PHILADELPHIA (AP) \u2014 The head of baseball\u2019s players\u2019 union chastised management on Tuesday for its advertising campaign in support of a salary cap while Commissioner Rob Manfred maintained the proposal was developed in response to fans.<\/p>\n
Bruce Meyer, who took over when Tony Clark was forced out in February, said the sport was thriving despite assertions by Major League Baseball that massive change is needed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have watched over the last few years the owners, the commissioner\u2019s office, try to convince fans, the consumers of their product, that the product is broken,\u201d Meyer said ahead of the All-Star Game. \u201cThe supposed stewards of the game have spent an inordinate amount of time trying to convince those same fans that they don\u2019t have hope or they shouldn\u2019t have hope or that the product that they\u2019re paying to consume in record numbers is somehow broken. I think it\u2019s perverse.\u201d<\/p>\n
Attendance has averaged 29,230 this season, up 1.2% from 28,895 through similar dates last year. MLB is on pace for its highest attendance since 2017.<\/p>\n
Management in May proposed a salary cap system, which players say they will never accept. MLB launched a \u201cLevel the Field\u201d campaign claiming fans support a cap that contains a floor.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn order for this game to reach its full potential we need to continue to address concerns that our fans have, particularly concerns that go to the core of what we\u2019re about, that is competitive balance,\u201d Manfred said in a separate question-and-answer session.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to make sure that fans in markets at the beginning of the season have a realistic belief that their team has a chance to win,\u201d he added. \u201cI think that we need a system where fans, particularly in smaller markets, can have some hope that the players that are signed and developed by their organizations can actually stay there through free agency and honestly I think we need a system where there is a more robust free agent market, so if you don\u2019t want to go to New York or Los Angeles, you have a realistic opportunity to get a viable free agent contract.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fans have responded positively to MLB\u2019s changes in the 2020s, which include expanded playoffs in 2022, a pitch clock in 2023 and an appeals system to robot umpires for strike zone decisions this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe got that momentum by listening to our fans and making changes that, candidly, the MLBPA was not interested in,\u201d Manfred said. \u201cThose changes have paid off in terms of creating that momentum, and the best way to lose momentum is to stand still.\u201d<\/p>\n
No small-market team has won the World Series since the 2015 Kansas City Royals. The Los Angeles Dodgers, coming off their second straight title, had a $323.3 million opening-day payroll for their 40-man roster and a $163.7 million tax for a $487.1 million total. Cleveland had the lowest payroll at $75.5 million.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt defies human experience to ask a fan to think that the bottom end of that gap has the same opportunity to win as the top,\u201d Manfred said. \u201cThere is no question, OK, that everybody in any sport is not going to win once every 30 or 32 years depending on how many teams you have, but the data in our sport is stark. Your opportunity to make the playoffs if you are a larger-market team is dramatically higher and your opportunity to proceed to the subsequent rounds, that advantage grows with each round.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meyer said unions for players in the NFL, NBA and NHL agreed to caps under duress.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn one way or the other they were broken or forced into it,\u201d he said. \u201cI believe that this system is bad for players and would be for generations to come.\u201d<\/p>\n
Baseball\u2019s five-year labor contract expires Dec. 1 and management is expected to immediately start a lockout, the sport\u2019s 10th work stoppage since 1972. No games have been lost since a 7 1\/2-month strike in 1994-95 caused the World Series to be canceled for the first in 90 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cTeams in every market across the league can afford to compete,\u201d Meyer said. \u201cMany of them are choosing not to. From our standpoint, that\u2019s the biggest problem in the game right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meyer said owners want a cap to guarantee profits and increase franchise values, a system he called \u201csubsidized mediocrity.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey don\u2019t want it because they\u2019re just so concerned about the fans,\u201d he said. \u201cIf they were so concerned about the fans, they would listen to the fans all across baseball who are literally chanting \u2018Sell the team.\u2019 They want their owners to sell the team because they feel they\u2019re not competing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Manfred did not want to comment on where he thought President Donald Trump, who said he supports a cap, would attempt to intervene in bargaining.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would be wildly, wildly inappropriate for me to speculate about what the president of the United States might do or not do in a hypothetical situation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Manfred defended MLB\u2019s advertising campaign supporting a cap.<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes the other side may not be completely accurate or fair in terms of their recitation and what\u2019s going on,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
PHILADELPHIA (AP) \u2014 The head of baseball\u2019s players\u2019 union chastised management on Tuesday for its advertising campaign in support of a salary cap while Commissioner Rob Manfred maintained the proposal was developed in response to fans. Bruce Meyer, who took over when Tony Clark was forced out in February, said the sport was thriving despite … Continue reading Baseball union head criticizes MLB salary cap ad campaign, says claims of economic woe are perverse<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1452],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1524158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports-news"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":true,"date":"2026-07-16 12:58:14","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[0],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1524158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1524158"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1524158\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1524166,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1524158\/revisions\/1524166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1524158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1524158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1524158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}