PHILADELPHIA — Ask baseball’s All-Stars if they’ll ever agree to a salary cap, and the answer comes back fast. Never.
Ask if that means a lost season is coming, and the answer gets a lot more careful.
Paul Skenes, Juan Soto and Bryce Harper were among the players who addressed MLB’s salary cap proposal Monday, ahead of Tuesday’s All-Star Game in Philadelphia. The message was consistent: players won’t budge on a cap, but nobody’s ready to call this a crisis. Not yet.
“Both sides kind of have their line that they’re not going to cross,” said Skenes, the Pittsburgh Pirates ace and a member of the union’s eight-man negotiating committee. “Whether that results in missing games or missing a season, we’ll see.”
The Clock That Actually Matters
Baseball’s five-year labor deal expires Dec. 1, and MLB is expected to lock out players the moment it does. That date will grab headlines, but it’s not the one that determines whether there’s a 2027 season. The real deadline lands in late February or early March, when MLB has to decide whether to postpone opening day.
Owners proposed a salary cap for the first time since players beat back a similar plan with a 7½-month strike in 1994-95 — the one that wiped out the World Series for the first time since 1904. Commissioner Rob Manfred says the cap is about closing the payroll gap between franchises. Players hear something else entirely.
MLB’s proposal would cap 2027 spending at $245.3 million, a figure built from luxury tax payroll numbers that include $20.1 million for benefits and the pre-arbitration bonus pool. It would also set a floor of $171.2 million, forcing low-spending teams to open the checkbook. What MLB hasn’t offered is a plan for phasing a cap in — a detail that matters enormously for a team like the Dodgers, who ran a $415.2 million payroll on opening day this year.
The Money Isn’t Hypothetical
For Soto, this isn’t an abstract policy fight. He signed a record $765 million, 15-year deal with the Mets as a free agent after the 2024 season. Under MLB’s proposed cap structure, that same production would’ve landed him a $265 million deal over six years.
“Yeah, that sucks,” Soto said. “It shouldn’t be there.”
Mike Trout, in year eight of his $426.5 million, 12-year contract with the Angels, sees exactly what the proposal is designed to do.
“It’s trying to minimize the years and obviously the totals. For sure, we see that,” Trout said. “I think baseball’s in a good spot right now and we can’t mess this up.”
Harper — eight years into his own $330 million deal with the Phillies — didn’t hedge at all.
“The opportunity for players to get paid is what this is all about,” Harper said, invoking the union’s history dating back to Curt Flood’s fight against MLB in the 1970s. “We owe it to the guys that have come before us to do the same thing.”
A Second Fight Over Teenagers
There’s another front in this battle that hits closer to home for Harper, who signed his own first pro contract at 17. MLB has also proposed barring players from signing until they turn 20 — specifically, by Sept. 1 of their signing year and two years past their high school graduating class. MLB’s reasoning: college baseball offers a better path to development.
Harper isn’t buying it.
“If you’re in the top three rounds as a high school kid, I think you should be able to do whatever you want,” he said. He pointed to Jackson Holliday as an example of what’s at stake — a player who might never have gotten the chance to reach the majors at 18 or 19 under the new rule.
The Rank and File Weigh In
Bargaining opened in May and is expected to pick back up after the break. The union wants expanded free agency, broader arbitration rights, and a major league minimum salary that’s nearly double what it is now.
Not everyone’s treating this like a five-alarm fire. Pirates pitcher Braxton Ashcraft described the early talks as “back-and-forth proposals that may or may not be unrealistic” — the kind of framing that suggests both sides are still posturing.
Skenes, 24 and in his second full big league season, has more to lose than most from a hard cap system. He’s not eligible for free agency until after 2029 and is playing this season on a $1,085,000 salary — his last before arbitration kicks in — though he’s already pulled in nearly $5.6 million from the pre-arbitration bonus pool established in 2022.
“MLB is kind of presenting their perfect-world offers, and we’re kind of presenting our perfect-world offers,” Skenes said. “So there’s a lot of time before there’s any real movement, I think.”
San Diego closer Mason Miller, also on track for free agency after 2029, struck a similarly patient tone. The 27-year-old right-hander is earning $4 million this season.
“I still have some optimism,” Miller said. “The place that the game’s at right now, I think killing that momentum is kind of fruitless for everybody.”
Nobody in that clubhouse is predicting disaster. But nobody’s ruling it out, either.
