Former New York Yankee and Hall of Famer Mariano Rivera said he believes Major League Baseball should adopt a salary cap in its next collective bargaining agreement.
“Yes, there should be one, because it has to be fair for everyone,” Rivera said at a Latinos in Sports event in Miami on Friday. “It makes the competition better.”
The MLB CBA expires at the end of this season, setting up negotiations between the league and its players. Negotiations are expected to begin in the coming weeks.
It’s remarkable that a player – even a retired one, like Rivera – would publicly support a salary cap. Rivera, himself, made approximately $170 million during his 19-year career, according to Baseball-Reference.com.
Mariano Rivera, former New York Yankees closer.
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The MLB is the only major American league without a salary cap. The gap between the teams that spend the most and those that spend the least has widened in recent years as the New York Mets, Los Angeles Dodgers and Yankees, among others, continue to increase their payrolls.
A record 11 teams opened the season with payrolls of at least $200 million, according to a USA Today analysis.
Rivera said any salary cap should include provisions that lower-spending teams also invest in improving competition in other ways. MLB currently has a revenue sharing program that distributes local media money equally to all 30 teams.
“If I give you money – out of my own pocket – to improve the team, I think you should do it and not pocket it,” Rivera said.
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The 10 lowest-spending MLB teams have increased their payroll by just 1.7% per year on average since 2019, according to the Wall Street Journal. This has led many to believe that the solution to an unequal league is not a salary cap, but rather a salary floor that would force smaller market teams to spend.
The MLB Players’ Association has long fought against a cap in an effort to maximize player salaries, including during a 1994-95 strike.
But current MLB rules allow for massive variations in team spending. And a number of studies support a correlation between spending and earnings.
“We have a significant segment of our fans who have been vocal on the issue of competitive balance,” MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said earlier this year. “And in general, we try to look out for our fans.”
There are also credible studies that indicate competitive balance issues in MLB are no worse than in any other sport. Over the past 10 MLB seasons, there have been seven different World Series winners, 13 different teams have reached the World Series, and 18 teams have advanced to the semifinals. These numbers suggest an even better balanced league than the NBA, NFL or NHL.