Valuetainment - “MLB Lock Out COMING” - Will Salary Caps DESTROY Baseball？

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00:00:28.000 major league baseball salary cap owners just proposed a salary cap it could cost them an

00:00:35.400 entire season and the entire market is talking about i'm about to come to tom here and by the

00:00:41.800 way one day we will all hear about a girl named bailey that will be a gm of a baseball team and

00:00:47.540 that's tom's daughter but hang tight till that happens so for the first time in 32 years mlb

00:00:53.100 owners have formally proposed a salary cap setting the stage for what could become the

00:00:56.560 sports most serious labor conflict since 1994 strike that canceled the world series with the

00:01:01.780 current collective bargaining agreement expiring shortly after the 2026 world series many expect

00:01:07.080 a lockout and a potentially ugly showdown over baseball's economic future owners say competitive

00:01:13.260 balance is broken mlb argues that the gap between the rich and the poor teams have become too large

00:01:17.700 the dodgers are spending roughly 420 million dollars on payroll while the marlins are spending

00:01:23.780 80 million dollars the league's proposal would cap payrolls at 243 million and create a salary

00:01:30.980 floor of 172 million which means the 80 goes up 90 the 420 would need to come down 180 give or take

00:01:38.020 eight teams would need to reduce spending by combined 578 million while 12 lower spending

00:01:43.880 teams would need to increase payroll by around 617 million league spokesperson glenn kaplan

00:01:50.380 said, too many fans in too many markets

00:01:52.680 have too little hope. Their teams have

00:01:54.560 a fair chance. Players see it as a money grab.

00:01:56.680 The MLB Players Association has a post-salary

00:01:58.640 cap for generations and views the

00:02:00.560 proposal as an attempt to suppress players' salaries

00:02:02.760 rather than improve competition. Our

00:02:04.600 union has never been broken, never will be.

00:02:06.640 The MLB PA director, Bruce Myers, said the

00:02:08.520 union argues that successful small

00:02:10.600 market teams like Brewers, Guardians, and

00:02:12.460 Rays prove that their spending

00:02:14.800 is not the only path to winning

00:02:16.660 while wealthy clubs like the Mets and the Angels

00:02:18.440 have often underperformed. Tom,

00:02:20.380 So I believe in a salary floor.

00:02:24.280 I do.

00:02:25.640 People say that's socialism.

00:02:27.500 Well, not really.

00:02:28.720 Because the modern contracts for digital transmission, digital rights, and television have given small markets almost like owning the team is a free ticket to a multimillion-dollar payday every year.

00:02:44.860 And that, if you look at the history of the stadium, there was a tax incentive somewhere, and that was paid for by the people.

00:02:52.800 So that medallion, that franchise in some city, and let's just use Miami as an example because we're sitting here.

00:03:00.460 You have a stadium down there.

00:03:02.860 You've got people down there, and the city has made tax concessions, and I like the salary floor, which says you have to spend the money on it.

00:03:12.360 Now, why do I like the floor?

00:03:13.740 In days gone by, people would say, I'm a small market team.

00:03:17.180 I can't put $40,000 a night in my stadium the way Yankees, Cubs, and Dodgers do.

00:03:21.740 I don't have those markets.

00:03:23.820 And that used to be a fair statement.

00:03:25.620 But now, sharing in the digital distribution and the TV contracts, it's the great equalizer.

00:03:32.840 So everybody's got money.

00:03:34.860 So I believe in the floor.

00:03:36.820 Now, in terms of a cap, I don't believe in a cap.

00:03:39.560 But I do believe in a tax and an equalization payment, which is what they have now, because otherwise you could have the uber wealthy like the Dodgers or the Yankees and even the Mets.

00:03:52.440 Steve Cohen knows how to do this, too.

00:03:54.440 You know, that are going to just overspend and and take up all the good players.

00:03:59.660 There needs to be an equalization payment because the equalization payment says, oh, you want to overpay for Shohei Otani.

00:04:06.420 great now you spread the money around and now everybody else has the ability to compete for

00:04:10.780 the other free agents so i i agree with that i also think they need to take a cue from other

00:04:17.380 sports where the negotiation was what percent of revenue goes to the players and that that's been

00:04:24.020 negotiated in other sports so i think now that's all my opinions but you know what's about to happen

00:04:30.420 pat we're about to have a lockout and we're about to have an arm wrestling match and we're all going

00:04:35.200 to go tumbling down a flight of stairs on this and i hate it i think that's what's going to happen

00:04:40.580 it's going to lead to a work stoppage there's going to be fire and brimstone you know what 0.77

00:04:45.420 happened to baseball you know what's so dumb for this because in 94 when the strike took place 0.84

00:04:51.180 baseball was dead no world series no forget about world series it was just dead the fans were

00:04:57.360 annoyed they were not coming back and you know when baseball came back up 1998 when sammy sosa

00:05:03.380 and Mark McGuire went through the home run, the 61, the 60,

00:05:06.480 the, you know, punching each other in the stomach.

