Good Bye Dodgers or Hello Horror?

On Thursday May 28th 2026, it was reported that the MLB had come to an agreement on their first salary cap proposal that would take place in the 2027 season. This news brought baseball fans with a mix of emotions that has caused much debate on is this the right call or should it be adjusted?

What You Need To Know. To make sure everyone reading this is fully up to date, here is what we know. First, the MLB broke the news earlier this morning that they would be releasing their first proposal to add a much-needed salary cap in the coming days. However, no one was expecting that it would come within the coming hours. The commissioner's proposal is as follows: that every team in Major League Baseball would have to spend at least 171.2 million dollars on their rosters but would be limited to a hard cap at 245.3 million dollars.

The commissioner Rob Manfred stated on ESPN earlier today that "Our payroll gap from top to bottom is $446 million dollars, you know that's not a fair fight...fans want competition, and that’s what it’s about at the end of the day, and that’s what we need to get fixed."If this doesn't show you the problem, I don't know what will.

In the current MLB, you have teams like the LA Dodgers and New York Yankees spending over close to 400 million dollars on their rosters. In contrast, you have smaller market teams like the Minnesota Twins and Miami Marlins who are only spending somewhere between 50-100 million dollars. To almost anyone, you can come to a conclusion such as, the teams who spend more to get better players will likely be the better teams. For instance, the Dodgers have had one of the largest payrolls in the entire league over the last few years. And look what happened. The Dodgers have won back-to-back World Series, which is one reason I personally believe these talks have started because as a league you can't have this happen.

Personally, I believe that although this is a major problem. The fact that there are many teams choosing not to spend more, is an even bigger problem that I think this proposal would solve even better.

Would This Work?

To paint the picture just a little bit more, let me explain what would need to happen if this proposal is set into place for the 2027 MLB Season. There will be three different options depending on each team's payroll situation, so first I will begin with the teams that would currently be over the proposed $245.3 million dollar salary cap.

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Shockingly, there are only 6 teams that would be over this salary cap, which is of course bringing more questions to the table on should the MLB lower it even more.

Those six squads are: (in order of largest payroll to lowest) the New York Mets, LA Dodgers, New York Yankees, Toronto Blue Jays, Philadelphia Phillies, and Atlanta Braves. Each of these teams would need to cut their respective amount of salary from their team in order to participate in the MLB season, but how much would they need to cut? I will keep this short, but here is a short table showcasing how much each team would need to cut from their current payroll.

Team	Amount Needed To Cut
New York Mets	$88 Million
LA Dodgers	$55 Million
New York Yankees	$46 Million
Toronto Blue Jays	$36 Million
Philadelphia Phillies	$36 Million
Atlanta Braves	$21 Million

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The second option would be for teams that are neither over or under the new proposed salaries so they would be able to spend more but also they would not be punished. Those teams are every team that is not listed in the third and last section.

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Lastly there are 15 teams (half of the league) under the proposed minimum payroll of $171.2 million dollars. These teams have not been as successful, not as star driven, and overall have not been as interesting as the other 15 teams in the MLB. Similar to the chart above, below is a chart of each of these teams that would be under the minimum payroll and how much they would have to pay to get to that minimum number.

Team	Amount Needed To Get To Minimum Payroll
Miami Marlins	$92 Million
Cleveland Guardians	$90 Million
Chicago White Sox	$80 Million
Washington Nationals	$77 Million
Oakland A's	$76 Million
St Louis Cardinals	$76 Million
Tampa Bay Rays	$68 Million
Pittsburgh Pirates	$67 Million
Minnesota Twins	$66 Million
Colorado Rockies	$54 Million
Milwaukee Brewers	$42 Million
Cincinnati Reds	$38 Million
Kansas City Royals	$25 Million
Seattle Mariners	$9 Million
Baltimore Orioles	$4 Million

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In conclusion, I must give credit where it is due, Rob Manfred, props to you for finally addressing this matter that will hopefully level the league out to some degree and make this league more popular throughout the entire US. It can't be more simple than this: Major League Baseball cannot have half of their league with a team payroll under 100 million dollars while some of the teams like the Dodgers and the New York Teams are able to spend almost quadruple that number. Even if you would like to make the argument the owners should be able to pay as much as they would like, and the bigger market teams just have more money. I hear you, but it has come to the point where the different in the largest team payroll to smallest has gone to over $400 million dollars and that's why a salary cap must be brought into the MLB. While there are definitely pieces of the puzzle that must be put together still, this is a great head start that hopefully will be set into place after this 2026 season.