Major League Baseball and high-ranking club officials have discussed limiting how much teams can spend in areas other than player salaries, such as technology, player development, scouting and health, multiple people briefed on such discussions told The Athletic.
Different pockets of management have talked about the potential cost controls, whether it be owners speaking to one another, or in similar conversations between club higher-ups. But MLB’s executive vice president of baseball operations, Morgan Sword, is said to have discussed the concept again last week on a call with club financial officers, an official briefed on the meeting said.
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A league spokesperson said MLB’s focus has been on technology vendors, rather than staffing.
“There is nothing happening on that front,” the spokesperson said. “What we are focused on is gathering information on vendor costs to find potential cost savings through efficiencies and to ensure equal access to all technology.”
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But multiple officials who have been briefed on or participated in some of these conversations said the thinking extends to personnel, as well. At least some clubs would enjoy seeing caps on spending in any area that can influence on-field success, player salaries or otherwise. Executives with smaller-market teams have long lamented the task of keeping up with the spending capabilities of larger market teams.
Just before Opening Day, commissioner Rob Manfred told a story about an owner who was puzzled by how large his analytics staff had grown.
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“I heard (the idea of limits) discussed at the ownership level,” said a different club official this week. “I don’t know where it originated. It’s about competitive balance. … I’ve been in the game 20 years. The number of people we have in our clubhouse working with the players has tripled, quadrupled in size.”
But with roughly 40 percent of the season complete, the standings suggest concerns over market size and competitive balance could be overwrought. Entering Tuesday, four revenue-sharing recipients — the Rays, Twins, Pirates and Diamondbacks — were in first place. Three others — the Marlins, Brewers and Orioles — were in position for wild cards.
Likewise, some teams would abhor the idea of spending limits, arguing that investing in technology or player development is a way of creating a fair advantage over other teams.
“Enough on the expense side,” another executive lamented of the league’s continued effort to tamp down costs. “You should be encouraging people to learn how to make money.”
Multiple club officials suggested that spending limits on non-players might make the most sense to pursue as part of a larger overhaul — including a salary cap for players, too. Whether the commissioner’s office and the owners will actually push for a player salary cap when the current collective bargaining agreement expires following the 2026 season is to be seen.
A cap on player salaries would require the approval of the Players Association, which has said it will not grant that approval. Most other employees in the sport, meanwhile, are not unionized.
If MLB does eventually try to restrict employee spending in some capacity, the league almost certainly would be leveraging the benefit of the sport’s antitrust exemption. The 30 teams likely would be collectively deciding not to compete with each other, in some way, in their hiring practices.
That would create some risk for the league. Leveraging the exemption in a new way could bring new legal challenges to the exemption, or increased scrutiny from Congress.
Whether baseball would actually be better off — meaning, more entertaining — if teams cannot outspend one another in off-the-field and player support areas is debatable. Does having every team on perfectly equal footing actually make baseball more compelling, or is the sport more enjoyable when teams have the ability and incentive to outspend each other?
Either way, the commissioner’s office and the owners have always valued cost control. Even a limit on how much teams spend on technology vendors would be another step in that direction.
(Top photo of Morgan Sword and Rob Manfred: Michael M. Santiago / Getty Images)
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