The New York Yankees CEO is surprisingly open to a salary cap being introduced to MLB, but with a caveat that would target teams like the Oakland Athletics.
MLB has one major difference from other leagues like NBA, NFL, and NHL: They do not have a serious salary cap. For example, the Golden State Warriors are set to have a bloated payroll next season that will surpass $200 million. In accumulating that much salary, they will be hit with taxes that will take their total payroll costs to over $400 million.
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MLB has similar penalties for surpassing certain payroll totals but the taxes are so small it does little to deter teams like the Los Angeles Dodgers, New York Mets, and New York Yankees from far outspending many others in the league. The Yankees have long taken advantage of this and for much of the 21st century have led the league with the largest payrolls.
However, things have changed and other big market teams are outspending the New York Yankees now, and it seems the shoe being on the other foot over the last few years has changed the Yankees CEO’s mind about if MLB needs to have a hard salary cap like other leagues.
New York Yankees CEO open to hard cap but with a floor added
During this week’s owner’s meetings, Hal Steinbrenner was asked about MLB introducing a hard cap, and he was not against it. However, he would only be for it if there was an equal minimum amount teams had to spend each season, which would have a big effect on a franchise like the Oakland Athletics that have long tried to spend as little as possible each season.
“It depends what the cap is. And it has to be, again, accompanied by a floor, so every club is doing their job to try to make it to the playoffs, for their fans’ sake. … We went through this in the last [collective bargainning] agreement a year ago, right? I’m not necessarily against — depending on what it is, of course — a salary cap. But there has to be a floor to address just the problems that I was talking to you about just now.
“If you’re going to attack it, under the under the guise of, ‘We’ve got to fix this (revenue) discrepancy because it’s not good for the industry as a whole and the sport as a whole,’ then you’ve got to narrow the gap, not just by going down, right? But also by going up on the other side.”
– Hal Steinbrenner
The New York Yankees boss has a fair point and would certainly make the fans of teams like the Athletics and Baltimore Orioles happier if their teams more frequently attempted to pay top stars and keep their own.