00:05:09.080 And it was everybody was watching the Cubs

00:05:10.860 and what was it, St. Louis Cardinals he was with at the time

00:05:13.780 when he hit that 78 home run.

00:05:14.960 It was a beautiful two years.

00:05:16.500 They say baseball.

00:05:17.740 FYI, in my opinion, since I've been watching baseball,

00:05:21.460 I didn't, I have to be very honest with everybody,

00:05:23.680 I didn't watch a lot of baseball in Iran.

00:05:25.620 We didn't.

00:05:26.200 When I lived in Iran, it wasn't baseball.

00:05:28.380 You don't give Middle Eastern's baseball bats and say, 0.87

00:05:30.180 here's the ball, go ahead.

00:05:31.000 They don't hit the ball.

00:05:31.780 They kind of play the game in a different way.

00:05:34.040 But when I came here, I fell in love with Major League Baseball.

00:05:37.200 From 1990, as a diehard Juan Gonzalez fan, Texas Rangers, till today,

00:05:43.680 the greatest World Series I ever watched in my life was last year.

00:05:50.100 Not a Dodgers fan.

00:05:51.380 I'm not a Toronto Blue Jays fan.

00:05:53.820 What an incredible World Series. 0.96

00:05:56.320 Fans, people who don't follow baseball were like, damn, this is exciting. 0.97

00:06:00.500 This is it. 0.97

00:06:01.780 And then now you want to do something like this

00:06:03.740 after the incredible momentum that you had.

00:06:05.660 I hope they figure it out.

00:06:07.000 I've been on multiple calls.

00:06:08.260 I can't disclose some of the conversations that we had.

00:06:10.100 They prepped us for this, that this is coming,

00:06:12.560 and there are certain decisions that are being made

00:06:14.500 on what's happening with this.

00:06:15.620 I hope they fully figure this thing out.

00:06:17.560 I understand the argument they're making

00:06:19.200 because players want to make as much money as possible,

00:06:21.920 and owners don't want to be forced to have to pay more.

00:06:24.900 If you've ever seen a movie Moneyball,

00:06:27.080 Billy Bean, who goes to the owner and says,

00:06:30.080 hey, man, I just need a little bit of more money,

00:06:32.080 he says, you're going to do fine.

00:06:33.200 I got a $67 million budget I'm dealing with.

00:06:36.900 Give me a break.

00:06:37.640 Give me a little bit more money.

00:06:38.760 You're going to be fine.

00:06:40.020 But we're going to lose Giambi.

00:06:41.500 We're going to lose.

00:06:42.440 You're going to be fine.

00:06:43.240 You'll figure it out.

00:06:44.200 Stop saying I'm going to be fine.

00:06:46.120 I need more.

00:06:46.660 So this changes that because they had that 21-game win streak

00:06:50.200 that the A's went through.

00:06:51.660 So it'll be interesting to see what happens here.

00:06:53.200 Brian, where are you at with this yourself?

00:06:54.720 Yeah, well, just talk about last year's World Series,

00:06:58.060 Toronto versus the Dodgers.

00:06:59.540 I mean, that's a pretty big difference in payroll.

00:07:02.700 Great point.

00:07:03.060 I mean, and that's almost the proof.

00:07:05.560 I wrote down Moneyball.

00:07:06.920 I was going to bring it up.

00:07:07.880 The Oakland A's did it with a different kind of way.

00:07:12.240 In college football, the University of Indiana did it this year. 0.99

00:07:16.320 If they do this, they're going to kill it.

00:07:19.280 And I was a Chicago Cubs fan in 1994, and that's kind of when I stopped. 0.97

00:07:25.640 Are you serious?

00:07:27.440 You're saying that's when you stopped after the strike?

00:07:29.260 I did.

00:07:30.040 It broke my heart.

00:07:32.160 I don't like that.

00:07:32.660 And I loved baseball.

00:07:34.720 And I can guarantee you, I used to go to 30 games a year,

00:07:38.540 like literally 30 games a year.

00:07:40.260 And I bet I've been to one or two a year since then.

00:07:43.960 Wow.

00:07:45.700 Baseball's God's favorite sport.

00:07:47.200 I'm telling you right now, in heaven, I'm willing to bet they watch baseball.

00:07:50.200 I'm telling you, they're watching baseball right now.

00:07:52.500 Shoeless Joe Jackson's going to be somewhere up there playing baseball.

00:07:54.740 But go ahead.

00:07:55.220 No, no.

00:07:56.020 Brandon and I were, you know, bigger into NFL, you know,

00:07:59.200 I like baseball, too.

00:08:00.820 You like baseball, but you like football much better.

00:08:02.380 Yeah, it's the best.

