Spending by the Dodgers has brought renewed discussion for a salary cap in baseball, from other owners, from fans, and even from the MLB commissioner himself.
Jayson Stark at The Athletic wrote about how MLB has much more parity than the NFL, the latter which does have a salary cap.
J.J. Cooper at Baseball America also wrote about parity in MLB, but noted that a salary cap is a matter of perception:
No matter what time frame you use, fans of a MLB team are more likely to see their team win a World Series over a 10-, 20-, 30- or 40-year timeframe than a fan of an NFL or NBA team is to see their favorite team win a title.
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The presence of a salary cap in those sports makes it appear to be a fair game, even if the results don’t indicate that at all.
Ken Rosenthal at The Athletic wrote about owners clamoring for a salary cap, “Their “sky is falling” act is already growing tiresome. Fix the sport some other way. Or sell your damn team.”
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Mike Petriello at MLB.com wrote about a new Statcast metric that captures the effects of wind on batted balls. Within his article he noted fly balls affected most by the wind in the last two years. The Dodgers had one of the top five in both balls hurt by wind (a Shohei Ohtani flyout in 2024) and helped by the wind (a Max Muncy home run in 2023), both at Wrigley Field.
Evan Drellich and Andrew Marchand at The Athletic reported on ESPN thinking of opting out of their television contract with MLB after this season, in which they pay the league an average of $550 million per year.