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Kyle Tucker to the Dodgers for 4 years at $60 million a year for $240 million.
I can’t fault them for the signing, but their luxury tax amount is going to dwarf most teams entire payroll. At this point, a salary cap may be necessary for the league. I also think a floor is necessary too though as the cheap owners are just as much of a problem.
I think the Dodgers will cause the rest of the owners to demand a salary cap. It is at the point that there is no way half of the league can compete regularly. They can be competitive for a couple of years but can’t spend at the level the Dodgers are spending.
The Dodgers will spend more salary and competitive balance tax on Tucker alone in 2026 than the Cardinals will pay to their entire team.
The only positive that I can see coming from this is if it pushes the game harder to make necessary changes to force a leveling of the playing field. In the short term, it is only good for one team.
I dont want a salary cap. Dodgers are great for the game. Players should make what they can. I want a rule that that says a certain minimum percentage has to be spent on the teams roster construction if anything.
Willie, if mlb is set up to tax overage, the same could apply for a floor. The tax is paid from their next welfare check. Half the overage limit next season is 122mil. A proposed floor.
Do they have-not owners want the overage taxes to stop? There are a lot of teams paying a huge amount of overage tax dollars. Where do those funds land? Whose pockets?
The NFL has a cap. The NFL is the gold standard.
I agree with a salary cap AND a salary floor along with doubling or trippling the luxury tax for teams that exceed the cap along with some penalty for teams that didn’t meet the floor amount that is more than they ‘saved’.
College sports today is a real good example of what happens without rules and regulations regarding spending and tampering with other team’s players. It’s a hot mess.
The players don’t want a salary cap and that might very well be the issue that costs us the 2027 season.
Half goes to the players retirement funds and half to the non-payers of overage taxes. Of the 403mil paid in 2025, roughly 200mil to 21 teams. It’s a nice spickit to have turned on, among others. I don’t see the discontent from the have-not owners, just from their fans.
Yeah, the issue of setting the rules for MLB is a sticky one, and it would seem to be tough to come to a compromise after the current agreement expires.
Somewhere between the principle of building the best team you can for your own business principles and to give your fans (customers) the best product, and leveling the playing field such that every team can have a chance to do that first part of this sentence, needs to be worked out.
The NFL does it right, but the big difference is a large part of the NFL’s revenues come from national television contracts, whereas with MLB it is regional broadcast revenues.
Bottom line, something has to be done. We have to keep alive the goal of building the best product, but dampen the natural advantage big market teams have. The only way I see that happening is a salary cap. The luxury tax is a good compromise in principle, but obviously it is not working.
But with the revenues being so unbalanced between teams, putting in a salary cap would simply switch the problem from one where some teams are far more talented, to where some ownership groups are far more compensated than others. And maybe that is just how it has to be done. It was that way for many years under the old reserve clause. That might be just part of the system, which is pretty much how life works. Some are born to more privileged circumstances, others not so much.
The luxury tax needs to be steeper and contracts should not be deferred. There also should be a salary floor. The players union will never agree to a salary cap.
The Dodgers are spending commensurately to their revenues, it seems. The Cardinals will probably have $300M of revenue this coming year and spend $65M of it on the team on the field. I would say teams that play poor are ruining the game more than the Dodgers.
That said, a salary cap/floor almost has to be coming, as a lot of teams are not going to be happy to lose out on every big free agent to LA or New York teams.
I also think a floor is necessary too though as the cheap owners are just as much of a problem.
I think the welfare queens are a bigger problem.
I think the Dodgers will cause the rest of the owners to demand a salary cap.
One third of the owners are now receiving welfare checks nearly as much as they spend on the field. Do you think they are going to vote against their own self-interest? DeWitt clearly prioritizes profit over winning, as do all the welfare recipients.
It is at the point that there is no way half of the league can compete regularly.
The perpetual welfare queens, like the A’s, Marlins, Rays & Pirates never try to compete, period. They try to maximize their welfare dollars and minimize their payroll spend.
I would still like someone to explain to me how a salary cap would be different than the CBT. The CBT IS a salary cap that just needs to have the thresholds and penalties adjusted.
The Dodgers now have a 40 man payroll of $331M. The Mets are at $329M. The system works for more than one team. The difference is that one of those teams knows how to do more than just spend money.
The only good thing I see with the Tucker signing is that it hopefully prevents the Cubs from going to the World Series.
I have not fact checked this.
With Kyle Tucker's new deal, he will now be making more this year than the entire Cardinals projected 26 man roster COMBINED. pic.twitter.com/CvTLeU1TN5
— Cardinals Stats And Facts (@STL_Stats_Facts) January 16, 2026
The above graphic is close to being accurate Brian. With deferrals Cots shows Tucker making $55M in 2026. They have Juan Soto of the Mets at $61M.
I think the deferred money is what is most concerning in the Dodger Deals.
With that being said the 26 man pay for the Cardinals roster is embarrassing.
You would think the cardinals have drawn about 1.5 million fans and had terrible local TV ratingsthe last 15 years.
The nfl is a joke far as paying players go. Yea it can be good for the fans and the nfl but not so for players. A lot of the money isnt guaranteed. Teams cut players all the time without batting an eye and many times thats it for the players. Its the most violent of the main sports and the players other than the main stars are treated like fodder going out into the roman coliseum. Anyone boasting its pay system is totally way out there. Its also generally not a reason why there tends to be some parity which is one of the reasons people champion it. Injurues are a big reason why there is some parity in the nfl. Your big stud qb and top receiver go down, it akmost always derails your team regardless of the team.
Non-fully guaranteed contracts do not correlate with a salary cap – it is just more common in the NFL to have contracts only partially guaranteed. But still if a guy gets cut, his guaranteed portion is a hit on the salary cap.
MLB could offer non-guaranteed deals, but they never seem to do so. They do in a way with incentive deals, but it is rare to see an MLB deal where say $50M is guarenteed and another $25M not. Instead it is usually X amount guaranteed with a possibly of another Y amount if incentives are met.
For those crying about the Dodgers I would highly recommend this article. It provides a lot of facts that some of the whining owners don’t want to hear.
Dodgers’ splurge on Tucker will increase calls for a salary cap, but MLB needs other fixes. Column: https://t.co/N5f8FHGB09
— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) January 16, 2026
Conclusion: The Dodgers are exploiting MLB’s weak and broken system that not all parties are motivated to try to fix. Seems fair for fans to be upset at all of them. Like it or not, the Dodgers made themselves the poster child.
Plenty of other clubs could be doing all of the same things but they don’t have the smarts. Simply writing checks isn’t good enough. The Mets had the highest 40 man payroll last year and didn’t even make the playoffs.
It is not just about annual payroll. The Dodgers are committed to pay millions and millions and millions of deferred moneys that separate them from the Mets and everyone else.
Do we really think the Dodgers have vastly more resources than the Mets?? No way!! I doubt if they have more than the Yankees either. The Dodgers are aggressive, use creative accounting, and use every tool in their toolbox including drafting and developing. They aren’t doing things that other big market clubs couldn’t do.
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