The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Does Major League Baseball Need a Salary Cap to Stay Competitive?

Episode Date: February 19, 2026

Does Major League Baseball Need a Salary Cap to Stay Competitive?

All right. Chris Bassett is a Baltimore Orioles pitcher. He has pitched with Toronto in the past. That's what he's best in. Oakland. He feels like he would sometimes, he would either go six innings of shutout ball against the Astros or then get crushed. Yeah, one of the other. He is on the subcommittee for the Players Association. And apparently if you're on the subcommittee, one of the things you are a sub of is you are in the labor negotiations.

When asked yesterday about the salary cap in baseball or a potential salary cap, here's the quote. The salary cap doesn't fix anything. If you look at every major sport that has a salary cap, we have the best parity. The salary cap is not the issue. Having suppressed salaries across the league so owners can make more money is not the answer. Now, stay with me on this. quoting Bassett, like if I tell you in 25 years, the Dodgers will be playing and going to the 10 World Series and winning seven of them,

is that an issue? Because that's the Patriots. Then Chiefs have been to six or seven. The Philadelphia Eagles have been to four or five. The parody in our sport is better than any other sport. So we will make changes to try to help the so-called bottom teams out, but a salary cap in suppressing salaries and taking from players to try, try to help the so-called bottom feeder spend more, that is not the answer.

Because again, if you're trying to make a competitive league across the board, we have proof that every single league has less parity than ours. So how can you sit there and say a salary cap is going to fix this when every single salary cap's board has less parity than ours? It makes no sense. Want to chew on that for a minute? I will say, now, when he says there's the better parity than even, you know, he's the better parity than any other.

He's talking about teams that have appeared in the World Series. You're talking about leagues. When he says our league, yeah, I know, but we have better parity. What is the definition of we have better parity? How is he defining parity? Is it champions or?

That there are been numerous different World Series champions. In the last 10 years, we have seen the Astros win. We have seen the Braves when we've seen the Nationals when we have seen the Rangers when we have seen the Dodgers win. He's saying, if you go look at the NFL, who's typically there? It's been New England, it's been Kansas City.

If you look at the NBA, you think of what largely what, the NBA. There's been parity there. Denver has won a championship. Golden State's won a bunch. It seems like there's been a fair amount of parity in everyone. So I'm wondering what the measure is and what exact numbers he's using. And I also say baseball is susceptible more to rank. randomness than the other two sports.

If you do a, especially, certainly NBA, NBA is the least random in a seven-game basketball series, which each game is like 200 possessions. Generally, the better team is going to win in a seven-game series. Generally speaking. Barring injury. Baseball, I mean, you get like, you get Joe West calling a home run that wasn't. You get, I don't know, a ball rolling off of the top of the, wall at Fenway

like stuff can bloops and weird stuff I feel like baseball is more of that than than any other to where we talk about like the worst the worst of the absolute worst teams can still win like they win generally 60 plus games let me put it this way and I know this is a comp or not

I can't tell you that a small a small market team may win a bunch of NFL games next year. There might be a chance that what was the smallest of the market teams? Would you be your... Jacksonville?

Jacksonville's. It could be your Carolinas. It could be, to a lesser extent, the Packers up in Green Bay with Milwaukee. I have a pretty good feeling, not guaranteed feeling, but a pretty good feeling, Rossi, that we're never going to see a Marlins versus Guardians World Series. Yeah. The Diamondbacks caught lightning in a bottle and made a World Series. Like, oh, it's great parody.

The Diamondbacks made a World Series. Yeah, but the Diamondbacks weren't any good that year. I mean, they won, what, like 84, 85 games, and they got hot in the playoffs. I don't know. I guess there's a number of examples we can think of. Like the Patriots, for example, you could argue didn't deserve to be in the Super Bowl, so maybe we can do this to every league. Can you have a league that has a floor without a ceiling, without a camp?

I mean, in theory, I guess you could. Oh, only a salary floor and no salary cap? Correct. I guess. Is there a way you can do that? You could do it, but I don't think you can get the owners to agree to that. That's what I think Chris Bassett wants. He even said it as much in his quote. He's like, how about the bottom feeders?

