00:00The absence of a salary cap, and I wrote about this in the aftermath of Tony Clark's address at the All-Star game last week in Atlanta,
00:11wherein he talked about how bad salary caps are for competition.
00:16I don't see that in any of the other leagues that have salary caps.
00:21You see lots of competition from lots of disparate markets.
00:24Kansas City's a power in the NFL.
00:26Oklahoma City just won the NBA championship.
00:31So I don't see that as being a problem in the other sports.
00:34But what I do see as a problem is how ridiculously the baseball players under this system get hosed.
00:44Scott, we're talking about everybody thinks that a salary cap in baseball would be bad for the players.
00:50Yeah, it'd be bad for the next Bryce Harper, I guess.
00:54It'd be bad for him in some ways, but everybody would get paid in a salary cap system.
01:01And right now, they're not.
01:02Scott, look, a million dollars is a lot of money.
01:05I get that.
01:06But it's not a lot of money for a successful professional athlete.
01:09And right now, more than half of active current MLB players, as of last Tuesday when I did the column, more than half were making under a million dollars a year.
01:22More than a third were making less than the National Hockey League minimum salary.
01:27Scott, it's the NHL.
01:28They don't have any money.
01:29They're paying their guys more than baseball is.
01:31It's a ridiculous system that's set up to benefit only the most outstanding players who have been in the league for a long time.
01:41So right now, what you have is you have 10 percent of the MLB players making 70 percent, more than 70 percent, of the money that's paid to Major League Baseball players.
01:52It's not just about making Cincinnati and Pittsburgh and Baltimore competitive.
01:57It's about giving the players a fair deal.
02:01So the rest of them get 30 percent of the pie?
02:05Less than 30.
02:07It's like 28.
02:09That's unbelievable.
02:11It's astonishing that it's gone on this long while.
02:15Everybody pretends that talks about baseball, that the MLB union is so strong.
02:20Yes, strong for, again, the guy who gets that $500 million contract, strong for Shohei Itani.
02:28It works out great for him.
02:29But Paul Skeens, who we just mentioned, the number one pick in the 2023 MLB draft, he'll finish his second season at the end of September.
02:40OK, so Paul Skeens, by that point, will have made $10.8 million, which is his two years of salary plus the full signing bonus.
02:48At the same, by the time Stefan Risa Shea, who was the number one overall pick in the 24 NBA draft, by the time he gets the end of his second season, he'll have made $25 million.
02:59And Caleb Williams, the number one pick in the 2024 NFL draft, by the end of his second season, will have made $28 million.
03:09So Paul Skeens, who is way better than the other two guys, are at what they do.
03:15Unless Caleb Williams comes out and all of a sudden he's not better than Paul Skeens.
03:21Neither one is close to Skeens, and yet they make more than twice as much money.
03:28That's Major League Baseball's system.
03:30It's a garbage system.
03:32It's bad for competition in terms of markets that are smaller, having a legit chance to win a World Series.
03:38And it's bad for the vast majority of MLB players.
03:41Will Manfred be able to pull it off against the union to get a salary cap, or are we going to see a lengthy strike?
03:53I think we'll see a lengthy strike, and I think it could cost us the 2027 season.
03:58But for both sides, for the players that are not getting a fair deal now, and for the competition, the fans of Major League Baseball teams that want to have the same chance in MLB that they have in the NFL, NHL, NBA.
04:15They all believe on day one that they have a chance in the right circumstance to have a championship.
04:21They all have reason to believe that now in the three other sports.
04:25But in Major League Baseball, Scott, I mean, how long has it been since Pittsburgh legitimately thought on day one that they had a chance in the World Series?
04:33Never.
04:33It's 1992.
04:35It was so long ago.
04:36I went to Memphis, Cincinnati, and Indianapolis on my way back to Pittsburgh.
04:44I spent more than 30 years gone since they had a chance to win a series.
