL has a cap, yet Patrick Mahomes will earn $56.8 million this season. The NBA has a cap, yet Steph Curry makes $62.6 million. MLB’s proposed cap would pay a minimum of $1 million to players with at least two years of service time. The average salary would be much higher than that, while the superstars would continue to rake in annual amounts in the dozens of millions.

By the way, the median annual income in the United States is about $64,200.

The point is, the “security” the players say they seek is the most extreme of luxuries. Does $80 million really offer less security than $60 million in any real sense? Most people would probably say no, but that’s ultimately what’s at the heart of the players’ opposition to a salary cap. And it’s going to be a very unpopular message.

So when the CBA talks get tense and the public starts to fear a truncated or lost season, the players’ spin will go nowhere. The players will take a public-relations hit unlike they’ve seen since 1994-95, when another fight over a salary cap canceled the ’94 World Series, shortened the 1995 season and led to years of apathy among fans, some of whom never came back.

Don’t ignore your constituents

Maybe the owners will eventually back off a cap in exchange for some other big concession, but that doesn’t seem likely. It’s been their top goal for more than 30 years, but they also know how the players will be perceived. I’m just not sure the players are prepared for it — or that they care. But they should not simply dismiss public opinion, especially when there’s a direct link to their paychecks.

Fans just want to watch baseball. They don’t really care how that happens. But if they’re deprived of that, especially for reasons of vanity, they will make their displeasure known in ways that will hurt the bottom line.

It’s a lot like politics: When constituents are ignored, bad things happen. If people think you don’t care about them, even when you should, they will stop caring about you.

This isn’t 1994. Fans have no shortage of entertainment options. If they aren’t getting what they want from MLB, it’ll be easy to shift loyalties elsewhere. There’s no guarantee that anyone other than die-hards will remain, and that’s not a recipe for long-term health.

As in politics, decisions have consequences. Sometimes, it takes a while to repair the damage. The damage from a long MLB lockout, especially one driven by players’ perceived greed, could take a lot longer to fix than people realize.

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