00:08:03.060 Of course, it's the best.

00:08:05.520 You guys don't know what you're talking about.

00:08:06.440 No, no, no.

00:08:06.900 But if you look at the different leagues, all right, you have the MLB with no hard cap, no floor, all right?

00:08:13.940 And then you see, what are we solving for here?

00:08:16.280 This is one of the biggest problems in the economy, like in general right now,

00:08:19.540 that the money is not making sense with the actual objectives that people want, all right?

00:08:23.920 What are we solving for in any sports league, all right?

00:08:26.760 We want to see competition, right?

00:08:28.580 So in the MLB, you have all these very rich teams that get all the awards, all the playoffs, and they just outspend every other team.

00:08:38.240 Then you have the NFL.

00:08:39.320 They have a hard cap, all right?

00:08:40.860 And that's the exciting thing at the beginning of the year.

00:08:43.080 Like who's going where, you know, the draft, and any team could make it to a Super Bowl except the Jets.

00:08:49.460 I'm sorry.

00:08:51.320 Yeah, worst to first happens all the time.

00:08:53.240 Yeah, and then you have the NBA.

00:08:55.340 Or the Raiders.

00:08:56.240 Or the Raiders.

00:08:56.860 I live in pain.

00:08:58.020 But then you have the NBA that also doesn't have a hard cap on top.

00:09:02.120 They have a luxury tax of sorts.

00:09:04.140 Tom, you can always fact check me.

00:09:06.500 And then you have the NHL that also, like the NFL, has a hard cap and a floor.

00:09:10.820 All right?

00:09:11.420 And we were talking before the show started about hockey, like how did the Panthers get two titles and then they're not even in the playoffs this year.

00:09:19.360 All right?

00:09:19.680 So if we're solving for an entertaining product that is competitive and anything can happen, I'm for the cap.

00:09:26.780 I'm sorry, Tom.

00:09:27.420 And I have another perspective, too. So I think it incentivizes the right types of people to own the teams, because I think if this does go through, you'll see a lot of MLB teams sell their franchise because there are a lot of owners, like you said, that just want to take the money instead of investing the money back into the team.

00:09:40.960 so get this since 1995 48 of world series championships have went to a top five payroll

00:09:48.080 93 of championships have gone to a top 15 out of 30 payroll only two teams have won the world

00:09:55.780 series and since 1995 that had a bottom half payroll it was the 2003 marlins and 2002 angels

00:10:03.840 yeah i think i think the marlins have a few things they need to do i think the marlins have

00:10:09.320 a few things they need to do but that's a great example of a few you know different things to

00:10:14.240 look out I just hope they don't get into this whole mess I really do I really hope they don't

00:10:17.240 get into this mess I hope they figure it out baseball's exciting right now baseball's viewership's

00:10:21.700 going up baseball's got a lot of good things going on I hope the reasonable people in the room are

00:10:26.120 gonna be like guys we're making a lot of money let's kind of figure this thing out let's not

00:10:29.080 lag this out you know where you know it continues just because of the money you have the fan base

00:10:35.000 today you have the fan base today you can make so much money through sponsorship and other different

00:10:40.020 ways but we'll see we'll see what happened there the big game is around the corner they're already

00:10:43.900 talking about the matchups who's playing against who the different people are representing different

00:10:49.760 countries obviously i live in an interesting community where a lot of uh soccer players

00:10:54.100 live we knew when they left to go off to kansas city uh messes in kansas city this is gonna be

00:11:00.620 the most amazing thing everyone's looked there was so many interesting stats the most ever players

00:11:05.580 above 40 years old playing in the world cup the youngest player is a 17 year old kid from uh uh

00:11:11.360 i think from mexico if i'm not mistaken there's going to be some interesting stories but uh we

00:11:16.360 had these hats that we made representing different countries okay and believe it or not for iran we

00:11:22.940 had the old shahan shahi muhammad reza shah palavi's flag right here which is sick and i think

00:11:29.300 there's a couple of those hats left. Rob, if you want

00:11:31.240 to play this clip, go for it.

00:11:59.300 We'll be right back.

00:12:29.300 All right, you can pause it right there, Rob.

00:12:35.520 Whether it's Argentina, whether it's Brazil, whether it's U.S., 0.67

00:12:38.800 which the U.S. hats look ridiculous, or whether it's Iran, any of them,

00:12:42.620 go to vtmerch.com, place your order, get the hat, get it for yourself,

00:12:46.220 get it for your friends, but go to vtmerch.com to place your order

00:12:50.300 and represent your country for this summer.

00:12:53.540 If you enjoyed this video, you want to watch more videos like this, click here.

00:12:56.240 And if you want to watch the entire podcast, click here.

00:12:59.300 We'll be right back.

Valuetainment - June 04, 2026

“MLB Lock Out COMING” - Will Salary Caps DESTROY Baseball？

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