We want to make sure they're more competitive. Because generally, what is, let me look it up. What is the floor and the cap in the NBA? Yeah, salary four is $140 million, which is, So yeah, their floor is 90% of the salary cap. That's not going to happen in baseball. Cap is $154 million. Floor is $139.

So let's just call it $140 and $155. Yeah. That's only $15 million in wiggle room. There's no way baseball owners agree to that. No way. So the owners are going to say, all right, you want a floor. We get that. But we're going to cap too.

Yeah, I'm generally in these types of situations, generally on the player's side. But I can't buy the, oh, we have more parity than anybody else. You can't use parity as an explanation, as a logical reasoning for no need for a cap. The haves have a much greater long-term advantage in baseball than any other of the major sports. And it is because of the lack of a salary cap.

And the Dodgers, while enjoying it now, have basically said, hey, we want the, Our contracts are already crazy right now, part because of us, or a large part because of us, we need a governor. And the baseball player is like, well, that's your fault. You can't control your spending, and that's on you. You're the ones and all these players. So look, you can see if on both sides of this, for sure.

You absolutely can't. When you go to a player and you say we're putting a cap on something, that means they're going to cap the amount of money the players are going to get. there will not be a Los Angeles, there will not be in New York, they will not be a Chicago that will say budget be damned. Because if you have a cap, you have a budget. And that's what the players do not want. Let's talk to our buddy Aggie Doug here.

Maybe he's an economist here on the Matt Thomasville Ross. Adi, what do you got today? I am definitely not an economist, but I do know that this is basically playing from a different rulebook. I mean, that's all it is. I mean, you basically say, okay, well, our field is, you know, 100 by, you know, 75, but the Dodgers field is only 80 by 60. It makes absolutely no sense. You can't play with a different set of rules.

Just because the Dodgers have more money, that doesn't make them basically, they can go out and money with it. I mean, the Yankees used to do it in the 80s and the 90s. So, yes, absolutely. I agree with Bassett that that's not a recipe for success. It's not a guaranteed recipe for success because obviously we know the Yankees, they sucked even with. then they had, you know, paid all those players.

You've got to pay the right players. The point of having this whole parody conversation, it's a different sport. In the NFL, if you have a franchise quarterback, you're probably going to make the playoffs. In the NBA, if you have one or two superstars, you're probably going to make the playoffs. So for them to sit there and say, oh, well, you know, if we pay, you know, our top 15 guys, let's just say top 15 out of 26, significantly more, let's even say 25 to 30% more than any other team can even afford. Not even like they can, but they can afford. So that's a completely different set of rules.

Yeah, I'm not smart enough to do this ADL, any of us are. It's hard for me to cross over sports and say, well, if one sport does it one way, we should do another way. I can't. I can't figure that out. And I'm more going to be... Well, think about it. Like, if you have a stud pitcher, right? Right? Like if you have a stud pitcher or like, like we had Jordan and we had, you know, our two or three pitchers that were great with Framber and, and you guys from Verlander.

I mean, but we had to have a lot of other guys do a lot of things. And we paid them a lot less money than the Dodgers would ever even think about pain. So I guess that's just my point is that when you have the ability to pay 30% more for even a guy that's just a guy on some of the way. other teams and that's just your plug-in guy or your bench guy, that makes absolutely no sense. Thanks, Jackie Doug, for the phone call. Appreciate it. The players are deathly afraid, Ross, if there's a cap, there's not enough money to go around. Yeah, that's interesting. If there's a cap, then the Dodgers just bank all these profits that the players have no

access to. That is correct, because the television deal for the Dodgers doesn't change unless the major league baseball owners collectively say, we'll take all of our TV money and put it together and the Dodgers have no interest in doing that. Like yeah, we're going to take this straight to the bank. And then if you make a cap for the, you know, the same cap for the raise as the same cap for the Dodgers,

that's just letting the Dodgers keep all their cash. And the players, you're not allowing the players to get into that. Yeah, I don't know. This is interesting. Yeah. Again, we got a lot more minutia to go to over the next calendar year. I would just say the overriding sentiment was I wouldn't be booking West Palm Beach for

2027, put it that way.