The Los Angeles Dodgers have dominated MLB news this offseason, signing many of the top free agents just months after winning the World Series. With the club having by far the highest MLB payroll in 2025, it appears an MLB salary cap could be on the horizon.
Los Angeles was the most active team in the offseason for the second consecutive winter. A year removed from committing to spend more than $1 billion on Shohei Ohtani, Tyler Glasnow, Teoscar Hernandez and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, the team once again was among the biggest spenders this winter.
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The Dodgers signed two-time Cy Young Award winner Blake Snell ($182 million over 5 years), All-Star closers Kirby Yates and Tanner Scott ($72 million over 4 years), All-Star outfielder Michael Conforto ($17 million salary in 2025), 25-year-old Korean Golden Glove Award winner Hyeseong Kim ($12.5 million over 3 years) and re-signed Hernandez ($66 million over 3 years).
In total, the Dodgers offseason spending has reached nearly $450 million. Even without another addition, Los Angeles has the highest payroll in baseball for 2025. When factoring in the MLB luxury tax, Los Angeles is committed to spending $370 million on player payroll this season which is almost as much as the Miami Marlins ($84 million, Chicago White Sox ($86 million), Pittsburgh Pirates ($104 million) and Tampa Bay Rays ($105 million) combined together at $379 million.
- Los Angeles Dodgers payroll 2025 (FanGraphs): $370 million
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The Dodgers spending has prompted many around baseball, from fans and analysts to those even involved with the league, to call for an MLB salary cap. Amid swirling MLB rumors about a potential MLB lockout in 2026 over the issue, it appears one franchise owner believes a salary cap could be coming.
In an interview with Yahoo Finance, Baltimore Orioles owner David Rubenstein said he wants to see an MLB salary cap in the future and he tends to believe other franchise owners will make it happen in the future.
“I suspect we’ll probably have something closer to (the salary caps and floors) the NFL and the NBA have, but there’s no guarantee of that.”
Rubenstein noted that the “big city teams have some advantages” and the Dodgers even more so. One example he cited, seen recently with the signing of free-agent pitcher Roki Sasaki, is the number of players already on the Dodgers roster and how their presence helps sell merchandise in Japan for Dodgers players.
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What an MLB salary cap would mean for small-market teams
While there is an NFL salary cap to limit how much teams can spend, there’s also a salary cap floor that clubs are required to meet. In order to prevent franchise owners from pocketing a majority of the money made by league and team revenue, the NFL requires each team to spend at least 89 percent of money on player salaries over a four-year period.
As for the NBA, league rules require teach team to spend a minimum of 90 percent of the salary cap ($140.588 million) on player salaries. While the league has also implemented strict rules in the recent collective-bargaining agreement to restrict what teams who overspend can do, there is also a priority of making sure teams are at least fielding competitive rosters.
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If team owners want an MLB salary cap in the future, the MLB Players Association will be adamant about a cap floor. That would mean times like the Rays, Pirates, Orioles, Marlins, Cleveland Guardians and Sacramento Athletics could no longer spend less than $100 million each year on player salaries.
While fans are becoming more vocal about the need for an MLB salary cap because of the Dodgers’ spending, another source of criticism has been many team owners who have been unwilling to spend. Teams like the Dodgers and New York Yankees could also push harder for a cap floor, because big-market teams have to give nearly half of their revenue to clubs that are spending less than $100 million per season and often not attempting to compete for the World Series.
