This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider.
You can subscribe to the newsletter for one year for $79.95 using your PayPal account or major credit card.
--
A salary cap -- what I call a payroll cap and what is more accurately described as a payroll band -- is the Holy Grail for owners in major sports leagues. It’s an agreement to only spend so much on talent, to limit teams’ competition for players. In the NFL, NBA and NHL, the owners have the upper hand on largely impotent players’ unions, and can all but dictate terms of those leagues’ bargaining agreements. That MLB does not have a cap is mostly a reflection of its union, even in a lessened state, still being intact rather than broken by scabs and lockouts. The quotes above make a point that I and many others have made for years: Payroll caps are big wins for owners and losses for players.
